From: Douglas P. Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Oh, well, I'll try again. Here goes: -- The first line on my home >page says "Imagine a future world in which it is easy to find a good >job." Perhaps it would have captured my intentions better if it had >said "Imagine a future world in which it is easy FOR EVERYONE to find >a good job." Talk about the two cultures! My first reaction would be that you are from a different planet -- the abstraction planet. This particular planet -- Earth -- already has too many people working. Until people incorporate biophysical laws into their world views, their prescriptions are meaningless. This planet is already over carrying capacity. ------- Revisiting Carrying Capacity: Area-Based Indicators of Sustainability by William E. Rees http://dieoff.com/page110.htm [snip] Let us examine this prospect using ecological footprint analysis. If just the present world population of 5.8 billion people were to live at current North American ecological standards (say 4.5 ha/person), a reasonable first approximation of the total productive land requirement would be 26 billion ha (assuming present technology). However, there are only just over 13 billion ha of land on Earth, of which only 8.8 billion are ecologically productive cropland, pasture, or forest (1.5 ha/person). In short, we would need an additional two planet Earths to accommodate the increased ecological load of people alive today. If the population were to stabilize at between 10 and 11 billion sometime in the next century, five additional Earths would be needed, all else being equal -- and this just to maintain the present rate of ecological decline (Rees & Wackernagel, 1994). While this may seem to be an astonishing result, empirical evidence suggests that five phantom planets is, in fact, a considerable underestimate (keep in mind that our footprint estimates are conservative). Global and regional-scale ecological change in the form of atmospheric change, ozone depletion, soil loss, ground water depletion, deforestation, fisheries collapse, loss of biodiversity, etc., is accelerating. This is direct evidence that aggregate consumption exceeds natural income in certain critical categories and that the carrying capacity of this one Earth is being steadily eroded. [We should remember Liebigs "Law of the Minimum" in this context. The productivity and ultimately the survival of any complex system dependent on numerous essential inputs or sinks is limited by that single variable in least supply.] In short, the ecological footprint of the present world population/ economy already exceeds the total productive area (or ecological space) available on Earth. This situation is, of course, largely attributable to consumption by that wealthy quarter of the world's population who use 75% of global resources. The WCED's "five- to ten-fold increase in industrial output" was deemed necessary to address this obvious inequity while accommodating a much larger population. However, since the world is already ecologically full, sustainable growth on this scale using present technology would require at [least] five to ten additional planets. [snip] Jay ------------------------- COMING SOON TO A LOCATION NEAR YOU! http://dieoff.com/page1.htm
