State of the Planet Address

A Critical Assessment You Won’t Hear in Biden’s State of the Union

President Biden can’t tell us the full truth in his State of the Union address this Thursday. The Republican Party, in their response, won’t be truthful, either. I’m not sure Biden or GOP officials know the truth. But even if they did, it’s just not politically possible for them to tell the voting public that things look bad – especially approaching an election. I understand that, but 50 years of that very political practicality is the reason our kids’ bright future is in jeopardy.

We were warned in 1972 that continuing “business as usual” would likely result in dire consequences 50 years later. About the same time, a chorus of warnings arose that accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were beginning to destabilize our climate. We could have taken appropriate action back then. But we didn’t. Policymakers ignored the warnings.

Now, after decades of pandering to voters, deference to big donors, compromise, and reluctance to question the gospel of everlasting economic growth, what is the state of our planet?

This question is about much more than the climate crisis, by the way.

I offer my assessment, and prescription for action, in this State of the Planet address:

I’m the one candidate for U.S. President in 2024 who is willing to tell the tough truths and offer the extraordinary policies needed to give our kids a bright future. Learn more about me and my platform here.

Get more detail about my National Project to Get the U.S. Out of Ecological Overshoot here.

Here is the text of my State of the Planet address:

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STATE OF THE PLANET ADDRESS

By Dave Gardner. March 6, 2024

I’m Dave Gardner. I’m running for U.S. President. This week President Joe Biden will deliver the traditional State of the Union address. I’m called to share with you today something more important but something that does affect the state of the U.S. This is my State of the Planet address. The state of the union cannot be good unless the state of the planet is healthy.

Imagine our kids or grandkids 20 years from now, going through their daily lives. What do we hope their lives are like?

Are they living beautiful lives in a wonderful world?

Are they living on a healthy planet, with clean air and water?

Are their lives filled with love, joy and happiness? Endless possibilities?

What if that’s not in the cards?

Perhaps they’ll be on the waitlist for a slot on the next starship to Mars, to escape a planet Earth that we’ve decimated.

Maybe they’ll be living in a Mad Max world. Looking over their shoulder, living in fear. Fighting for their lives, competing for every scrap of food. Killing or being killed for food, water or a tank of gas?

We all used to think the dystopian world in the Mad Max movie franchise - of road warriors fighting for survival on a desolate Earth - was just some wildly imaginative movie fiction, but looking at the state of the planet today, I’m afraid it’s a real possibility. We’re at a crossroads – facing a choice between a bright future and a dead planet. The window for us to make that choice is closing fast, but a bright future is still within our grasp.

Since this is a State of the Planet address, I do have to share with you why Mad Max and a dead planet COULD be our kids’ future.

The state of our planet today is a state of polycrisis.

Our climate is destabilizing and becoming less and less friendly to life. Last year we saw the hottest day on record, then the hottest week, hottest month, and finally 2023 was the hottest year. Thanks to sea-level rise, some islands and coastal cities are already either being evacuated or planning for permanent evacuation. Massive wildfires, drought and record heat waves are now a regular occurrence. 

Texas is the latest casualty, right now fighting its largest wildfire ever – over a million scorched acres.

Antarctic sea ice has been the lowest on record for the past three years.

Ice-free summers in the Arctic are becoming a reality much faster than previously expected.

Scientists estimate we could see a 30% drop in crop yields if present trends for carbon emissions continue.

We’re in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth. We’re losing species at about a thousand to 10,000 times the natural rate. The last mass extinction was over 65 million years ago, so this is a big deal.

We’re replacing the natural landscape with asphalt, concrete and farms at the rate of over one million acres a year in the U.S. alone! Globally, we lost over 24 million acres of forest in 2023. Wildlife habitat is being lost at the rate of 240 acres an hour. 240 acres every hour.

We’re concentrating and spreading poisons across the planet. PFAS, the endocrine-disrupting forever chemicals we thought were great for firefighting foam, nonstick cookware, dental floss and waterproof outdoor gear, are now found in the most remote corners of the world – and 97% of us have it in our bloodstream, forever. 

We produced 380 million tons of plastic last year. 150 million tons has accumulated in the oceans. And we’re finding microplastics in human placentas, arteries, blood and breast milk.

There are more than 200 ocean dead zones every year, thanks to agricultural runoff and sewage. We’ve overfished our oceans to the point that the population of large fish is 10% of what it was in 1950. We’ve already lost half of the coral reefs in our oceans over the past 40 years.

71% of the world’s aquifers are in decline, and the rate of decline is accelerating in many. Worldwide demand for water to irrigate farms tripled over the past 50 years. Demand for freshwater is expected to outstrip supply by 40% in just six years.

A third of the world’s soil is moderately to highly degraded today. 12 million hectares turn to desert each year. And we’re facing limited supplies of phosphates to shore up phosphorous content in the soil for the next growing season.

You might be thinking, right now, that this is just a catalog of “environmental” problems. Let me remind you, the environment is everything. It’s our home, our life-support system. Respected ocean scientist Jacque Cousteau once observed:

"The environment is not a luxury, but a necessity for life."

Yes, we are facing other serious threats, and they warrant our attention. But there is no affordable housing on a dead planet, no peace on a dead planet, no social or economic justice, no jobs, no daycare, and no food on a dead planet. So today I’m outlining our highest priority.

The good news is there are smart people working on solutions, or at least mitigations, for all these problems. The bad news is, progress eludes us. Things are not getting better. That’s because we – human beings – are overwhelming the planet.

We’ve been adding a billion of us to the world’s population every twelve years. We were at 4 billion in 1974. We doubled that, to 8 billion today. And we added over 75 million to the planet last year.

Meeting our needs and demands, is a 100-trillion-dollar global economy. That economy was just 5 trillion 50 years ago. 100 years ago, humans and our livestock constituted 30% of mammalian biomass on the Earth. We’ve swollen to 96% today. 96%.

That’s why our plastic and the toxic chemicals we make are everywhere – from ocean depths to the summit of Mount Everest. We can no longer hide or walk away from our mistakes. There is nowhere left for us to discard the byproducts. The greenhouse gases from our waste have grown to such an extent that our atmosphere can no longer process them. We’re paving over so much wildlife habitat, there is no longer room and food for other species.

When our scale gets to the point that we’re doing all this damage, we are said to be in ecological overshoot. Globally, we’re engaged in 2-planet living, demanding roughly twice what our home planet can actually provide and renew, year after year. Here in the U.S., we’re living as though we had 5 planets to support us.

As long as we’re in overshoot, our demands on the planet are breaking its life-supporting ecosystems, shrinking its ability to meet our needs. Try as we might to mitigate each issue, we’re just putting band aids on the symptoms, not effecting a long-term solution to the root cause.

We can’t go on, chasing more of everything year after year. Nothing in this world grows forever. An economy that grows just 2% annually doubles in size every 35 years. We’re in trouble now. Do we really want double that trouble in a few decades? Borrowing a headline from an interview with a very smart economist, Tim Jackson:

“It’s time to bust the myth that endless economic growth is good for us.”

The tough truth is, we need to scale back – our population and our economy. We need to embrace and support the choice of smaller families, we need to simplify our lifestyles, curb our overconsumption, and go on an energy diet. Anything less is continuing on course to a dead planet.

This is a pretty brutal report on how the planet’s doing. But you need to know! Our home planet is in critical condition. If things don’t change, our planet won’t continue to support life as we know it. That Mad Max world I described will just be a temporary state on the way down to an even bleaker future.

I mentioned devastating wildfires earlier. Twelve years ago, the Waldo Canyon fire burned for two and a half weeks right on the edge of my town, Colorado Springs. Ultimately it burned over 18,000 acres and nearly 350 homes. When you’re in this kind of emergency, it dominates the news. Our eyes were glued to the TV as officials held multiple news conferences every day, to report on the path of the fire and containment progress. It was pretty much the ONLY thing everyone in town talked about – as we collectively held our breath, and did everything we could to ensure safety and to extinguish that fire.

The state of the planet today is an emergency of far greater scale. It threatens the existence of everyone around the world. Yet we are not getting daily press briefings. It doesn’t dominate mainstream news. We aren’t holding our breath. We don’t wake up every day planning to do everything in our power to treat the patient and get her out of intensive care. Heck, we haven’t even admitted her to the ICU. This has to change. If I’m elected, I’ll do that. You see, I think we would all be more careful about our ecological footprint – if only we knew we’re in overshoot and that means a dead planet for our kids. And we’d demand – and get – more responsible public policy.

So, I’ll declare an overshoot emergency. We’ll report on it daily. We’ll launch a national project to get out of overshoot, and because we’ll all be working together to resolve this emergency, we’ll have progress to report. Believe me, it will be top of mind, and we’ll all do our part, every day, to chart a path not to a dead planet, but to a bright future for our kids. 

When President Biden reports to Congress – and the nation – on the state of our country, he won’t paint such a bleak picture. He won’t tell you the full truth that I’ve laid out here. He can’t tell you the truth because if he does, you won’t renew his contract. The Democratic Party will drop him like a hot potato. 

No one gets elected or reelected delivering such bad news. So what the hell am I doing, telling you these truths and daring to run for president? I’m doing this because my heart is breaking. My kids are in many ways just getting started with their lives. My daughter got married a year and a half ago and is building a life with her husband. My son is working his tail off to finish up a college degree and launch a career in I.T. Last week my stepson and his wife watched their baby girl take her first steps. Just like I was doing 40 years ago, they’re making plans for life ahead.

It is breaking my heart to see their future being pulled out from under them. Some days I wish I didn’t know about our ecological overshoot and what it’s doing to our planet, because I tear up, considering the future they’re planning is likely not to be. The bright future I want for them, the bright future we ALL want for our kids, is in grave danger. If we don’t wake up, smell the coffee, and change our ways, we’re leaving them a dead planet. I just can’t bear it.

Is there any hope??!! I entered the presidential race hoping my candidacy might alert everyone to this overshoot emergency. hoping to change the conversation. hoping to inspire politicians who will be reelected, to end business-as-usual, to stop rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and turn the ship.

Truth is, that isn’t looking very likely. It’s just too politically risky for them to admit the truth and lead the dramatic changes we need. I’m afraid our only hope may be for you to elect me! I know that’s very far-fetched. But that’s exactly why I’m free to be honest with you about where we are and what we need to do. Get more details at davethplanet2024.com.

If my campaign catches fire and astonishes everyone, we’ll make a national project out of giving our kids a bright future. Now that you know the truth, you know that the usual fluff about growing the economy, creating jobs and providing cheap gas is not going to give our kids that bright future. It will give them the opposite, a dead planet.

So our national project will turn things upside down. We’ll engage in the most important, innovative project in human history, as we reinvent the way we live, to be in harmony with our planet - and design a truly healthy 21^st century economy. We’ll stop chasing GDP growth and turn to measuring and pursuing wellbeing.

We’ll leave no stone unturned in an effort to lighten our load on the planet. In the process, we’ll improve our lives! We’ll drop out of the rat race, stepping off the treadmill we’re currently running in service to this overshoot economy. We’ll rediscover the true joys of life – things you can’t buy and sell. We’ll ditch greed, fear and competition. We’ll get back in touch with collaboration, community, and love.

Please join me. Support my candidacy. Tell your friends and family. Together, let’s get off that dead planet course, and chart a bright future for our kids.

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If the information in this address is new to you, you can learn more about limits to growth and overshoot here:

The Human Eco-Predicament: Overshoot And The Population Conundrum - by William E. Rees

1972 Limits to Growth study

Earth Overshoot Day

Planetary Boundaries

World Scientists Warnings

Economic Heresy: Herman Daly

Economics for a Full World – by Herman Daly

Robert F. Kennedy Sr. Challenges Gross Domestic Product