World's scientists urge immediate action toward building a sustainable future
By Nathan Johnson
The runaway success of US former vice president Albert Gore's film and book 'An Inconvenient Truth' and his subsequent winning of the Nobel Prize have certainly made a huge impact in terms of bringing some hard science into living rooms and auditoriums worldwide; but the scientific community — itself responsible for discovering such facts and often 'inconvenient' truths — is no longer engaged in a debate about whether the planet faces new and profound dangers, but is focused now instead of what must be done right now to avert the worst imaginable outcomes for life on planet Earth.
Several of the world's top scientists gathered in Budapest on November 8-9 for the third World Science Forum to discuss these very issues, and a main thread to emerge during the event was that world leaders and policymakers need to make a significant shift away from short-term gains (whether as individual consumers or single nation states) in order to promote long-term environmental stability and economic justice worldwide.
Timo Makela, a consumption and waste specialist and the European Commission's DG Environment director, warns that population growth, coupled with more consumptive lifestyles outside of the United States and the European Union, could lead to a six-fold increase in consumption worldwide by 2050. One particularly urgent problem is worldwide disposal of electronic waste. Makela points out that 15 million cars are sent each year to the scrap heap, as are 100 million mobile telephones. The world's annual electronic waste would, in fact, cover an area the size of Budapest in a layer of debris one metre thick, according to the specialist.
Makela is encouraged, however, that eco-industries now account for 2.1 percent of the EU's total GNP, and that recycling efforts are playing an important role in this expanding economic sector. He adds, however, that research needs to be "robust and bold" if we are to meet today's and tomorrow's environmental challenges.