Some folks may have read the Internation Herald Tribune article or Jerome a Paris' latest diary on peak oil and the topic of the coming oil shortages discussed in the above IHT article. (I search out that type of information because I have a beautiful one-year-old baby boy and I am terrified that we as the denizens of the world have failed him. Certainly, the owners of massive SUVs and McMansions have failed the children of the world with their petulance.)
Some folks may have also been listening when the World Wildlife Federation famously predicted that the "Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week."
Most haven't heard however about Dongtan though. China, a country that is otherwise a ticking time bomb on our planet's resources (and Tibet), is actually doing something good with their eco-city under design named "Dongtan."
The greatest movement of people in world history is under way. Three hundred million Chinese peasants will move to cities in the next twenty years. That means massive expansion for existing urban areas and the building of three to four hundred brand new cities. Miriam O'Reilly has been to China to see what these new cities could look like.
The Chinese are well aware that cities have a massive impact on the environment so they've commissioned the British engineering company, Arup to create a model eco-city where half a million people will live and work without damaging the environment. Their electricity will come from wind and wave, their sewage will fertilise the surrounding farmland and their water will be harvested from the skies and recycled.
The building of Dongtan on an island close to Shanghai is a horrendously expensive project but the Chinese are convinced that their investment will pay off. The new technology and new modes of urban living pioneered at Dongtan will, they hope, be replicated throughout China and sold on to a world desperate for environmentalas solutions.
Link.
There it is. Let's hope China really does this and that this project isn't just a PR stunt. Let's hope that the British company designing it gets all the help they need to get this done: our children's future depends on it quite literally, along with all the other conservation techniques and technologies that could, if we invest, save them (and us).
Let's also hope that we in the "West" can get off our lilly-livered, earth-raping ASSES and convert our cities to something like Dongtan.
P.S.
This blurb from the above WWF article is a set of depressing facts about our dwindling resources that doesn't mention the coming water wars nor even the potential catastrophe that is global warming. Oil wars are already here so that blurb won't scare people into action very well now will it? But what the hell, maybe my whining on this resource issue will get through to just the right person some day:
The world's ticking timebomb
Marine crisis:
North Atlantic cod stocks have collapsed from an estimated 264,000 tonnes in 1970 to under 60,000 in 1995.
Pollution:
The United States places the greatest pressure on the environment, with its carbon dioxide emissions and over-consumption. It takes 12.2 hectares of land to support each American citizen and 6.29 for each Briton, while the figure for Burundi is just half a hectare.
Shrinking Forests:
Between 1970 and 2002 forest cover has dwindled by 12 per cent.
Endangered wildlife:
African elephant numbers have fallen from 1.2 million in 1980 to half a million now. In the UK the songbird population has fallen dramatically, with the corn bunting declining by 92 per cent in the past 30 years.
Link.
I'm sorry but one more time: I don't understand how a person can ride around in a massive earthraping SUV or live in a McMansion to keep up with the Smithsidiots and look their children in the eye without feeling utter shame.
What is wrong with people that they would damn their children to this bleak future?
Are we THAT sick in the mind or weak-minded at this point that so many people of all political pursuasions would DAMN their children, as our parents damned us, to our sweltering, diminishing world?
Are we so weak and pathetic a species that we just give in like this?
Yeah I hate government waste and cronyism and lobbyism and all that crap just as much as the most hypocritical, rabid Republican but THIS should be something I could agree with the most Koolaid crazed Republican BECAUSE THEY HAVE KIDS TOO! But they DON'T CARE. Yes I'm yell-typing!!
God help us.
Dongtan.