[Vision2020] Interesting report on environmental decline

[Garrett Clevenger]

Thanks, Tom, for bringing this to our attention.  I
appreciate having Representatives who understand the
implications human activity is having on our planet
Earth, which, unfortunately, happens to be our only
home.

It's refreshing in a state where those in power
overwhelmingly disregard ecology, which in turn
affects water quality, air quality, wildlife habitat
and overall health of the environment we humans have
to live in.

Mostly all for $$$ that we'll never see, yet have to
pay for.

It saddens me to think where we are headed...

Take care,

Garret Clevenger


[Vision2020] Interesting report on environmental
decline

ttrail at moscow.com ttrail at moscow.com 
Thu Oct 4 19:27:16 PDT 2007
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Constituents:

This is an enlightening report from the book, The
Nature of the New World
by Lester R. Brown.  The fact that economic decline of
past civilizations
is linked to environmental decline is well brought out
by Brown.

Rep. Tom Trail
Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 2.0 Book Byte
For Immediate Release
October 2, 2007

THE NATURE OF THE NEW WORLD

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch01_ss2.htm

Lester R. Brown

We recently entered a new century, but we are also
entering a new 
world, one where the collisions between our demands
and the earth’s 
capacity to satisfy them are becoming daily events. It
may be another 
crop-withering heat wave, another village abandoned
because of invading 
sand dunes, or another aquifer pumped dry. If we do
not act quickly to 
reverse the trends, these seemingly isolated events
will occur more and 
more frequently, accumulating and combining to
determine our future.

Resources that accumulated over eons of geological
time are being 
consumed in a single human lifespan. We are crossing
natural thresholds 
that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do
not recognize. 
These deadlines, determined by nature, are not
politically negotiable.

Nature has many thresholds that we discover only when
it is too late. 
In our fast-forward world, we learn that we have
crossed them only 
after the fact, leaving little time to adjust. For
example, when we 
exceed the sustainable catch of a fishery, the stocks
begin to shrink. 
Once this threshold is crossed, we have a limited time
in which to back 
off and lighten the catch. If we fail to meet this
deadline, breeding 
populations shrink to where the fishery is no longer
viable, and it 
collapses.

We know from earlier civilizations that the lead
indicators of economic 
decline were environmental, not economic. The trees
went first, then 
the soil, and finally the civilization itself. To
archeologists, the 
sequence is all too familiar.

Our situation today is far more challenging because in
addition to 
shrinking forests and eroding soils, we must deal with
falling water 
tables, more frequent crop-withering heat waves,
collapsing fisheries, 
expanding deserts, deteriorating rangelands, dying
coral reefs, melting 
glaciers, rising seas, more-powerful storms,
disappearing species, and, 
soon, shrinking oil supplies. Although these
ecologically destructive 
trends have been evident for some time, and some have
been reversed at 
the national level, not one has been reversed at the
global level.

The bottom line is that the world is in what
ecologists call an 
“overshoot-and-collapse”
mode. Demand has exceeded the sustainable yield of
natural systems at 
the local level countless times in the past. Now, for
the first time, 
it is doing so at the global level. Forests are
shrinking for the world 
as a whole. Fishery collapses are widespread.
Grasslands are 
deteriorating on every continent. Water tables are
falling in many 
countries. Carbon dioxide
(CO2) emissions exceed CO2 sequestration.

In 2002, a team of scientists led by Mathis
Wackernagel, who now heads 
the Global Footprint Network, concluded that
humanity’s collective 
demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative
capacity around 1980. 
Their study, published by the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences, 
estimated that global demands in 1999 exceeded that
capacity by 20 
percent. The gap, growing by 1 percent or so a year,
is now much wider. 
We are meeting current demands by consuming the
earth’s natural assets, 
setting the stage for decline and collapse.

In a rather ingenious approach to calculating the
human physical 
presence on the planet, Paul MacCready, the founder
and Chairman of 
AeroVironment and designer of the first solar-powered
aircraft, has 
calculated the weight of all vertebrates on the land
and in the air. He 
notes that when agriculture began, humans, their
livestock, and pets 
together accounted for less than 0.1 percent of the
total. Today, he 
estimates, this group  accounts for 98 percent of the
earth’s total 
vertebrate biomass, leaving only 2 percent for the
wild portion, the 
latter including all the deer, wildebeests, elephants,
great cats, 
birds, small mammals, and so forth.

Ecologists are intimately familiar with the
overshoot-and-collapse 
phenomenon. One of their favorite examples began in
1944, when the 
Coast Guard introduced 29 reindeer on remote St.
Matthew Island in the Bering Sea to serve as the
backup food source for 
the 19 men operating a station there. After World War
II ended a year 
later, the base was closed and the men left the
island. When U.S. Fish 
and Wildlife Service biologist David Kline visited St.
Matthew in 1957, 
he discovered a thriving population of 1,350 reindeer
feeding on the 
thick mat of lichen that covered the
332-square-kilometer
(128-square-mile) island. In the absence of any
predators, the 
population was exploding. By 1963, it had reached
6,000. He returned to 
St.
Matthew in 1966 and discovered an island strewn with
reindeer skeletons 
and not much lichen.
Only 42 of the reindeer survived: 41 females and
1 not entirely healthy male. There were no fawns. By
1980 or so, the 
remaining reindeer had died off.

Like the deer on St. Matthew Island, we too are
overconsuming our 
natural resources. Overshoot leads sometimes to
decline and sometimes 
to a complete collapse. It is not always clear which
it will be. In the 
former, a remnant of the population or economic
activity survives in a 
resource-depleted environment. For example, as the
environmental 
resource base of Easter Island in the South Pacific
deteriorated, its 
population declined from a peak of 20,000 several
centuries ago to 
today’s population of fewer than 4,000. In contrast,
the 500-year-old 
Norse settlement in Greenland collapsed during the
1400s, disappearing 
entirely in the face of environmental adversity.

Even as the global population is climbing and the
economy’s 
environmental support systems are deteriorating, the
world is pumping 
oil with reckless abandon. Leading geologists now
think oil production 
may soon peak and turn downward.
Although no one knows exactly when oil production will
peak, supply is 
already lagging behind demand, driving prices upward.

Faced with a seemingly insatiable demand for
automotive fuel, farmers 
will want to clear more and more of the remaining
tropical forests to 
produce sugarcane, oil palms, and other high-yielding
biofuel crops. 
Already, billions of dollars of private capital are
moving into this 
effort. In effect, the rising price of oil is
generating a massive new 
threat to the earth’s biological diversity.

As the demand for farm commodities climbs, it is
shifting the focus of 
international trade concerns from the traditional goal
of assured 
access to markets to one of assured access to
supplies. Countries 
heavily dependent on imported grain for food are
beginning to worry 
that buyers for fuel distilleries may outbid them for
supplies. As oil 
security deteriorates, so, too, will food security.

As the role of oil recedes, the process of
globalization will be 
reversed in fundamental ways. As the world turned to
oil during the 
last century, the energy economy became increasingly
globalized, with 
the world depending heavily on a handful of countries
in the Middle 
East for energy supplies. Now as the world turns to
wind, solar cells, 
and geothermal energy in this century, we are
witnessing the 
localization of the world energy economy.

The world is facing the emergence of a geopolitics of
scarcity, which 
is already highly visible in the efforts by China,
India, and other 
developing countries to ensure their access to oil
supplies. In the 
future, the issue will be who gets access to not only
Middle Eastern 
oil but also Brazilian ethanol and North American
grain. Pressures on 
land and water resources, already excessive in most of
the world, will 
intensify further as the demand for biofuels climbs.
This geopolitics 
of scarcity is an early manifestation of civilization
in an 
overshoot-and-collapse mode, much like the one that
emerged among the 
Mayan cities competing for food in that civilization’s
waning years.

You do not need to be an ecologist to see that if
recent environmental 
trends continue, the global economy eventually will
come crashing down. 
It is not knowledge that we lack. At issue is whether
national 
governments can stabilize population and restructure
the economy before 
time runs out.

#     #     #

Adapted from Chapter 1, “Entering a New World,” 
in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet
Under Stress and a 
Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2006), 
available on-line at
www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm

Additional information at www.earthpolicy.org

Media & Permissions to Reprint Contact:
Reah Janise Kauffman
Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 12
E-mail: rjk (at) earthpolicy.org

Research Contact:
Janet Larsen
Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 14
E-mail: jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org

Earth Policy Institute
1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403                   
  
Washington, DC  20036        
Web: www.earthpolicy.org



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