Creativity and Resilience
“No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”
–Epictetus (Phrygian-born Greek Stoic Philosopher, c.A.D.55- c.A.D.135)
I have written several articles about resilience, and I have begun to talk about some of the methods for developing psychological resilience and also some of the potential consequences of not developing this essential psychological strength.
I’d also like to share with you another aspect of resilience: it is essential ingredient of creativity and of innovation.
I’ve had a longstanding fascination with the creative process, and one of the most robust findings in the research on extraordinary creative achievement is that even the greatest performers in their fields seem to produce the same ratio of undistinguished works to notable ones through their careers. The great chess player wins more often than the average one, but only sometimes produces a truly great creation. Even the best engineers and scientists conduct many unsuccessful experiments. The stories are legion of artists who produce many paintings and works of music that never win recognition and may not even be much good. Many great actors, directors, cricketers and companies have a great many failures behind – and sometimes in front – of them.
Amongst the many attributes of the high achiever in each of these fields is a remarkable ability to bounce back, to detach from the apparent failure, to see it as an education, and to understand the importance of persistence and perseverance. To take a risk, to take a step back and to learn and adapt if at first it doesn’t succeed. This never means repeating the same strategies over and over again, it means being smart and not being fazed by failure
“Unless you are willing to try, fail miserable, and try again, success won’t happen.”
–Phillip Adams (Australian Broadcaster, Filmmaker, Archaeologist and Satirist, 1939-)
I was once working with a company that had just tried to launch a promising new medicine. The initial effort had been a flop and at the time that I became involved, the company had just fired the entire marketing team. Neither the company nor the recently departed team had had the chance to find out what had gone wrong and how to build something new and different. The new team had to start from scratch and, living in constant fear, was burning out at an astonishing rate. The real problem was the inflexibility of the company that was stifling creative solutions to problems. Once that was fixed, things began to improve very quickly.
If anyone ever says that they and the company never accepts failure, it is laudable but impractical.
It’s different if an enterprise fails because people are not pulling their weight; or failing to meet deadlines; or being overly rigid in interpreting rules or just goofing off. But if everyone is trying to help, learning, and being dynamic and flexible, then it’s best not to send them on their way, but instead to see how we can learn from a failure.
And the key for you personally and the key for your company is to learn to develop personal and corporate resilience. Then creative answers have the chance to start flowing.
“Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
–Thomas Alva Edison (American Inventor, 1847-1931)
“No one succeeds without effort…. Those who succeed owe their success to their perseverance.”
–Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)
Going to College with Attention Deficit Disorder
I’ve recommended www.attitudemag.com
before: it always contains a treasure trove of practical tips for
people who have or whose family members have attention deficit disorder
(ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
This month features an interesting
article by Marissa Kantor on planning for college. This is a tough time
for everyone. The structure of high school and home life are replaced
by a far more free wheeling life style where mom and the school
teachers are no longer there to act as surrogate frontal lobes. Marissa
lists seven essential life skills. Her list is terrific, but I would
like to extend it to what I see as the Fifteen Essential Skills that
anyone with ADD or ADHD needs to master before he or she can head off
to college. The keys to success are organization, stability and
resilience.
1. Learning to manage not just
time, but energy: what to do and when, and also how much effort to put
into individual tasks: people need to be taught how to use and
organizer and how not to lose it!
2. Having good sleep habits:
getting enough and waking up on time: There is more and more evidence
that people with ADD and ADHD are prone to sleep disturbances that may
increase the risk of a mood or anxiety disorder
3. Managing money
4. Taking regular physical
exercise is an important aspect of living a balanced life: many people
trace their adult inactivity to their college days
5. Being able to cook simple, nutritious meals
6. Doing laundry on a regular schedule
7. Being able to keep track of appointments
8. Remembering and fulfilling deadlines
9. Being able to keep on target with academic assignments
10. Working with teachers, tutors
and counselors: who must all be aware that the person has a difficulty
which may need some special help
11. Using medications – or other
treatment strategies – appropriately and getting medicines refilled
before they run out: we studiously avoid making medication changes
during school time, and particularly when exams are looming; another
good reason for not stopping and re-starting medicines during vacations
12. Avoiding the temptations of
alcohol, substance abuse and relaxed attitudes toward sex are really
important and also the most difficult to achieve: have a look at my
article about some of the potentially disastrous consequences of
untreated ADD/ADHD; even with treatment, young people are likely to be
a least somewhat predisposed to these problems
13. Maintaining healthy
relationships: it is very valuable for young people to learn about the
impacts of positive and negative inter-personal relationships before
they leave for college. They may well meet toxic people in college, and
we can help them identify, void and detach from them
14. Maintaining a spiritual life
can be very helpful to the young person with ADD/ADHD: they may well
have had an active spiritual life while at home, and it’s a good thing
to encourage some continuing form of spiritual awareness or spiritual
practice. Not only is it a stabilizing factor, but it is important for
people to be in the habit of thinking about thing outside themselves
15. ADD/ADHD is not all bad: we
don’t want to romanticize a very real difficulty, but before the young person leaves for college it is well worth getting into the habit
of seeing that there may be some positive aspects to the illness. Does
the person with ADD/ADHD have a particularly entrepreneurial or
creative flair, or an affinity with nature or with animals? Consciously
thinking about the positives years in advance can pay enormous
dividends during the early years in college.
Each of these items could easily
fill a whole article. But something for family members to keep in mind
is this: ADD/ADHD can be a serious problem that requires serious
treatments. It can be a Labor of Hercules to keep young people on
track, but remember that if you are a parent, you will likely have some
leverage, particularly if you are helping them financially.
Technorati tags:Attention deficit disorder Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder Coping strategies Psychological resilience
Psychological Reslience and Adult Support
Most of us would agree that it is very difficult to try to reduce human behavior to genes alone: one of the most important breakthroughs in our understanding of many genes is the way in which they interact constantly with the environment. This has been known for years with the genes involved in metabolism, but we now also know that the main function of genes in the brain is not to determine behavior, but to predispose us to the way in which we handle the environment.
There is a good discussion of this distinction in a paper posted by someone whom I am sorry to say that I do not know, called R.J. O’Hara, that endorses our point: even if you have genes that could predispose you to a bad long-term outcome, if you had strong, positive support from an adult, it could significantly reduce the impact of "bad" genes.
It leaves us with an important question: how late in life can strong social supports and a positive mental attitude cancel out some of our genetic predispositions?
My answer? "Biology is not destiny, and we can help people make a new start at any age or at any time in life."
Technorati tags: Psychological resilience Genetic predisposition Biology is not destiny
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Resilience and the Brain
There has always been a puzzle about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): why do some people get it and others don’t? It has always seemed that if the stress was bad enough, and particularly if it was unexpected, then pretty much anyone could get PTSD. But in between the mild stressor that makes one person fall apart and suffer terribly, while others scarcely notice, and the severe trauma that catches almost everyone, is a great unexplained mass of suffering people.
Six years ago research by Tamara Gurvits and her colleagues from the VA in Manchester, New Hampshire first suggested that people with PTSD may have some subtle neurological problems that couldn’t be explained away by alcohol abuse or injury. Now the same group has published a new study that adds significantly to our knowledge about this issue. A study of twins lead the investigators to conclude that the neurological abnormalities predated the PTSD and most likely predisposes patients to it.
The researchers studied 49 pairs of identical male twins in whom one twin had been exposed to combat during the Vietnam War and the other had not.
In 25 pairs the combat-exposed twin had a current diagnosis of PTSD, while the remaining 24 twins did not have the problem.
All the subjects were tested for what we call neurological “soft signs.” This is not a good term, and refers to subtle neurological disturbances, usually involving some complex systems of the brain. They include things like an impaired sense of direction, being able to do rapid, complex motor actions, copying pictures and movements. The combat veterans with PTSD scored higher on the soft signs tests than did the veterans without PTSD. But now it gets interesting: the identical twins of people with PTSD also had high soft sign scores. In other words there appears to a familial vulnerability to developing PTSD. This is consistent with a fascinating new paper on the neurological circuitry involved in fear. We can now map out some of the neurological vulnerabilities involved in PTSD as well as some of the neurological consequences of severe PTSD. Nobody knows if we can reverse them with psychological or other approaches, but we now think it is very possible.
There is a lot more work to be done. But as a first suggestion: someone who has this kind of evidence of vulnerability to PTSD should be the first to get advanced training in developing resilience. We already know that even the most limited efforts to bolster and develop resilience can have marked effects.
The key is to start building your resilience starting today.
“Always plan. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”
–Richard C. Cushing (American Roman Catholic Cardinal, 1895-1970)
Technorati tags: Posttraumatic stress disorders Brain Vietnam veterans Resilience
Stress, Depression and Resilience
“Patience in calamity, mercy in greatness, fortitude in adversity; these are the self-attained perfections of great saints.”
–The Hitopodesa (Sanskrit fable from the Panchatantra, the “Five Chapters,” Translated as the “Good Advice” c.1100 A.D.)
We are all different in the way that we respond to emotional and physical stress. It is not enough to focus on one single reason why one person handles it and another does not. I have often made the point that we need to consider the physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual contributions to any illness or challenge.
New research is shedding light on the interaction between two of these: genes and environment. A multinational research effort assessed the impact of stressor on mood in 275 pairs of female twins. 170 sets of twins were identical: they have exactly the same genetic makeup.
The research indicates that only 12% of individual differences in reactions to stress can be attributed to genetic influences. This is stunning, and should have been reported far more widely: 88% of the differences in the way a person reacts to stress are not genetic, but personal and environmental. This is of great importance in problems such as depression. If genetic factors play such a small role, then paying attention to the development of personal resilience – as well as dealing with social factors – is more likely to be effective than anything else. And, as has been discussed elsewhere one of the ways in which some medicines help people with depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia is probably by increasing their resilience.
I have already started showing you some of the techniques for improving psychological resilience and in a future publication we are also going to start work on physical, subtle and spiritual resilience and how to develop more resilient and dynamic relationships.
“Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the faultfinding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. Your time is too precious to be sacrificed in wasted days combating the menial forces of hate, jealously, and envy. Guard your fragile life carefully. Only God can shape a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces.”
–Og Mandino (American Motivational Speaker and Author, 1923-1996)
Technorati tags: Resilience Depression Stress Environment Genetics
Re-Writing Our Life Stories and Developing Resilience
“Every man’s story is important, eternal and sacred.”
–Herman Hesse (German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet and, in 1946, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1877-1962)
In Healing, Meaning and Purpose, I spend a lot of time discussing the nature of memory – that it does not work like a video recorder, but is a dynamic process – and the value of re-writing your life story. This is a remarkably powerful technique.
What is particularly interesting and useful is to uncover events in our lives that have had two characteristics. First, is that they had a strong subjective impact. And second, that they generated meaning. Breaking up with a partner might generate a lot of emotion and lead you to believe that you are not good in relationships or it could make you think that the other person didn’t appreciate you. Losing a game of football may be painful, but will likely not generate much meaning. Unless your team is on a thirty game losing streak….
A recent study from Quebec published in the Journal of Personality, studied events that we use to define ourselves. Researchers looked at the subjective impact and the meaning-making effect of these self-defining events. This is what they found. When we remember events in our lives that we feel had a major impact on our life story or on our sense of identity, we tend to downplay the negative and emphasize the positive.
When we are asked to think back to those events, we tend to report less sadness and more pride than we actually felt at the time. For positive memories, people reported equally intense positive emotions – for example love – and less negative emotions – such as fear – compared with how they recalled feeling at the time.
What this means is that in the face of change, adversity and opportunity, we are always trying to maintain a positive and coherent sense of self. This is a component of psychological resilience. Someone with clinical depression loses the ability to maintain this positive and coherent sense of self.
This work is also important for people trying to fashion a more positive view of him or herself. While it is usually a good idea to cultivate a positive mental attitude, there are some people for whom such an approach can be disastrous: they are the ones who thrive on negativity. Which one are you?
Simply deciding to change your view of yourself will likely have only a very short-term effect unless you identify and work with cardinal life events. Some forms of psychotherapy revolve around trying to identify the key events that have fashioned our sense of self and that have contributed to our identity. You can begin that process for yourself.
But that is only one part of the equation.
Any long-term change will also involve the attitudes and expectations of other people: none of us lives in a vacuum. I have known countless supremely self-confident musicians, artists and even scientists, whose careers have never got started, because nobody agreed with their evaluation of themselves.
There are a number of ways of presenting yourself in a way that will inspire confidence in other people, and I shall discuss some of those in one of my future programs.
“Every story can be told in different ways.”
–Greek Proverb
Technorati tags: Memory Resilience Story
Revisiting Resilience
“I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs, but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.”
–General George S. Patton (American General, 1885-1945)
Resilience is the process of being able to adapt and to thrive in the face of adversity, stress, trauma, tragedy or threats. A resilient person is les likely to succumb to any of these life events and is less likely to develop mental illness. But resilience is more than a passive strength or resistance to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: it is a dynamic capacity that not only protects us, but enables us to turn adversity into strength and an opportunity for growth.
Despite our extraordinary health care system and a multi-billion dollar antidepressant industry, the rates of depression are increasing throughout the Western world. A recent book has suggested that boredom was unknown before about 1760: the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. All this tells us that something is seriously wrong with our resilience.
“The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.”
–Plutarch (Greek Biographer and Priest to the Oracle at Delphi, A.D. 46-c.120)
In Healing, Meaning and Purpose, I pointed out some of the incredible changes that have taken place over the last one hundred years, and their impact on health. To try and apply the principles of the past to the problems of the present and future is unlikely to be crowned with success. We need to adapt. Buddhists do not normally eat meat. Except for Tibetan Buddhists, who need to eat some meat in order to survive at the high altitudes of the Himalayas. I have a good friend who created the finest integrated medicine clinic in the world, the Hale Clinic in London. Normally an abstemious vegetarian, when she was embroiled in business meetings, she would often take some meat to remain grounded. I have done the same thing myself for years. I prefer not to eat meat. I have not had a steak in more than thirty years. But if I am to do a lot of traveling and need to work with politicians and business people, a bit of chopped up fish or poultry can be essential.
The changes in our lifestyles over the past century have dramatically reduced the level of physical activity necessary to provide life’s basic resources: our effort-based rewards that are intimately involved in the regulation of mood. If you think about it for a moment, if your great-grandparents wanted to eat, there was probably a lot of effort involved. Our brains still contain a huge number of circuits that evolved to play roles in sustaining the kind of continuous effort that would be critical for the acquisition of resources such as food, water and shelter. So what happens when we suddenly on longer need much physical activity to obtain those resources? What happens to those parts of the brain that have millions of years evolving? There will be reduced activation of those brain regions essential for reward, pleasure, salience, motivation, problem-solving, and effective coping strategies. The practical consequence of that is that these systems will not sit there idling: if under-stimulated, since these systems are so heavily involved with our emotions, we would expect to see people becoming depressed. And we know that depression has been increasing throughout the Western world. Of course, many people need to stimulate these regions of the brain artificially, as with drugs, pornography or extreme sports.
Effort-based rewards are an essential component of resilience to life’s stressful challenges. Purposeful physical activity is important in the maintenance of mental health. It therefore makes sense to put more emphasis on preventative behavioral and cognitive life strategies, rather than relying solely on psychopharmacological strategies. Our strategy is geared toward protecting people from developing depression, and compensatory behaviors. One of the very interesting new ideas in pharmacology is that antidepressants and antipsychotics may act to enhance resilience at both the cellular level and in the whole person. This is a very different concept from thinking of medicines as chemicals that simply block symptoms.
Our aim is to improve resilience and gradually to increase activation of all those under-used systems of the brain to treat and then to prevent problems. All the things that mother always said were good for you: healthy exercise, meditation, a balanced diet, charity and kindness, and actions aimed at fulfilling your personal and Higher Purpose have already been shown to treat and to protect.
Here are some proven methods for improving resilience:
1. Learn to be adaptable: the heart of resilience is the ability to take things in your stride and to be able to surf the ocean of change, rather than trying to hold the hold it back.
2. Be aware of the blockages in your mind or in the subtle systems of your body that are preventing you from bouncing back form adversity
3. Attitude: avoid seeing a challenge as an insurmountable problem
4. Accept that change is part of life: you can do little about it, but you can do a great deal about how you react to change
5. Ensure that you have meaningful goals that are consistent with your core desires and beliefs, and that you are moving toward them
6. Do all that you can to work on establishing your own Purpose in life. You can create a purpose for your life, but also be aware that there is a Higher Purpose in you life
7. Take decisive actions: even if the first action may not be the best one. Any action is usually better than denying that problems exist, and hoping that they will evaporate while you are asleep or watching television
8. Develop and maintain close relationships. Even if you are not a sociable person, relationships are one of the most potent way of protecting yourself from life’s ups and downs
9. Look for opportunities to learn more about yourself, and how you react to situations. This doesn’t mean becoming an introvert or a rampant narcissist, but it does mean taking a moment each day to review where you are and what you can learn form things that are or have happened in your life. This is a big subject, but there are many good ways to answer the question, “Why is this happening to me again?” and from preventing habitual problems and routine self-sabotage. (I shall be publishing an eBook and CD about this crucial topic in the very near future)
10. Work on developing a positive self-image. I have had some harsh things to say about the excesses of the self-esteem movement, but it has now been replaced by something far more valuable: the science of positive psychology. We have a great deal of empirical data on how to improve a person’s happiness and resilience. Again, we can speak about that some more if you are interested.
11. Maintain hope for the future. We have done research that has shown that one of the best ways of predicting a positive outcome with major mental illness, or of reducing the risk of recurrent substance abuse is to instill hope. Again, there are techniques for doing this, even when the whole world seems to be against you.
12. Maintain perspective: do not blow things out of proportion, and remember that this too shall pass.
13. Take care of yourself, physical, emotionally and spiritually. Listen to yourself: what does your body need? What do you need emotionally? What do you need from a relationship? What do you need spiritually?
14. Are you giving others what they need from you? If you have a nagging sense that you are not giving a child or a spouse that they need and deserve, it can dramatically reduce you resilience.
15. Rather than just thinking about and worrying over your problems, or problems that may turn up in the future, get into the habit of thinking of yourself not just as an individual who is going through problems, but as a boundless spiritual being who is learning a lesson.
16. Never forget to think about the legacy that you are going to leave. Not just to your family, but to the world at large. If you can’t think of one, this is a good time to begin to create one. That is an enormously powerful perspective on the world and on your problems.
“I am an old man and have had many troubles, most of which never happened.”
–Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer, 1835-1910)
Technorati tags: Resilience Life event Life balance Legacy Stress management
Capacity
There’s a nice article at a website that I like a lot. This one recommends adopting an approach of examining our capacity for work in four different ways: physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.
There are powerful reasons for using multidimensional perspectives to help people not just function at their best, but also to be resilient in the face of adversity. I would like to add two things to this article.
First is an exceedingly useful concept is the “complexity quotient” (CQ), which measures our ability to adapt to changing complexity. It is another way of thinking about a person’s “capacity.” Successful leaders, winning athletes and healthy individuals are extremely flexible and have a high CQ. They can raise their game and adapt quickly. On the other hand, they also have the ability to let go when the pressure is off. After recovering from a mental breakdown, the psychologist Carl Jung was known not only for his remarkable scholarship, but also for his extraordinary ability to relax and to become childlike and to think up all sorts of games for his children. These are signs of a well-rounded, balanced and integrated personality. Sometimes we see people in whom this ability goes haywire, and they overcompensate with drugs, alcohol or risky sexual behavior.
Second, I think that it’s valuable to also add the capacity of your relationships and your energy. Robust, dynamic and supportive relationships can enhance your capacity for work and play, and they buffer you from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We do not usually think about the capacity of the subtle systems of the body, but they are there and very real. Strengthening them with techniques such as breathing, yoga or qigong, can dramatically improve your quality of life and capacity for effectiveness and enjoyment.
Technorati tags: Capacity Complexity quotient Subtle systems Biofield
Happiness and Resilience
For more than two decades, my main focus has been on ways to help people become more resilient to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. To enable people to withstand anything that’s thrown at them: physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. And not just to withstand them but to use adversity as the impetus for growth.
Adversity is a fact of life: it cannot be controlled. But we can control how we react to it.
This is such an important concept.
So many people try and make themselves stronger and stronger, yet there will always be something that can overwhelm the most powerful defenses. I knew of two martial artists in Hong Kong who claimed that they could defeat anyone. They were incredibly strong and had exquisite technique.
Which did not help them one bit when some villains shot them from behind by.
I have come across others who have spent their lives eating and exercising and still dying prematurely. What was the problem? They had not learned the arts of resilience, which include adaptability, flow and seemless integration with the Universe.
Over the next few days I am going to introduce you to some of the techniques that we have developed for enhancing psychological and physical resilience, before going on to reveal some of the secrets for strengthening the subtle fields of your body, and how to maintain dynamic relationships, not just with another person, but with your Higher Self.
One of the manifestations of resilience is happiness, so before we start, I would suggest that you try this small test that was published by the BBC by arrangement with Professor Ed Diener, from the University of Illinois who designed it.
Technorati tags: Resilience Happiness Flow Relationships
Climate Change and Your Health
When I hear the continuing arguments about climate change, I often fancy that I can in the far distance hear Nero playing his lyre while Rome burns. In March the BBC reported faster than expected warming of the Antarctic over the last 30 years. This report was based on a paper in the journal Science by a team from the British Antarctic Survey.
Gradual climate change is drawing particular attention in Europe, where the climate is exquisitely dependent on the Gulf Stream. In some places records have been kept for centuries, and there seem to have been genuine changes in a short space of time. A few years ago I was in Stockholm in the week before Christmas, and it was so warm that I was able to walk around in my shirtsleeves. That made it the warmest December in almost 800 years. People notice things like that, and governments and populations are eager to do something before the Arctic is reduced to a puddle.
Even if we are just seeing a natural climatic cycle, the consequences could be disastrous. Leaving aside the obvious matter of a rise in sea level, there is also the impact of global climate change on health. Earlier this year the BBC reported a speech by Professor Paul Hunter from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, to the Society of Applied Microbiology at the Royal Society in London. He pointed out that global warming, with hotter summers and more frequent and heavy rainfall and storms, would create the right conditions for an increase in food poisoning and other gastrointestinal upsets caused by microorganisms.
Global warming could also create conditions favorable for a return of malaria to the United Kingdom. Professor Hunter has published papers on this important topic before. He is no alarmist, and his work underscores the way in which our environment and we are closely interlinked, and even small climatic changes may have major effects on illness.
We could discuss this topic in a great deal of detail. Suffice to say that it is more important than ever for all of us to get into the habit of washing our hands, ensuring the cleanliness of food, and even more so of the water that we use, and that we do all that we can to build our resilience.
There is also another matter of equal importance, and that is the dwindling supply of fresh water around the world. The number of us is growing fast and our water use is growing even faster. A third of the world’s population now lives in water-stressed countries, and it is expected that this will rise to two-thirds by the year 2025. The cruelty of the situation is that there is altogether more than enough water available for everyone’s basic needs. The water is in the wrong places and much of it is unusable.
The United Nations recommends that people need a minimum of 50 liters of water a day for drinking, washing, cooking and sanitation. Global water consumption rose six-fold between 1900 and 1995 – more than double the rate of population growth – and goes on growing as farming, industry and domestic demand all increase.
As important as quantity is quality – with pollution increasing in some areas, the amount of useable water declines. Each year, more than five million people die from waterborne diseases, which is 10 times the number killed in wars around the globe. Most of the victims are children.
Seventy percent of the water used worldwide is used for agriculture. Much more will be needed if we are to feed the world’s growing population, which is predicted to rise from about six billion today to 8.9 billion by 2050. And consumption will further increase as more people expect Western-style lifestyles and diets. Here is a useful statistic: one kilogram of grain-fed beef needs at least 15 cubic meter of water, while a kilo of cereals needs only up to three cubic meters. Many futurists are already predicting that water will become as much of a strategic issue as oil is today, with wars being fought over the water supply.
As of today, we should all start thinking about ways in which we can reduce our own water consumption and make provision to collect and purify water ourselves.
“Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” — Charles Dudley Warner (American Author, 1829-1900)
Technorati tags: global warming, water, Environment, Climate Change, pollution
