The Dead Planet Index
Ranking the Presidential Candidates On Our Kids’ Future
We voters – of all stripes – have one thing in common: we all want a bright future for our children. We’d take a bullet for our kids. We’re in an environmental meta crisis so deep that it threatens the viability of Earth’s life-support systems. So our top criterion for choosing the next U.S. President ought to be whether a candidate has plans that will give our kids that bright future, or a dead planet.
Now that the two major parties have determined their candidates – Biden and Trump, barring some amazing, awesome, wonderful miracle – I thought I’d assess the top contenders for our vote. Since our kids’ future is the most important thing to us, I’ve created the Dead Planet Index to aid us in voting. I present my findings in this very short video:
If you aren’t familiar with our ecological overshoot crisis, listen to this syndicated radio special I produced a few years ago:
And read this excerpt and explore the links from my post, What We’re Doing Isn’t Working:
An array of evidence suggests continued pursuit of growth will leave our kids a Mad Max future, at best, and very likely a dead planet. Here’s a brief report card on what we’re currently doing:
· Fertile soil depletion
· Fresh water scarcity
· Toxification of air, land and water
· Large ocean dead zones
· Oceans acidifying
· Deserts expanding
· Rainforests shrinking
· Species vanishing at an alarming rate
· Food scarcity
Alarming Scientific Reports:
· Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
· Earth Overshoot Day, Ecological Footprint Accounting
· World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice
· Earth Beyond Six of Nine Planetary Boundaries
This is an overwhelming catalog of problems we need to solve. Believe me, we need to be working on them. But the odds are against us getting all the solutions right. To solve all these problems and still support the food, water and energy needs of eight billion (and growing) people is practically, if not completely, impossible. At the current, massive scale of the human enterprise, we must get everything PERFECTLY right, because there is no margin for error. Frankly, it just won’t happen. That’s why we MUST stop chasing growth and embrace contraction for a time. Our population, material consumption and energy appetite have got to be scaled back, so we have a decent chance at aligning our way of living with the natural world.
Global Footprint Network conservatively estimates that, globally, we’re demanding nearly twice what the Earth can sustainably provide, year after year. Americans, on average, are engaged in 5-planet living. We need to scale back in order to avoid leaving our children a dead planet. Contracting our economy and population back to sustainable levels is a major part of my agenda as a presidential candidate. I want to allow our children to have a bright future.
I’m the one candidate for U.S. President in 2024 who has a bright future agenda. Learn more at davetheplanet2024.com