A globe showing population projections. Photo credit: Arenamontanus/Creative CommonsThe hundreds of
data sets that accompany
World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, illustrate the world's current predicament and give a sense of where we might go.
Here are some highlights from the collection.
Veering Toward the Edge:As the
world economy has expanded nearly 10-fold since 1950, consumption has begun to outstrip natural assets on a global scale. The same values that have allowed
ecological deficits to grow are contributing to ballooning fiscal deficits around the world, threatening to undermine economic progress.
Photo credit: Earth Policy InstituteSome of the planet's natural capital, like fossil fuels or water in non-replenishable aquifers, is finite and exhaustible. And some is regenerative; it can be thought of like an interest-earning bank account, where if the principal is maintained, one can live off of the interest indefinitely. In nature, we can harvest plants from the same land as long as
soils are maintained; we can continue to catch fish from the sea as long as the catch remains below each fishery's sustainable yield; we can get water from underground as long as pumping does not exceed rates of recharge; and carbon can regularly cycle through the atmosphere, land, and oceans without major consequence.
Yet as our human family has grown and the global economy has expanded, demand has surpassed the earth's regenerative capacity. We are
overharvesting forests,
overplowing fields,
overgrazing grasslands,
overdrawing aquifers,
overfishing oceans, and pumping far more
carbon into the atmosphere than nature can absorb.
Many of these negative trends intersect at our global food supply. While for many years the world was making gains in reducing the number of hungry people, this progress was reversed in the late 1990s. Today close to one billion people in the world are undernourished.
Photo credit: Earth Policy InstituteAs food prices rise, the ranks of the hungry are likely to grow even larger. Following the punishing
heat wave that devastated Russia's wheat harvest in summer 2010, staple grain prices have soared to near-record highs in early 2011. Rising food prices hit people on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder--many of whom spend over half their income feeding their families--the hardest.
Photo credit: Earth Policy InstituteGovernments that are unable to ensure adequate and affordable food risk political instability and social unrest. If they cannot provide basic security, they may descend into
state failure. Many of the world's failing states are hampered by
high population growth rates and a
deteriorating resource base, and depend heavily on
international food aid.
Photo credit: Earth Policy InstituteTime is running short, but we can pull back from the edge. While security is a major concern for the world's governments, we have inherited a definition of security from the last century, one dominated by two world wars and the Cold War. Rather than armed aggression, today we are at risk from the fallout of
climate change,
population growth,
water shortages,
poverty,
rising food prices, and
failing states.
Military spending worldwide exceeds $1.5 trillion annually; yet traditional defense outlays do little to address these true threats to our future. Diverting just
12 percent of global military spending can meet the goals of
eradicating poverty, ensuring basic health care, stabilizing population, and
restoring the earth's natural systems.
Photo credit: Earth Policy InstituteStabilizing climate will mean rapidly cutting carbon emissions by dramatically scaling up renewable energy, harnessing
energy efficiency, restructuring
transportation systems, curbing deforestation, and planting trees. That the fastest
growth in the global energy industry over the last decade is in
solar and
wind is an early sign of hope.
Photo credit: Earth Policy InstitutePoliticians talk about cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, but more ambitious cuts are likely needed to prevent climate catastrophe. Together the climate stabilization measures described in
World on the Edge would drop net carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020.
Photo credit: Earth Policy InstituteAdditional figures and tables are posted by chapter and by topic, along with full downloads of the text of World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, on the Earth Policy Institute website, www.earth-policy.org.by treehugger
