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The FORWARD below from Gene Glass advertises a January 2005 UNESCO
conference in Ahmedabad, India on "EDUCATION FOR A SUSTAINABLE
FUTURE." This conference is to mark the beginning of the UN Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD).
"India, growing at nearly 2 percent a year, is projected to reach 1.5
billion people by 2050, adding 515 million people in just 50 years."
But will the population growth problem be discussed at the Ahmedabad
conference? History suggests that it may not.
Al Bartlett (1997, 1998, 2001) and Michael Kraft (1999) have both
deplored the fact that the wildly popular "sustainable development"
movement usually side steps the key problem of population growth.
Al Bartlett (1998) wrote:
"Today we hear many people talking about 'Sustainability,' as though
we can accommodate continued population growth with something vague
and ill-defined that is called 'sustainable development.' The thought
seems to be that there is no need to worry about population: all we
need to do is to make minor modifications of our way of life,
(conserve, recycle, etc.) and this will suffice to make our society
'sustainable.' Please remember the First Law of Sustainability: 'IT
IS NOT POSSIBLE TO SUSTAIN POPULATION GROWTH OR GROWTH IN THE RATES
OF CONSUMPTION OF RESOURCES.' "[My CAPS.]
Michael Kraft (1999) wrote:
"As the end of the 20th century, sustainability has become broadly
accepted as a desirable social goal from local and regional levels to
the world as a whole. At the local level, for example, hundreds of
communities across the United States have begun sustainability
initiatives, with their collective actions reflected in the May 1999
National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America. There are comparable
activities at the national and international level that signal a new
awareness of the need to link environmental, social, and economic
goals in pursuit of sustainable development. Despite this progress,
however, HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH AS A KEY DETERMINANT OF OUR
COLLECTIVE FUTURE CONTINUES TO BE WIDELY IGNORED. Yet failure to deal
with population issues guarantees that no community or nation can
achieve sustainability." [My CAPS.]
BTW:
1. What's all this got to do with physics education? Al Bartlett (1997) wrote:
"The concept of sustainability addresses the fundamental question of
the survival of society. Education for sustainability must start in
our classrooms. We have the obligation to work with the large numbers
of students in our introductory classes, to lead them to explore the
meaning of sustainability, even though sustainability is not now in
our textbooks or curricula. . . . It may be that no other academic
discipline is seriously or realistically concerned with education for
sustainability. In which case, it's up to us."
3. For those who might wish to dig deeper regarding "sustainable
development," Google <http://www.google.com/> searches for the
following [with the quotes but without the square brackets] yields
the indicated number of hits"
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to
understand the exponential.
Albert Bartlett
REFERENCES
Bartlett, A.A. 1997. "Physicists And Sustainability," Text of an
invited paper presented at the annual meeting of the American
Association Of Physics Teachers meeting in Denver, Colorado, August
16; online at
<http://www.popco.org/irc/essays/essay-bartlett-sus.html>.
Bartlett, A.A. 1998. A slight revision of "The World's Worst
Population Problem (Is There a Population Problem?)" Wild Earth 7(3):
88-90; online at <http://www.oilcrisis.com/bartlett/worstPop.htm>.
Bartlett, A.A. 2001. Re: "President's Council on Sustainable
Development Report," PHYSOC post of 8 Jul 2001 20:58:27-0600; online
at
<http://listserv.uark.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0107&L=physoc&P=R2503&X=5544DE7B82677C697C&Y=rrhake@earthlink.net>.
The encyclopedic URL indicates that PHYSOC is one of the few
discussion lists whose archives are closed to non subscribers :-( -
WHY ??. However, it takes only a few minutes to subscribe by
following the simple directions at
<http://listserv.uark.edu/archives/physoc.html>/ "Join or leave the
list (or change settings)" where "/" means "click on." If you're
busy, then subscribe using the "NOMAIL" option under "Miscellaneous."
Then, as a subscriber, you may access the archives and/or post
messages at any time, while receiving NO MAIL from the list!
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FORWARD
From: Gene Glass <glass@ASU.EDU>
Subject: CONFERENCE> Education for a Sustainable Future
On January 18-20, 2005 the Centre for Environment Education,
Ahmedabad,India, in partnership with the Government of India, UNEP
and UNESCO will host "Education for a Sustainable Future," an
international conference to mark the beginning of the UN Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). Those involved in
education for sustainable development (ESD) are invited to share
their experiences with colleagues from the international community.
The conference will be organized around 19 thematic workshops,
ranging in focus from strengthening public participation and
capacity-building for sustainable development, to integrating ESD in
the formal curriculum, and using ESD to address specific issues and
challenges in sustainable development. For a
complete listing of ESF's workshops, or for more information and
registration, please see <http://www.ceeindia.org/esf/index.htm>, or
e-mail <esf@ceeindia.org>.
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