Growing Pains

In light of the success of progressive ideas and candidates in Tuesday's elections - and the utter embarrassment that seems to be the current 2012 Republican presidential field - we decided we'd look at a subject we'd noted a couple of weeks ago, but hadn't fully addressed - the announcement of the world's seven-billionth person.

According to the United Nations Population Fund report released recently, the world's seven billionth human inhabitant is likely somewhere on the planet right now. While we didn't get to this point overnight, the last three billion people were all born within the lifespan of the youngest two members of our staff - about thirty-five years or so.

There's no legitimate way to determine who the planet's seven billionth individual is, or where he or she was born. The mere existence of that many people on our little island in space brings to light a few very important questions, that - frankly - humans should have had answered long ago.

Everyone needs adequate food, water, and shelter - and far too many of them don't have anything close to that. Those people, in one way or another, will also need energy; to power their cars or motorbikes, their lights, and all the other modern conveniences that much of the world either wants or already has.

After the announcement Wednesday by the International Energy Agency, now more than ever we're concerned about how we're going to obtain and distribute the resources we all want and need.

The agency's report made it clear: "On planned [energy] policies, rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change... we are on an even more dangerous track to an increase of 6°C [11°F]….  Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”

In short, we humans need to get our collective butts in gear - or we'll bake our planet into a place where humans can no longer survive. We could get to the point of no return within the next five years.

Already, because the energy sources humans have been using over the last two centuries have been so wasteful and filthy, we've increased the type and severity of weather worldwide. The winter monster storm that is literally half the size of the lower 48 states, that's now slamming Alaska isn't just a rare event. It's an event climate scientists have rarely seen the likes of before.

Sadly, one of the biggest issues being ignored with some of the discussions about the Keystone pipeline has to do not with leaking oil, or how many jobs a pipeline project like Keystone would actually generate. It's the fact that the type of oil energy that would be pumping through the pipeline would be some of the highest polluting materials in the world - at a time when the world can least afford it.

Meanwhile, the executives of companies in the solar power business are having some of the fastest growth of any industry in the U.S. Their industry is experiencing growth that's ten times faster than the national economy as a whole over the last 12 months, in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression. Another study, released in February 2011, pointed out that the world as a whole doubled its output of solar energy last year - and future forecasts look, well... bright.

As Tuesday's elections proved, with landslide wins for progressive policies in traditionally conservative places like Mississippi, even those people who've been traditionally against change seem to be understanding: we can't just continue doing things the way we always have.

We can find solutions together, that will help divide our resources in a more just manner, and still give people plenty of opportunities to make money in a capitalist way.  But not if we just keep pushing the same old, hairy, ugly model of politics and business we've been using for far too long.