David Attenborough urges business to protect nature from population boom

Lewis Smith - The Guardian Wednesday 18th January 2012

Corporations have a leading role to play to make sure "mankind doesn't spread willy nilly over every square yard of the globe", says naturalist

A crowded beach in Brighton ... the earth's population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. Photograph: Paul Carstairs/Alamy

Sir David Attenborough has called on big businesses to protect the natural world from the rapidly expanding human population.

The broadcaster and naturalist said the population increase is unstoppable and that action must be taken to stop the natural world from being concreted over.

Distancing himself from conservationists who regard big businesses as the enemy, he said companies and corporations, as the holders of much of the world's wealth, have a vital and leading role to play.

"It's not a mystery. Wealth empowers," he said. "And businesses have by no means been slow in helping. We've [conservationists] gone to multinationals over and over again."

He said there were exceptions, but that for the most part businesses that defiled the natural world in the 19th and to an extent the 20th century, such as by dumping waste in the sea, usually did so out of ignorance. "They didn't know any better," he said.

But he warned: "We've got to such a situation and dense population that we can no longer make these mistakes. The warning is clear and the job of people in the media like me is to make sure the warning is understood."

For full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/18/david-attenborough-big-business-population

Submitted by ChrisMartenson.com contributing editor Gregor Macdonald

A Punch to the Mouth: Food Price Volatility Hits the World

Perfect Storms: 2011 was an abysmal year for the global insurance industry, which had to cover yet another enormous increase in damages from natural disasters. Unknown to most casual observers is the fact that during the past few decades the frequency of weather-related disasters (floods, fires, storms) has been growing at a much faster pace than geological disasters (such as earthquakes). This spread between the two types of insurable losses has moved so strongly that it prompted Munich Re to note in a late 2010 letter that weather-related disasters due to wind have doubled and flooding events have tripled in frequency since 1980. The world now has to contend with a much higher degree of risk from weather and climate volatility, and this has broad-reaching implications.

And critically, it has a particular impact on food.

Many factors seen over the past decade have produced higher food prices: population growth, urbanization, the decline of arable land per person, and the upgrading of diets for example. But more damaging than food inflation has been the pushing of global food prices out of their long, quiet envelope of stability. From the recently released UN Report on the World Food Situation

To read full article: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-punch-mouth-food-price-volatility-hits-world

Where Population Pressures Have Deadly Consequences

By: Alex Ashlock

With the world population now topping 7 billion, the November issue of National Geographic opens a window on a place where population pressures are having deadly consequences.

“The competition for finite resources has led to power grabs, the shredding of the bio-diversity… and the pitting of one ethnic group against another.”

–Robert Draper, reporter

Africa’s Albertine Rift is a 920-mile crease or rift formed by shifting plate tectonics, where the countries of Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania and Burundi all meet.

It’s the continent’s most bio-diverse region, with highland forests, snow-capped mountains, savannas, great lakes and wetlands, populated with rare birds and fish not to mention lions, hippos and gorillas. Reporter Robert Draper wrote the piece and he told Here and Now the very richness of the area has led to scarcity.

To read more: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2011/12/01/where-population-pressures-have-deadly-consequences