The Danish Peace Academy

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

John Avery
H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen

Chapter 19 CARING FOR THE EARTH

Exponential growth

Measured on the time scale of ordinary genetic evolution, the cultural evolution of our species has been astonishingly rapid. Humans have been living on the earth for roughly two million years (more or less, depending on where one draws the line between our human and prehuman ancestors). During almost all of this time, our ancestors lived by hunting and food-gathering. They were not at all numerous, and not conspicuously different from other animals.

Then, suddenly, during the brief space of ten thousand years, our species exploded in numbers from a few million to more than five billion, populating all parts of the earth, and even setting foot on the moon. This population explosion, which is still going on, has been the result of dramatic cultural changes. Genetically, we are almost identical with our hunter-gatherer ancestors who lived ten thousand years ago; but cultural evolution has changed our way of life beyond recognition. In genetic evolution, a species changes through inherited variations in the DNA of its individual members. However, our species has another means of change - through additions to the inherited body of techniques, customs and knowledge which we call culture.

Beginning with the development of speech, human cultural evolution began to accelerate. It began to move faster with the agricultural revolution, and faster still with the invention of writing and the in- vention of printing. Finally, modern science has accelerated the rate of technical and social change to a completely unprecedented speed. There has been, in other words, an “information explosion”, to which modern science has contributed.

The growth of modern science is accelerating because knowledge feeds on itself: A new idea or a new development may lead to several other innovations, which can in turn start an avalanche of change. For example, the quantum theory of atomic structure lead to the invention of transistors, which made the development of high-speed digital computers possible. Computers have not only produced further developments in quantum theory; they have also revolutionized many other fields.

The growth law which follows from this type of relationship is exponential; and in fact, the number of scientific articles published per year has for some time been increasing exponentially, doubling every fifteen years. The exponential growth of technology is the driving force behind the other exponentially increasing graphs which can be made, such as the graphs of population growth and the growth of international trade.

When the increase of a quantity is proportional to the amount already present, the resulting growth is exponential. The exponential growth of science follows from the fact that its increase is proportional to the amount already present; and the same is true for the growth of a population whose birth rate exceeds the death rate.

The doubling time for an exponentially-growing quantity is approximately equal to 70 years divided by the annual percentage of increase. Thus, a population growing at the rate of 2 percent per year will double in 35 years, while a population growing at 3 percent per year will double in 23 years.

Seen in one way, the phenomenal growth of human population and economic activity is a success story whose hero is technical progress. Almost everyone now living owes his or her life to modern techniques of agriculture, industry and medicine. If humans had remained huntergatherers, the total global population would have continued to be only a few millions; and under those conditions, almost everyone now living would never have been born, or would have died in childhood. Therefore most of us must thank the progress of society for the fact that we are alive at all.

However, if we compare the present growth rates of population and economic activity with the world’s reserves of non-renewable resources and arable land, the picture changes: We can then see the beginnings of a tragedy, with growth and “progress” perhaps playing the roles of villains.

Population and food supply

In 1930, the population of the world reached two billion; in 1958 three billion; in 1974 four billion; and in 1988 five billion. Today, more than 90 million people are being added to the world’s population every year. United Nations experts believe that by the year 2100, the population of the earth will have stabilized at between 10 and 15 billion - roughly double or triple today’s population - most of the increase having been added to the less-developed parts of the world.

In 1983, the Secretary-General of the United Nations established a World Commission on Environment and Development, led by the Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The Commission’s report, “Our Common Future” (published in 1987), examines the question of whether the earth can support a population of 10 billion people without the collapse of the ecological systems on which all life depends. With respect to food, the report has this to say:

“...Researchers have assessed the ‘theoretical’ potential for global food production. One study assumes that the area under food production can be around 1.5 billion hectares (3.7 billion acres - close to the present level), and that the average yields could go up to 5 tons of grain equivalent per hectare (as against the present average of 2 tons of grain equivalent). Allowing for production from rangelands and marine sources, the total ‘potential’ is placed at 8 billion tons of grain equivalent.”

“How many people can this sustain? The present global average consumption of plant energy for food, seed, and animal feed amounts to about 6,000 calories daily, with a range among countries of 3,000- 15,000 calories, depending on the level of meat consumption. On this basis, the potential production could sustain a little more than 11 billion people. But if the average consumption rises substantially - say, to 9,000 calories - the population carrying capacity of the Earth comes down under 7.5 billion.”

“These figures could be substantially higher if the area under food production and the productivity of 3 billion hectares of permanent pasturage can be increased on a sustainable basis. Nevertheless, the data do suggest that meeting the food requirements of an ultimate world population of around 10 billion would require some changes in food habits, as well as greatly improving the efficiency of traditional agriculture.” Thus, the next doubling will bring the global population of humans near to or beyond the maximum number that the earth can support, even assuming greatly improved agricultural yields. The study quoted in the Brundtland report assumes that the world average for agricultural yields per hectare can be doubled; but this assumption raises many problems.

Extremely high-yield varieties of rice and wheat have indeed been produced by “Green Revolution” plant geneticists, such as Norman Borlaug. However, these high-yield crop varieties require heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as well as large amounts of water. Will the enormous quantities of fertilizer required be available globally? According to a recent study (Man’s Impact on the Global Environment, MIT Press, 1970), the world’s food production rose by 34 percent between 1951 and 1966; but this required a 146 percent increase in the use of nitrate fertilizers, and a 300 percent increase in the use of pesticides.

Between 1964 and 1987, the fertilizer consumption of Asia increased by a factor of 10, from 4 million metric tons to 40 million metric tons. Much greater increases will be needed if global agriculture is to double its productivity per hectare during the next half century. Assuming the availability of the needed amounts of fertilizer, we can anticipate that the runoff from fields, heavily saturated with nitrates and phosphates and pesticides, will contaminate the ground-water, lakes and oceans, thus reducing fish populations.

One can already observe a catastrophic depletion of oxygen in the bottom layers of such bodies of water as the Baltic Sea (which is surrounded by countries presently making heavy use of fertilizers in agriculture). This oxygen depletion is due to the growth of algae in layers near to the surface, stimulated by the presence of nitrates and phosphates. Bacterial decay of the algae at the bottom exhausts the oxygen; and in many parts of the Baltic, all bottom-living species have disappeared.

Pesticides and fertilizer in drinking water can cause a variety of human health problems, including cancer and methemoglobinemia. (Methemoglobinemia is sometimes called “blue baby syndrome”, and it results from drinking water containing too large a concentration of nitrates.) If a global population of 10 billion is to be supported, another alternative is open: More land can be exploited for agriculture. However, we may encounter as many problems in doubling the area of the world’s agricultural land as in doubling its productivity per hectare.

The cost of roads, irrigation, clearance and fertilizer for new agricultural land averages more than a thousand U.S. dollars per hectare.

During the next half century, hunger will strike the poorest parts of the world’s population. Capital for opening new agricultural land cannot come from those who are threatened by famine. It must be found in some other way.

A Report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (Provisional Indicative World Plan for Agricultural Development, FAO, Rome, 1970) makes the following statement concerning new agricultural lands:

“In Southern Asia,...in some countries in Eastern Asia, in the Near East, and North Africa...there is almost no scope for expanding the agricultural area... In the dryer regions, it will even be necessary to return to permanent pasture the land which is marginal or submarginal for cultivation. In most of Latin America and Africa south of the Sahara, there are still considerable possibilities for expanding cultivated areas; but the costs of development are high, and it will often be more economical to intensify the utilization of the areas already settled.”

In the 1950’s, both the U.S.S.R and Turkey attempted to convert arid grasslands into wheat farms. In both cases, the attempts were defeated by drought and wind erosion, just as the wheat farms of Oklahoma were overcome by drought and dust in the 1930’s. If irrigation of arid lands is not performed with care, salt may be deposited, so that the land is ruined for agriculture. This type of desertification can be seen, for example, in some parts of Pakistan. Another type of desertification can be seen in the Sahel region of Africa, south of the Sahara. Rapid population growth in the Sahel has led to overgrazing, destruction of trees, and wind erosion, so that the land has become unable to support even its original population.

The earth’s tropical rain forests are also rapidly being destroyed for the sake of new agricultural land. Tropical rain forests are thought to be the habitat of more than half of the world’s species of plants, animals and insects; and their destruction is accompanied by an alarming rate of extinction of species. The Harvard biologist, E.O. Wilson, estimates that the rate of extinction resulting from deforestation in the tropics may now exceed 4,000 species per year - 10,000 times the natural background rate (Scientific American, September, 1989).

The enormous biological diversity of tropical rain forests has resulted from their stability. Unlike northern forests, which have been affected by glacial epochs, tropical forests have existed undisturbed for millions of years. As a result, complex and fragile ecological systems have had a chance to develop. Professor Wilson expresses this in the following words:

“Fragile superstructures of species build up when the environment remains stable enough to support their evolution during long periods of time. Biologists now know that biotas, like houses of cards, can be brought tumbling down by relatively small perturbations in the physical environment. They are not robust at all.”

The number of species which we have until now domesticated or used in medicine is very small compared with the number of potentially useful species still waiting in the world’s tropical rain forests. When we destroy them, we damage our future. But we ought to regard the annual loss of thousands of species as a tragedy, not only because biological diversity is potential wealth for human society , but also because every form of life deserves our respect and protection. Every year, more than 100,000 square kilometers of rain forest are cleared and burned, an area which corresponds to that of Switzerland and the Netherlands combined. Almost half of the world’s tropical forests have already been destroyed. Ironically, the land thus cleared often becomes unsuitable for agriculture within a few years.

Tropical soils may seem to be fertile when covered with luxuriant vegetation, but they are usually very poor in nutriants because of leech- ing by heavy rains. The nutriants which remain are contained in the vegetation itself; and when the forest cover is cut and burned, they are rapidly leached away.

Often the remaining soil is rich in aluminium oxide and iron oxide. When such soils are exposed to oxygen and sun-baking, a rocklike substance called laterite is formed. The temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia are built of laterite; and it is thought that the Khmer civilization, which built these temples a thousand years ago, disappeared because of laterization of the soil.

It can be seen from the facts which we have just discussed that increasing the world’s food supply to accommodate the next doubling of population will be difficult. If this goal can be achieved at all, it will be achieved at the cost of severe damage to the global environment and the extinction of many thousands of species.

Added to the agricultural and environmental problems, are problems of finance and distribution. Famines can occur even when grain is available somewhere in the world, because those who are threatened with starvation may not be able to pay for the grain, or for its transportation.

The economic laws of supply and demand are not able to solve this type of problem. One says that there is no “demand” for the food (meaning demand in the economic sense), even though people are in fact starving.

We can anticipate that as the earth’s human population approaches 10 billion, severe famines will occur in many developing countries. The beginnings of this tragedy can already be seen. It is estimated that roughly 40,000 children now die every day from starvation, or from a combination of disease and malnutrition. This terrible suffering and loss of life is almost certain to become worse in the next few decades; and the fact that the problem of increasing the world’s food supply is very difficult by no means decreases its urgency.

An analysis of the global ratio of population to cropland shows that we may already have exceeded the sustainable limit of population through our dependence on petroleum: Between 1950 and 1982, the use of cheap petroleum-derived fertilizers increased by a factor of 8, and much our present agricultural output depends their use. Furthermore, petroleum-derived synthetic fibers have reduced the amount of cropland needed for growing natural fibers, and petroleum-driven trac- tors have replaced draft animals which required cropland for pasturage. Also, petroleum fuels have replaced fuelwood and other fuels derived for biomass. The reverse transition, from fossil fuels back to renewable energy sources, will require a considerable diversion of land from food production to energy production. For example, 1.1 hectares are needed to grow the sugarcane required for each alcohol-driven Brazilian automobile. This figure may be compared with the steadily falling average area of cropland available to each person in the world - .24 hectares in 1950, .16 hectares in 1982.

As population increases, the cropland per person will continue to fall, and we will be forced to make still heavier use of fertilizers to increase output per hectare. Also marginal land will be used in agriculture, with the probable result that much land will be degraded through erosion and salination. Reserves of oil are likely to be exhausted by the middle of next century. Thus there is a danger that just as global population reaches the unprecedented level of 10 billion or more, the agricultural base for supporting it may suddenly collapse. The resulting ecological catastrophe, possibly compounded by war and other disorders, could produce famine and death on a scale unprecedented in history - a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, involving billions rather than millions of people. The present tragic famine in Africa is to this possible future disaster what Hiroshima is to the threat of thermonuclear war - a tragedy of smaller scale, whose horrors should be sufficient, if we are wise, to make us take steps to avoid the larger catastrophe.

Growth of cities

The global rate of population growth has slowed from 2.0 percent per year in 1972 to 1.7 percent per year in 1987; and one can hope that it will continue to fall. However, it is still very high in most developing countries. For example, in Kenya, the population growth rate is 4.0 percent per year, which means that the population of Kenya will double in seventeen years.

Because of increasing mechanization of agriculture, the extra millions added to the populations of developing countries are unable to find work on the land. They have no alternative except migration to overcrowded cities, where the infrastructure is unable to cope with so many new arrivals. Often the new migrants are forced to live in excrement-filled makeshift slums, where dysentery, hepatitis and typhoid are endemic, and where the conditions for human life sink to the lowest imaginable level.

During the 60 years between 1920 and 1980 the urban population of the developing countries increased by a factor of 10, from 100 million to almost a billion. In 1950, the population of Sao Paulo in Brazil was 2.7 million. By 1980, it had grown to 12.6 million; and it is expected to reach 24.0 million by the year 2000. Mexico City too has grown explosively to an unmanageable size. In 1950, the population of Mexico City was 3.05 million; in 1982 it was 16.0 million; and the projected population for 2000 is 26.3 million.

A similar explosive growth of cities can be seen in Africa and in Asia. In 1968, Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, were both growing at the rate of 14 percent per year, doubling in size every 5 years. In 1950, Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, had a population of 0.14 million. By 2000, it is expected to reach 5.3 million, having increased by a factor of almost 40.

In 1972, the population of Calcutta was 7.5 million, and it is expected to almost double in size by the turn of the century. This growth will produce a tragic increase in the poverty and pollution from which Calcutta already suffers. The Hoogly estuary near Calcutta is already choked with untreated industrial waste and sewage, and sixty percent of Calcutta’s population already suffer from respiratory diseases related to air pollution.

Governments in the third world, struggling to provide clean water, sanitation, roads, schools, medical help and jobs for all their citizens, are defeated by rapidly growing urban populations. Often the makeshift shantytowns inhabited by new arrivals have no piped water; or when water systems exist, the pressures may be so low that sewage seeps into the system.

Many homeless children, left to fend for themselves, sleep and forage in the streets of third world cities. These conditions have tended to become worse with time rather than better. Whatever gains governments can make are immediately canceled by growing populations.

The demographic transition

In discussing the Industrial Revolution, we noticed a general pattern in the social impact of technical change: Since technical changes can take place extremely rapidly, while social and political adjustments require more time, the first impact of new technology often throws society off balance, producing an initial period of suffering and social disruption. However, once society has made the needed adjustments, new techniques are usually beneficial.

In the case of the Industrial Revolution, great suffering resulted when an agricultural society, with traditional rights and duties, was replaced by a society functioning according to purely economic rules, where labor was regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold without regard for the needs of the humans involved. Later, however, after the appropriate social adjustments had been made, industrialization yielded great benefits.

We have just been discussing a more recent example of social dislocation and suffering produced by the initial impact of technical change: Advanced medical techniques transferred from industrialized countries to the third world have quickly lowered death rates without affecting basic social structures and traditions. The result has been overpopulation and poverty.

For example, in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the death rate fell sharply, from 22 per thousand in 1945 to 10 per thousand in 1954, largely as the result of an antimalarial program. However, social customs remained the same: Girls continued to be married very early; and they continued to give their husbands large numbers of children, just as they had done when the death rate was high. The result was a population explosion which has produced almost as much suffering as the malaria which it replaced.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s there was great hope that transfer of technology from the industrialized countries would lead to development and prosperity in all parts of the world. President Kennedy proposed that the 1960’s should be designated a “development decade”, and this proposal was adopted by the United Nations.

The good intentions of the development decade were backed by substantial aid: According to official estimates, the industrialized nations contributed 8 billion U.S. dollars per year to the less developed parts of the world. However, in most third world countries, exploding populations blocked economic development, producing a trap of poverty. The gap between the rich and poor nations widened, rather than narrowed. Rapidly-growing populations are both the cause and the effect of poverty: As we have seen, a rapidly-growing population makes economic development difficult or impossible. Furthermore, in an educated, prosperous, urban population, where women have high social status and jobs outside the home, the birth rate tends to be low. For example, in Denmark, each woman has, on the average, fewer than two children during her lifetime.

A recent study (conducted by Robert J. Lapham of the Demographic and Health Surveys and by W. Parker Mauldin of the Rockefeller Foundation) has shown that the use of birth control is correlated both with socio-economic setting and with the existence of strong family-planning programs. For example, in countries like Yemen, Burundi, Chad, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, where family-planning programs are weak or absent, only 1 percent of couples use birth control.

In Paraguay, where the socio-economic setting is high, but where a family-planning program is absent, 36 percent of couples use birth control. In Indonesia, with a lower-middle socio-economic setting but a strong government-supported family-planning program, the percentage is 48. Finally, in Hong Kong, which has both a relatively high socioeconomic status and a strong family-planning program, 80 percent of all couples use birth control.

China, the world’s most populous nation, has adopted the policy of allowing only one child per family. This policy has, until now, been most effective in towns and cities, but with time it may also become effective in rural areas. Like other developing nations, China has a very young population, which will continue to grow even when fertility falls below the replacement level (because so many of its members will be contributing to the birth rate rather than to the death rate). China’s present population is between 1.1 and 1.2 billion. Its projected population for the year 2025 is 1.5 billion.

Recent statistics show that the world can be divided into two demographic regions of roughly equal population. In the first region, which includes North America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Asia, populations have completed or are completing the demographic transition from the old equilibrium where high birth rates were balanced by a high death rate to a new equilibrium with low birth rates balanced by a low death rate. In the second region, which includes Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Africa, populations seem to be caught in a demographic trap, where high birth rates and low death rates lead to population growth so rapid that the development which could have slowed population growth is impossible. The average population increase in the slow growth regions is 0.8% per year, with a range between 0.2% (Western Europe) and 1.0% (Eastern Asia). In the rapid growth regions, the average increase is 2.5% per year, with a range between 2.2% (Southeast Asia) and 2.8% (Africa). Thus there is a very marked division of the world into two demographic regions, and there seems to be no middle ground. Some individual countries in the rapid growth regions (such as Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay in Latin America) have completed or are completing the demographic transition, but their numbers are too small to influence the regional trends.

For countries caught in the demographic trap, government birth control programs are especially important, because one cannot rely on improved social conditions to slow birth rates. Since health and lowered birth rates should be linked, it is appropriate that family-planning should be an important part of programs for public health and economic development. In 1977, the World Health Organization resolved that during the coming decades its goal should be “the attainment by all citizens of the world by the year 2000 of a level of health that will permit them to lead a socially and economically productive life”. Halfdan Mahler, who was then the Director General of the World Health Organization, has expressed the relationship between health, development and family planning in the following words:

“Country after country has seen painfully achieved increases in total output, food production, health and educational facilities and employment opportunities reduced or nullified by excessive population growth. Most underdeveloped countries therefore seek to limit their population growth.” “The lesson of recent years is that virtually wherever health-care facilities have been made available, women have demanded information and the necessary materials for spacing their children and limiting their families.”

Non-renewable resources

Economists in the industrialized countries have long behaved as though growth were synonymous with economic health. If the gross national product of a country increases steadily by 4% per year, most economists express approval and say that the economy is healthy. If the economy could be made to grow still faster (they feel), it would be still more healthy. If the growth rate should fall, economic illness would be diagnosed.

Economics has been called “the impatient science of growth ”, and (with a few notable exceptions, such as the Club of Rome) economists seem to assume that growth can continue forever. This assumption, of course, cannot stand examination any better than the assumption that population can continue to grow forever. A “healthy” economic growth rate of 4% per year corresponds to increase by a factor of 50 in a century, by a factor of 2500 in two centuries, and by a factor of 125,000 in three centuries. No one can maintain that this type of growth is “sustainable” except by refusing to look more that a certain distance into the future.

It is obvious that on a finite earth, population cannot continue to grow indefinitely because of limits imposed by the food supply and because of limits to the ability of the environment to tolerate pollution.

Exponential growth, where the population doubles in size every generation or every few generations, has brought us near to these limits with surprising rapidity. It is characteristic of exponential growth that one is surprised by the sudden approach of the limits, because one moves from a situation of plenty to one of scarcity in a single doubling time.

As we have seen above, global population will soon exceed the carrying capacity of the environment. Economic growth will encounter the same limit, as well as limits imposed by the depletion of non-renewable resources. Our failure to see this fact clearly is probably due to our unwillingness to look more than a few years ahead. We say to ourselves, “What happens fifty years from now is not our worry”. However we owe it to our children to try look as far as possible into the future, since “we did not inherit the earth from our parents; we borrowed it from our children”.

The total ultimately recoverable resources of fossil fuels amount to roughly 7300 terawatt-years of energy 1 Of this total amount, 6700 TWy is coal, while oil and natural gas each constitute roughly 300 TWy.2 In 1890, global consumption of energy was 1 terawatt, but by 1990 this figure had grown to 13.2 TW, distributed as follows: oil, 4.6; coal, 3.2; natural gas, 2.4; hydropower, 0.8; nuclear, 0.7; fuelwood, 0.9; crop wastes, 0.4; and dung, 0.2. Thus, if we continue to use oil at the 1990 rate, it will last for 65 years, while natural gas will last for twice that long. The reserves of coal are much larger; and used at the 1990 rate, coal would last for 2000 years. However, it seems likely that as oil and natural gas become depleted, coal will be converted to liquid and gaseous fuels, and its rate of use will increase. Also, the total global energy consumption is likely to increase because of increasing population and rising standards of living in the developing countries.

It is easy to calculate that a global population of 10 billion, using oil and energy at the same rate as present-day Americans, could exhaust the world’s supply of petroleum in seven years, and could burn all of the world’s remaining reserves of fossil fuels in only 60 years, meanwhile producing a catastrophic change in the earth’s climate through the release of greenhouse gases. It may be just as difficult for the developed countries to abandon their habit of encouraging economic growth as it will be for the developing countries to abandon their habit of encouraging large families; but both these changes of attitude are necessary for the future of our planet.

The burning of coal and oil, and the burning of tropical rain forests, release so much carbon dioxide that its atmospheric concentration has increased from 290 parts per million in 1860 to 347 parts per million in 1985. At present 6 billion tons of carbon are released into the atmosphere every year by human activities; and if this continued at the same 11 terawatt 1012 Watts is equivalent to 5 billion barrels of oil per year or 1 billion tons of coal per year 2British Petroleum, “B.P. Statistical Review of World Energy”, London, 1991 rate, the CO2 concentration will reach 550 ppm by the end of the 21st century (double the preindustrial concentration) with a resulting global warming of between 3 and 5 degrees Centigrade. Although the exact climatic consequences of this warming are difficult to predict, there is a fear that some areas of the world which are now able to produce and export large quantities of grain may become arid. Global warming of between 3 and 5 degrees Centigrade would also produce a rise in sea level of between 1 and 2 meters (because of the expansion of the water in the oceans and because of melting of the polar ice caps) with a resulting loss of fertile cropland in lowlying regions of the world. Thus, both because of limited reserves and because of the greenhouse effect, we will be forced to replace fossil fuels by renewable energy sources.

The industrialized countries use much more than their fair share of global resources. For example, with only a quarter of world’s population they use more than two thirds of its energy; and in the U.S.A. and Canada the average per capita energy consumption is 12 kilowatts, compared with 0.1 kilowatts in Bangladesh. If we are to avoid severe damage to the global environment, the industrialized countries must rethink some of their economic ideas, especially the assumption that growth can continue forever.

The present use of resources by the industrialized countries is extremely wasteful. A growing national economy must, at some point, exceed the real needs of the citizens. It has been the habit of the developed countries to create artificial needs by means of advertising, in order to allow economies to grow even beyond the point where all real needs have been met; but this extra growth is wasteful, and in the future it will be important not to waste the earth’s diminishing supply of non-renewable resources. Thus, the times in which we live present a challenge: We need a revolution in economic thought. We must develop a new form of economics, taking into account the realities of the world’s present situation - an economics based on real needs and on a sustainable equilibrium with the environment, not on the thoughtless assumption that growth can continue forever.

The resources of the earth and the techniques of modern science can support a global population of moderate size in comfort and security; but the optimum size is undoubtedly much smaller than the world’s present population. Given a sufficiently small global population, renewable sources of energy can be found to replace disappearing fossil fuels. These include solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, hydroelectric power, and energy derived from biomass.

Technology may also be able to find renewable substitutes for many disappearing mineral resources for a global population of a moderate size. What technology cannot do, however, is to give a global population of 10 billion people the standard of living which the industrialized countries enjoy today.

Like a speeding truck headed for a brick wall, the earth’s rapidly growing human population and its growing economic activity are headed for a collision with a very solid barrier - the carrying capacity of the environment. As in the case of the truck and the wall, the correct response is to apply the brakes in good time.

A global population of 10 billion people using energy at the present U.S.and Canadian rate would produce catastrophic environmental degradation; and for the developed countries to continue to use resources at the present rate while denying this privilege to the rest of the world would produce dangerous political tensions. The environmental crisis thus involves not only the problems of depletion of non-renewable resources, loss of cropland through erosion and salination, poisoning of the environment through fossil fuel emissions, destruction of forests through acid rain, eutrophication of rivers and lakes, threatened climatic change from the release of greenhouse gases, and a rate of extinction of species thousands of times the normal background rate. The crisis also involves problems of social injustice - a quarter of the world’s population using almost three-fourths of its resources, and dying from overeating, overdrinking and oversmoking, while the remaining three quarters of humankind lives in near-poverty or absolute poverty, lacking safe water and sanitation, lacking elementary education and primary health care, with fourteen million children dying every year from diseases, most of which are preventable by simple means, such as vaccination, rehydration therapy and proper nutrition.

In June, 1992, 35000 people from 172 countries met at Rio de Janero in Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. They included 118 heads of state or heads of governments, and before the meeting there were high hopes for international agreement on a new and equitable world order and for agreements which would address critical environmental problems. However, although some progress was made, the results of the meeting were disappointing because discussion of the two most important problems, overconsumption in the industrialized countries and the population explosion in the developing countries, was blocked respectively by the North and the South.

To avoid a North-South confrontation like that which blunted the effectiveness of the Rio meeting, a compromise is needed: Through a combination of increased energy efficiency and a more modest lifestyle (especially more modest transportation requirements) we should aim at a global society where both the developed and developing countries reach the same per capita energy consumption of between 1.5 and 3 kilowatts per person. This rate of energy consumption is near to the present global average. It is, however, considerably less than the present U.S. and Canadian level of 12 kilowatts per person and very much greater than the present figure for Bangladesh - 0.1 kilowatts per person!

The developed world must reduce its consumption of fossil fuels and other resources while aiming at a life which would have a high quality in other respects than purely material ones. The developing world should find its own way forward to the future, not imitating the wasteful and unsustainable lifestyle of the west, but evolving a way of life which is high in quality but low in resource consumption.

A more modest life-style need not be unpleasant. What is needed is a change in our system of values. We should recognize that a high quality of life is not synonymous with a high level of consumption.

For example, the quality of life in our cities would be improved by a shift from private cars to bicycles and public transport, and this would at the same time reduce our consumption of energy. A less hectic and consumption-oriented life-style would also give us more leasure to enjoy our families.

In today’s world, power and material goods are valued more highly than they deserve to be. “Civilized” life often degenerates into a struggle of all against all for power and possessions. However, the industrial complex on which the production of goods depends cannot be made to run faster and faster indefinitely, because we will soon encounter shortages of energy and raw materials.

Looking ahead to the distant future, we can hope that the values of society will change, and that nonmaterial human qualities, such as kindness, politeness, knowledge, and musical, artistic or literary ability, will come to be valued more highly, and that people will derive a larger part of their pleasure from the appreciation of unspoiled nature. Our power-worshiping industrial society can perhaps learn from the values of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who lived in harmony with nature. We are now so numerous that we cannot return to a primitive way of life; but we can learn to respect nature as our ancestors did.

Harmony is a better ideal than power. We must learn to live in harmony with other humans and with other species. We must learn to care for the earth.

Chapter 20: LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE.

Suggestions for further reading

1. D.H. Meadows, D.L. Meadows, J. Randers and W.W. Behrens, The Limits of Growth, (Reports to the Club of Rome), The New American Library, New American Library, New York (1972).
2. Berry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology, Bantam Books, New York (1972).
3. Barbara Ward and Ren´e Dubos, Only One Earth, Penguin Books Ltd. (1973).
4. Gerald Foley, The Energy Question, Penguin Books Ltd. (1976).
5. J. Holdren and P. Herrera, Energy, Sierra Club Books, New York (1971).
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