It's so simple, yet...

Gardeners in the UK can no more splash gardens lavishly with a hosepipe. With several water companies in the south and south-east of England imposing restrictions from this week, hobby gardeners may face a fine of up to £1,000 if they are caught using a hosepipe. May sound tough action but in times of water scarcity, every drop counts. As we have said, in a city like Bangalore, the groundwater is being drawn thrice as faster than it is being recharged causing the table to sink and dry up in a few years. River water is being supplied from 100 kms away using power to pump it up 500 metres, and this same water is stolen and lost to leakages up to 40 percent! Finally, when it reaches the city, unscrupulous citizens have resorted to guzzling more than their quota by using pumps!! How long can this kind of unsustainable situation continue?? New studies are showing that Chinese cities are slowly sinking as a result of rapid development and excess groundwater use. According to reports, as many as 50 cities across the country are affected by soil subsidence, including the country’s largest -Shanghai. Rather than looking to 'greener' sources, which are as unsustainable at times, perhaps it is time we adopted smaller and simpler solutions that use recycled material largely. Rather than blame fossil fuels, we need to look at the whole picture. Can we live in smaller homes, simpler food, use public transport (or our legs where possible)? Adopt community living that fosters a sense of sharing? Tough, but necessary if we choose to plan for a tomorrow.

A quarter of global land 'highly degraded'

A UN report released this week says that 25% of all land on earth is “highly degraded” making it unsuitable for agriculture.

The implications of this finding are enormous; the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that farm output must increase by 70% by 2050 to accommodate the food needs of an estimated 9 billion humans.

That translates into another billion tons of grain foods and 200 million tons of livestock meat (note: as standards of living rise in developing nations, the demand for high-quality meat also rises).

Primitive or unsustainable farming practices like over-tilling can lead to soil erosion, loss of surface water and loss of biodiversity.

Consequently, the UN report, ‘State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture’ calls for “sustainable intensification” of agricultural productivity on existing farmland. To meet world water and food needs by 2050, the report recommends more efficient irrigation systems (most are currently below capacity), new farming practices (e.g., “integrated irrigation” and increased fish-farming [aquaculture] to meet protein demands), and more investment in agricultural development.

Do it for your country!

Growth, some believe, is inextricably tied with energy. But is it? Does increased energy consumption lead to better quality of life? Or does cheap, abundant (seemingly!) fuel cause indirectly obesity and diabetes, pollution, waste, etc?

Take for instance Europe with a collective economy larger than that of the US.
It has considerably lower levels of inequality; provides universal health care with better overall outcomes; and enforces stricter environmental, health and safety regulations--all on half the energy per person as in the US.

Vaclav Smil illustrates this phenomenon in a recent article entitled "Science, energy, ethics, and civilization." He notes that there is an inflection point for many quality of life measures at around 100 gigajoules/year per person. Above that, indicators improve very little. For comparison the United States uses 330 gigajoules/year per person. Smil thinks consumption above 200 gigajoules is actually counterproductive.

Humans are energy-gathering machines. If they did not gather more energy than they expend, they would instantly die out. Every organism on the planet seeks to maximize its energy gain. But as with any adaptive strategy, it eventually becomes maladaptive. If an organism cannot evolve to match changing conditions--in this case, rapid fossil fuel depletion, climate change, soil degradation and so on--then dieoff or extinction can follow.

One way around this, according to experts like Kurt Cobb, is to use some strong attachment of the race, like nation or God! 'To say one needs to use less energy for the good of humanity has very limited appeal. To say one needs to do it for God, king and country is a move in the right direction.'

Natural selection to blame

On an average, human civilization consumes some 14 terawatts of power, mostly provided by burning coal, oil and natural gas. And yet, roughly two billion people lack reliable access to modern energy—whether fossil fuels or electricity—and largely rely on burning charcoal, dung or wood for light, heat and cooking.

Lighting and battery charging take a big helping of power at home, followed by television. But when talking of ghg emissions, it is the gadgets and vehicles that take the cake.In the U.S., for example, household emissions tripled between 1950 and 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, thanks to the use of electricity in the home for devices like TVs.

But looking for alternate energy also means more mining and energy use for rare-earth elements for electric motors; more pollution from purifying process for wafers, etc. Biggest challenge is that of dwindling resources. Minerals, food, water...

So, do we blame it all on population? Taking a different line recently was Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve at a lecture. He pointed the finger at natural selection, saying that this principle which drives us to reproduce and advance our genes operates "on the here and now level" and pays no heed to imminent food, energy and resource crises.

Our ancestors in the Central African forests and savannahs evolved to embrace intra-group selfishness and inter-group hostility as a matter of survival, he said.

Humans are the only species that have the ability to act against natural selection, he said. "If we don't act soon to overcome our genetic tendency to intra-group selfishness and inter-group hostility, the future of humanity and of much of life on Earth will be gravely endangered, possibly leading to total extinction under conditions that can only be visualized as apocalyptic."

City pangs

Cities are already responsible for more than 80 percent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. By 2030, the world will have almost 5 billion city residents -- about 60 percent of the world's population.

So, it makes sense for cities to get smart and learn to build housing and transportation systems, ensure food and energy supplies, and deal with waste in a sustainable manner that cuts greenhouse-gas emissions.

Perhaps as a first step cities must know their emissions and have policies to lower these. At a recent meet, the attention was on C40's collaboration with International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) -- Local Governments for Sustainability -- to develop a standard for measuring city greenhouse-gas emissions.

ICLEI draws upon the expertise of World resources Institute in this regard. WRI has begun developing a city-level emissions accounting framework tailored for China. WRI's city framework will measure both direct and indirect emissions. This means that emissions from goods and services produced and consumed by city residents would be included in a city's emissions assessment.

Then there are the BRT systems which lowers commuting time and also reduces emissions! A step ahead, inspired by IPCC's recent report that renewable energy could provide 80 percent of the world's energy by 2050, how about distributed on-site solar that sees solar panels on individual homes? To make the installation and financing easy, WRI has been looking at collaborative solar financing for a group or community.

Surely, there are many ways cities can lead the way in becoming climate champions. All it takes is some innovative thinking and a visionary leadership.

Finite world

When still in that introspective mode, let us see what Nobel laureate Paul Krugman says in his column in New York Times about this finite world in terms of economy.

Rightly, he points as expected to how the primary driving force behind rising commodity prices isn’t demand from the United States, but from China and other emerging economies. 'As more and more people in formerly poor nations are entering the global middle class, they’re beginning to drive cars and eat meat, placing growing pressure on world oil and food supplies.

'And those supplies aren’t keeping pace. Conventional oil production has been flat for four years; in that sense, at least, peak oil has arrived.'

He goes on to note how extreme weather, driven by climate change possibly, has also played an important role in driving up food prices.

However, while concluding that the commodity prices are a 'sign that we’re living in a finite world, one in which resource constraints are becoming increasingly binding', he goes on to offer a consolation that this will not mean the end to economic growth, or a collapse. 'It will require that we gradually change the way we live, adapting our economy and our lifestyles to the reality of more expensive resources'.

Are we missing the vital aspect here? Sure, for some time at least there will be food, energy, water, but these will be so expensive that only few with the money can buy it. Soon enough catastrophe will follow.

Simply because we are dealing with a finite world and making infinite demands with our rising population. By mid-century we are poised to hit the 10 billion mark.

We must learn to live with less, less of food, water and energy. There is no way out of that. Is there?

Perhaps as costs of essential commodities keep rising, we will be forced to make the effort. Perhaps the new year will see a changing trend.

Shortage of metals predicted

Not just Peak oil, we are entering an era of Peak everything. Peak water, Peak metals! Failure to advance metal recycling, especially of rare metals used in high-tech products, could produce a global shortage of many metals within two decades, according to a series of reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Thomas Graedel, a member of UNEP’s International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management and a Yale University professor, cited the example of indium, a metal used to create transparent electrodes used in liquid crystal displays, touch screens, semiconductors, and photovoltaic cells. Global demand for the metal is expected to grow from 1,200 tons this year to 2,600 tons next year, he said. Yet, like most specialty metals, recycling rates for the metal are below 1 percent, he said.

Graedel cited information from microchip maker Intel Corp. that the number of elements it used for computers rose from 11 in the 1980s to around 60 now, indicating that it would be hard to maintain current levels of computer performance if newer specialty metals became unavailable.

Other metals whose recycling rates the panel said needed to be improved included neodymium, used in wind turbine magnets, and gallium, used for light emitting diodes in indicator lamps and lighting.

In a separate report, the U.N. panel detailed what it said was a substantial shift in metals stocks from underground ores to existing products. "These 'mines above ground' have growing potential for future metals supply," it said.

Above-ground copper amounts to about 50 kg (112 pounds) for every person on earth, compared with more than two tons of iron, the panel said. The recycling rate for steel is about 75 percent but for copper between 25 and 50 percent, it found.

After the frenzied discovery of the magic materials has come the discovery that everything is limited. Reduce and reuse has to become more than a fad. A dedicated workforce for recycling could be among the major changes in the way we do sustainable business in future.

Tapping the higher self

Will money-based incentives help make people change lifestyle habits? Or simply appeal to their altruism? This is not so much about going spiritual and talking of the collective consciousness of the race as much as about behavioral science.

There have been innumerable failed attempts of rallying people to a cause, but a pertinent question is: have incentives worked? Not always.

So, if you are asked to reduce air travel, eat less of meat and dairy products and use paper responsibly, as part of your shared responsibility to the planet and other inhabitants, will you consider it?

One of the fundamental insights of behavioral economics is that people are not merely the rational, self-interested beings of Economics 101, but also emotional creatures, capable of altruism and influenced by the behavior of others. Is it better to appeal to the better nature in us, rather than pursue the ‘what’s in it for you’ approach? Formulating policies that tap into our social and genetic heritage of cooperation offers the best hope for success, feel experts.

Simple and inexpensive changes could reduce global warming emissions by one billion tons. A three-day symposium on Climate, Mind and Behavior, sponsored by NRDC and the Garrison Institute, a nonprofit organisation in the US, showed that simple and inexpensive changes by Americans could reduce emissions by one billion tons!

Some of its recommendations included flying once less every year -The average one-way commercial flight from London to Los Angeles produces more greenhouse gas emissions per passenger than the average British commuter produces yearly by car, train, and subway combined!

Consume less red meat and dairy: while the average pound of beef consumed in the United States is responsible for 20 pounds of emissions, a pound of chicken is responsible for less than two. Today’s average American consumes a prodigious quantity of red meat: the equivalent of one McDonald’s Angus Bacon and Cheese Burger per day. Replacing two days’ servings of red meat with poultry will reduce emissions by more than 70 MMtCO2e in 2020. Dairy cattle similarly produce vast quantities of greenhouse gas emissions. Dropping dairy two days per week in favor of plant-based foods is not only healthy but will save more than 35 MMtCO2e in 2020.

Consume paper and plastics more responsibly: Buying recycled paper, stemming the flow of unwanted catalogs by two-thirds, and reducing printer paper consumption by one-third (easily achieved by printing doublesided) will save more than 50 MMtCO2e in 2020. Dropping bottled water consumption by 50 percent in that same timeframe will save another 8 MMtCO2e.

So, are you willing to take on responsibility for the planet?

Change more than bulbs

That is the transformation sought by Erik Assadourian, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and project director of a new book called 2010 State of the World: Transforming Cultures from Consumerism to Sustainability.

The culture of consumerism “has taken root in culture upon culture over the past half-century ... [and] become a powerful driver of the inexorable increase in demand for resources and production of waste that marks our age,” says the report. But consumer cultures are unsustainable and are driving the planet toward a “great collision between a finite planet and the seemingly infinite demands of human society.”

Global consumption has grown dramatically since World War II, reaching $30.5 trillion in 2006, up sixfold since 1960. This is, in part, good as it brings in wealth and employment for many (the premise of capitalism!) but today’s prevailing consumption patterns are, quite simply, unsustainable.

Not only the rich but even the poor earning around, $5,000 or $6,000 per person per year, are consuming at rates that will deplete the earth’s resources and cause catastrophic change.

The report sees danger as people in developing nations aspire toward the same consumer lifestyles as their peers in the West.

But how feasible is the“wholesale transformation of dominant cultural patterns” that the report calls for? How will things change to mean “machismo is not about the size of your car, but the fact that you don’t have one at all.”

True, there is more agreement that consumer culture is not only causing environmental havoc, but also failing to deliver the well-being that it promises. Look at the stressed lives around, and you know! But how can such a change happen? Can advertising and media, the very tools that sell consumerism, be used to sell a sustainable culture?

The developing world that has just discovered the heady brew of consumerism will be most reluctant to let go. Even the developed world that has had its time in the sun is most reluctant to abstain from consumerism. What will it need for the world citizens to say 'enough'?

Cities with digital underbellies

Suddenly the resistance to migration from villages to cities seems to have disappeared. More people are beginning to believe this as an inevitable trend of days to come. Cities are where humankind are going to be concentrated, like it or no. So, the next best thing is to see how cities can become sustainable and cater to the growing numbers. By going digital?

WorldChanging lists "the great digital underbelly" of new and retrofitted sustainable cities by Gordon Feller of Urban Age, green ICT (information and communications technologies) with its promise for increasing the energy and resource efficiency of most aspects of urban development, as one of the trends of tomorrow.

If these technologies can offset their operating and production resource impacts (estimated to use 2-3 percent of total industry energy used, but forecast to double by 2022), the world could benefit from initial increased efficiencies in the 15-25 percent range.

Many companies like IBM, Cisco, General Electric, Siemens are believed to be positioning for implementing new ICT for sustainability in cities, demonstrating applications at the pilot project level. Cities with pilot or operating projects in green ICT include Amsterdam, San Francisco, Masdar City (United Arab Emirates), Seoul, London, Singapore, Beijing, New Delhi, Mumbai, Stockholm and Oslo.

The following are Green Smart City applications and examples of companies involved:
o traffic congestion monitoring and pricing systems: IBM, Capita Group
o water applications (leakage detection, purification): IBM, Siemens
o building applications (sense-and-respond technologies to monitor temperature, light, humidity and occupancy): Johnson Controls, Siemens, IBM
o intelligent public transportation and logistics: PwC, Samsung, Cisco
o public shared offices with telepresence (pictured above): Cisco, Hewlett-Packard
o home and office smart appliances that can tie in with smart grid energy applications: General Electric, AT&T, Whirlpool
o smart grids: General Electric, Schneider Electric, SAP, Oracle, ABB
o data centers for cities: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco
o carbon inventories and carbon accounting: Microsoft, Oracle.

That is quite an impressive list. Have they missed out any area? Can you think of any? One doubt – where it calls for products to be put in place, actual physical ones, what are the energy implications of manufacturing these. For example, smart grids. Even sensors need to be manufactured, right. And chip manufacturing calls for a lot of water. What do you think?

Zero cost homes?

Even without floods doing their bit, the numbers of homeless are millions. When they could easily be provided shelter simply by using the things the rest of us throw out as waste. Old tires. Old bottles. Beer Cans. Plastic containers.

So many birds in one stone! Turning waste into shelters. Reducing the dependence on scarce resources. Using less water and energy!

The ‘Earthship’ concept of American architect Michael Reynolds is slowly but surely catching up. The latest to join the crew is a small community in the San Juan Del Sur region of Nicaragua.

They have created an entirely off-grid, sustainable community, titled Casa Llanta ("Tire House"). In India, a similar concept was tried out at Kodaikanal.

Earthships use materials that can be found in the community to build "cheap" homes, coupled with rainwater catchment systems, solar panels and other construction techniques to develop a community with the lightest footprint possible.

Natural heating without electricity and a more reliable water supply through rainwater catchment and storage for cooking and for growing crops are some of its selling points. In addition, throwaway materials like tires, glass, plastic containers and aluminum cans are incorporated into construction, along with minimal construction materials like cement, for example, to create structures that are more easily reproduced.

The Nicaraguan project began back in December 2007 with preparation of materials, like packing tires with dirt as "bricks" and cutting/cleaning glass bottles. To get involved with Earthships in your local community, or by volunteering internationally, check out www.earthship.net

Home, as it was meant to be?? How about getting students at your nearby school to work on such ideas?

Imagine it, first

All roads lead to Copenhagen. All discussions end there too. In this regard, it is worthwhile to ponder on the observations of someone who went to that city.

‘Copenhagen is not a city of magicians. The people there have no secret powers. What they have is a belief in their power to work together using their city as a tool for changing their lives and transforming the world. Each new bike lane, each new windmill, each new green building, each new design, each new public art project: each builds upon the success of the last, and offers promise to the next. It's that engaged, happy, progressive spirit that I think is Copenhagen's real message to the world: imagine it, build it, and the world will change.’

That is something truly inspiring. Surely we have it in us to attempt something like that? But is it time to give up on leaders and rely more on collective action at the grassroots?

Another expert, IPCC’s Pachauri seems to believe so, when he says, ‘Leadership demands that people with vision, people with a large sense of responsibility start informing the public on what needs to be done. But, I'm reaching the stage where you really cannot rely on leaders. You really need a groundswell of grassroots action and grassroots consciousness on what needs to be done.’

Well, there is hope. On 26 September 2009, almost 4400 citizens from 38 countries participated in the world's first independent citizen consultation on climate change, World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews). The Centre for Social Markets organised one of two such consultations in India. More on that in the next post.

In yet another heartening move, IYCN, the coalition uniting Indian youth and Indian youth oriented organizations who are concerned about climate change announced the launch of the Agents of Change team. The Agents of Change will engage both students and young professionals in massive lobbying, as well as campaigning and direct action at regional and national levels, to influence the political decisions leading up to and during the Copenhagen summit in December ’09.

Now whether direct action is desirable or not is another question, but individuals and organizations are getting their act together.

The Agents of Change team will be responsible for coercing governments to take swift and concrete action against global warming at regional, national and international levels. We will achieve this through direct action, policy suggestions, media pressure and negotiation. IYCN is currently seeking funding to support all of the above efforts. For more details on the Indian Youth Climate Network, its earlier projects and other ventures please visit www.iycn.in

Imagine it, and let us build it. That is a point where we will stop at. Do talk to us.

Ecological limits

Nature has published a lead article by a team headed by the Stockholm scientist Johan Rockstrom. Titled “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” it sets boundaries for nine interlinked planetary thresholds, arguing that if we crossed them we risked destroying the “unusual stability” that has marked the Holocene, the last 10,000 years.

Besides carbon dioxide and ozone, there is good evidence for some other as important thresholds: ocean acidity, freshwater use, the movement of nitrogen and phosphorus, the amount of land used for crops, aerosols (haze and other particles), biodiversity, and chemical pollution.

For example, as we spread fertilizer on farmland and burn coal, we are pumping far too much nitrogen into the environment. Human activity releases 121 million tons of nitrogen, much of which ends up polluting rivers, lakes and oceans and potentially pushing their ecosystems into irreversible changes.

Ecological models still can’t capture the entirety of Earth’s biological, geological and chemical processes, and it’s impossible to run whole-Earth experiments. What are the alternatives? So is it truly useful to create a list of environmental limits without serious plans for how they may be achieved?

These are questions to which answers are tough but many are beginning to believe that to stay within planetary boundaries is important, and for that we need social transformation at a massive scale. Is that possible when the problem is not really 'visible' to the large majority? Are these merely scare scenarios? What do YOU think?

Connected with reality: Nokia

Nokia is the world's most sustainable technology company, according to Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, that looked at how over 2,500 companies in 50 countries incorporate sustainability into their practices. It was chosen as "World Technology Supersector Leader," making it the leader across the entire global technology sector.

Nokia has been integrating environmental and sustainable activities into the way it does business for more than a decade and the company considers the environment in ALL of the devices it makes by reducing environmental impacts in packaging, energy consumption, materials and manufacturing processes, and recyclability.

Nokia works with a number of public sector bodies, NGOs and voluntary groups to harness the power of mobile technology to address environmental, social or economic issues.

As part of its climate change strategy, Nokia is constantly working on reducing energy consumption and increasing efficiency across its business. Some of its actions include reducing travel, investing in research and development of new technologies using renewable energy resources, and plans to increase the usage of green electricity which already accounts for 25% of all energy the company consumes.

Creditable achievement. Let us hope more companies will follow suit.

Can we hope for global cooperation?

A major new World Bank report titled ‘World Development Report 2010’ concludes that the world can fight poverty and climate change at the same time. But it won't be easy, and it won't be cheap. So, anything new about that?? We did know it will be tough.

The biennial global economic assessment, which this year focuses exclusively on the threat of climate change, estimates that nations will need nearly $500 billion annually by 2030 to both develop clean energy technologies across the world and cope with natural disasters.

The report calls on governments, research institutions and individuals to overcome a worldwide "inertia" of dependence on fossil fuel. The World Bank study estimates that poor nations will bear between 75 and 80 percent of the cost of floods, increased desertification and other disasters caused by global warming.

Among the near-term impacts of climate change, the authors estimated that India's crop yields would likely decline 4.5 to 9 percent within the next three decades.

What is needed is decisive, immediate action, they say. Finally!

In a related study, a group of environmental scientists and economists propose a much stronger focus on regional and worldwide cooperation to deal with human-caused crises.

The researchers, writing in Science, say that “energy, food and water crises, climate disruption, declining fisheries, ocean acidification, emerging diseases and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of serious, intertwined global-scale challenges spawned by the accelerating scale of human activity,” have proven beyond national governments and institutions to deal with adequately.

Since these crises are planet-wide, they require a much more cooperative, i.e. global, response, according the group of economists and scientists, who themselves represent an international front coming from Australia, Sweden, the United States, India, Greece and The Netherlands.

Both studies do not really throw up any newer scenario than has been parrotted by many before them. Both are commendable. But what impact they will have is the question. In times of scarce resources, how many nations will open up rather than shut doors? Hiding behind financial meltdown, how many developed nations will fund mitigation scenarios in the south? How many governments will acknowledge that the future is threatened, and work to avert threats? Very few. For it takes the brave, and the brave seem a small number today. It may well take a strong force to dislodge us from our collective inertia.

Transition beyond 2012

Excuse the length of this post but the subject simply warrants it. Read on and share your thoughts.

The doomsday predictions are back in circulation. This time it is based on the Mayan Calendar, which talks of December 12, 2009 as the end of the world as we know it. Will it be an asteroid delivering the dinosaurian fate to mankind? Or towering waves unleashed by uncontrolled climate change? Sony will release its popular genre film 2012 this winter based on such an apocalypse.

Doomsday deniers have scorned the many scenarios spawned by the industry as a mere excuse for sitting back and doing nothing. They are supremely confident that the human race will ride the rough waves on the boats of science and technology.
But some optimists have interpreted this as a time of reawakening, a beginning of a spiritual era, of a collective consciousness. A transition.

Transition is also a world we believe in. Transition to more efficient, less wasteful ways. Transition to new and clean energy sources.

Whether things will come to a grinding halt on December 12 or no, there are indications plenty that choppy seas await us. Population piles up. Food production goes down. Water is going beyond our reach. Climate change adds on biceps with every passing day. And viruses are getting stronger. Do we really need more evidence to show how unsustainable we are?

Whether cosmic forces will play their hand or we will bring it on to ourselves, remains to be seen. If not December 2012, sometime very soon. Unless we halt in our tracks and make a change. A visible change.

For this we need to accept some things. One, that resources are limited whether it be fossil fuels or water or fertile soil. Is it not better to wean away before we run out of these? Two, that we are but a small line in the web of life that connects all living things and resources. That is how it has evolved.

Take for instance, the fate of Zabbaleen, a Coptic Christian community of recyclers who reside in Cairo, Egypt. Their main profession is collecting and disposing of the city's waste through reusing and recycling materials and feeding food waste to livestock - mainly pigs.

Due to the outbreak of swine flu the Egyptian government ordered the culling of the country's pigs. A majority of these pigs were raised by the Zabbaleen and used in the first stage of recycling the thousands of tons of organic waste generated daily in Cairo. The future of these garbage collectors is now unclear as they have lost an integral part of their garbage disposal system.

Wars will become more frequent s nations try to stockpile crucial resources which were hitherto exported under a globalised economy. A draft report by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs.

China mines over 95pc of the world’s rare earth minerals, mostly in Inner Mongolia. The rare earth family are hard to find, and harder to extract.

Terbium is a key ingredient in low-energy light-bulbs. Neodymium that enhances the power of magnets at high heat and is crucial for hard-disk drives, wind turbines, and the electric motors of hybrid cars. Cerium and lanthanum are used in catalytic converters for diesel engines. Europium is used in lasers. Any modern day gadget, ipod, mobile phones, computers, lap up rare earth minerals. The Chinese move is not an attempt to get the rest of the world on its knees, as much as hoarding for its own growth.

Nations will be forced to take stock of their own welfare as critical resources become scarce. Wars and famines will follow. How soon? 2012? Write in to say what you think we need to do? About energy, about food, climate change, water…

Is it too late to be a pessimist?

For the weekend, here is something interesting you can do – watch a film. It’s free for download from the Net.

French photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand's documentary Home is a collection of unique aerial footage from over 50 countries, showing how humans are mining the planet’s resources beyond the criteria of need. It offers a solution in moderation, intelligence and sharing.

Much like one of the astronauts recommended a trip to space for humans to overcome notions of borders and war, this film strikes the human conscience by providing hard evidence of disaster from greedy consumption. It takes you across the globe from the farmland of Australia to the cold unwelcoming plains of Siberia, from desert land to Antarctica, from poverty stricken Africa to the concrete jungles of skyscrapers and criss-crossing flyovers glittering at night!

Both the rich and poor are exploiting natural resources – one for a living, another for a lifestyle. But whether it is oil, or machinised agriculture, the clock is ticking. Can we slow down? Can we change? Or do we simply give up and carry on as usual?

Stark. Evocative. Silencing. The vivid colours of planet earth, from the blue and green and rust to the cruel brown gashes on the hill slope, it is a reminder of what we have and what we are doing.

It took 217 days of shooting in 54 countries, which added up to 488 hours of footage.

Interestingly, the emissions for the making of the movie were offset, by financing a project for Diffusion of anaerobic digesters in India!

Home was released free and worldwide to reach as many people as possible. To make this possible, the film was sponsored by PPR Group.

Message and visual delight apart, the movie has an equally appealing music score written by Armand Amar and recorded with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and the Shanghai Percussion Ensemble.

How transparent is that cloth?

The wool in your sweater, the lithium in your mobile, the paper in the book you just purchased, they all have a history tracing them back to their origins. How much water, energy or minerals did they consume?

Companies are now showcasing this history to show they are serious about sustainability! ‘Supply chain transparency’ is the latest in the game. It requires companies to understand and provide details of their entire supply chains.

A British company called Historic Futures that specializes in traceability, tracks such commodities as cotton and gold through the supply chains of Wal-Mart, Gap and Patagonia, etc using Internet-based systems and RFID tags.

Icebreaker is a company that makes clothing from New Zealand merino wool and invites customers to trace their garments back to the farmers who raised the sheep that made it using a Baacode! Your Baacode will let you see the living conditions of the high country sheep that produced the merino fibre in your Icebreaker garment, meet the farmers who are custodians of this astonishing landscape, and follow every step of the supply chain.

Wal-Mart's "Love, Earth" brand of gold and silver jewelry invites consumers to visit a website to find the source of their precious metals and to be assured that it's not a dirty mine in a poor country.

Patagonia's "Footprint Chronicles" website tracks the journey of a T-shirt through the global economy, revealing its carbon footprint, water usage and miles traveled.

The wood that went to make your furniture – was it the consequence of illegal logging in a forest or from a plantation?

Wal-Mart and Tesco have vowed not to buy clothing made with cotton farmed in Uzbekhistan, where child labor is rampant, requiring them to ask all their suppliers to know where their cotton is sourced.

For sure this move will help when the consumer is sensitive to the issues at hand. Not otherwise. It could well end as an interesting gimmick or fad to catch the consumer’s attention.

Would it make a difference to YOU if you knew where your stuff came from? Let us know.

Lasting homes

Homes in the future could last forever. Well, almost! A concrete material developed at the University of Michigan can heal itself when it cracks. No human intervention is necessary—just water and carbon dioxide to heal and form a thin white scar of calcium carbonate.

Self-healing is possible because the material is designed to bend and crack in narrow hairlines rather than break and split in wide gaps, as traditional concrete behaves.

Failures often occur when traditional concrete is strained in an earthquake or by routine overuse as it is brittle and rigid. But the flexibility of engineered cement composite, or ECC (which acts more like metal than glass), prevents this occurrence. The bendable ECC remains intact and safe up to tensile strains of 5 percent where traditional concrete fractures and can’t carry a load at .01 percent tensile strain.

At present, building structures are constructed using steel bars to keep cracks as small as possible. But they’re not small enough to heal, so water and salts can penetrate to the steel, causing corrosion that further weakens the structure. Self-healing concrete needs no steel reinforcement to keep crack width tight, so it eliminates corrosion. And costs! And energy!

Natural materials have long been shown to be the best when it comes to temperature modulation and costs. Bamboo, kemp, etc have been used effectively. But more and more traditional homes all over the country are being replaced by concrete structures – for its strength. Are we headed in the right direction?

The scapegoat

Overpopulation is not driving environmental destruction at the global level; over-consumption is. That is what reputed journalist Fred Pearce says in a well-analysed post.

Referring to the famous environmental scientist Garret Hardin who had proposed in the 70s what he called “lifeboat ethics” where, “each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in.” If any were let on board, there would be chaos and all would drown.

Pearce makes a change to Hardin’s metaphor, by noting that ‘each of the people in the lifeboat was occupying ten places, whereas the people in the water only wanted one each’.

He cites Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environment Institute, who calculates that the world’s richest half-billion people — about 7 percent of the global population — are responsible for 50 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. And the poorest 50 percent are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions.

In ground covered earlier, he talks of the comparative costs of sustaining lifestyles of Americans, Canadians, Britons with the poor brethren. And makes a case for how despite increasing populations, the poor will still be consuming much lesser than their rich equivalent. And emitting much less carbon di-oxide!

Even if we could today achieve zero population growth, that would barely touch the climate problem — where we need to cut emissions by 50 to 80 percent by mid-century. Given existing income inequalities, it is 'inescapable that over-consumption by the rich few is the key problem, rather than overpopulation of the poor many', Pearce concludes.

Any counter-arguments? What about the rising consumption patterns in some of these developing regions?