Everything you didn't wanto know about Ecology .....

Highlights from Biology, [1999] Johnson, Raven

The world's population is increasing by ~80 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 stifled, tech. One well known established example of energy efficiency 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, [they convert CO2 into O2 more than anywhere withe possible exception of coral reefs] 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 ..... [so unbelievably illogical it boggles the mind].

[To increase the terrestrial sink capacity by afforestation one must also protecthose forests which already exist.]