| Publication | Page(s) | Quote | Keywords |
|---|
| Vital Signs 2000 |
44 |
As [world harvested grain] area per person falls [by more than a third since 1972], countries turn increasingly to foreign markets for their grain. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example, now have less than a quarter of the world average grain area per person, and each imports more than 70 percent of its grain. Population growth in many other Asian nations will reduce area per person to levels that have never supported food self-sufficiency anywhere. Indeed, by 2020 an estimated 70 percent of the people in Asia could depend on foreign markets for one fifth or more of their grain. |
famine world trade hunger |
| Vital Signs 2000 |
122 |
... in the Great Plains, farmers began [in the last half of the 20th century] to tap on a large scale one of the planet's greatest aquifers -- the Ogallala. Spanning portions of eight states, the Ogallala covers some 453,000 square kilometers, and, prior to exploitation, held 3,700 cubic kilometers of water -- a volume equal to the annual flow of more than 200 Colorado Rivers. Today, the Ogallala alone waters one fifth of U.S. irrigated land. |
groundwater agriculture United States |
| Vital Signs 2000 |
123 |
Estimated annual water deficits [groundwater extraction rate exceeds replenishment rate]
in key countries and regions, mid 1990s
(tab-delimited table)
Country/Region Billion m^3/year
India 104.0
China 30.0
United States 13.6
North Africa 10.0
Saudi Arabia 6.0
Minimum Global Total 163.6 |
agriculture |
| Vital Signs 2000 |
123 |
In the United States, several decades of heavy pumping have depleted the Ogallala aquifer by 325 bcm [billion cubic meters], a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers. More than two thirds of this depletion has occurred in the Texas High Plains. Annual net depletion of the Ogallala averages about 12 bcm a year. |
agriculture groundwater |
| Vital Signs 2000 |
150-151 |
China's rate of imprisonment appears to be on the low side, at 113 people per 100,000. But official figures may represent only 13 percent of those deprived of freedom. Dissident Harry Wu, a former prisoner who has studied the Chinese system, estimates that 4-6 million people are sentenced to "reform through labor," 3-5 million are in "re-education" labor camps, and 8-10 million are forced to work in prison factories or farms. Millions more are held in pre-trial detention. |
justice |
| Vital Signs 2000 |
150-151 |
In the United States, the prison population has risen rapidly since the 1970s, when state and federal governments began to require mandatory and increasingly lengthy prison sentences for drug possession. The populatin in state and federal prisons grew from fewer than 200,000 inmates in 1970 to 1.2 million in 1998, with another 600,000 in local jails. Some 36 percent of prisoners entering state prisons and 71 percent of those in federal prisons were convicted of drug offenses. The drug-driven rapid increase in prison populations has led to widespread overcrowding; California's system, for example, is running at twice its intended capacity -- despite the construction of 21 new prisons in the past 20 years. |
justice drug war |
| Vital Signs 2000 |
150-151 |
In many countries, drug offenses are handled through treatment programs rather than through imprisonment. Arizona recently adopted such an approach. Because imprisonment costs the state $50 per day, while treatment, counseling, and probation run just $16 per day, Arizona saved more than $2.5 million the first year of the change in policy. More than three quarters of the people on probation stayed free of drugs thus far. |
justice drug war |
| Beyond Malthus: Sixteen Dimensions of the ... |
62-63 |
In mature industrial countries with stable populations, agricultural claims on the Earth's ecosystem are beginning to level off. In the European Union (EU), for example, population has stabilized at roughly 380 million. With incomes already high, grain consumption per person has plateaued at around 470 kilograms a year. As a result, EU member countries, now consuming roughly 180 million tons of grain annually, have essentially stabilized their claims on the Earth's agricultural resources -- the first region in the world to do so. And, perhaps more important, since the region is a net exporter of grain, Europe has done this within the limits of its own land and water resources. Likewise, future demand for grain in both North America and Eastern Europe is also projected to remain within the carrying capacity of regional land and water resources. |
|
| Building a Sustainable Society |
13 |
Civilization might survive the exhaustion of petroleum reserves, but not exhaustion of the world's agricultural topsoil. |
agriculture farming land crops environment |
| State of the World 2000 |
11 |
Whether a similar revolution in the environmental field will follow that in smoking remains to be seen. Some 34 years passed between the first Surgeon General's report and the landmark agreement beteween the tobacco industry and state governments. In Eastern Europe, it was fully four decades from the imposition of socialism until its demise. Thirty-eight years have passed since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, issuing the wake-up call that gave rise to the modern environmental movement. |
social change |
| State of the World 1999 |
|
Sharply accelerating the wind power growth rate depends on restructuring tax systems to reduce taxes on income and wages while increasing those on environmnetally destructive activities, such as carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning. Some countries have already begun to do this, including Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. |
income tax reform ecology economics government taxation |
| State of the World 2000 |
19 |
One of the keys to the needed changes in reproductive behavior is information that will help people understand the consequences of not shifting quickly to smaller families. Few people intentionally want their children or grandchildren to be deprived of adequate water supplies or o education because they themselves have too many children. This information is vital. Governments can provide this information through national carrying capacity assessments -- studies to determine how many people the cropland, water, grassland, and forest resources of a country can sustain. |
population stabilization family planning ecological footprint |
| State of the World 2000 |
37 |
First, nature is a system of unfathomable complexity. Our predominant response to that complexity has been specialization, in both the sciences and public policy. ... Second, nature gives away nothing for free. You cannot get an appreciable quantity of anything out of nature without sacrificing something in the process. ... Third, nature has no reset button. Environmental corrosion is not just killing off individual species -- it is setting off system-level changes that are, for all practical purposes, irreversible. ... These are basic features of the natural world: we will never understand it completely, it will not do our bidding for free, and we cannot put it back the way it was. |
ecology |
| State of the World 2000 |
49 |
Today some 40 percent of the world's food comes from the 17 percent of cropland that is irrigated. India, China, the United States, and Pakistan together account for over half of the world's irrigated land; the top 10 countries collectively account for two thirds of the global total. |
irrigation agriculture crop farming groundwater aquifer |
| State of the World 2000 |
42 |
Besides constraining future food production, groundwater overpumping is widening the income gap between rich and poor in some areas. As water tables drop, farmers must drill deeper wells and buy larger pumps to lift the water to the surface. The poor cannot afford these technologies. |
irrigation agriculture crop farming aquifer poverty inequality |
| State of the World 2000 |
42-43 |
By far the most serious case of [groundwater] depletion is in the region watered by a geologic formation called the Ogallala -- one of the planet's greatest aquifers. The Ogallala spans portions of eight states, and prior to exploitation held a volume of water equivalent to more than 200 years of Colorado River flow. Today, the Ogallala alone waters one fifth of U.S. irrigated land. Particularly in its southern reaches, this aquifer gets very little replenishment from rainfall, so almost any pumping diminishes it. Currently it is being depleted at a rate of about 12 bcm a year. Total depletion to date amounts to some 325 bcm, a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers. More than two thirds of this depletion has occurred in the Texas High Plains. |
irrigation agriculture crop farming |
| State of the World 2000 |
44 |
Collectively, etimated annual water depletion in India, China, the United States, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula adds up to about 160 billion cubic meters a year -- equal to the annual flow of two Nile Rivers. ... The vast majority of this overpumped groundwater is used to irrigate grain, the staples of the human diet. Since it takes about 1,000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain (and a cubic meter of water weighs one ton), some 180 million tons of grain -- roughly 10 percent of the global harvest -- is being prouced by depleting water supplies. This finding raises an unsettling question: If so much of irrigated agriculture is operating under water deficits now, where are farmers going to find the additional water that will be needed to feed the more than 2 billion people projected to join humanity's ranks by 2030? |
|
| State of the World 2000 |
62 |
The United States has been at the leading edge of [the] overeating wave. Today it is more common than not for American adults to be overweight: 55 percent have a BMI over 25. The share of American adults who are obese has climbed from 15 to 23 percent just since 1980. And one out of five American children is overweight or obese, a 50-percent increase in the last two decades. ... The prevalence of obesity in England has doubled in the last 10 years to 16 percent. |
body mass index developed countries inequality disparity |
| State of the World 2000 |
68 |
In the United States, the billions of dollars of advertising by fast-food restaurants and the myriad advertisements for snack foods, soda, candy, and sugary breakfast cereals -- Kellogg's spends $40 million to promote Frosted Flakes alone -- makes USDA's $333-million budget for nutrition education look like a pittance. This imbalance in information and power between industry, consumers, and government results in what Kelly Brownell, a Yale University psychologist, has labeled a "toxic food environment": unprecedented access to high-calorie foods that are low in cost, promoted heavily, and good-tasting. |
overeating obesity |
| State of the World 2000 |
70 |
Sixty percent of all newborns in India would be in intensive care had they been born in California. |
birth babies baby malnutrition health natal care |
| Eco-Economy |
51 |
After World War II, accelerating population growth and steadily rising incomes drove the demand for seafood upward at a record pace. At the same time, advances in fishing technologies, including refrigerated processing ships that enabled trawlers to exploit distant oceans, dramatically boosted fishing capacity. In response, the oceanic fish catch climbed from 19 million tons in 1950 to its historic high of 93 million tons in 1997. This fivefold growth -- more than double that of population during this period -- raised seafood consumption per person worldwide from 8 kilograms in 1950 to a peak of 17 kilograms in 1998. Since then, it has fallen to scarcely 15 kilograms, a drop of one eighth. |
|
| Eco-Economy |
56 |
After losing 97 percent of the Atlantic rainforest, Brazil is now destroying its Amazon rainforest. This huge forest, roughly the size of Europe, was largely intact until 1970. Since then, 14 percent of Brazil's rainforest has been lost. In 1999 alone, 17,000 square kilometers were deforested. |
deforestation |
| Eco-Economy |
64 |
The U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) launched in 1985 was designed to simultaneously control surplus production and conserve soil by retiring the most erodible land. Initiated and supported by environmental groups, the program encouraged farmers to take their highly erodible land out of production by providing government payments under 10-year contracts to plant the land in grass or trees. |
erosion agriculture |
| Eco-Economy |
64 |
Within five years [of the CRP's 1985 launch], U.S. farmers had converted nearly 15 million hectares of cropland, roughly 10 percent of the national total, to grassland. This reduced excessive soil erosion nationwide by some 40 percent, helping to enhance food security for the entire world. The nonmarket benefits from soil erosion reduction and the provision of habitat by the CRP between 1985 and 2000 are estimated to exceed $1.4 billion. |
agriculture Conservation Reserve Program |
| Eco-Economy |
81-82 |
31 countries in Europe, plus Japan, have stabilized their population size, satisfying one of the most basic conditions of an eco-economy. Europe has stabilized its population within its food-producing capacity, leaving it with an exportable surplus of grain to help fill the deficits in developing countries. Furthermore, China -- the world's most populous country -- now has lower fertility than the United States and is moving toward population stability. Among countries, Denmark is the eco-economy leader. It has stabilized its population, banned the construction of coal-fired power plants, banned the use of nonrefillable beverage containers, and is now getting 15 percent of its electricity from wind. In addition, it has restructured its urban transport network; now 32 percent of all trips in Copenhagen are on bicycle. Denmark is still not close to balancing carbon emissions and fixation, but it is moving in that direction. |
|
| Eco-Economy |
102 |
In Bangkok, the city government decided that at 9 p.m. on a given weekday evening, all major television stations would be co-opted in order to show a big dial with the city's current use of electricity. Once the dial appeared on the screen, everyone was asked to turn off unnecessary lights and appliances. As viewers watched, the dial dropped, reducing electricity use by 735 megawatts, enough to shut down two moderate-sized coal-fired power plants. For viewers, this visual experiment had a lasting effect, reminding them that individually they could make a difference and collectively they could literally close power plants. |
energy consumption |
| Vital Signs 1999 |
|
Much of the world's stock of aluminum, with its light weight and strength, is invested in the fleet of commercial planes. At any given time, a substantial fraction of the world's aluminum is actually airborne. With air travel expanding at 6 percent a year, the investment of aluminum in aircraft is also expanding. |
aviation mining |
| Eco-Economy |
129 |
Most of the damage done by aluminum production comes from generating electricity to run the smelters. Worldwide, the aluminum industry uses as much electric power as the entire continent of africa. In some cases, the electricity for aluminum smelting comes from coal-fired power plants, but often it comes from hydroelectricity. Scores of dams have been built, particularly in remote regions, to produce cheap electricity to manufacture aluminum. Governments eager to build indigenous industry in their countries compete with each other for aluminum smelters by subsidizing the cost of electricity. As a result, aluminum is one of the world's most heavily subsidized raw materials. |
|
| Eco-Economy |
130 |
Tons of ore mined
per ton of metal produced
Iron: 3
Copper: 110
Gold: 303,000
Zinc: 200
Lead: 40
Aluminum: 4
Manganese: 3
Nickel: 40
Tin: 100
Tungsten: 400 |
|
| Eco-Economy |
166 |
The best nourished people in the world are not those living low on the food chain, such as Indians who consume roughly 200 kilograms of grain per year, or those living high on the food chain, such as Americans who consume some 800 kilograms of grain per year, mostly in the form of livestock products. It is people living at an intermediate level, such as Italians, who consume 400 kilograms of grain a year. ... For those living high on the food chain, moving down to a more moderate level would enhance not only their health, but also the health of the planet. |
vegetarianism meat |
| Eco-Economy |
174 |
New York City, with its population of nearly 17 million, recently discovered just how valuable nature's services are. Faced with the residential and industrial development of the Catskill forest region, the basin that is the source of its water, the city was told it needed a water purification plant that would cost $8 billion to build and $300 million a year to operate. Teh bill for this would reach $11 billion over 10 years. After analyzing the situation, city officials realized that they could restore the watershed to its natural condition for only $2 billion, thus avoiding the need for the purification plant and saving taxpayers $9 billion. |
drinking water quality |
| Eco-Economy |
189-190 |
In the year 1000, the world's 10 largest cities were widely distributed throughout the Old World. But by 1900, a century after the Industrial Revolution began, nearly all the large cities were in the industrial west. In 2000, after a century of record population growth -- most of it concentrated in the Third World -- 7 of the top 10 were in developing countries. |
overcrowding population distribution |
| Eco-Economy |
197 |
The estimated 300,000 Americans who die prematurely each year as a result of being overweight compares with the 400,000 who die prematurely from cigarette smoking. But there is one difference. The number of cigarettes smoked per person in the United States is on the decline, falling some 42 percent between 1980 and 2000, while obesity is on the rise. If recent trends continue, it is only a matter of time before deaths from obesity-related illnesses in the United States overtake those related to smoking. |
|
| Eco-Economy |
200-201 |
In the United States, more than 80 percent of police departments serving populations of 50,000 to 249,999 and 96 percent of those serving over 250,000 residents now have routine patrols by bicycle. Officers on bikes are more productive in cities partly because they are more mobile and can reach the scene of an accident or crime quicker. They typically make 50 percent more arrests per day than officers in squad cars. For fiscally sensitive officials, the cost of operating a bicycle is trivial compared with a car... Better community relations for officers on bikes provides an additional bonus. |
|
| Eco-Economy |
222 |
After the Islamic revolution in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, the family planning programs put in place by the Shah were dismantled. Khomeini exhorted women to have more babies to create "soldiers for Islam," pushing annual population growth rates to over 4 percent -- some of the highest ever recorded. By the late 1980s, the social and environmental costs of such growth rates were becoming apparent. As a result, policy shifted. Religious leaders argued that having fewer children was a social responsibility. Eighty percent of family planning costs were covered in the budget. Some 15,000 "health houses" were established to provide family planning and health services to Iran's rural population. As literacy levels among rural women climbed from 17 percent in 1976 to nearly 90 percent, fertility dropped to an average of 2.6 children per woman. Within 15 years, Iran's population growth rate has fallen from over 4 percent a year to scarcely 1 percent, making it a model for other developing countries. |
|
| Eco-Economy |
224 |
At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the governments of the world agreed to a 20-year population and reproductive health program. The United Nations estimated that $17 billion a year would be needed for this effort by 2000 and $22 billion by 2015. (By comparison, $22 billion is less than is spent every 10 days no military expenditures.) Developing countries and countries in transition agreed to cover two thirds of the price tag, while donor countries promised to pay the rest -- $5.7 billion a year by 2000 and $7.2 billion by 2015. Unfortunately, while developing countries ... have covered about two thirds of their allotted payments, donor countries have fallen far behind -- honoring only one third of their commitment. As a result... the United Nations estimated that there were an additional 122 million unintended pregnancies by 2000. An estimated one third of these were aborted. Moreover, an estimated 65,000 women who did not wish to become pregnant died in childbirth and 844,000 suffered chronic or permanent injury from their pregnancies. |
|
| Eco-Economy |
246-247 |
In June 2001, the Natural Resources Ministry in Moscow announced that it was introducing national mandatory certification [of sustainable harvesting] of wood. Although a small portion of its timber harvest is already certified, buyers' discrimination against the rest of the harvest costs Russia $1 billion in export revenues. Teh ministry estimates that its uncertified wood sells for 20-30 percent less than certified wood from competing countries. |
responsible consumption lumber |
