> Excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven by economic growth, must be quickly curtailed to maintain long-term sustainability of the biosphere.
> Profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained increases in both human and ruminant livestock populations, per capita meat production, world gross domestic product, global tree cover loss, fossil fuel consumption, the number of air passengers carried, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and per capita CO2 emissions since 2000
There's the rub. The vast majority of people in the developing world want the wealthy, Western lifestyle. People like eating meat. People like having technology and air conditioning and transportation and using airplanes to visit far off places.
No leader of a developing country is going to go to their people and say, "Sorry, for the sake of the planet we are going to remain poor." And no leader of developed country is going to go to their people and say, "Sorry, for the sake of the planet, we are going to have to give up our lifestyle, and curtail our economic growth."
> Exactly 40 years ago, scientists from 50 nations met at the First World Climate Conference (in Geneva 1979) and agreed that alarming trends for climate change made it urgently necessary to act.
My guess is that 40 years from now, this group of scientists will put out a paper talking about how they have been warning us for the last 80 years, and we still haven't done anything.