The State of the World

1. The Earth is finite.  There is no away.

2. The Earth is in the 6^th great extinction period of geologic history.

Although the extinction of species is a natural phenomenon, the rate of extinction occurring in today's world is exceptional - as much as 100 to 1,000 times greater than normal. On average, a distinct species of plant or animal becomes extinct every 20 minutes, and may be as high as 130 species extinctions a day. The rate of current loss is highly unusual - clearly qualifying the present period as one of the six great periods of mass extinction in the history of Earth.  Currently, more than 11,000 plant and animal species, including 24% of all mammals, are facing extinction due to human activities.

There are five causes of this enormous loss of diversity, all of which are caused by humans: habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, population (human) and over harvesting.

If nothing changes in current trends, 20% of plants and animals will be gone by 2030, and 50% will be gone by 2100.  As an example, the numbers of indigenous amphibians worldwide are falling by an average of 2% per year since at least 1960.

Endangered Species Act

Less than 10% of the species placed on the endangered species list are improving, 40% are still declining, and 50% are stable or unknown.  Critics call the ESA a failure and are attempting to drastically cut its provisions.  This is analogous to calling an emergency room a failure because more people die than leave in good health.  Since the passage of the Act in 1973, 9 species have become

extinct in the US.  It is estimated that without the ESA, more than 100 species would now be extinct.

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

a. Fresh water available for human use constitutes less than 0.5% of all the water on the planet.

b. At least 30 countries are now considered ‘water scarce’, many of them in the Middle East and Africa.

c. Nearly every major watercourse on Earth has been either dammed or diverted; along with pollution, these actions have caused 1/5 of the world’s freshwater fish to become endangered or extinct.

d. The loss of forest worldwide over the past 200 years (with the majority of the loss occurring within the past 100) has been significant: 60% of the temperate hardwood and mixed forest; 30% of the conifer forests; 45% of the tropical rainforests and 70% of the tropical dry forests.

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

a. The population of China is 1 billion. China has 50,000 km of major rivers, and 80% of these rivers no longer support fish.  In addition, 41 out of 44 of China’s largest cities have polluted groundwater.

b. 38% of China’s total territory has soil erosion, and 900 square miles of farmland topsoil is blown away each year.  In May 2001, a dust cloud 2000 km long blew from China across the Pacific and covered the US from Alaska to Florida.

c. 2 billion tons of soil flows into the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers annually.

5. Pollution of the planet is a threat to human wellbeing and the stability of natural and agricultural ecosystems.

a. 45% of our nation’s lakes and 39% of our rivers are too polluted to be completely safe for swimming or fishing.

b. Each year, up to 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the US – 8 pounds for every man, woman and child.

c. More than 100 million Americans live in urban areas where the EPA as unsafe to breathe officially classifies the air.

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

a. There were 928 scientific papers published between 1993 and 2003 with the words "global climate change" in their abstracts. None of the papers refuted the claim that human activities are affecting Earth's climate.

 b. The average change in the onset of arctic snowmelt between 1975 and 1995 is 5 days earlier per decade.

c. The northward range expansion of guillemots (an arctic bird species) in the last century has been 500 miles.

d. On September 19, 2005, the lowest sea-ice extent yet seen in the satellite data was recorded, a five-day mean average of 2.06 million square miles. The team reported the extent was lower than the mean average September sea-ice extent from 1978 to 2001 by about 20 percent, or 500,000 square miles, an area about twice the size of Texas.

e. While the overall frequency of hurricanes worldwide has not increased, the intensity has.  A recent study of hurricanes over the past 35 years shows that annually, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes have increased from 20% of the total worldwide to 35%.

f. Each year, humans add 6 to 8 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere.

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

a. The number of ‘mega-cities’ - with populations greater than 10 million – was 1 in 1950, 5 in 1975, 19 in 2001 and 25 in 2005.

b. The world population in 1800 was 1 billion people, in 1900 it was 1.6 billion, in 1950 it was 2.5 and in 1999 it reached 6 billion.

c. The population is currently growing annually by 1.4%, or 200,000 people per day.

d. By 2050 scientists predict the population will have reached between 9 and 10 billion people

8. Over consumption is also a major factor in that deterioration.

a. The US has 4.7% of the world's population, consumes 25% of the world's resources and generates 25% to 30% of the world's waste.  Many of the resources are extracted from low-income countries with little benefit to them, which further accelerates environmental degradation and destroys the resources low-income people depend on. 

b. Compared to an average citizen of India, a typical person in the United States uses 50 times more steel, 56 times more energy, 170 times more synthetic rubber & newsprint, 250 times more motor fuel, and 300 times more plastic.

c. Americans use one million gallons of oil every two minutes.

d. Increasing fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles over 10 years to 45 mpg would conserve 15 times more oil than the Arctic Wildlife Refuge would likely produce.  By 2012, we’d save nearly 2 million barrels every day – more oil than what we imported from Saudi Arabia in 2001.

e. In 2000, Americans threw away 74.7 million tons of packaging.

f. Every person consumes a certain amount of the earth’s resources. One way to think about this is to 

consider the average amount of land and shallow sea needed by each person for food, water, housing,

energy, transportation, commerce and waste absorption. A person in a developing nation uses 2.5 acres,

while a person in the U.S. uses 24 acres. The average is 5.2 acres/person worldwide.  For every person

in the world to reach U.S. standards, we would need 4 more planet earths.

g. Global water use has quadrupled since 1940.  The average per capita U.S. use is 7200 liters per day.

In India it is 25 liters per day.

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

a. Of all high-income nations, the US has the most unequal distribution of income: the richest 1% has almost 40% of the income.  The poorest 20% have no wealth: either they have no savings and no assets, or their debt exceeds their assets.

b. The richest 20% of the world consume 45% of the meat and fish, 58% of the total energy, have 74 % of all telephone lines, consume 87% of the paper, and own 87% of the world’s vehicles.

c. Worldwide, over 45,000 people die each day of starvation, 38,000 of them children.

d. Nearly 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day.

e. The US contributes less than 1% of the GDP to international aid.

Example American Economic Policies

The US Forest Service uses taxpayer money to build logging roads and prepare timber sales.  The timber sales generate revenue.  Over the next decade the amount spent will exceed the amount received in this cycle by $1 billion.  This means that taxpayers are subsidizing the timber industry.  In the Alaska rainforest, the taxpayer subsidies average over $30 million annually.

Mining companies buy public land for less than $5 an acre, and pay no royalties on the gold and other minerals they extract.  This combined with massage environmental damage and clean up, costs $1 billion a year.

Livestock grazing leads to soil erosion, watershed destruction and the ruin of wildlife habitat on millions of acres of public lands.  Every year, taxpayers lose $100 million underwriting this activity.