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Is business blowing up the earth? ◦ and if so, what can/should we do about it?
◦ Can the average person benefit from business growth?
Man-made greenhouse gases such as CO2 can (and to at least some extent do) cause atmospheric warming
Most Ph.D. climate scientists believe the current trend would produce disaster
A few equally qualified scientists disagree sharply
Today’s climate management programs are far too weak to control warming in mainstream models
Government-mandated change that the mainstream models encourage might have serious negative effects on the economy◦ But Silicon Valley would be a winner
Today progress is disgustingly slow by measures based on mainstream science◦ But wastefully aggressive according to skeptics
Maybe we can clarify our minds by looking at a bigger picture
Unfortunately, much of it isn’t pretty
They don’t point to other disasters as big, immediate, and dramatic as global warming scientists predict
But the variety of major human impacts suggests we have serious problems
There does seem to be enough time and technology to address most of these problems if today’s activism is the start of long-term efforts
But what does the path to a stable and still-wondrous world environment look like? ◦ No one – certainly no business spokesperson –
has a credible answer
“We have created a regime of perpetual ecological disturbance, as if we had organized a grand global plot to do in species less cagey than ourselves
“But we are not so clever as that. The regime of perpetual disturbance is an accidental by-product of billions of human ambitions and efforts”
- McNeil, p. xxiv
The news isn’t all bad, but it shows how much human impact is worsening things. ◦ Earth’s skin of soil◦ Earth’s outer shell of rock◦ Waters on and near the earth’s surface◦ Atmosphere◦ Biosphere – the ‘community’ of all living things
The most advanced change◦ We use at least 150 million tons of inorganic
fertilizer◦ Most isn’t consumed by plants, so ends up as
pollutants◦ Intensity of cultivation causes erosion, makes
land unusable
◦ Manufacturing, mining, military work also render land unusable
The area ‘degraded’ by human action is 2 billion hectares - about equal to the area of the U.S. and Canada◦ 430 million hectares (1.66 million sq. miles) has been
‘irreversibly destroyed’ by erosion – about 7 times as large as Texas
Vast quantities of pollutants Many (sulfer, nitrogen oxides, soot) have been
controlled during periods of economic growth◦ From the 1960s, politicians campaigned for
pollution control◦ Businesses invented ways to do it at reasonable
cost◦ Air pollution declined dramatically in developed
countries
But in the majority of places it still is likely to be getting worse
Globalization of air pollution is much greater after 1950
◦ Particulates (soot) killed 300,000 to 700,000 a year in cities annually in the 1990s
10s of millions killed by contamination Mercury from factories such as at Minamata, Japan Diseases from urbanization affecting water sources
Dams, etc., enable us to consume about 17% of the earth’s freshwater run-off
This produces much food, electric power But about 10% of irrigated land is now
affected by salinity that accumulates in irrigated systems
Today the amount of land abandoned due to salinity, etc., is about equal to the amount opened by new irrigation projects
We’re pumping aquifers faster than rain percolates into them
Countries seem to be taking land out of international trade without real plans for how to use it effectively
Except possibly for soil on a large area of earth, most of the earth’s endowment of natural features is not yet ruined
Extinctions since 1600 are very fast by evolutionary standards, but only 484 animals, 654 plants of 14 million species are known to be gone◦ Most extinctions are on islands or in freshwater
lakes◦ Larger creatures are going faster – 1% of
mammals & birds went extinct 1900 to 1995
He glorifies activists (mostly anti-business), but
doesn’t mention Soichiro Honda’s crucial work on low pollution engines, for instance
Predicts we can’t feed 9.2 billion people expected by 2050, insists we need to limit population to 8 billion (just 17% more than today!)
Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020 ◦ 12 years from when he wrote!
Stabilize population at 8 billion or lower ‘Eradicate poverty’ ‘Restore the earth’s natural systems’
Advocates many changes in market mechanisms◦ ‘total cost’ of gasoline is $15 a gallon including
environmental impact, so require that drivers by charged that much
Much top down planning ◦ ‘Adopt wind power like we adopted PCs’