STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
Happy New Year! This month, I am going to review State of The World 1998. Edited by Lester R. Brown and published by the Worldwatch Institute on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society, this book is must reading for all critical thinkers. I used it in my English 103 class, Critical Thinking and Writing. The students were appreciative of my having selected it.
"Without a massive mobilization by governments to reverse the trends that are threatening future food security, future political instability may well disrupt economic progress" (p. 17) That is a major issue. Eighty million people are born somewhere in the world every year. "Feeding eighty million more people each year means expanding the grain harvest by twenty-six million tons, or 71, 000 tons a day. Not only is the world now adding eighty million people annually, but it is projected to add nearly this number for the next few decades, reaching 9.4 billion in 2050."(p. 14)
How about our paper usage? "Not recovering and recycling waste paper also stresses waste disposal systems—in the United States for example, paper accounts for 30-40 percent of the waste sent to landfills and incinerators>." (p. 37)
What this book provides are solutions. "There is significant room for improvement in national laws and policies governing forests....Eliminating subsidies that encourage forest degradation or conversion. reforming tenure policies, and improving revenue collection from public lands are important elements. So, too, is better enforcement of existing national laws, including preventing illegal logging and trade. These changes make good economic and ecological sense.
Most of the world relies on firewood to heat their homes and to cook their food. "In India, the demand for fuelwood is now six times the sustainable yield of its remaining forests, forcing the burning of cow dung and crop residues for cooking, thus depriving the soil of nutrients and organic matter." (p. 10) What about food? "If the trend of rising temperatures over the last 15 years continues, higher temperatures may soon lead to higher food prices." (p. 11) What about water? "The Colorado, the major river in southwestern United states, is now drained dry to irrigate cropland and to satisfy industrial and residential needs in Colorado. California, and Arizona, rarely ever reaching the Gulf of California, the point at which it used to enter the sea." (p. 7) "In Punjab, IndiaÕs breadbasket, the water table in much of the state is falling roughly two thirds of a meter per year." ( p. 11) "In an area of north central China inhabited by roughly 100 million people, the water table has fallen some 30-35 meters over the last two or three decades." (p. 11) "Agricultural runoff in the Mississippi River basin is now so extensive that when the river enters the Gulf of Mexico, the over fertilized brew of nutrients it carries sparks huge algal blooms, which deplete the water of oxygen and create a "dead zone" of some 17,600 square kilometersÑnearly the size of New Jersey." (p. 53)
This book concludes with a chapter on "Building a New Economy. I like that. The book offers suggestions for solutions. What about the population problem? " The first step in stabilizing population is to remove the physical and social barriers that prevent women from using family planning services. Approximately one third of projected world population growth will be due to unwanted pregnancies that occur because couples still do not have access to the family planning services they desire, according to John Bongaarts of the Population Council. Worldwide, more than 120 million married women, and many more unmarried sexually active adults and teens, fall into this category." (p.175) What about a tax on polluters? "Among the more environmentally destructive economic activities that deserve to be taxed are carbon and sulfur dioxide emissions, the generation of toxic waste, the use of virgin raw materials, and the use of pesticides. Taxing these destructive activities simultaneously discourages them and indirectly encourages sustainable ways of satisfying our needs. For example a tax on virgin raw materials encourages the use of recycling." (p. 181)
"The good news is that we know what an environmentally, sustainable economy would look like. We have the technologies needed to build such an economy. And we know that the key to getting from here to there lies in restructuring the tax system, decreasing personal and corporate income taxes while increasing taxes on environmentally destructive activities. The challenge is to convince enough people of the need to do this in order to make it happen." (p169)
