The WWF

Not wrestling related - the World Wildlife Fund has an interesting report out called the Living Planet Report, 2004. The term "ecological debt" is new to me but is a main tenet of the report. The way I understand it is that it means that we are using resources at a rate higher than the earth can replenish them, therefore they are "borrowed" in a sense. The report makes four suggestions to decrease or hopefully reverse the trend.

"Four factors make up the ecological debt;
therefore, debt reduction requires policies and
actions that lead to:
1. Increasing biocapacity by protecting,
conserving, and restoring ecosystems and
biodiversity, to maintain biological
productivity and ecological services.
2. Lowering world population.
3. Reducing per person consumption of
goods and services.
4. Improving the resource efficiency with
which goods and services are produced." p. 22

Most of those seem pretty clear but Number 2, lowering world population, is bound to cause some excitement as Malthusian Theory rears it's head again (still?). I wonder how this stacks up considering that as North America we have one of the lower birth rates around but by far the highest consumption in the world. Is giving birth to one child here the ecological equal to having several children in an "undeveloped" country? Are the numbers of people as big an issue as our voracious appetites for stuff? I suppose if we do both we reduce consumption by that much more.

I'm just making this up as I go and if I come up with new thoughts after I've read the report in full or want to recant some I've already written I'll post again soon.