World on the Edge:How to Prevent

Environmental and EconomicCollapse

by Lester Brown

Professor Wayne HayesV. 0.5 | 10/14/2014

Remember Brown’s four goals.

His daunting goals (p. 16) are:1.Cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2020.2.Stabilize population at or below 8 billion by 2040.3.Eradicate poverty.4.Restore earth’s natural systems: forests, soils, aquifers, fisheries.

How much will it cost?

The Earth Policy Institute claims that the cost of

meeting these ambitious goals will be $200 billion per year,

an eighth of the world’s military expenditures (p. 17).

His policy recommendations may surprise you.

Brown makes two policy recommendations, and he does so early in his book (p. xi):1.Reduce income tax but also tax carbon, maintaining a tax neutrality.2.Redefine security around climate change, population growth, poverty, food prices, and failing states.

Brown presents three key social & economic indicators.

1. The economic indicator is the global price of food, particularly grains.

2. The social indicator is the rate of hunger around the Earth.

3. The political indicator is the number of failing states.

Food first!

Brown begins the first chapter around the theme of food bubbles. His cases are compelling and complex, illustrating important trends:•Russia: Excessive heat shrank the wheat harvest in 2010.•Pakistan chose armaments over the needs of its people (see quote, p. 5).•Saudi Arabia has depleted its fossil aquifers and can no longer grow food (p. 21).•Yemen is a “hydrologic basket case” and a failed state (p. 22).

Brown supports markets, with a specific condition.

Brown wants true market signals. Brown recognizes and respects global markets so long as the market recognizes indirect costs, also called externalities. See page 8. Brown does not want the economy to grow beyond the threshold of sustainability.

Civilization is in trouble.

Brown’s basic model is called

overshoot: the demand or load

has grown bigger than the supply, causing collapse.

Overshoot = Crash

S curvecrash

Phantom Capacity & Overshoot

Catton: carrying capacity illusions x reality

Prosthetic/Tech Fix

Unlimited CC

cc CC

load loadload

Unrealisms realism

Ecological FootprintSource:http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/

Ecological Footprint U.S.Global Footprint Network

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/us/

Listen to Peter Goldmark

The former President of the Rockefeller Foundation said:“The death of our civilization is no longer a theory or an academic possibility; it is the road we’re on. (p. 10)”Brown urges a “new economic worldview” (p. 9). Brown sees food as the weak link.

Food is being diverted as fuel.

Brown was probably the first to spot the trend (p. 11) that grain is being diverted as fuel for automobiles, exacerbating hunger potential and placing grain in direct competition with the price of oil.

Brown connects food and water.

Chapter 2, “Falling Water Tables and Shrinking Harvests,”

provides case after case that connect the food supply

with available water supplies, mostly ground water (aquifers).Note his conclusions, pp. 32-33.

Soil erosion expands deserts.

Chapter 3, “Eroding Soils and Expanding Deserts,” focuses on Dust Bowl events in China, then India, then Africa.

The obvious connection between soil exhaustion, depletion of farmland and grazing land, and poverty on a massive scale cannot be more obvious.

Massive feedback loopsthreaten the grain supply.

Chapter 3, “Rising Temperature, Melting Ice, and Food

Security,” starts with icebergs the size of Manhattan

but moves to melting glaciers and the threats to global grain supplies.

Heat waves threaten crop yields.

Heat stress impedes photosynthesis,

therefore the yields of the three basic grains:

wheat, corn, and rice.See pp. 47-48.

Glacial ice melt irrigates great regions.

Melting ice from the glaciers of the Himalayas maintain the great rivers of Asia (p. 50). But:“These melting glaciers coupled with the depletion of aquifers present the most massive threat to food security the world has ever faced. China is the world’s leading producer of wheat. India is number two. (The united States is number three.) With rice, China and India totally dominate the world harvest. (p. 51)”

Carbon emissions is not linked strongly to happiness.

Source: Treehugger (2009 data)

Brown connects food shortage with social unrest.

The supply of grains is vulnerable to disruption. As supplies dwindle, so will exports. Political instability and failed states will increase. Child mortality will climb. Brown continues to make connections, define the feedback loops, and sound an alarm.

Brown brings all this to home.

China is the banker to the U.S., holding $900 billion of U.S. debt. “Like it or not, American consumers will be sharing the U.S. grain harvest with Chinese consumers. The idea that shrinking glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau could one day drive up food prices at U.S. supermarket checkout counters is yet another sign of the complexity of our world” (pp. 54-55).