1. GENERAL STATEMENTS.
 
    2.  EXPENSIVE WAYS.

    3. RICH WORLD WAYS ARE IMPOSIBLE FOR ALL

    4. VALUES

    1.  GENERAL STATEMENTS

"Clearly there is no way of protecting the environment within the context of a global "free trade" economy committed to continued economic growth and hence to increasing the harmful impact of our activities on an already fragile environment.

R. Nader and L. Wallach, "GATT NAFTA and the subversion of the democratic process, in J. Mander and E Goldsmith, The Case Against the Global Economy, 1996.

If all people are to be fed adequately and equitably,we must have a gradual transition to a global population of 2 billion Last orders please ... room is running out at the global dinner table,

Dr David Pimentel., professor of ecology andagricultural science at Cornell University, New York,
Sydney Morning Herald, 12/07/2002, p 11,

"The book proposes that the root of society’s future problems lies the pursuit of endless growth as the principal economic objective…the global economy is larger than can be sustained by the resources available, little sense exists of any limits to growth.

Tom Morrow, Growing For Broke, 2001.

"..global capitalism is unquestionably coming up against the limits of the environment; within a few decades continued broad based growth will be increasingly impossible." 24

J. S. Soul and C. Leys, "Sub Saharan Africa in global capitalism, Monthly Review, 51.3.July-Aug, 1999.

"…there is a genuine and irreconcilable conflict between the operation of global capitalism and the demands of ecological sustainability." 90.

J. W. Smith, G Lyons and G. Sauer-Thompson, The Bankruptcy of Economics, St Martins, 1999.

"We have come to believe that human civilization…wil self-destruct, producing massive environmental damage, social chaos and megadeath." 91

J. W. Smith, G Lyons and G. Sauer-Thompson, The Bankruptcy of Economics, St Martins, 1999..

"...the existing order is coming apart, and rightly so, since it has failed to meet the needs of the vast majority of peoples and reserved its benefits for a privileged minority."

    What Now, 1975. Dag Hamersjold Report on Development and international Cooperation. -
 

All of the main philosophical strands of both capitalism and socialism have remained locked into the economic-growth-at-all-costs straight Jacket."  . .
 

Jack Mundy, in D. Hutton, Green Politics in Australia, 19 p. 118 .

R. Bahro, Socialism and Survival, 1982..

The existing world ecoriomic order impoverjshes half of humanity, forces whole nations below the basic subsistence level, and Everywhere smothers local cultures, makes hundreds of millions of people landless and unemployed, destroys the fertility of the land, extends the deserts, fells the rain forests, and drives one country after another into state bankruptcy and towards military dictatorship.  But now we in the metropolises from-which this all emanates, North America, Westem Europe, Japan - have ourselves been caught up by the crisis. The "free market economy", so highly praised, is here too devouring its own natural basis, materially impoverishing and above all psychologically depressing the people dependent upon it."

    Rudolf Bahro's statement of the German Green Party's foundations: -

In the richest, industrially over-developed countries of the West a fundamental opposition is growing- above all in the diverse form of the new social movements. It is reacting to the now clearly and markedly self-destructive, outwardly murderous and inwardly suicidal .characttr of our industrial civilization, and to its institutional system which is geared to continuing in the same old way. What makes this opposition fundamental is above all the fact that it throws into question both the material foundation and its counterpart in our basic attitudes which are oriented towards possessions and having. It gives expression to the ever more obvious truth that we shall only survive if we equip ourselves to live differently than we have up till now. The Greens see themselves as the parliamentary political arm of this fundamental opposition movement.

    R. Bahro,  Building the Green Movement, 1986, p. 11.
 

We are clearly beleaugured  bny an ecological crisis of monumental proportions -- a crisis that visibly stems from the ruthless exploitation and pollution of the planet. We rightly attribute the social sources of this crisis to a competitive marketplace spirit that reduces the entire world of life, including humanity, to erchandisable objects, to mere commodities with price tags that are to be sold for profit and economic expansion. The ideology of this spirit is expressed the notorious marketplace maxim: "Grow or die!"—a maxim that identifies limitless growth with progress" and the "mastery of nature' with civilization." The results of this tide of exploitation and pollution have been grim enough to yield serious forecasts of complete planetary breakdown, a degree of devastation of soil, forests, waterways, and atmosphere that has no precedent in the history of r species.

In this respect, our market-oriented society is unique in contrast with other societies in that it faces no limits on growth and egotism. The antisocial principles that "rugged individualism" is the primary motive for social improvement and competition the engine for social progress stand sharply at odds with all past eras that valued selflessness as the authentic trait of human nobility and cooperation as the authentic evidence of social virtue...

    M. Bookchin, The Modern Crisis, 1987, 49-50.

Our continued adhewrence to the myth of growth has predictable consequences—continued pollution of the rivers and oceans, depletion- of the ozone layer, degradation of the land. We are destroying the basis of life on the planet.

Next time the Herald wants to conduct a poll of strange or irrational beliefs (July 11 ). include belief in "continued economic growth forever. It is just as irrational as reading palms and tarot cards, but much more dangerous.

    (Dr) Neil Ormerod, - St Paul's National Semloary, Roma Avenue, Kensington.

"An ever-expanding conventional industrialisation cannot be sustained in the face of accelerating environmental destruction  and resource depletion." x

    J,  McRobie, quoted in D. P. Ross and P. J. Usher, From the Roots Up, 1986.

"More and more thinkers, from various disciplines, are converging on the same overall vision; a globe with thousands of locally managed, self-sufficient economies based ecologically meaningful boundaries and where possible comprising culturally and historically integrated communities."
 

    M.E. Clark, Rethinking ecological and economic education: A Gestalt Shift.  World .Bank Conference on Ecological Economics of  Sustainability, Washington, 21/5/1990, 226-7.

Thc first, and most pernicious sacred truth endorsed by almost every business person, politician, and economist, is the belief.in the
absolutenecessitytomaintaingrowm.Growth is thc most important preoccupation for  governments-around the world. The measure
of any society'sprogress is secn as the amount  of economic growth. And given that economic growth is prirnarily growth in profit, it
follows that progress and profit have essentially become interchangeable. Profit then,  has become the raison d'etre of most political systems.

Have you ever heard of a country or government that has said "that's enough. - a country that says "we have achieved tremendous material wealth, we don't need any more"?

Since the Second World War, our consumption of air, energy, water, soil, our levels of pollution, our populations, have essentially been in a growth phase that is going straight off the page. But our governrnents say, "That's been great. Look at the quality of life.  We have to keep that up."

We must aimn, not for zero growth as Paul Ehrlich advocated a few years ago, but for negative growth. We must aim for negative  growth and ensure that a great deal of the resources we have been using are shared with the countries that are way down at the bottom of our tree.

If we do not bring down these growth curves deliberately, then I can assure you that within the litetimes of our children they will come down anyway - because of plague, disease, war and famine. They will come down because nothing in the universe can continue to grow exponentally as we have The time we are living through is essendally an histoncal artifact. The great bulk of our 800,000 years of existence on this planet has boen one of stasis, where we have been deeply embedded in nature and used very little of it per person.

    David Suzuki, Wilderness in the Age of Technology, Habitat, Dec., 1988. p.10.

The conclusion here is as inescapable as it is apparently unpalatable, our entire way of life is environmentally suicidal... the evidence is now beyond any possibility of reasonable dispute that if we do not mend our ways and stop abusing the planet there is no way in which organised social life in any sense compatible with human dignity can possibly continue." 3

    Editorial, Fourth World Review, 33, 1989.
 

"The ecological and cultural crisis spells the end of a adventure in the history ot humanity: two hundred years of  industrial expansion are over."

    A. de Romana, The autonomous economy, Interculture, Fall 1989, p. 161

In 1992 a document entitled World Scientists' Waning to Humanity was issued, signed by more than 1600 senior scientists from 71 countries, including more than half the Nobel Prize winners. It began,

"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...No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost..."

    D. Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1997, p. 4.

"...a US style high resource consumption standard for a world of four billion people is impossible. "

    H. Daly, Economics, Ecology' Ethics, San Fran cisco, Freeman, 1980t p. 361.

"The key to future sustainability is a dramatic reduction in our levels of consumption. According to Friends of the Earth, "There is growing consensus that within the first half of the 21st Century we need to have achieved (a reduced) consumptin of environmental resources to one-tenth of the current level." ~

    C. Harris, "Healthy houses", Lightly Living, 8, Summer,1999, p. 9.

"The North's patterns of resource consumption are not environmentally sustainable...either for the region itself or as a model for the world."

    J. Leonard, Modernity, 1996, p 49.

"...continuing~(with the) prevailing growth.path is blocking (global) chances for survival.
 

J. Tinbergen, and R. Hueting, 1991, "GNP and market prices," in R. Goodland, et al, Environmentally  Sustainable Economic Development, World Banz.

    R. Hueting, 1990, The Brundiland Report; a matter of : conflicting goals, Ecological Economics, 2, 109-117.

"No manner of economic growth is compatible with the ecological harmony of the earth. Sustainable growth is self-contradictory ... It is impossible for the world economy to grow its way out of poverty and environmental degradation...sustainable growth is impossible.'

    H. Daly, Resurgence, 1992.

'Economic growth and global environmental protection cannot bemade compatible...'

    Peoplets Research Institute on Energy and Environment, Tokyo, Japan.

"It is perfectly clear that development of the underdeveloped countries into industrialised countries modelled on today's over-developed countries is impossible." Paul Ehrlich.

"...the third world cannot conceivably attain the  sort of affluence that we know today in the affluent world." 133.

    E. Goldsmith and N. Hildyard, Battle For The Earth, 1988.

"The earth has just about coped with roughly 1000 million people living out their materialistic fantasies... there's not a hope in hell that it will cope with 5000 or 6000 million, let alone 10,000 or 11,000 million..." 21.

    J. Porritt, Save the Earth, 1991, p. 21.

...it will never be possitle for the greatest share of humanity to live at the levels of material consumption reached by the rich countries."

    D. Firages, Global Technopolitics, 1989, p. 163.

"...ever increasing growth in consumption of resources can no longer be sustained... The limited capacities of (the planet's) life support system are already being exceeded. We have no choice but to cut back, and quickly if we are to stablise our planet." 193.

    G. Chittleborough, Should our Grandchildren Know?, Freemantle Arts Press, 1992.

"...what we must aim for is not growth, but negative growth, or economic and demographic contraction.

    E. Goldsmith, The Great U Turn, Green Books, London, 1966. p. 193.

In modem society econornic growth has assumed an almost , sacred quality. To be against growth is to be against all that
is good and holy.  Yet we have to come to terms with the fact that any forrn of econornic growth that increases aggregate dernands
on earth's eco-system is suicidal over the longer-terrn.   Indeed, since the limits of tolerance have already been  substantially exceeded, it has become essential that we consciously reverse such growth in order to reduce that dernand. That is our reality—no mattter how unpleasant or inconvenient it may be.

    D. Korten, People-centred development. Aug. 1991.

, ... There is just no way in which ' even the current global level of population can acquire the trappings of affluence as promoled by 'free' market forces in the West without bankrupting our posterity of the planet's available finite resources and, inter alia, destroying irredeemably the fragile and already savagely sabotaged life-suppon systems of the planet. '

If there is to be any future worth the name for the human race it needs now to declare a state of global emergency which will put a moratorium on most forms of industnal activity and in which consumption levels of non-essentials produced by heavy industry shail be drastically reduced

    J. Papworth, The Fourth World Review.

Mander lists as basic necessities for the survival of a healthy planet, " abandon all values emphasising commodity accumulation as desirable, abandon growth economics and the profit motive, ...Such an adjustment is not going back, but getting back on track after a short, unhappy diversion into fantasy."

    J. Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred. San Francisco, Sierra, 1991.

'The causes of the current crisis for capitalism are the over development of productive capacities and the destructiveness of the technology they are based on..."40

    A. Gorz, Ecology as Politics, 1980.

There is a growing awareness that the root causes of most  environmental problems are over-consurnption of resources and excessive production of waste in the industrialized world.

        R. Gilman, About this issue,i In Context, 133, 1992, p.

    Notes on growth and the quality of life, from R. Douthwaite, The Growth Illusion, Devon, Green Books, 1992.

"What I hope this book will show is that economic growth has made life considerably worse for people in Britain since 1955, and that even if growth was beneficial at one stage in human history, it is now downright damaging." 3

"What evidence there is, however, suggests that growth has not improved the quality of life, or, if it has, that the improvement is
marginal. For example, the SSRC survey showed that people in Britain believed that their quality of life was declining." 9

Another study of the quality of life found "...surprisingly income did not matter, at least not in France, the Netherlands and Britain, and it was only the seventh or eighth most important predictor in Italy,  Ireland and Denmark. 9

"...respected economists have been pointing out for years that the rate of growth is a very poor guide to anything at all." 9

"It seems very doubtful that economic growth brought any real benefits to the majority of British people in the period up to 1914 (from 1850)." 47

"...there was an inverse relation between social progress and growth in the 18th and 19th centuries, with ordinary people gaining most when growth was checked or slowed." 50

Douthwaite documents in detail how growth in recent years in Britain has been accompanied by deteriorating health, more crime, youth
suicide, community, housing, hours of work, holiday time.

____________

"An American is probably the most unhappy citizen in the history of the world."

        W.Berry, TheUnsettling ofAmerica, 1977.

"...economic growth is the main cause of social and environmental destruction and associated poverty and misery."

        E. Goldsmith, Foreword to The Growth Illusion by R. Douthwaite, Green Books, 1992.
 

"The demand to go on getting richer, year after year, come what may in ecological terms, must inevitably destroy the natural
resources and life support systems on which we depend."

    J. Porritt, Save the Earth, 1991, p. 21.
 

"Western Europe consumes nutrients from nearly 5 times its agricultural area."

L. Woodward, Inside Voice, Clean Slate, 42, Autumn, 2z001, p. 9.

Four fifths of the people in Japan are going to die when the fossil fuel is gone. Japan has an ecological footprint of 2,029,000 square miles but only 337,000 square miles of productive land.

Energyresources@ egroups.com, 2.6.2000
 

There is no prospect at all that ownership of most of the mechanical appurtenances common to the households of 'rich nations, and on the mass production of which the economic fortunes of such nations depend, can ever be part of the life-style of the swarming millions of the world's poor and undernourished. The production of these and other items, especially of automobiles, is already at a level of consumption of finite resources which cannot possibly be sustained.

D. Willy, Population Ethics, 2000. Optimum Population Trust.
 
 

"Severe, prolonged hardship"…is inevitable, at east in the US.

"…both ecology and poverty call for limits to development." 33

"As we humans have begun to think globally, it has become clear that we do not have just a poverty problem, or a hunger problem, or a habitat problem, or an energy problem, or a trade problem, or a population problem, or an atmospheric problem, or a waste problem, or a resource problem. On a planetary scale, these problems are all interconnected. What we really have is a poverty-hunger-habitat-energy-trade-population-atmospheric waste-resource problem. This mega problem is so new that we did not even have a name for it until 1970 when the late Dr. Aurelio Peccei described it and named it the "global problematique."

G. Barney, Global 2000 Revisited, 1993, p. 7.
 
 

American women have on averaged 15-20 pairs of shoes.

Source unknown.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the conclusion that the continuation of present patterns of economic growth will take us toward greater ecological instability, and sooner or later, into a period of chaos followed by the establishment of a balance at some lower level of population and productivity."

J. W. Smith and G. Lyons, Global Anarchy in the Third Millenium, St. Martins Press, 2000.

Smith et al refer to "...the impending collapse of industrial civilization."

J. W. Smith, G. Lyons, G. Sauer-Thompson, The Bankruptcy of Economics, St. Martins, 1999.
 
 

"The key to future sustainability is a dramatic reduction in our levels of consumption. According to Friends of the Earth, "There is growing consensus that within the first half of the 21st Century we need to have achieved (a reduced) consumption of environmental resources to one-tenth of the current level."

C. Harris, "Healthy houses", Lightly Living, 8, Summer ,1999, p. 9.
 
 

"In fact, if people all over the world were to consume at the levels that many in the North do already, we would need at least eight planets to provide us with the resources we need by the year 2050."

"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 my 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...No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we no confront will be lost..."

D. Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1997, p. 4.
 
 

"It is clear that we may not be able to sustain the present world system for much longer. The world is rapidly becoming fragmented and disorganised, more dehumanised and impersonal...there is a very real possibility that the entire global eco-system will collapse as a result of the colossal demands and expectations being placed on it."
 
 

D. P. Schafer, Culture; Beacon of the Future, Westport CT, Preger, 1998.

"The average item of food sold in the US has travelled 2800 km." (Schwarz and Schwarz, 1998, p. 150.)
 
 

"Eternal progress is a nonsensical myth. What must be implemented is not a 'steadily expanding economy" but a zero growth economy. Economic growth is not only unnecessary but ruinous."

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quoted by A. Rankin, "League of Real Nations," Fourth World Review, 101-102, 2000, p. 12.

"Liberal ideology and liberal society will be swept away in the deluge that is to come." p. 5.

Important in their argument is that globalisation is weakening the cohesion of the nation. The unit of social organisation will be the tribe, racial group, locality. (See p. 15.) The world is retribalising.

J.W. Smith and G. Lyons, Global Anarchy in the Third Millenium? Race, Place and Power at the End of the Modern Age, New York, St. Martins Press, 2000.

J. Leslie, (1996), The End of the World; The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction.

"...the direction of the global economy is precisely the opposite direction to one necessary for ecological sustainability. Human hubris --insolent pride about our technical prowess -- will ensure that a remorseless fall, an ecological nemesis will occur.......we believe that a collapse of civiizaton...is inevitable." (p. 22.)

J.W. Smith and G. Lyons, Global Anarchy in the Third Millenium? Race, Place and Power at the End of the Modern Age, New York, St. Martins Press, 2000.
 
 

"Eternal progress is a nonsensical myth. What must be implemented is not a 'steadily expanding economy" but a zero growth economy. Economic growth is not only unnecessary but ruinous."

Theme two is that there has now erupted from immediate origins somewhere in the last half of the nineteenth century, an exponentially exploding and intertwined virus of mindlessly-used technology, industrialisation, and population growth which will 'go critical' in the early part of the new millennium.

Theme Three is that the dominance of the economic motive the world over, insupportable levels of consumption, rising and quite unsatisfiable "consumer" expectations, and the manifest inability and unwillingness of all governments to face these issues now collude to pose a unique and immediate threat to the planet and our occupation of it; and that there are not available yet, at any rate, or in prospect?any tried, tested and democratically acceptable means of responding with any confidence to these defiant challenges.

P. Crutwell, History Out of Control, Dartington, Green Books, I995.

"...it is physically impossible...for the world to consume at levels even approximating those in North America, Europe and Japan." 35

Living Planet Report, 1998, World Wildlife Fund.

Everywhere that we live we're using up the resources that we depend on faster than they are being replenished. The reason is that there are too many of us. In simple biological terms, we have exceeded the carrying capacity of our environment.

How will the situation be rectified? Like any other species, most of us will die. That death will not be pleasant for many. But consider the alternative. If most of us don’t die in the next few decades, if we somehow manage to hang on long enough to gradually reduce our numbers by some other method than starvation or disease, we will useup that much more of our resource base, leaving our descendants thatmuch poorer.

The logic of despair, Runningonempty@onelist.com, 6.1.2000

The report, to be released in September, is published by WRI, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Envronment Program (UNEP) and the World Bank. More than 175 scientists contributed to the report, which took more thantwo years to produce.

Portions of the report are now available online at: http://www.wri.org/wri/wrr2000.

Half of the world's wetlands were lost in the last century.

Logging and conversion have shrunk the world’s forests by as much as half.

Some nine percent of the world's tree species are at risk of extinction.

Tropical deforestation probably exceeds 130,000 square kilometers per year.

Fishing fleets are 40 percent larger than the ocean can sustain.

Almost 70 percent of the world's major marine fish stocks are overfished or are being fished at their biological limit.

Twenty percent of the world’s freshwater species are extinct, threatened or endangered. At least 10,000 freshwater fish species are threatened globally.

-----------------

Our relentless pursuit of economic growth is accelerating the breakdown of the planet's life support systems, intensifying resource competition, widening the gap between rich and poor, and undermining the values and relationships of family and community.

D. Korten, The Post Corporate World, p. 6.
 
 

The earth's natural resources simply do not suffice for the standards of living enjoyed today by the privileged in the North to be universalized. In other words, there is an : absolute natural barrier that places impossible the globalization of the North's capitalist type of growth economy.

D. Korten, The Post Corporate World, p. 142.

"The cities of West Africa at night are some of the unsafest placesin the world. Streets are unlit; the police often lack gasoline for their vehicles; armed burglars, carjackers, and muggers proliferate. The government in Sierra Leone has no writ after dark,' says a foreign resident, shrugging. When I was in the capital, Freetown, last September, eight men armed with AK-47s broke into the house of an American man. They tied him up and stole everything of value. Forget Miami: direct flights between the United States and the Murtala Muhammed Airport, in neighboring Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, have been suspended by order of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation because of ineffective security at the terminal and its environs. A State Department report cited the airport for extortion by law-enforcement and immigration officials. This is one of the few times that the U.S. government has embargoed a foreign airport for reasons that are linked purely to crime. In Abidjan, effectively the capital of the Cote d'lvoire, or Ivory Coast, restaurants have stick-and-gun-wielding guards who walk you the fifteen feet or so between your car and the entrance, giving you an eerie taste of what American cities might be like in the future. An Italian ambassador was killed by gunfire when robbers invaded an Abidjan restaurant. The family of the Nigerian ambassador was tied up and robbed at gunpoint in the ambassador's residence. After university students in the Ivory Coast caught bandits who had been plaguing their dorms, they executed them by hanging tires around their necks and setting the tires on fire. In one instance Ivorianpolicemen stood by and watched the 'necklacings,' afraid to intervene. Each time I went to the Abidjan bus terminal, groups of young men with restless, scanning eyes surrounded my taxi, putting their hands all over the windows, demanding 'tips' for carrying my luggage even though I had only a rucksack. In cities in six West African countries I saw similar young men everywhere -- hordes of them. They were like loose molecules in a very unstable social fluid, a fluid that was clearly on the verge of igniting."

A PREMONITION OF THE FUTURE: "West Africa is becoming THE symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real strategic' danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism. West Africa provides an appropriate introduction to the issues, often extremely unpleasant to discuss, that will soon confront our civilization...." http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/anarcf.htm

wn in the US... 64% of US cropland produces livestock feed, only 2% produces fruit and vegetables." (USDept. of Agriculture, quoted in Schwarz and Schwarz, 1998, p. 83.)
 
 

The evidence that we are beyond the limits to growth is by now overwhelming.

Belief in unlimited economic growth on a finite planet is absurd. A moment's consideration of the concept reveals that increase in production, consumption and population will ultimately be stopped by exhaustion of resources.
Humans over the centuries have held many erroneous beliefs but few as silly as this one.

Despite its absurdity, politicians and economists around the world unceasingly preach the doctrine of economic growth. How is it that intelligent, highly trained and sometimes famous people can continue with this nonsense?

Our vision is of coming global chaos, anarchy and the breakdown of social and ecological systems. ..Unlike other gloom 'n' doom books on the market, we doubt whether modernist "man" will change his/her ways in time. It is time for this stark possibility to be fearlessly discussed.

The evidence that we are beyond the limits to growth is by now overwhelming.

A. Atkinson, "Sustainability is dead…", (source not recorded.)

"Can America Survive" by Joseph George Caldwell is a new book available free on the web at: http://www.foundationwebsite.org/canam4x.htm Warning; it is a very big file so don't try to load it unless you have a very fast connection. But you can read a short summary of the book at: http://www.foundation.bw/summary4.pdf

"The book proposes that the root of society’s future problems lies the pursuit of endless growth as the principal economic objective…the global economy is larger than can be sustained by the resources available, little sense exists of any limits to growth. Big business, the government and the media pursue economic growth before all other policies."

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Control, a UN body), as well as the Enquiry Commission of the German Bundestag, have calculated that if global warming is to be prevented emissions of CO2 must not exceed about 11 billion tonnes per year.

If we accept that long term sustainable development is possible only on a basis of fair distribution of wealth then, with a global population of six billion, our 11 billion tonne budget would allow two tonnes of CO2 per person per year. The current per capita emissions of carbon dioxide industrial countries stands at 11 to 13 tonnes. In the US this rises to 23 tonnes, while in most of the Southern countries it is much below two tonnes per year. (The Australian figure in 2002 is 27 tonnes, the world's highest, partly due to land clearing in addition to fuel burning.)
Huge quantities of methane—a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2—are stored on the seabed and in permafrost, the permanently frozen earth which covers at least a fifth of the planet. The gas is combined with water or ice to form a solid called | methane gas hydrate. 'Rising temperatures destabilise the hydrate and cause the emission of methane' Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway College, University of London, writes in his book Leaving Eden.

'One of the nightmares of climatologists is that the liberation of methane from permofrost will enhance the Arctic warming because of the greenhouse effect of the methane, and so induce further release of methane and thus increased warming, in a runaway feedback cycle.' He fears that warming will also release methane from hydrate in shallow Arctic seas. 'Any slight warming of the Arctic water will release hydrate from the sea floor sediments almost immediately' he writes.

Source not recorded.

___________________________________________________________________________________

A NOTE ON LOMBORG.

B. Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist has been much discussed, arguing that the environmental problem is far less serious than most people believe. There has been extensive controversy about the book. For critical commentary see, Scientific American: Feature Articles, "Misleading Math about the Earth," a series
of essays that critized Bjørn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. ... www.sciam.com/2002/0502issue/0502rebuttal.
The Lomborg debate :Some replies from Danish scientists to a contrarian.
Contents
1. Introduction to the debate
2. Some of the contributions to the debate that were made by Danish
scientists and researchers in 1998-1999

1. Introduction to the debate
In 1998 my good colleague associate professor Bjørn Lomborg, who teaches statistics
and methods at the Political Science Department at Aarhus University, wrote a series
of four chronicles to the Danish newspaper Politiken about environmental issues.
Originally the editor of Politiken, Tøger Seidenfaden, had promised Bjørn Lomborg,
that he could write 4 x 2 pages in the newspaper with his version of the environmental
problems, but much to Bjørn Lomborgs regret this option was in the end reduced to
that of four chronicles. Apparently this solution was also to the regret of the chronicle
editor, who soon was flooded with the counter-contributions to the debate that
Lomborg's writings initiated in 1998.

Many different persons took part in this debate, that soon reached a vociferous tone.
In particular the exchange of views between NGO spokespersons and Bjørn Lomborg
was heated and attracted much attention. However, there were also a number of
scientists and researchers who wrote letters and chronicles to the newspapers to
correct Bjørn Lomborgs often biased interpretations of the statistics and
circumstances.

In particular in the newspaper Politiken, which initiated the debate, it proved difficult for
scientists to get their interventions accepted, as the newspaper editor found them 'too
complex and convoluted' for the readers. Subsequently there were many
environmental researchers who had to spend considerable time and effort to explain
the complexity of the issues and correct Lomborg's arguments.

Now that Bjørn Lomborg has announced the translation of his book into english, this
time with the title "The sceptical environmentalist", we feel that it might be useful and
appropriate to make available to an international audience some of the contributions
to the debate that were made by Danish scientists and researchers in 1998-1999. In
each their professional field, the researchers argue against the interpretations that
Bjørn Lomborg have given, and provide counter-arguments that are for the reader to
consider. Some of the articles were followed by replies (from Lomborg) and
counter-replies (from the authors), but they have not been translated here.
We do not know to which extent Bjørn Lomborg has taken account of these
arguments in his translated version of the book. We hope that this is the case, but
according to statements made by Bjørn Lomborg we are not too optimistic. We also
note, that Bjørn Lomborg so far has failed to publish his findings in a relevant
international scientific journal with peer review.

The contributions to the debate translated here are of the short type that were
accepted by newspaper editors, but they nevertheless allow the reader to get some
idea of where there are weak elements in the contrarian arguments. They were
originally published in the Danish newspaper journals Jyllandsposten, Information,
Politiken and Ingeniøren. There have been several other contributions by scientists,
but I have made a small selection of contributions that cover the main issues in the
debate.

By making available these contributions to the debate, the argument with Lomborg
has not been exhausted. I merely hope to economize on the time that researchers
and scientists have to spend on this debate, because, as it needs to be
acknowledged, time is the most precious resource of scientists.

I would like gratefully to acknowledge the effort of mrs. Else Løvdal, secretary at the
Political Science Department, for help with skillfull translations into english, as well as
the assistance of the individual authors, who have approved the translations.
Åbyhøj, 31.12.2000.
Mikael Skou Andersen,
Associate professor, Dept. of Political Science, Aarhus University.
From 1.1.2001 professor at the National Environmental Research Institute (DMU).

2. Some of the contributions to the debate that were made by Danish
scientists and researchers in 1998-1999
Resources: "Lomborg's claims are untrue and dangerous"
Henning Sørensen, Professor, dr.phil., former President of the Royal Danish
Academy of Sciences and Letters, Department of Geology, University of Copenhagen.
Species' extinction: "Lomborg's facts are absurd and irrelevant"
Jon Fjeldsaa, Professor, dr. scient., Vertebrate Department, Zoological Museum,
University of Copenhagen
Economics: "Clean growth is not proven"
Poul Schou, MSc in economics, Ph.D. student at the Department of Economics,
University of Copenhagen.
Forest die-back: "Acid rain is not a myth"
Per Gundersen, Senior Researcher, Research Center for Forrest and Landscape
(FSL), J. Bo Larsen, Professor, Royal Agricultural University (KVL); Lars Bo Pedersen,
Senior Researcher, FSL and Karsten Raulund Rasmussen, Chief Researcher, FSL.
Pesticides: "Associate Professor always gets the last word"
Allan Astrup Jensen, Research Director, DK-Teknik.
Breast cancer: "Lomborg's errors"
Philippe Grandjean, Professor, dr.med., Institute of Public Health, University of
Southern Denmark.
Climate change: "Greenhouse effect created by humans: Myth or reality?"
Anne Mette K. Jørgensen, Ph.D., Head of Research Department, Denmarks
Meteorological Institute (DMI) and Henrik Feddersen, Ph.D., Danish Climate Centre,
DMI.
Climate and cost-benefit: "Lomborg's precarious model"
Mikael Skou Andersen, Associate Professor, Ph.D., Department of Political
Science, University of Aarhus.
Book Review, Politica 1/1999
"Bjørn Lomborg: Verdens sande tilstand (The True State of the World), Viby:
Centrum, 1998" (Politica is the scientific journal for political science in Denmark)

-------

The following notes are from "UCS examines The Skeptical Environmentalist by BjørnLomborg"

A new book by Bjørn Lomborg, a political scientist and professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in
Denmark, has created quite a stir in recent months. Lomborg accuses scientists and environmental
organizations of making false and exaggerated claims about the world’s environmental problems. He
concludes that population growth is not a problem, that there is plenty of freshwater around, that
deforestation rates and species extinctions are grossly exaggerated, that the pollution battle has been won,
and that global warming is too expensive to fix.

A self-proclaimed environmentalist and skeptic, he claims that his reanalysis of environmental data measures "the real state of the world." The heavily promoted book, published in September by Cambridge University Press, has received significant attention from the media and praise from commentators writing in The
Economist, The New York Times, and Washington Post. For example, the Post’s reviewer (a philosophy professor from New Zealand) concluded that it was "a magnificent achievement," and "the most significant work on the environment since the appearance of its polar opposite, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, in 1962." Meanwhile, groups with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo are using the book to promote their
"no need to take action to address global environmental problems" agenda. For example, the "Cooler Heads Coalition" -- formed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and others to "dispel the myths of global warming" -- recently featured Lomborg in a Capitol Hill briefing on global warming.

Does this book merit such positive attention? Does Lomborg provide new insights? Are his claims supported
by the data? A healthy skepticism towards the claims of others is, after all, one of the hallmarks of good
science. And, at first glance, Lomborg’s book appears to be an objective and rigorous scientific analysis. It is
published by a leading academic press, and contains an extensive bibliography and nearly 3,000 footnotes.

To answer these questions, UCS invited several of the world's leading experts on water resources,
biodiversity, and climate change to carefully review the sections in Lomborg's book that address their areas
of expertise. We asked them to evaluate whether Lomborg’s skepticism is coupled with the other hallmarks
of good science – namely, objectivity, understanding of the underlying concepts, appropriate statistical
methods and careful peer review. Reviewing Lomborg’s claims are Dr. Peter Gleick, an internationally
recognized expert on the state of freshwater resources; Dr. Jerry Mahlman, one of the most highly
regarded atmospheric scientists and climate modelers; and top biologists and biodiversity experts Dr.’s
Edward O. Wilson, Thomas Lovejoy, Norman Myers, Jeffrey Harvey and Stuart Pimm.
These separately written expert reviews unequivocally demonstrate that on closer inspection, Lomborg’s book is seriously flawed and fails to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis. The authors note how Lomborg consistently misuses, misrepresents or misinterprets data to greatly underestimate rates of species extinction, ignore evidence that billions of people lack access to clean water and sanitation, and minimize the extent and impacts of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels and other
human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases. Time and again, these experts find that Lomborg’s
assertions and analyses are marred by flawed logic, inappropriate use of statistics and hidden value
judgments. He uncritically and selectively cites literature -- often not peer-reviewed -- that supports his
assertions, while ignoring or misinterpreting scientific evidence that does not. His consistently flawed use of
scientific data is, in Peter Gleick’s words "unexpected and disturbing in a statistician".

These reviews show that The Skeptical Environmentalist fits squarely in a tradition of contrarian works on
the environment that may gain temporary prominence but ultimately fail to stand up to scientific scrutiny.
Others, such as Julian Simon and Gregg Easterbrook, have come before him, and others no doubt will
follow. Correcting the misperceptions these works foster is an essential task, for, as noted above, groups
with anti-environmental agendas use these works to promote their objectives. It is also an unfortunate,
time-consuming distraction, for it pulls talented scientists away from the pressing research needed to help us
understand the environmental challenges we face and their prospective solutions.
Winston Churchill’s quote reminds us of the parable of the Tortoise and the Hare. Like the Hare, Lomborg’s
lie has raced out in front of the truth. With the help of these careful scientific peer reviews, UCS hopes that
the truth, like the Tortoise, will catch up and emerge the ultimate victor.

Editor’s note: In addition to these UCS-solicited reviews, critiques of Lomborg’s book have also been
published in Scientific American, Nature, Science, and other scientific journals, as well as on several web
sites (see Related Links).

UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
2 Brattle Square
Cambridge, MA 02238
617-547-5552
Contact us at ucs@ucsusa.org
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    2.  EXPENSIVE WAYS

Right now, Britain exports as much butter as it imports from the continent - 47m kg is exported, and 43m kg imported, each year. ~

A whole airport has been built in Arkansas, USA, just to export pigs abroad in 747s.

V. Shiva, Stolen Harvest, South End Press,

Golf courses, constructed partly for tourists, are expanding rapidly in Asian developing countries, putting severe strains on water supplies, and also on land and forests. In the early 1980s the region had few courses outside Japan. Now there are 'about 160 in Thailand, 155 in Malaysia, 90 in Indonesia, 80 in the Philippines and many more are planned', points out Chee Yoke Ling of the Asia Pacific Peoples' Environment Network, which started the Global Anti-Golf Movement (based in Malaysia) to draw attention to the problems. Some of these courses have been funded with Japanese aid money.

The world's biggest golf course operator is the US-based TNC, the American Golf Corporation. A standard 18-hole golf course uses 6,500 cubic metres of water a day - an amount that could meet the needs of 60,000 villagers. Building golf courses in tropical areas can mean that forests have to be cleared, coastal areas bulldozed, mountain tops lopped off and swamps are drained. Course maintenance usually requires large amounts of chemicals such as fertiliser and fungicides which can pollute water and cause health hazards. Like tourism as a whole, golf courses can affect local food supply, sometimes by taking over land which once grew food. In May 1998, farmers in the Philippines planted rice on a golf course in Manila, in a protest about the way the land was being used.

    3.  RICH WORLD LIVING STANDARDS ARE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ALL
 
 

"In fact, if people all over the world were to consume at the levels that many in the North do already, we would need at least eight planets to provide us with the resources we need by the year 2050."

            H. Daly, Economics, Ecology, Ethics, San Fran cisco, Freeman, 1989, p. 361.
 

"The North's patterns of resource consumption are not environmentally sustainable...either for the region itself or as a model for the world."

            J. Leonard, Modernity, 1996, p 49.

"...the development celebrated in ultra-solemn declarations will never exist, because it presupposes infinite growth that is in reality impossible." (236)

            G. Rist, The History of Development, London, Zed, 1999.

"But at the heart of the development system is a claim to be extended to the whole planet through endless growth above all for the countries already most developed. The fact is however that this is not an achievable objective." (44)

"...hope that all the world's inhabitants will enjoy material affluence has now vanished..." (220)

            G. Rist, The History of Development, London, Zed, 1999.

A team of researchers at the University of British Colombia recently estimated that the typical North American consumes resources each year equivalent to the renewable yield from 12 acres of farmland and forestland. For all the world’s people to consume at that rate is a mathematical impossibility. It would require four earth’s worth of productive land. In other words, we’re three planets short. We’re at least nine planets — or atmospheres- short of safely absorbing the greenhouse gases that would result if all the world’s people pumped pollution aloft at the North American rate.

,
WARNING: 90% CUT NEEDED in CONSUMPTION SAYS U.N. The United Nations Environment Programme says the developed countries must cut their use of natural resources by 90% to give the rest of the
world a chance of emerging from poverty...

by BBC via www.EconomicDemocracy.org
http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=46890&group=webcast

"…it is simply not physically possible for the wasteful consumption standards, which are today enjoyed by the ‘40% societies’ in the North and the elites in the South, to be universalized and enjoyed by the world population."

T. Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, Cassell, 1999, p. 72.

"It seems clear that the material consumption of industrial people cannot be universalized to encompass all humans on earth. …To simply universalize the North’s standard of living now, global industrial production would need to rise 130 times."

M. Carley and I. Chjristie, Managing Sustainable Development, Minneapolis, U. of Minnesota Press, 1993, p. 50.

In every pre-capitalist society we find acquisitive activity disliked or despised in part as a projection of aristocratic attitudes (true aristocrats do not "need" money); in part as an expression of popular revulsion against money lenders and exploitative local traders; in part perhaps as a deep-rooted protest against the de-personalisation of monetary dealings. Nowhere was this distaste more pronounced than within Christianity, where the taking of ordinary interest was declared to be an excommunicable offence as late as the Council of Vienna in 1311, and where three centuries later a disapproving view of wealth-seeking

continued to inform Protestant as well as "In the numerous treatises on the passions that appeared in the seventeenth century", writes Albert Hirschman in The Passions and the Interests 11977 p. 411, "no change

whatever can be found in the assessment of avarice as 'the foulest of them all' or in its position as the deadliest Deadly Sin that it had come to occupy toward the end of the Middle Ages." Even in the wordly eighteenth century, it is very much in the spirit of the age that Adam Smith regards acquisitiveness, in both the Theory of Mora| Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, as a useful but never admirable characteristic,

leading to the pursuit of things that, viewed with philosophic detachment, appear "contemptible and trifling", or simply "vulgar".

the capacity of acquisitiveness to increase the amount of wealth, Locke changes the generation of surplus from a zero sum game, where every gain is someone's loss, into a positive sum process in which every person's enrichment is at least potentially the occasion for the enrichment of all.

… "by any stretch of the imagination, it will not be possible that all citizens of the world will share in the fossil fuel-based, money-driven development model… '

Planet Dialectics: Explorations in Environment and Development

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