01 About
Why ONEPLANET?
Several calculations show our current path of production and consumption coupled with the current rate of population expansion will require several earth-sized planets in order to sustain ourselves. This is a truly frightening scenario.
The obverse is even more appalling – where we strip the earth of it’s natural resources and are left with a domesday scenario of epic proportions.
If it wasn’t already obvious, a report entitled “Ecological Footprint” argues that in the long run an environmental footprint larger than one Earth cannot be sustained.
More issues we consider paramount:
Rampant consumerism.
Widespread unsustainable lifestyles.
Unsustainable business practices.
Damaging and unsustainable travel and transport.
These are some of the problems we face.
Energy crisis.
Financial crisis.
Uneducated and un-empowered.
Environmental damage.
Food and water shortage.
Climate change.
More problems.
The solutions:
Education
Finance
Legislation
Action
Solidarity
That’s what this Review is all about.
The ONEPLANET Sustainability Review is dedicated to research in and advancement of environmental sustainability, sustainability in the built environment, and education for sustainability and prosperity.
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The image above shows European, middle eastern and far east city lights as an indication of human presence across the globe. Courtesy of and with thanks to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Reto Stöckli.
Drawing on data from multiple satellite missions (not all collected at the same time), a team of NASA scientists and graphic artists created layers of global data for everything from the land surface, to polar sea ice, to the light reflected by the chlorophyll in the billions of microscopic plants that grow in the ocean. They wrapped these layers around a globe, set it against a black background, and simulated the hazy edge of the Earth’s atmosphere (the limb) that appears in astronaut photography of the Earth.
Most of the data layers in this visualization are available as monthly composites as part of NASA’s Blue Marble Next Generation image collection. The images in the collection appear in cylindrical projection (rectangular maps), and they are available at 500-meter resolution. The large images provided above are the full-size versions of these globes. In their hope that these images will inspire people to appreciate the beauty of our home planet and to learn about the Earth system, the developers of these images encourage readers to re-use and re-publish the images freely.
To learn the history of the Blue Marble go here:
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/BlueMarble_…
To learn more about the Blue Marble go here:
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8108
