The rising world population, ever-growing demands of goods and services, destruction of the earth ecosystems and resources and climate change are the four major challenges for our global human society for 2010 and beyond. The sooner we face the reality of every one of those four challenges, the sooner we take the path to commit to their solutions. And, the sooner the human civilization can continue to flourish but definitely not in the same way.

Since the industrial revolution at the beginning of the XIX century, our pursuit of economic growth, consumption and wealth have led us to take advantage of the Earth resources and ecosystems as if they were inexhaustible. We have depleted the Earth resources for water, food, land, wood, energy and raw materials as we did not realize that we had only ONE PLANET. And, the scale of the human activity is so overwhelming and so ubiquitous that it does not give any home for any other species on our Blue Planet. We have been harvesting the Earth resources and ecosystems at a much faster rate than they can regenerate and killing the other species at a much faster rate than they can reproduce. We have simply reached a point where the Earth cannot give us anymore what we need for our on-going well-being.

Articles about the environment and sustainability:

• Saving the dark, A Silicon Valley Insider
• Leaving no Plastic to Landfills and to the Ocean, A Silicon Valley Insider
• Re-Planet Closing its Recycling Sites, A Silicon Valley Insider
• The Unfolding of the Climate Change Crisis Imminent, A Silicon Valley Insider
• Cleaning the Oceans from Plastic, A Silicon Valley Insider
• Paris COP21 – Actions Must Follow Talks, A Silicon Valley Insider
• The Decline of the Price of Silicon PV Cells, A Silicon Valley Insider
• Reducing Water Consumption by 35% from 2013, A Silicon Valley Insider
• The World’s First Solar-Powered Family Car, A Silicon Valley Insider
• Investing in Drought Technology, A Silicon Valley Insider
• Why not an Agriculture that is Natural Bioregional and Sustainable?, A Silicon Valley Insider
• The Quest for Highly Efficient Solar Photovoltaic Cells, A Silicon Valley Insider
• Our Journey to a Sustainable Economic Development for 2010 and Beyond, A Silicon Valley Insider
• The Road to an Unsustainable Economic Development for 2010 and Beyond, A Silicon Valley Insider
• We will be Running Out of Oil Soon, A Silicon Valley Insider
• How Much Energy Do we Need? A Silicon Valley Insider

A news site to keep-up with green and clean tech:

• Green Tech Media news site and research

Some excellent recent articles:

• Pour L’eco, L’economie peut-elle sauver la planete?
• Our pathetically slow shift to clean energy, in five charts

Some Web sites that you want to bookmark:

• Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ Web site
• Columbia University – Earth Institute – State of the Planet
• Jean-Marc Jancovici’ site about climate change and energy transition

United Nation’s Web sites:

• The United Nations
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Books to read:

• Peter Kalmus, Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution, New Society Publishers
• Jeffrey Sachs, Common Wealth, Penguin Books
• Jared Diamond, Collapse, Penguin Books
• Paul and Anne Ehrlich, the Dominant Animal, Island Press
• Joanna Yarrow, Ecological, Duncan Baird Publishers

A class to take about sustainable development:

• Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ class “The Age of Sustainability” on Coursera

A lot of the content of this class is as well available on YouTube:

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