Global economy consuming more than earth can yield, expert warns (Classic!)

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The hungry global economy is eating up the earth's natural resources at a far faster rate than they can be renewed, a US environmental expert warned.

The bleak warning was made by Lester Brown, president and founder of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, who has published his findings in a United Nations (news - web sites)-funded book.

"We are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than the earth can absorb it, creating a greenhouse effect," Brown said.

"We are creating a bubble economy, an economy whose output is artificially inflated by drawing down the earth's natural capital," Brown wrote in his book which was funded by the United Nation's Population Fund.

"Each year the bubble grows larger as our demands on the earth expand. The challenge for our generation is to deflate the global economic bubble before it bursts."

Brown explained that economic bubbles are not new, and recalled the Internet bubble of 2000 and Japan's real estate bubble of 1989.

Unlike those bubbles, however, Brown warned that if the global economic bubble bursts, "it will affect the entire world" with repercussions for the whole planet.

In order to avoid this, Brown said political action must be taken immediately to reduce water consumption to a more sustainable level.

He also called on governments to address population stability, particularly in developing countries, as well as urging them to stabilize industrial emissions.

In sum, "avoiding the damaging effects of higher temperatures on crop yields means moving quickly to stabilize climate," he said adding "I suggest cutting global carbon emissions in half by 2015."

Brown's book, "Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble," has been published by W.W. Norton in New York and London.

"Each year the bubble grows larger as our demands on the earth expand. The challenge for our generation is to deflate the global economic bubble before it bursts." Brown explained that economic bubbles are not new, and recalled the Internet bubble of 2000 and Japan's real estate bubble of 1989.

“The earth is like a fudge-dipped Oreo that is really delicious, but if we eat it then we won’t have it.”

By way of scientific proof, Brown cited the cookie that his brother ate in 1978 and another cookie eaten by a woman in Missippi in 1994 or 1995.

“Neither cookie is with us any longer,” he noted ominously.

"Our existing economic output is based in part on cutting trees faster than they can grow, overpumping acquifers, and draining rivers dry. On much of our cropland, soil erosion exceeds new soil formation. We are taking fish from the ocean faster than they can reproduce," he cautioned. "We are creating a bubble economy, an economy whose output is artificially inflated by drawing down the earth's natural capital," Brown wrote in his book which was funded by the United Nation's Population Fund.

Where have I heard this crap before? Oh, yeah, that's right:

Paul Ehrlich is the modern version of Thomas Malthus -- the most visible and persistent predictor of mass famine and economic catastrophe. Unlike Malthus, though, Ehrlich doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes; when one of his predictions of disaster fails to come true, Ehrlich simply moves on and makes other predictions of disaster, constantly pushing back the timetable for massive world famine, perhaps in the desperate hope that if he keeps predicting the same thing, eventually pure chance will fulfill the conditions he requires.

Ehrlich penetrated the American consciousness with his 1968 book, The Population Bomb. Given the economic stagflation that struck the world in the 1970s, books with pessimistic outlooks claiming humanity had enormous problems to solve were to be expected.

Ehrlich went way beyond this and instead predicted famine and disaster on a scale unprecedented in world history. In the prologue to The Population Bomb he wrote, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..." (1)

Not only was the world headed for catastrophe, but there was little that could be done to avoid it. Some parts of the world might see some minor and temporary recovery, but "a minimum of ten million people, most of them children, will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving before the end of the century" (emphasis in the original). (2)

In fact the last quarter of the 20th century has been amazing for the reduction in famine. If current trends persist, by 2001 only about 2 million people will have died from famine-related causes. Many of those died in Africa’s various famines where governments such as Ethiopia used food as a weapon against people -- the food was there, but the political will to feed the starving was missing

This is classic ratthink economics. They simply do not understand the dynamic aspects of economic activity. Here's my favorite piece of ratthink economics. In the early 90's the totally economics ignorant jim florio was the governor of New Jersey. Big eyed jimmy rammed through a tax on the sale on heavy trucks. Now the key fact to remember here, is that at that time,New Jersey was the state to go to in the whole Northeast,if you wanted to buy a heavy truck. Big eyes figured that if say, the existing tax was, let's say $100.00 per truck yielded the state a hypothetical 1 million dolars from the sale of 10,000 units, all you had to do is double the tax to get 2 million dollars! The problem big eyes had was this: when he doubled the tax, he killed the market. The year before the tax they sold over 10,000 of these trucks. The year after they sold around 100! That's a 99% drop in sales. Duh? Even stupid florio moved to turn that one around. Too late for poor guys trying to sell trucks, though.

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