The overcrowded ark
Pastor Dale Morgan
The overcrowded ark*
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online
Humanity's choices are getting harder and fewer. The Earth's population
has doubled
since 1950 and consumption has risen even faster. There has to be a
reckoning. For many
people, it is here already. The few first-class passengers on the planet
that is our Noah’s
Ark are safe for now on the upper deck. It’s a very different story down
below. How much
longer can the rich keep their feet dry?
Oil consumption has increased seven-fold in the last 50 years and meat
production, marine fish catches and carbon emissions from fossil fuel
burning have all at least quadrupled. And freshwater use increased
six-fold last century.
According to one recent study, the human race is consuming the Earth's
resources at a rate that is 20% faster than it can replenish itself,
with the
result that we would need 1.2 Earths to sustain this lifestyle.
The gap between rich and poor is becoming wider and more visible. Nearly
30% of the
world's population suffers some form of malnutrition and almost two
thirds of
humanity lives on less than $2 a day.
And sustainable development is critical for the world's poorest.
The family that has to level a forest to grow its food and find the fuel
to cook it does not
have the choice of living sustainably.
The poorest have least power to protect themselves from the effects of
global environmental problems such as climate change.
And, with the richest 1% of the world's population consuming as much as
its poorest 44%, we would have to use massively more resources if the
poor were to live as the rich world does.
What is sustainable development?
In principle, sustainable development means not using up resources faster
than the Earth can replenish them - "treating the Earth as if we intended to
stay".
In practice, everything from biotechnology and nuclear power to
vegetarianism and rail
travel is promoted in the name of sustainable development – to the point
where some
campaigners say the term has become meaningless.
The optimists say disaster will never strike, as development knows no
limits.
They argue that human ingenuity will always find a way. Society will
find new raw materials, develop cleaner
technologies and manage water scarcity so resource depletion and
pollution cease to be problems.
One argument runs that a better world needs us all to spend and consume
more to generate wealth for all – and that industrialisation slows
population growth and raises environmental standards.
But if "development" means every person on the planet aspiring to own a
car, fly half way round the world on holiday and get a new mobile phone
every year, we may as well forget it, the sceptics say. We don't have
enough Earths for this sort of consumer capitalism.
Talking shops
And this clash of perspectives is at the heart of the often rancorous and
divided international negotiations on conservation and development –
from the Kyoto climate change treaty and the World Food Summit to the
Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Industry wants open markets and voluntary
agreements. Campaigners fear the globalised
economy has outrun the capacity of political
institutions to control it.
Both talk of sustainable development as the way to square the circle,
though it does not always provide easy answers, or any at all.
And the crisis is for this generation as well as the future.
As government officials, industry representatives, scientists, policy
makers and campaigners continue to thrash out the future of the planet,
more than 30,000 under-fives – the equivalent of about 10 World Trade
Center attacks - die every day from hunger or from easily preventable
diseases.
Our record for managing to think ahead is poor. Professor James Lovelock
has said humans are as qualified to be stewards of the Earth as goats are
to be gardeners.
And we do not have 1.2 Earths.