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Eaarth (or, Why We're Soooooo Screwed)


There's a lot to take away from Eaarth, the new book by noted author Bill McKibben, but I was struck by three conclusions that McKibben pulled from another book called Limits To Growth, by a small group of European industrialists and scientists known as the Club of Rome. Those conclusions are as follows:

-- If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years.

-- It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his or her individual human potential.

-- If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.

The main problem with these three points? They were laid out in Limits To Growth in 1972, almost 40 years ago. Which means that were we to hold to their original (rather conservative) timeline, there's about 60 years left before we hit the ceiling on this planet. But given the current trends in the aforementioned variables are more accelerated than the Club of Rome thinkers could have ever foreseen, I'm not sure that there's that much time before systematic global societal breakdowns reach a fever pitch, to say nothing of the contamination of the remaining natural resources such as food and water.

--sigh--

See, it's shit like this that really makes one reflect on one's birthday, wondering when the descent down the inevitable road to The Road will begin. Or has it already begun, and like the frog in the ever-so-warming pot of water, we have failed to notice the ecological and sociological tipping points have already passed? I'm not sure I want the answer to that question, even if Eaarth posits some adjustments we can make to this brave new world we've created.

Step one? Buy the book, read it, and change what you can. It's the best birthday gift you could give me.

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