SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Approaching the End of the World on a Happier Note
How do you write an upbeat column about the end of the world?
That’s the question I asked myself as I looked over the 1990 volume of the “State of the World” series, which recently came across my desk. The book, which is produced annually out of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, might just as well be called the “End of the World.” It tells all about such trends as destruction of the ozone, deforestation, global warming, rising oceans, spreading deserts and a human population choking on its own wants and wastes.
You’ve heard it all before, and your eyes glaze over, just like mine, but Lester Brown and his people at Worldwatch keep tabs on things. They rub their noses in these dismal statistics, so the rest of us can read the funnies and go to the movies. But every so often we have to pay attention to what they are saying--once a year at least, when they lift their heads from the columns of numbers and global maps to tell us where we stand.
So what was that about writing an upbeat column? The fact is, this volume of the “State of the World” devotes more space to the end of the end of the world--the prospect for stabilization--than any previous one. Brown and his colleagues picture a stable world in the year 2030, 40 years from now. If we don’t do it by then, they say, we won’t ever be able to. Tailspin city. It’s doable, but it won’t be automatic; it depends on people.
They envision the world in 2030 as one in which the total human population is slowly declining, having topped out at 8 billion (declines had begun in various European countries before 1990; by the year 2000, although population growth continues, the number of births begins to decline for the first time.) Solar thermal power--sunshine trained by a magnifying glass to heat a steam turbine--generates vast amounts of electricity (back in 1990, it was already cheaper than nuclear power from new plants), and most houses are covered with photovoltaic shingles. Ranchers have so much to gain by farming wind instead of wrangling that they send their dogies off to the last roundup under the sleek shadows of windmills.
The smog-spewing automobile has ended its brief career (barely a century) as the dominant mode of transportation. More people work and shop at home through computer networks, and bicycles have proliferated, keeping us in shape as they fight urban smog. Recycling of resources, efficient energy use--we still drive sometimes, of course, but the cars get 100 miles to the gallon--and a fashionable reversal of conspicuous consumption all combine to reverse the worst ecological trends of 1990. Poor countries are still struggling to feed their people, but there is hope on the horizon, and that grotesque waste of the 20th Century, which endlessly poured precious resources into weapons of destruction, is finally seen for the folly that it was.
Can we do it? It’s far from certain, friends and fellow travelers on Spaceship Earth, especially considering the current state of the world. Don’t be fooled by some recent scientific arguments. Global warming is controversial, sure, but not that controversial; experts argue about whether it’s going to be 4 or 10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter over the next 100 years, but all agree it’s happening.
In the same time period, oceans may rise as little as half a meter or as much as 3 1/2 meters, but ultimately, rising sea levels will turn all coastal nations into Hollands, and many of us will be like the boy with his finger in the dike.
Meanwhile, pollution is not being controlled in a serious way in most countries. Lakes are being acidified throughout the world and, in some urban centers, the majority of infants have unacceptable blood levels of lead. Life-giving forests are being destroyed at a prodigious rate, along with hundreds of irreplaceable species of plants and animals. Dissipation of our one and only ozone layer continues, inviting dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation. What was in the early ‘80s a hopeful picture of grain production per capita--seemingly adequate worldwide, for the first time in history--was clouded in the last few years as new mouths more than consumed the surplus. Meanwhile, back at the baby ranch, the production of additional humans will increase from an average of 84 million a year in the ‘80s to 96 million a year in the ‘90s. Practically all of them will someday watch television, and so will demand more from life even as they are forced to accept less.
But consider this: Three days of global military spending could fund the Tropical Forest Action Plan for five years; two days could fund the annual cost of the U.N. Action Plan to halt desertification. The political will is there in many countries, but in most, actual policy has not yet changed.
Almost four-fifths of our species has been born since World War II. As one of the oldest of that group--it now hurts my elbows to read--I feel as if I should exercise some leadership. So get out there on April 22--Earth Day, 1990, the 20th anniversary of the first such political action--and do something for your grandchildren. Chant yourself silly until those two so-called environmental Presidents, Bush and Gorbachev (not to mention the Japanese, who haven’t even gotten their public relations in order), start to get serious about the fate of the Earth.
And there’s the personal effort too: I know it’s a drag to recycle, but folks, we have to stop using the garden as a toilet. It would be pretty ironic if we finally drew back from the brink of nuclear war, only to find a slower but equally sure way of killing ourselves.
