Mining activities are among essential drivers for the global industry especially what regard the exploration, processing and production of raw materials necessary for technological production worldwide. For a global overview and up-to-the-date coverage check “Terrapinn – Total Mining” for information on exploration, investment, and development of miners, financiers and investors (http://blogs.terrapinn.com/total-mining/category/minerals/).

The growing fear of world industry to run out of raw materials there are intentions directed towards the moon. Professor Ouyang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in an interview conducted by BBC News, states that China is in pursuit of natural resources up in the celestial skies as the earth’s mineral resources gradually dwindles, starting with the moon. “The Moon is full of resources – mainly rare earth elements, titanium, and uranium, which the Earth is really short of, and these resources can be used without limitation.”

If this would be the solution from where the energy resources to the outer space come from? And even if the needed energy would be available, what shall humans do with ever increasing amount of waste and pollution? Under these conditions would humans still have accessible and affordable quality of air and water for life? Few new challenge facing future generations.

http://blogs.terrapinn.com/total-mining/2014/02/28/chinas-moon-mining-pursuit/

Information from “CDC” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA regarding Ebola Virus Disease and protection of people. Check Key “Questions and Answers on Ebola” concerning: Personal protection against Ebola?; Has the “patient zero” been identified?; How do I know if I have seasonal influenza or Ebola? If I  am experiencing some flu-like symptoms (e.g. fever, headache, muscle aches).

What is “CDC” doing in the U.S. about the outbreak in West Africa?; Travelers: What is being done to prevent ill travelers in West Africa from getting on a plane? In West Africa, during travel and in the United States; What do I do if I’m returning to the U.S. from an area where the outbreak is occurring?; What do I do if I am traveling to an area where the outbreak is occurring? Should people traveling to Africa be worried about the outbreak? In the United States: Are there any other cases of people in the U.S. getting Ebola?; Is there a danger of Ebola spreading in the U.S.?; Why don’t we restrict travel to the United States?

Check with the local authorities in your counry if similar questions and answers can be applicable, e.g. elsewhere around the world.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/qa.html?mobile=nocontent

As humans, in many ways we are special. We are developing with everything working together in complex and fully functioning machine. However, this is not the fully story of evolution on earth. Bacteria are the truly special organisms, evolving very quickly, able to elegantly escape and evade the best of modern medicine. Thus evolution is not only about explaining where humans may have originated but it also a process occurring around us now that we should understand unless we are willing to lose the game to our sleeker, sexier competitors.

http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/pages/index.php?page_id=g1

Indeed, the era of antibiotics is coming to an end, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria that humans designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases but the old ones are coming and even more new ones are on the way.

Peak antibiotics – Aug 14

At least 30 new diseases have emerged in the past two decades, for many of which there is no treatment, cure or vaccine, or the possibility of effective prevention or control. In addition, the uncontrolled and inappropriate use of antibiotics has resulted in increased antimicrobial resistance and is seriously threatening drug control strategies against such common diseases as tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, dysentery and pneumonia. Many more that is spreading to new geographical areas, because of changing habits, lifestyle, behavior (including injecting and non-injecting drug use) and cultural or social values. Travel, including tourism, global mobility, pressures on water resources, climate change, intensive land-use, agriculture, farming and animal production, also play a role. The practices of modern medicine also contribute. New animal diseases pose potential food-borne risks to human health that are sometimes difficult to evaluate or predict. All of which have developed anti-microbial resistance. The most dramatic example of a new disease is AIDS, deadly haemorrhagic fevers and Ebola. Epidemics of food-borne and water-borne diseases due to new organisms such as cryptosporidium or new strains of bacteria do exist. New strains such as those of cholera and influenza do not follow the usual pattern of being more common in younger people. They affect all age groups, since older people have not acquired immunity to them from previous infection. These are trends taking place in many places around the world.

Despite the emergence of new diseases, there is still a lack of national and international political will and resources to develop and support the systems that are necessary to detect them and stop their spread. The next few years are certain to be critical for the future of antimicrobial drugs. Antimicrobial resistance will increase if present trends continue.

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/dise-cn.htm

In addition to the eco-systemic impact of industrial agriculture and global circuits of capital, our highly mobile society and the consequent climate disruption from fossil-fueled globalization have worked to propel the spread of invasive species, diseases, and pathogens:

http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/tag/peak-antibiotics/

Quality of drinking water, and the water for household uses, is constantly and frequently showing up as daily public concern around the world and it is indeed a serious problem of increasing dimensions.

It is a historical daily pain in Africa where people spend long time searching, collecting and also transporting water long ways. It is not only a headache and troublesome issue for millions of people in Africa but a constant source of threat as water is an effective media for conveying and spreading diseases. What is much more serious is the degradation in the quality of the natural water resources. If the “raw” water in natural systems, e.g. rivers, lakes and marine coasts, and to some extent groundwater, is contaminated then how would it be possible to get access to, at least, affordable drinking water? How would it be possible to manage other household uses?

What happens, and still happening, in Africa started to be a global concern of growing importance. Water quality is a problem that is gradually and slowly emerging in many places around the world. There are increasing number of reports on the degradation of both tap water and bottled water around the globe even in the best countries in Europe (but in very much limited extent), not to mention Asia and in particular China. Some examples are given here while others were previously addressed for discussions in different Blog posts in “sustain-earth.com” and LinkedIn groups, e.g. “Africa and MENA Sciences and Technologies” as well as Facebook and Twitter.

http://africacheck.org/reports/false-claim-that-sa-one-of-only-twelve-countries-with-safe-tap-water/

http://m.thelocal.com/20130913/tap-water-less-risky-than-bottled-water-swiss-study

The impacts of increasing deterioration in natural water systems and water for household uses are, also, showing up in the public health records because of the growing threats from resistant bacteria. Anti-biotic and other pharmacological remains keep injected out in nature from wastewater treatment plants, also other known and unknown sources can be expected.

http://www.riles.org/musings.htm

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/invincible-bacteria-in-the-middle-east/381671/

The Alliance for Global Water Adaptation founded in 2010 and involving regional and global development banks, government agencies and ministries, diverse non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector is focusing on managing water resources in a sustainable way.  Though climate change is a major driver altering the global hydrological cycle still pollution and water are other man-made drivers influencing the global quality of natural waters. Water provides coherence to climate change adaptation and mitigation, integrating energy, water, food production and agriculture, and ecosystems and the environment. At the same time, the interaction with environmental changes in terms of increasing pollution and waste has strong threats on all life forms on earth with huge impacts on the quality of food and the health of ecosystems in general. Though AGWA is focused on how to help experts, decision makers, and institutions in the water community work more effectively, however there are still needs to consider sustainability in much wider perspective especially what regards the threats and impacts of pollution and waste, arising from production and consumption, on the hydrosphere, ecosphere and biodiversity.

http://alliance4water.org/

Many countries around the world suffer from increasing degradation in the quality of their natural land-water and aquatic water resources, e.g. lakes, rivers, coastal maritime and in some cases groundwater, because of growing net accumulation of pollution and waste in the environment. As explained in separate post (http://sustain-earth.com/2014/10/life-on-planet-earth-until-2100-double-e-global-collapse-in-economy-and-ecology/) the net global waste is expected to peak sometime at the end of this century.

In parallel to this there is a gradual and increasing degradation in the global quality of natural land-water and aquatic water resources with serious negative feedback impacts on the quality of all life forms on the Earth. So sometime at the turn of this century or early twenty-second century we may expect peak ecological water quality (http://pacinst.org/issues/sustainable-water-management-local-to-global/peak-water/) to materialize. This of course assuming that trends in waste production/recycling will follow the scenarios of the “Nature” paper given in the mentioned post. Also, this is assuming that the collapse of life on earth will not occur already before peak ecological water quality and the delay-effects will give some space to perform remediation and correction measures. There are observations and data in literature illustrating that the degradation in ecological water quality and the associated collapse (frequency and intensity) in ecological systems have already taken place in a growing number of geographical regions. Peak “ecological” water is defined as the point beyond which the total costs of ecological disruptions and damages exceed the total value provided by human use of that water. Unfortunately, the quality of tap water is very much related to the quality of “raw” water, i.e. the natural water of aquatic systems. We have already seen that achieving suitable tap water quality, even acceptable quality bottled water, are not any longer an easily affordable task.

Water Quality – Top 10 Countries With Best Tap Water.

Water management is an important part of landscape architecture of increasing importance in rural areas where appropriate and sustainable technologies are highly lacking due to un-coordinated and random expansion in urbanization. Rural areas especially in the developing countries are of crucial importance not only for agriculture, agro-industries and production of food but also for generation of jobs, maintaining socio-economic and cultural heritages in these regions. Integration and engagement of the rural population in water management are imperative for successful long-term and large-scale implementation of such policies.

Appropriate and sustainable management of water resources involves developing supplementary Key Performance Indicators “KPI” for monitoring and assessing the consequences of the interference of man in the environment and possible feedbacks impacts on water quality status and changes through short-term and long-term approaches. This would require net-work of sensors, field-work, sampling and modeling activities and can provide effective tools for rehabilitation, conservation and protection of water resources.

http://sembraragua.blogspot.com.es/2011/06/introduccion-la-recarga-artificial-de.html

The United Nations seems to recognize things so late that solutions become complicated, very difficult to manage and in panic things get turned up side down. What are supposed to be “scientific instruments”, available for decades, to implement became suddenly and urgently “political goals”. Yet not all science is realized as important in politics, policy-makers select and it is generally based on short-term election-driven, economy and competition-based market policies.

After more than a century of advances, progress and innovation in science and technology, the UN is suddenly asking the engagement of science. I would agree that science could have contributed much better. But this is, again, related to socio-economic political priorities. It looks like science can fix things over-night, fix everything alone and for all other sectors and for everyone in the society? We shouldn’t mix science with politics though they are inter-dependent. Were we all blind during such a long-time or were we just ignoring the failing reality and hoping “business-as-usual” will make things better. Sustainability requires early engagement of ALL SECTORS in a coherent, collective collaborative and interactive manner. What happened was an increasing fragmentation and isolation in “within” and “between” sector activities where individuals were lost in failing reality and an increasing complexity without unified holistic vision “Life on Earth”.

It is not any longer SUSTAINABLE to let it burn first then come to extinguish the fire, life on earth does not function this way. This has been more or less how WE were acting or reacting on world problems.

http://www.scidev.net/index.cfm?originalUrl=global/mdgs/feature/jeffrey-sachs-sdgs-big-science.html

There are many scenarios and prognoses as well as data and observations supported by an increasing number of peer reviewed publications (in top journals such as Nature) that illustrate that planet Earth is heading to severe and double global collapse, i.e. in terms of economy and most importantly of ecology. Shrinking economy means increased poverty and degradation in ecology means increasing diseases. It is not hard to comprehend: wealthy and healthy environment means high quality of life; unwealthy planet with unhealthy environment means death or in best cases poor quality of life. It is already a growing and severe inconvenient reality in many parts around the world, just tens or hundred meters away from luxury hotels and beaches, there are densely populated slums in mega cities.

Affordable, accessible, safe and clean energy that can support the growing population and the increasing needs of consumption is an ideal painting of a rather gray reality facing a common fate for our planet. With expected future production and consumption of “net” energy and the considerable pressures on the natural “capital” resources, the global production of waste and pollution due to an accelerating urbanization keeps doubling. According to the UN Inter-Agency Mechanism on all freshwater related issues (including sanitation) it has been an increase of 20%, during the period 2000 to 2008, in the number of individuals in cities and towns of all sizes in the world who lack access to basic water and sanitation facilities.  In 2011, a reported of 2.5 billion people in the world did not use improved sanitation facilities and this number keeps increasing. Urban settlements are also a growing main source of point-source pollution even in best countries around the world including Scandinavia where anti-biotic keep injected from wastewater treatment plants to natural surface water systems with serious impacts on the flora and frequency of resistant bacteria. It is not strange that humans will face an increasing number of threats from known, such as Ebola virus disease, and yet other unknown diseases to emerge.

http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/88380/energy-economics-crash-course-chapter-19

http://www.nature.com/news/environment-waste-production-must-peak-this-century-1.14032

http://www.unwater.org/topics/water-and-urbanization/en/

Would life on planet Earth survive to the end of this century? Follow sustain-earth.com to hear more about sustainability issues.

To counteract the increasing threats from the abuse of energy, water and natural resources and mitigate the accelerating negative impacts of “produce and consume” on quality of life, all education stages have to seriously consider weaving sustainability issues in all educational components. This has to involve applied sustainability instruments and solutions as well as building appropriate interactive links between education, politics, society and the market. There are huge information and data worldwide on continuous and increasing degradation in the atmosphere (air quality), the hydrosphere (water quality), land-water resources, the biosphere and ecosphere (biodiversity, degradation in agro- and animal production, …. ).

“Sustainability” is not only of political and social concern, it is also a natural part of modern high-quality education especially what regards higher education and research where future innovations, engineers, professionals, teachers, policy-makers, scientists, ….. etc, are being shaped and prepared to take care of the planet in much more sustainable manner. The collapsing quality of life reflects severe gaps in education and technology management structures with enhanced fragmentation and isolation within and between society sectors in terms of production, consumption and service. The main responsibility for achieving sustainable socio-economic developments anywhere in the world is through shaping education and research institutions and organizations to meet future sustainability requirements.

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2011/oct/13/sustainability-in-higher-education

Information Communication Technology “ICT” is changing very fast, as everything else around us. “ICT” is not any longer a matter of social media where Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, … etc. are instruments for connecting people, it will continue to expand its innovations to connecting machines and users of technologies. In this context, it is not only about connecting machines to machines but machines to users so even the wheels of production, consumption and communication spins even faster and faster by coupling technology and engineers to people and customers and not only people to people in much passive and “business-as usual” manner. Every one of us can imagine changing the Internet communication and traffic from having 3 billion people interacting to involving over 50 billions machines with interactive communication.

Bringing technology and engineers near to the customers and consumers is something that is need, so as technology can be better understood especially what it is best needed for, also when, where and why.

Visit, share and contribute in “sustain-earth.com”

Two most important spheres for existence of life, and the only life in the whole universe, on earth are suffering from severe and increasing degradation. The ATMOSPHERE with remarkable changes in its global composition that has caused global warming and an accelerating deterioration in the air quality in cities around due to urbanization (70% of world population is planned to live in cities in coming decades. The HYDROSPHERE with an ever increasing degradation in the quality of natural waters with accelerating threats on the whole ecosphere and enhanced negative impacts on drinking water and food production. Though ENERGY is the primary cause of all pollution in these two spheres still much attention and resources are given to it with very little left to protect, cure and rehabilitate WATER, and to enhance its accessibility and affordability in clean forms. Follow how energy-water nexus is shaping the life on the earth http://sustain-earth.com

https://www.dropbox.com/s/atcq7lm7iv4rrlt/Water%20vs%20Energy.jpg?dl=0

Many universities and research institutes around the world have huge investments in energy-related R&D “Research and Development” programs. Much of such R&D programs are primarily related to Renewable Energy Resources that can meet future demands for lowering the emissions of GHG “Green House Gases”, for mitigating the impacts of global warming and for achieving sustainable socio-economic development around the world.

However, the world energy market in terms of demand and supply is forcing other realities where the use of conventional fossil fuel resources will be gradually shifting towards increasing utilization of unconventional fossil resources. With such trends the world is facing “tectonic” challenges for “safe-clean-secure” shifts towards new extraction techniques from the so-called UHRs “Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resources” with minimal environmental impacts. It is believed that UHRs is the future of the fossil fuel industry not only in North America, with the major part of UHRs, but likely globally as well. UHRs are composed of heavy oil, oil sands, unconventional gas, light-tight oil and liquid-rich shale. While, the Middle East is facing up to end ‘Easy Oil’ it is, also, turning to a much tougher and complex reality to tap their huge heavy-oil reserves (http://m.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704436004576299421455133398?mobile=y). A wide-range of investments and pilot studies are being carried out to develop appropriate technologies to boost heavy-oil production in several places in the Middle East. Such trends will expand to other regions around the world with gradual transformation to a worldwide utilization of the global UHRs.

The technology to tap heavy-oil, and to make use of, is not a new one and has already started in the US several decades ago. However it needs to be up-dated, developed and refined to meet not only the environmental and economic demands but also the diversity of UHRs in the complex geo-formations, including coupled litho- and hydrospheric ones. The University of Calgary has clear strategic direction to become one of Canada’s top five research universities by year 2016 where research and innovative teaching go hand in hand with full engagement of the communities they both serve and lead. Among the six research themes of the university’s roadmap to achieve its future goals is “Energy Innovation for Today and Tomorrow”.

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=119453290&goback=

Levels of optimism and happiness has declined. Public health determines the level of happiness and the satisfaction is mostly found in family life and accommodation, while the least satisfaction is being with the standard of living. The trust in key institutions (governments and parliaments) has fallen across the EU. Large differences in member states are being found what regards satisfaction. The social exclusion is dependent on unemployment, while activities in associations and voluntary work makes people feel more socially included. The gap between racial and ethnic groups is growing across the EU as the tensions between rich and poor. Difficulties from coming homes too tired to do household jobs has increased where single parent-household are disadvantaged in most domains of life quality.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bOT5MA3Xeo&feature=player_embedded