Global Ecology and the Sick Earth

Question for Discussion: What is the major evidence for an increasing global
environmental crisis?

Readings: UCS, "Worlds Scientists Warning to
Humanity"; Ehrlich, "One Planet, One Experiment";
UCS, "The Global Environmental Crisis";
Knickerbocker, "The Environmental Load of 300
million"; Pluto Political Cartoon

(Download Adobe Acrobat Reader)
Password for readings is"cclewis"

Download PDF Editor for PCs: You can use this program to use a yellow highlighter to highlight your PDF documents after you download and save them to your computer . Download PdfPen for Mac .

Video: Blue Planet, Health Earth

Satellite Maps of the Earth

National Atlas Mapmaker (in-class)
Earth in Peril: Interactive Maps (in-class)
MSN Virutal Earth (in-class)
Google Earth (in-class)
Google Maps Mania
Globe Explorer.com
National Atlas.gov

Global Environment Links.

Center for a New American Dream
World Scientists' Warning to Humanity
Union of Concerned Scientists
Restoring Scientific Integrity in PolicyMaking
The Earth at Night (2000) (in-class)
The United States at Night (2000) (in-class)
The Earth and its People:
An Environmental Scorecard (in-class)
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Earth Trends: World Resources Institute (in-class)
Ecosystems and Global Well-Being
UNEP: Global Environmental Outlook
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(in-class)
IPCC: Summary for PolicyMakers 2007
U.S. Consumption and GDP: 1949-2002
2005 Ecological Footprints of Nations
Tracking the Ecological Overshoot of
the Human Economy (in-class)
Interactive Table of World Nations
GDP and Energy Use (in-class)
Global Dynamic Population Clocks (in-class)

Editing the PDF Readings

Boehret, "Creating Documents for All to Read "

Examples of marked-up PDF readings for today

UCS, "Worlds Scientists Warning to Humanity"
Ehrlich, "One Planet, One Experiment";
UCS, "The Global Environmental Crisis";
Knickerbocker, "The Environmental Load of300 million"
Pluto Political Cartoon

Global Environmental Crisis Evidence
Satellite Maps of the Earth from Space
Global Environmental Links
World Scientists Warning to Humanity
One Planet, One Experiment, by Paul Ehrlich (1996)
Threats to the Global Environment
Knickerbocker, "The Environmental Load of 300
Union of Concerned Scientists analysis of the
Global Environmental Crisis
Bateson, The Roots of the Ecological Crisis (1972)
Lewis, Developing an Explanatory Model for
Explaining the Global Environmental Crisis

"World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" (1992)

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

Our massive tampering with the world's interdependent web of life--coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change--could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand.

One Planet, One Experiment, by Paul Ehrlich (1996)

The consensus of the scientific community is as follows:

Earth is finite.

Declining supplies of good agricultural land, soils, and biodiversity are matters of great concern. So are overexploitation of fisheries and forests and growing demand on limited supplies of fresh water.

The life-support systems of civilization are being pushed ever closer to their limits and are in danger of being damaged beyond repair.

Toxification of the planet (including acidification and exposure to dangerous ultraviolet radiation) are threats to human well-being and the stability of natural and agricultural ecosystems.

Global warming has the potential to change the world's climates and further destabilize civilization's life-support systems.

Population growth is a major factor in the deterioration of local, regional, and global ecosystems.

Overconsumption is also a major factor in that deterioration.

People in both developed and less-developed nations must change their own behavior and cooperate with one another to solve these overarching problems.

The world's scientific community is now pointing out that we have only one Earth and that our global society is running a vast and dangerous experiment on it. If the experiment goes wrong, there will be no way to rerun it. In the end, we can only hope that the voices of science and reason will prevail over the brownlash and that the public and political leaders, who enjoy the many benefits that have been provided by the scientific community, will heed its warnings.

"Threats to the Global Environment" (1993)

Moreover, population growth is only one of many factors contributing to environmental degradation, all of which must be addressed if humanity is to live within the means nature has provided. Some of the most serious threats to the environment are driven not mainly by growing numbers of people but by the unrestrained consumption of natural resources by affluent consumers. Others are the result of deliberate, unsustainable exploitation of resources by both poor and rich nations in the name of economic development. And still others can be traced to the desperate poverty of so many people who-often because of misguided national and international development policies-are forced to destroy their own habitats in order to survive. All of these issues are interconnected.

The role of affluence. Wasteful consumption and pollution by affluent societies are probably the most important factors responsible for environmental degradation today. According to the World Resources Institute, the seven largest industrial nations of the world-with barely 10 percent of the world's population-together account for over 40 percent of the world's consumption of fossil fuels, most of its consumptionof metals, and a substantial share of its consumption of forest products and industrial materials.

The United States must play a central role in promoting equitable and sustainable policies the world over, for four main reasons. First, US consumption patterns are a major cause of environmental problems such as global warming, ozone depletion, and air and water pollution. Cutting US CO2 emissions by 70 percent over the next 40 years, for example, would have the effect of reducing global emissions by as much as 15 percent. Second, US practices and lifestyles are widely emulated by other countries, especially by the emerging middle classes in the South, who are becoming major consumers and polluters. Southern countries can hardly be persuaded to control their environmental impacts if the United States does not set a good example.Third, US policies on trade, development, and the environment have tremendous influence on the course of development and environmental protection in other countries. And fourth, the United States asserts considerable moral and political leadership in world affairs, and the prudent use of this leadership could substantially improve the prospects for equitable and sustainable development.

Knickerbocker, "The Environmental Load of 300 million"

"The US is the only industrialized nation in the world experiencing significant population growth," says Vicky Markham, of the Center for Environment and Population, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization in New Canaan, Conn. "That, combined with America's high rates of resource consumption, results in the largest ... environmental impact [of any nation] in the world."

• Land is being converted for development at about twice the rate of population growth. When housing, shopping, schools, roads, and other uses are added up, each American effectively occupies 20 percent more developed land than he or she did 20 years ago.

• Nearly 3,000 acres of farmland are converted to nonagricultural uses daily..

• Each American produces about five pounds of trash daily, up from less than three pounds in 1960.

• While the US is noted for its wide open spaces, more than half of all Americans live within 50 miles of the coasts where population density and its environmental impact are increasing.

Some observers aren't that worried. "We're a very big country in terms of our land and our expansiveness," says demographer William Frey of theUniversity of Michigan and the Brookings Institution in Washington. "The people who argue that we're going to run out of energy, that we're going to run out of water, that we're going to run out of other natural resources, overlook the fact that time and again technology has been able to overcome those limitations."

There will be 400 million Americans in 2043, climbing to 420 million by midcentury, the US Census Bureau estimates. The added numbers will change the nature of the populace, reflecting trends already begun.

Between the last official census in 2000 and the one of 2050, non-Hispanic whites will have dwindled from 69 percent to a bare majority of 50.1 percent. The share who are Hispanic will have doubled to 24 percent. Asians also will have doubled to 8 percent of the population. African-Americans will have edged up to 14 percent. In other words, the US will be on the verge of becoming a "majority of minorities."

Experts generally believe that expansion to meet the housing and other community needs of a growing population is likely to remain concentrated in suburbs and exurbs.

"Most projections show that the continued increase in the population and the projected 50 percent increase in
space devoted to the built environment by 2030 will largely take place in the sprawling cities of the South and West, areas dominated by low-density, automobile-dependent development of residential, commercial, and industrial space," writes demographic trend-watcher Joel Kotkin in a recent issue of the magazine The Next American City.

Bateson, "The Roots of Ecological Crisis" (1972)

That these fundamental factors certainly interact. The
increase of population spurs technological progress and creates that anxiety which sets us against our environment as an enemy; while technology both facilitates increase of population and reinforces our arrogance, or "hubris," vis-à-vis the natural environment.

The attached diagram illustrates the interconnections. It will be noted that in this diagram each corner is clockwise, denoting that each is by itself a self-promoting (or, as the scientists say,"auto catalytic") phenomenon: the bigger the population, the faster it grows; the more technology we have, the faster the
rate of new invention; and the more we believe in our "power" over an enemy environment, the more "power" we seem to have and the more spiteful the environment seems to be.

(8) That the ideas which dominate our civilization at the
present time date in their most virulent form from the
Industrial Revolution. They may be summarized as:

(a) It's us against the environment.

(b) It's us against other men.

(c) It's the 'individual (or the individual company, or
the individual nation) that matters.

(d) We can have unilateral control over the environment and must strive for that control.

(e) We live within an infinitely expanding "frontier."

(f) Economic determinism is common sense.

(g) Technology will do it for us.

We submit that these ideas are simply proved false by the great but ultimately destructive achievements of our technology in the last 150 years. Likewise they appear to be false under modern ecological theory. The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.

Developing an Explanatory Model for Explaining the
Global Environmental Crisis (by Chris Lewis, Ph.D):

Gregory Bateson's, "The Roots of Ecological Crisis" (1973)

Bateson's argues that "the basic causes lie in the combined action of a) technological advance, b) population increase, and c) conventional thinking but wrong ideas about the nature of man and his relation to the environment. He argues that each of this causes interact to create the larger, global environmental crisis.

Bateson's model depends on an understanding of systems theory and positive and negative feedback. Systems theory argues that whether it be the global environment, a family, a business, or the human body all living and non-living things are interconnected through a series of feedback loops and form systems. To put it simply, every part of an environment is part of a larger system that receives information from other interconnected parts. System theory argues that everything is interconnected, and to understand the action of one part of a system we need to understand how that part interacts with all the other parts of that system.

Systems theory argues that parts are interconnected, and affect each other, through positive and negative feedback. Positive feedback is when an increase or decrease in one part of a system causes a proportionate increase or decrease in another part of a system. Negative feedback is when a change in one part of a system reduces or limits changes or activity in another part of a system. The best example of a feedback loops is the thermostat on a furnace. When the heat in a room reaches the temperature set on the thermostat, the thermostat will send a signal--negative feedback--telling the furnace to reduce the amount of heat it is producing. However, when the temperature in the room falls below the thermostat setting, the thermostat will send a signal --positive feedback--to the furnace telling it to produce more heat, and will keep sending that signal until the heat in the room reaches the temperature set on the thermostat. When this temperature is reached, the thermostat will then send negative feedback, telling the furnace to reduce the heat it is producing.

In "The Roots of Ecological Crisis," Bateson used the development of DDT to illustrate how his systems model helps explain the global environmental crisis. He argues that after World War II, DDT was developed to kill the insects that were reducing the world's food supply by eating crops. Faced with growing demand for food by an expanding global population, human society used technology--in this case, DDT--to expand the food supply. This is a good example of a positive feedback loop: The larger the population, the more demand for food, the more DDT and pesticides were produced. But the more food was produced, the more people could survive, and the global population grew even faster. But the larger the population became, the greater became the demand to use technology--such as fertilizers and pesticides--to grow more food. As a result of this positive feedback loop, we get expanding global population, increasing development of advanced technologies to feed that population, and increasing belief--hubris--that we can continue to feed our expanding population by ever modern advanced and productive technologies.

However, this positive feedback loop is creating increasing problems for human society. Expanding populations, advanced technologies, increased demand for land and resources to feed more people, and growing demand for affluence and higher living standards is also creating negative feedback, which will eventually limit our growing populations, reckless use of advanced technology, affluence, and our belief that we can control the environment, what Bateson calls our hubris. This negative feedback includes increasing pollution, famine and hunger, war and conflict, cancer and disease, destruction of land, forests, fisheries, and destruction of now-renewable resources. Faced with this negative feedback, as we have always done in the past, modern, industrial civilization is trying to develop more advanced technology, to use even more land, water, and biological resources, and expand our control even further over the global environment. But Bateson argues that these efforts will only, in the long run, make the problems--the negative feedback--worse. Bateson concludes that we must rethink our fundamental responses to these problems. If we continue to rely on our old ways, the global environmental crisis will only get worse, which will force us to do even more of the same things that are causing the global environmental crisis. By understanding that our general assumptions and traditional approaches to reducing economic and environmental problems is causing and exacerbating the global environmental crisis, we can begin to change our understanding and approach to solving problems, and in doing so help solve this growing global environmental crisis.

Union of Concerned Scientists , "The Causes of the Environmental Crisis" (1993)

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argue that the global environmental crisis is caused by the interaction of these major causes: affluence and overcomsumption, poverty and underdevelopment, inequality between the sexes, population growth, and growing inequality in incomes and standard of living between the developed and underdeveloped nations. Each of these variables--or parts in a larger system--interact to exacerbate the global environmental crisis. In order to solve the environmental crisis, the UCS argues, we must solve these problems.

The UCS systems model for the global environmental crisis works like this: Expanding populations in the underdeveloped nations put increasing pressure on the land and resources to support more people, and this leads to destruction of forests, top-soil, water and air pollution, crowding, and a declining quality of life. But instead of reducing their population growth, families in underdeveloped nations increase the number of
children they have. Children are their insurance policy. The more children they have, the harder they can work their declining land and resources to eke out a living. But the harder they try to feed their increased populations, the more they destroy their environment. Faced with the decreasing ability of the land and resources to feed their families, many parents force their children to migrate to the cities to find jobs, so that they can back money to support their parents and their family. As a result, we see exploding urban populations in the underdeveloped world. Crowding, shortage of jobs, lack of housing, water, and sewer for this growing urban population causes tremendous economic and environmental problems in these growing Third World cities. Even under these conditions, parents continue to have large families.

Recognizing this growing problem in the underdeveloped world, the leaders of developed countries have tried to help the Third World become developed. First World countries have encouraged Third World countries to create mechanized agriculture to feed their growing populations, encourage rural people--who are no longer needed to work the land because machines and technology has replaced them--to move to the cities and work in industrial factories and businesses, and to reduce the size of their families. But this hasn't worked. In order to pay for the modern technology to expand their agriculture and industry, Third World countries had to borrow billions and billions of dollars from First World governments and banks. In order to pay these loans back, Third World countries are forced to use more and more of their land for export crops and sell more and more of their resources--such as trees, fisheries, minerals, and oil and coal--to the First World. Tragically, this creates an escalating positive feedback loop: As more land is used for growing export crops, there is less land to grow crops to feed their own people. In order to acquire this food, Third World countries are forced to buy it from developed countries. But Third World families often cannot afford to buy this needed food. So what do they do? They have larger families, ruthlessly exploit the remaining land not dedicated to export crops, put increasing pressure on scare water, fish, and forest resources, and send their children into the exploding cities.

First World countries and affluent consumers only exacerbate this positive feedback system in the Third World. Demands for increasing living standards and affluence cause Global companies to make increasing demands on Third World agricultural for luxury crops such as coffee, tea, cocoa, tobacco, cotton, etc. In addition, First World consumers demand ever more paper products, energy resources, clothing, meat and food to feed their pets, housing, cars, computers, and other goods. Because they can afford to pay more for these goods than Third World peoples, they are
driving up the price of global resources. This makes it
even more difficult for Third World families to feed,
clothe, house, and support their children. In fact, the 20
percent of the global population in the First World consumes 80 percent of the resources consumed by humanity. Thus, the increased demands by First World consumers for limited global resources drives up their price, creates increasing poverty in the Third World, causes the growing destruction of forests, land, fisheries, water, and air to support these growing demands.

The combined positive feedback systems of the developed and underdeveloped nations, the First and Third Worlds, is the larger cause of the global environmental crisis. The UCS concludes that our global society must reduce overconsumption and affluence, reduce poverty and lack of access to the basic resources needed to survive, reduce our global population, reduce the inequality between men and women, reduce the economic inequality between the First and Third Worlds and within nations, reduce our destruction, pollution, and overuse of limited global resources, and use technology and science to preserve resources and protect the global environment.

Now that we know what the larger causes of the global
environmental crisis, can we reach global consensus on
ways to reduce and solve these problems? Just because we understand the larger causes, and this global feedback system, does not mean we will change our behavior. In fact, we are continuing to push the same solutions that has caused, and is causing, the global environmental crisis. We continue to accept the same assumptions and same solutions. What will
it take to get us to change our ways? Bateson warns that "we cannot trust Nature not to overcorrect." (p. 96)