Having registered this website on the Blog Action Day, I’ll try to write here some notes about the environment.
Reading The Anthropocene I learnt that:
- the total biomass of the world’s population has increased to roughly 40 MTC (Megatons of carbon);
- the biomass of all wild vertebrates on land is roughly 5 MTC.
In other words, excluding animals that live in the sea, our weight is eight times that of our wild counterpart. This data is disturbing and it can be even more frightening if you think that a TC of first world humans certainly does not have the same impact on our planet as the same mass of, let me say, lions!
To summarise, my obvious proposal is to think twice before doing something that could increase our total MTC (making thoughtless sex is a core problem of course but it is not the only one).
In addition to blogging about the environment, the second way to participate in Blog Action Day was
donating your day’s earnings to an environmental charity
so I chose to join Rientro Dolce (”Mild Return”), which is
an association linked to Italian Radicals, which concerns itself with overpopulation, the environment and energy.
It seems that the MTC numbers come from papers written by Prof. Vaclav Smil.
Thanks to Luca Pardi for having suggested the references to me.
Last update: 2008-07-08
One Comment
Thank you for participating in Blog Action Day.
I did not participate.
However, I did write a belated post about an environmental issue that is important to me. I see a lot of people using a product in luxury homes that is very destructive in a number of ways. Check out this post, please:
Brazilian Teak Floors, Slave Labor, and the Destruction of the Rainforest.
http://www.realestatetwincities.net/brazilian-hardwood-floors-can-you-say-slave-labor/
If this url was too long and got broken in the comment form, you can find it easily at:
http://www.realestatetwincities.net/blog/
Your blog seemed like the right place for sharing this post.
Whatever you can do to share this link or help promote awareness of this issue will be greatly appreciated. Normally, I don’t ask for this kind of help, but the issue is that important to me. Most luxury home owners are unaware of the environmental and human cost of these products.
Thank you!
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[...] giorno (oltre ad altre azioni… come iscriversi ad una associazione a scelta). Io scrissi http://perassi.org/2007/10/15/my-blog-action-day-thoughts/ potremmo chiamare i blogger italiani per un’adunata per lo stesso giorno dell’incontro [...]