We had a big snowfall in St. Louis today. In the middle of it, I visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens to capture a series of color photos that certainly don't look like color photos. Except check out the final photo, in which a blue heron is notable.
These drivers really know the law, to the consternation of these border patrol agents.
Here's another cartoon from the pen of John Jonik (reprinted here with permission. Visit his site for reprints).
[caption id="attachment_24894" align="aligncenter" width="553"]
By John Jonik - reprinted with permission.[/caption]
Can we have endless growth (as proposed by many as the solution to our economic woes) on a finite planet? John Atcheson of Common Dreams explains why this idea of endless growth is absurd:
Right now, it takes 1.5 Earths worth of resources to maintain our current economy. By 2050, assuming only moderate growth, we’ll consume nearly 3 Earths worth.
But of course, we only have one planet.
Those extra worlds we consume represents debt – assets taken from our children. In ecologic terms, it is called “overshoot.” And living systems cannot long survive in overshoot mode. The term overshoot comes from ecology, and a classic example of an ecological overshoot might serve to make this concept more real.
So here you go. In 1944, the US Coast Guard released 29 reindeer onto St. Mathew Island. By the summer of 1963, the population had exploded to over 6,000 animals. Quite a success, eh? Not really. By the end of 1963, the population plummeted to fewer than 50 scrawny, starving animals. They’d experienced an ecological overshoot.
