Ecology 101 

Biology, [1999] Johnson, Raven

The world's population is increasing by 100 million people per year .... [this] population is placing considerable stress on the environment ....producing enormous amounts of waste and pollution. [Less people [also] = more prosperity]

It is important to develop solar energy and wind energy.

[Energy efficiency should be promoted for] as much as 75% of electricity produced in the United States and Canada is wasted through the use of inefficient appliances. [This can be dealt with by replacing with available yet not promoted tech. One well known example, which is established is], the fluorescent light bulb [which] uses 20% of the amount of electricity as a conventional lightbulb uses, provides equal or better lighting, lasts up to 13 times longer, AND provides substantial cost savings

Roughly seven times as much carbon dioxide is locked up in fossil fuels, ~ 5 trillion metric tonnes, as exists in the atmosphere today

Widespread agriculture introduces large amounts of many new kinds of chemicals into the global ecosystem .... [Some] banned for normal use the United States .. .are still manufactured in the United States and exported to other countries.

Thinning of the ozone layer in the stratosphere ..... is a matter of serious concern. ..... Life on land may have only become possible only when the oxygen layer was sufficiently think to generate enough ozone to shield the surface from these destructive rays. This may account for the billions of years in which all life was aquatic.

The undisturbed tropical rainforest has one of the highest rates of net primary productivity of any plant community on earth, and it is therefore imperative to develop ways that it can be harvested for human purposes in a sustainable, intelligent way.

[Currently] about 5.5 million square kilometers of tropical rainforest still exist in relatively undisturbed form about half of the original extent of the rainforest about 160,000 square kilometers are being cleared every year ..... a one time consumption of natural resources that will never be available again.

Therefore arguments [for] replacing unmanaged old-growth forest by young ... stands, for example, ... [are ridiculous and] will lead to massive carbon losses to the atmosphere mainly by replacing a large pool with a minute pool of regrowth and by reducing the flux into a permanent pool of soil organic matter. ... [To increase the terrestrial sink capacity by afforestation one must also protecthose forests which already exist.]