A new atlas from the United Nations Environment Program shows the impact the growing human population is having on Earth.
Here's a look at Las Vegas from the skies:
Now, a quick point: 70 per cent of the human body is water, which makes H20 pretty damned important to us (it takes about 30 days to die of starvation; you can die of dehyration in three or so).
Further to that point, where is Vegas? It's in a freakin' desert, that's where!!
Vegas's population is now about one million, not counting tourists. The fastest-growing metropolitan area in the U.S.A., it may well double again within 10 years, according to UNEP.
So where does the water come from?
I'll have to read the book to perhaps find the answer, but to me, it's the height of ecological folly when a nation's growth areas are centred in climates hostile to life.
In the United States, the population centre of gravity has been shifting to the south and west. I remember on my one great American sojourn in the early 1990s where I was returning to Canada. I was about 30 kilometres northwest of Grand Island, Neb. On one side of the road was a beautiful corn crop. On the other was shortgrass prairie -- and it stays that way for well over a thousand kilometres, to the Rockies. From north to south, it runs from Prince Albert, Sask. down into Mexico.
That part of the continent was never designed to be heavily populated. People have been fighting a tenacious but losing battle against that reality ever since settlers poured into the West.
Anyway, that's my digression. For more on the book, here's an excerpt from the BBC story:
Among the transformations highlighted in the atlas are the huge growth of greenhouses in southern Spain, the rapid rise of shrimp farming in Asia and Latin America and the emergence of a giant, shadow puppet-shaped peninsula at the mouth of the Yellow River that has built up through transportation of sediment in the waters.
The effects of retreating glaciers on mountains and in polar regions, deforestation in South America and forest fires across sub-Saharan Africa are also shown in the atlas.
I see growing population and unsustainable living to be the crux of the problem
Vaishali, USAThis year's World Environment Day, which will be hosted by San Francisco in California, will focus on ways of making cities more environmentally friendly and resource-efficient.
"The battle for sustainable development, for delivering a more environmentally stable, just and healthier world, is going to be largely won and lost in our cities," said Klaus Toepfer, Unep's executive director.
"Cities pull in huge amounts of resources including water, food, timber, metals and people. They export large amounts of wastes including household and industrial wastes, waste water and the gases linked with global warming."
It's quite true that cities will be the battleground, but that's been clear since the dawn of civilization.