Beware The Coming
Shortages
By David R. Francis
29 October, 2004
Christian
Science Monitor
Dennis
Meadows warned 32 years ago that the world would run short of resources
within a century, putting the planet at risk of expanding hunger as
well as economic and social disaster.
Today, that danger
is more imminent, says Mr. Meadows, one of the authors of "The
Limits to Growth," a book published in 1972 and now just
updated.
Within 30 years,
world living standards could start falling, Meadows predicts. "We
are living on borrowed time." The rising expense of protecting
the rising population from starvation, pollution, soil erosion, and
shortages of nonrenewable resources will cut into the capital available
for boosting industrial output, Meadows says.
His book, coauthored
with Donella Meadows, his late wife, and Jorgen Randers, was a publishing
sensation, selling 30 million copies in 30 languages. But the book was
widely scorned, especially after the food and oil shortages of the mid-1970s
turned into surpluses.
The critics, though,
were often ignoring the 100-year timetable the authors used.
"The Club of
Rome [which commissioned the book] got the whole picture right,"
maintains Matthew Simmons, a prominent Texas oil consultant.
In their update,
the authors note, humanity has "squandered the opportunity"
to correct its current course over the last 30 years.
The entire world,
rich and poor, faces political and economic turmoil likely to arise
from a grim situation.
Signs of global
trouble are brewing:
The gap between rich and poor nations is 10 times what it was 30 years
ago. During the 1990-2001 period, 54 countries already experienced declines
in per capita gross domestic product. This gap could help keep terrorism
going, warns Meadows.
Demand from prospering China has caused shortages of oil and metals.
If 9 billion people on earth were to consume materials at the American
rate, world steel production would need to rise fivefold, copper eightfold,
and aluminum ninefold. It's not possible or necessary, the authors hold.
World food production per capita peaked about 1990. Total food production
will stop growing about 2020, predicts Meadows. A global assessment
of soil loss, based on studies of hundreds of experts, has found that
38 percent, or nearly 1.4 billion acres, of currently used agricultural
land has been degraded. Key aquifers in the US, China, and India are
drying up. This will hit farm output.
In 1972, the world's population was less than 4 billion. Today it is
6.4 billion and headed toward 9 billion by 2050, the United Nations
projects. Meadows maintains the planet can sustain only 2 billion people
at a Western standard of living.
"The 'population bomb' hasn't fizzled," he says. "It
has already exploded."
Because of their
wealth, Americans and inhabitants of other rich nations will likely
"buy their way out" from the worst aspects of looming disasters,
he says. "The US will be pretty well off."
But he expresses
concern that the US will not tackle seriously such universal problems
as climate change, depletion of the world's fisheries, or nuclear proliferation.
"The quality of public discussion has declined over the last 30
years," he says.
Using computer models,
Meadows generates one hopeful scenario where society adopts a desired
family size of two children and sets a fixed goal for industrial output
per capita, adopts technologies to abate pollution, conserves resources,
increases land yield, and protects agricultural land. Then the resulting
society of nearly 8 billion people can live with high human welfare
and a continuously declining footprint on the ecology.
But this has to
be done soon, he insists. The problem is that people tend to ignore
the impact of events with consequences they perceive as far in the future.
They look to the now.
© 2004 Christian
Science Monitor