Date published: 2012/05/06
The BBC says:
Over-consumption in rich countries and rapid population growth in the poorest both need to be tackled to put society on a sustainable path, a report says.
An expert group convened by the Royal Society spent nearly two years reading evidence and writing their report.
Firm recommendations include giving all women access to family planning, moving beyond GDP as the yardstick of economic health and reducing food waste.
The report will feed into preparations for the Rio+20 summit in June.
"This is an absolutely critical period for people and the planet, with profound changes for human health and wellbeing and the natural environment," said Sir John Sulston, the report's chairman.
Dear, oh dear, why does the Royal Society spend a lot of time and money compiling such a report, which just contains the most trite conclusions and could have been written at any time in the last forty or fifty years, and indeed has been by organisation after organisation, trumpeting the end of the world.
The claim that there is "over-consumption" by people in "rich" countries is always the first indication that a report should be ignored. The Fellows of the Royal Society might themselves be guilty of over-consumption, since they are all professorial grade (or soon will be), and so are vastly wealthier than the average UK citizen, but most ordinary people in Britain would be bemused to find out that the British ruling elite are dead keen to reduce the living standards of the citizens of their own country (and other "rich" countries).
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