Translated material
Collapse is just around the corner
We are so accustomed to frightening forecasts, which are regularly supplied to us by specialists in various fields, that the latest “horror stories” somehow don’t really bother us. However, the latest report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) unequivocally proves: the jokes are over, and a quick and inevitable reckoning for the damage done to our planet looms ahead of humanity.
“We risk irreversible environmental losses that could challenge all the improvements in the human condition over the past two hundred years,” the report states categorically.
In the next forty years, the world's population will grow by two billion people and reach nine billion. Almost two-thirds of humanity in 2050 will live in cities, and the results of global human economic activity will quadruple.
And this leap will not remain without consequences. The world economy, which has grown fourfold, despite energy-saving measures, will consume almost 80 percent more energy. And since large developing countries will continue to focus primarily on oil and gas, emissions of harmful greenhouse gases, despite international agreements, threaten to increase by 50 percent by 2050.
The struggle for fresh water will also sharply intensify, experts warn. The need for it will increase by more than 50 percent by 2050. And the subsequent redistribution of resources could lead to almost 40 percent of the population having to live in regions with extreme freshwater shortages. This could be 2.3 billion more people than today.
The report's authors warn of serious economic and human costs unless the international community takes vigorous action to sharply reduce environmental destruction. For example, the number of people who die each year due to harm caused by exhaust fumes and various chemicals could double by mid-century.
Active uprooting of forests and cultivation of monocultures, according to estimates by OECD experts, will lead to the fact that by 2050 the diversity of plants growing on Earth will decrease by ten percent. Europe, Asia and South Africa will be particularly affected. In rivers and lakes, the number of species living there has already decreased by a third, and this harmful process threatens to increase in the future.
In the face of these dangers, the OECD demands swift and effective action. “The previous policy of achieving incremental gains over the coming decades will no longer be sufficient,” the report’s authors say. And they propose specific measures that can, in the coming decades, not only reduce the harm caused to nature, but also reverse this destructive process. To do this, first of all, it is necessary to ensure that any burden on the environment becomes an expensive undertaking. As an example, we can take the EU taxes on energy resources or on harmful emissions containing carbon dioxide, as well as the German environmental tax.
In addition, scientists are pushing for the elimination of environmentally harmful subsidies in agriculture and fisheries. This can significantly dampen the desire to invade nature on the part of a selfish person. It is also necessary that peasants, entrepreneurs and householders pay significantly more over time for the use of natural resources such as water. Until now, in many regions of the world, the lack of economic leverage leads to significant and useless overspending.