18 September, 2015

Ghandi's observations from nearly 70 years ago still relevant today


T

he world has enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed, said Mahatma Gandhi in 1947.

Gandhi's prescient words came on the cusp of a great acceleration in human consumption and production that now results in "Earth overshoot day."

We are borrowing from our future and we are altering Earth's natural cycles to the extent that there is a mountain of evidence we have entered a new geological epoch -- the Anthropocene.

This world we have created is a world of waste and imbalance, where 800 million go hungry each night, but more than two billion suffer obesity; and while scarcity and shortages plague some places, waste is prevalent: 30 percent of electricity produced, 40 percent of food produced and 50 percent of transportation capacity is wasted. Every dollar of GDP produced produces more than a dollar in unaccounted pollution, waste, health risks and loss of nature.

Read the blog from the Executive Director of Future Earth, Dr. Paul Shrivastava -“Welcome to the World of Waste and Imbalance”.

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