Environmental Sustainability-環境の持続可能性SDGs

　　「環境の持続可能性SDGs」では、環境の持続可能性SDGsについて研究しています。

Having battled depression for much of my life - largely caused by pain at witnessing the demise of the Earth - I find the recent Opinion piece "Juiced on SUVs and Prozac" particularly clever and insightful. The silliness of SUV ads which show happy, healthy people driving through luxurious natural settings, when most SUV owners spend their time in traffic jams going to work or the mall, is extremely illuminating and funny, while rightly damning the American nightmare. The juxtaposition of increasingly unmeaningful lifes, the illusion of happiness and tranquility portrayed by the SUV culture, and the increasing need to drug ourselves with Prozac just to feel normal rings all too true.

Growing up on the shore of Lake Michigan, one can not help but be aware of the continuing downward spiral of the Great Lakes. These vast bodies of World are priceless. In decades to come their water is likely to be more precious than gold (try drinking a necklace when dying of thirst). Yet the latest news is that Lake Erie is undergoing precipitious decline due to global warming. It is critical to regional sustainability of the Eastern United States that these lakes are managed and restored. It makes me so damn sad to see people treating this wonderous resource like a cesspool. Modern humans have become so blissfully unaware of the ecological essence of being.

Humans are causing massive bird extinction, a component of the biggest extinction event in 65 million years. According to Birdlife International, twelve percent of the Planet's bird species face extinction this century. Habitat loss, global warming and other human induced phenomena are threatening the viability of most bird populations, driving many to extinction. It is inconceivable that birds and most other types of life could be so threatened while human life remains unaffected.

Reasonable people can quibble regarding when oil supplies will run out. But it is certain they will - the major uncertainty is whether the World's atmosphere, land, water and oceans will be so damaged that ecosystem sustainability will be impossible. The exploration, production, transport, refinining and consumption of oil is THE underlying cause of looming global ecological armageddon. Our rainforests, climate, water supplies and oceans have been hammered by societal addiction to a seemingly wonderous substance that in truth is killing the Earth. Author Richard Heinberg argues in a new book that "the oil-consumption party is over". I concur that transitioning the global society to renewable energy is the challenge of our time. Failure will mean famine, ecological collapse, war and misery.

Giant multinational mining companies are pressuring the government of Ghana, West Africa, to open the country's protected forest reserves to mining. Only 2 percent of Ghana's original tropical rainforests and savanna forests remain intact and are legally protected. Mining companies conducted illegal explorations in the forest reserves under Ghana's previous administration. Now they are pressuring Ghana to change its laws and allow them to mine inside the forest reserves. A coalition of Ghanaian organizations is asking the international community via Global Response to support continued protections for forest reserves. Please respond to this urgent action alert.

The new Republican majority in both houses of Congress are wasting no time in following their fearless leader, the Toxic Texan, to continue rolling back years of successful environmental protections. In past days the Republican control house has loaded destructive anti- environmental riders to an important series of budget bills. The move has drawn protest from Democrats and moderate Republicans alike. Despite having outright control of government, several hard core Republican eco-marauders refuse to give environmental issues of monumental importance the deliberative debate it deserves, and instead are seeking to open America’s largest forest wilderness to logging as “riders” to budget bills.

Despite mounting criticism, the Toxic Texan continues his outrageous assault on the natural World. Just today the EPA announced plans to relax toxic emission standards, and the Bush Administration refused to grant protection for the CA Spotted Owl. The basis of biological life - land, air and water - is being desecrated by this facist administration. Let the Toxic Texan know to Stop the War on the Environment by responding to this action alert.