Podcast-Tipp: June 13, 2007: Science Talk. Jared Diamond on the State of the World Environment
You environmentalist care less for people than you do for some lousy species of earth worm snail dort [?] or furbished louse worm – Okey, let’s talk about lousy earth worms. As all of the gardeners among you know earth worms are the main force maintaining the texture and fertility of our soil. For example: Populations of earth worms are plumething now in China because of China’s heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers. China’s pasture grass production has decreased by 50% in large part because of declines of those lousy earth worms. Now that China has lost half of its food growing potential for its more than 1 billion people you just can calculate how many trillions of dollars that’s worth to the economy.
We have to balance the environment against the economy. […] Environmental problems are relatively cheap and easy to solve if you catch them in an early stage; but at a late stage, they are horrendously expensive or impossible to solve. That’s a lesson that was rubbed into the faces of us americans something like two years ago in August, when, after a decade in which various govermental agencies complained about the economy and didn’t want to spend a couple of hundert million dollars to shore up the dykes around on of our big cities. We then found ourselves faced with a bill of several hundred billion dollars in insurance losses and the cost of rebuilding a major city not to mention a couple of thousands of dead americans.
Quelle: June 13, 2007: Science Talk. Jared Diamond on the State of the World Environment (ca. 11min)
Einige Feststellungen
- Die Oster-Insel findet wohl überall Erwähnung, wo es um die Umwelt und die Demonstration mangelnder Nachhaltigkeit geht. Dennoch ist immer noch kontrovers umstritten, was genau auf dieser Insel passiert ist.
- Lustiger Akzent! Ist er Südstaatler?
Lausiger Bücherwurm
Auf meinen Nachttischchen liegen immer noch Diamonds Bücher Guns, Germs, And Steel: The Fates of Human Societies sowie Collapse. Leider bin ich noch nicht über die Einleitung herausgekommen …
