QUOTES
One
of the things that's happening in the world today as our numbers have passed the
six billion mark is that in order to support six billion-plus people, we are over-consuming
the Earth's natural capital. Forests are shrinking, fisheries are collapsing,
water tables are falling, soils are eroding, grasslands are deteriorating from
over-grazing. This over-consumption of natural capital artificially inflates economic
output, including food output. We are developing a bubble economy.
we're
going to have to restructure the global economy if we want to sustain economic
progress, because the existing model simply will not satisfy the needs of these
growing numbers without destroying its support systems, which is already happening.
We
will have to deal with the issues of population growth, falling water tables,
and rising temperatures one way or the other. What we decide will quite literally
shape the future course of history.
The
Berlin Wall was kind of the symbol of that change. But people woke up one morning,
and even the people in power realized that the system wasn't working anymore and
that change was inevitable. Something like that may come on the food front. Consider
what happens if it becomes clear that rising temperatures that whither harvests—as
they did in India and the U.S. in 2002 and in Europe in 2003—are shrinking harvests
and raising food prices. Suddenly we'll have a massive new lobby, consumers who
will want to reduce carbon emissions. Then we may see governments begin to take
global warming seriously in a way that we have not up until now.
Socialism
failed because it couldn't tell the economic truth; capitalism may fail because
it couldn't tell the ecological truth.
In
contrast to U.S. taxpayers, their counterparts in several European countries are
experiencing a steady decline in income taxes. Their governments are lowering
taxes on income and raising taxes on environmentally destructive activities —
like burning gasoline or coal.
A
three billion year old planet floating in the vast universe with mountains, seventy
percent seas and oceans, fertile lands, immense forests, rivers and lakes, sea
shores and deserts, this is where we humans have the privilege to live, the latest,
most advanced newcomers in evolution. What an immense, incredible responsibility
we have to be a right, positive element in the further evolution of that planet.
That is the big question before us in the new century and millennium.
We
can build an economy that does not destroy its natural support systems, a global
community where the basic needs of all the Earth’s people are satisfied, and a
world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized. This is entirely
doable.
The
choice is ours—yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside
over a global bubble economy that keeps expanding until it bursts, leading to
economic decline. Or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that stabilizes
population, eradicates poverty, and stabilizes climate. Historians will record
the choice, but it is ours to make.
