INTRODUCTION
Chapter 12. Accelerating the Transition
Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth
(W.W. Norton & Co., NY: 2001).
At a 1999 conference of corporate leaders
and bankers, Robert Nef, the head of a Swiss research institute,
shared with me a thoughtful definition of technology. "Technology,"
he said, "is nature's experiment with man." At issue for us today
is how this experiment will turn out.1
Earlier chapters described the dimensions of the restructuring needed
to build an eco-economy. The scale of the change needed is matched
only by its urgency. Time is running out. The central question facing
our generation is whether we can reverse environmental deterioration
before it spirals out of control, leading to global economic decline.
We would like to think that such a tragedy cannot happen in the
modern age, but we need only look at Africa to see what happens
when governments delay in responding to a threatin
this case, the spread of HIV. Nearly 40 million Africans have now
been infected with the virus that causes AIDS. Several countries,
including Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, could lose one fifth
to one third of their adult populations by 2010. Africa's AIDS fatalities
during this decade may eclipse all fatalities during World War II.2
Just as the governments of Africa let the AIDS virus spread, so
the governments of India and China are letting water tables fall.
Since the ability to pump water from underground faster than nature
replenishes it has evolved only during the last century, the world
has little experience in dealing with aquifer depletion. We do know
that failing to address the issue early on risks an even more catastrophic
result when the aquifer is depleted and the rate of pumping is reduced
to the rate of recharge.
Even while African governments let HIV spread and Asian governments
let water tables fall, the United States is letting atmospheric
carbon dioxide (CO2) levels rise. The one country that is capable
of single-handedly disrupting the earth's climate is doing so. The
United States could reduce its carbon emissions by the modest amount
called for in the Kyoto Protocol by 2010 and make a profit doing
so, but it chooses not to.
Other governments are watching as populations grow, doing little
to facilitate family planning and the shift to smaller families.
After nearly half a century of rapid population growth, farms already
divided once are now being divided again as another generation comes
of age. Shrinking plots of land are driving hundreds of millions
of people either into nearby cities or across national borders in
search of a job.
As water scarcity and land hunger spread, people become desperate.
It is this quiet desperation of trying to survive that drives them
across national borders. In some cases, it drives them to their
deaths, as tragically seen in the bodies of Mexicans who regularly
perish trying to enter the United States by crossing the Arizona
desert, and in the bodies of Africans washing ashore in Spain when
their fragile watercraft come apart as they try to cross the Mediterranean.
The combination of land hunger, water scarcity, soil erosion, desertification,
and rising sea level all coming at once is a recipe for human migration
on a scale that has no precedent.
Unless we can build an eco-economy, the world that we leave our
children will be a troubled one indeed. Restructuring the economy
depends on restructuring taxes. (See Chapter 11.) If we fail to
restructure the tax system, we will almost certainly fail to reverse
the trends that are undermining our future. If this effort is not
actively supported by all segments of societynot
only governments, but also the communications media, corporations,
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals, we will fail.
Building an eco-economy is not a spectator sport. Everyone has a
role to play.
ENDNOTES:
1.
Robert Nef, Tiroler Wirtschaftsforum, Innsbruck, Austria, discussion
with author, 6 October 1999.
2. Number of HIV-positive Africans based on Anne Hwang, "AIDS Erodes
Decades of Progress," in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2001
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), pp. 78-79; specific countries
in Population Reference Bureau (PRB), 2001 World Population Data
Sheet, wall chart (Washington, DC: 2001).
Copyright
© 2001 Earth Policy Institute
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