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<div class="cpf-deletable cpf-printOut-header-title"><font size="6"><b>The Earth is full</b></font> - CNN.com</div>
<div class="cpf-deletable cpf-printOut-header-byline">By Paul Gilding , Special to CNN</div>
<div class="cpf-deletable cpf-printOut-header-dateline">2012-04-08T13:39:53Z</div>
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<div style class="cpf-deletable cpf-printOut-header-domain">CNN.com</div>
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<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">
<span><span>Editor's note:</span> Paul Gilding, author of "The Great
Disruption," is an advocate and adviser to nongovernmental organizations
and businesses and the former chief executive of Greenpeace. He spoke
at the TED2012 conference in February. TED is a nonprofit dedicated to
"Ideas worth spreading" which it makes available through talks posted on
its website.</span>
</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">
<span>(CNN)</span> -- For 50 years the environmental movement has
unsuccessfully argued that we should save the planet for moral reasons,
that there were more important things than money. Ironically, it now
seems it will be money -- through the economic impact of climate change
and resource constraint -- that will motivate the sweeping changes
necessary to avert catastrophe.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">The reason is we have now
reached a moment where four words -- the earth is full -- will define
our times. This is not a philosophical statement; this is just science
based in physics, chemistry and biology. There are many science-based
analyses of this, but they all draw the same conclusion -- that we're
living beyond our means.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">The eminent scientists of
the Global Footprint Network, for example, calculate that we need about
1.5 Earths to sustain this economy. In other words, to keep operating at
our current level, we need 50% more Earth than we've got.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">Watch Paul Gilding's TED Talk</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">In financial terms, this
would be like always spending 50% more than you earn, going further into
debt every year. But of course, you can't borrow natural resources, so
we're burning through our capital, or stealing from the future.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">While they use different
words, leaders and experts around the world are acknowledging this.
Chinese Environment Minister Zhou Shengxian said last year, "The
depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the worsening
ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to
(our) economic and social development." If I had said that in the '90s,
when I was the global head of Greenpeace, it would have been dismissed
as doom-and-gloom extremism!</p>
<div>
<br></div>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">TED.com: How we wrecked the ocean</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">Even the previous heresy,
that economic growth has limits, is on the table. Belief in infinite
growth on a finite planet was always irrational, but it is the nature of
denial to ignore hard evidence. Now denial is evaporating, even in the
financial markets. As influential fund manager Jeremy Grantham of GMO
says: "The fact is that no compound growth is sustainable. If we
maintain our desperate focus on growth, we will run out of everything
and crash." Or as peak oil expert Richard Heinberg argues, we are moving
beyond peak oil and into "peak everything."</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">Despite this emerging
understanding, the growth concept is so deeply ingrained in our thinking
that we will keep pushing economic growth as hard as we can, at
whatever cost is required.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">As a result, the crisis
will be big, it will be soon, and it will be economic, not
environmental. The fact is the planet will take further bludgeoning,
further depleting its capital, but the economy cannot -- so we'll
respond not because the environment is under great threat, but because
the science and economics shows that something far more important to us
is jeopardized -- economic growth.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">TED.com: The biggest health threat facing women</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">A good indicator is that,
despite the recession of the past few years, oil and food prices are
approaching record highs again, driven by underlying, long-term trends
that even a recession can't slow down. Grantham calls this "the most
important economic event since the Industrial Revolution." </p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">If serious growth returns,
the resulting resource price spikes, particularly oil and food, will
soon kill it again. As a result, what we are facing is not a few bad
years of slow growth like this past recession, but a fundamental shift
-- the end of cheap resources and an environment in a state of collapse.</p>
<p class="cpf-printOut-body-content">Even normally cautious bodies like
the International Energy Agency and the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development are sounding the alarm, with the latter
recently releasing a comprehensive report forecasting a world in 2050
that will be defined by resource constraint and its economic impacts.
They even dare to ask: "Will the growth process undermine itself?"</p>
<p class="cpf-printOut-body-content">TED.com: Peter Diamandis says abundance is our future</p>
<p class="cpf-printOut-body-content">So when this crisis hits, will we
respond or will we simply slide into collapse? Crisis elicits a powerful
human response, whether it be personal health, natural disaster,
corporate crisis or national threat. Previously immovable barriers to
change quickly disappear.</p>
<p class="cpf-printOut-body-content">In this case, the crisis will be
global and will manifest as the end of economic growth, thereby striking
at the very heart of our model of human progress. While that will make
the task of ending denial harder, it also means what's at risk is, quite
simply, everything we hold to be important. The last time this happened
was World War II, and our response to that is illustrative of both the
denial and delay process and the likely form our response to this crisis
will take.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">TED.com: The global power shift</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">When we look at history we
tend to see the progress of events as inevitable, but it was rarely so
at the time. Indeed, the UK's powerful response to Hitler and the United
States' equally extraordinary mobilization after Pearl Harbor both
followed long years of denial and debate.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">Many argued that the
threat wasn't that great, the response would be too expensive to afford,
the public wouldn't support it. Sound familiar? But when the response
came, when the scale of the threat was finally accepted, our response
was breathtaking. As Churchill told his country: "It is no use saying,
'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is
necessary."</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">With denial gone,
governments knew what was "necessary." They directed industry to support
the war -- banning civilian auto production just four days after Pearl
Harbor. They raised massive amounts of money to fund investment and
technology research at an extraordinary scale -- indeed, U.S. spending
on the war rose from 1.6% of GDP in 1940 to 37% just five years later.
To achieve this, they curtailed personal consumption and drove
remarkable behavior change to free up financial and other resources for
the war effort.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content cpf-viewbox-edit-highlight">Do
you find this hard to imagine today? Then try to imagine the
alternative -- that in a collapsing global economy and society we will
stand by and simply watch the slide. There is no precedent in modern
history on which to base that conclusion and plenty of evidence for the
alternative. Humanity may be slow, but we are not stupid. Get ready for
the great disruption.</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">
<span>Follow us on</span><span>.</span>
</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content">
<span>Join us at</span><span>.</span>
</p>
<p style class="cpf-printOut-body-content"> The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul Gilding.</p>
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<div class="cpf-printOut-footer-copyright cpf-undeletable">© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.</div>
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