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                        DEAD WRONG                    12/1/95
                      by Jay Hanson

    "A tormenting thought:  as of a certain point, history was
no longer real.  Without noticing it, all mankind suddenly
left reality;  everything happening since then was supposedly
not true;  but we supposedly didn't notice.  Our task would
now be to find that point, and as long as we didn't have it,
we would be forced to abide in our present destruction."
                                                Elias Canetti

    We left reality when we believed the "infinite earth ideas"
of Locke, Smith, and Marx.  Our "present destruction" (economic
system) encourages its disciples to dominate and exploit each
other and nature, and rewards the most powerful, aggressive, and
ruthless with even more power and riches.  Since the system
actively destroys people and the environment (both morally and
physically), it requires a continuous feast of new people and
natural resources.

    In essence, this method ingests natural-living systems
(including people) in one end, and excretes un-natural-dead
garbage and pollution (including now-obsolete people) out the
other -- development and progress.  The entropy law dictates
that this method can not run in reverse (Prigogine).  Our
society can not be "de-developed" and "de-progressed".

    We, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, call forth
"artificials" (large corporations) to faithfully administer our
present destruction.  Artificials may be seen as autonomous
technical structures (machines) that follow the logic inherent
in their design.  They have no innate morals to keep them from
seducing our politicians, subverting our democratic processes
or lying to maximize profit.  Today, the artificials are
transforming life into death as efficiently and as quickly as
they can.

    Now we find that Locke, Smith, Marx, and that entire
"dismal science" called economics -- were wrong.  Dead wrong.
We find that we actually do live in a finite world with a
finite life-support system that may be destroyed in less than
35 years.  Yet we are unable to call the artificials back
because they have stolen our only means to do so:  our
so-called political system.

    Thus, the artificials will rip, tear, and gulp down our
life-support system till it's gone.  We gambled it all and we
were wrong.  Dead.  Wrong.

jhanson@ilhawaii.net

References:
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TOWARD SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: CONCEPTS, METHODS, AND POLICY

by The International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE)
and Island Press -- 1994. Phone: 800-828-1302 or 707-983-6432

UNSUSTAINABILITY: A CONSENSUS
    "Little wonder, therefore, that in 1992 two of the world's
most prestigious scientific institutions saw fit to issue a
joint statement of warning 'Unrestrained resource consumption
for energy production and other uses could lead to
catastrophic outcomes for the global environment.  Some of the
environmental changes may produce irreversible damage to the
earth's capacity to sustain life. ...  The future of our
planet is in the balance.' (RS and NAS 1992, 2, 4)" [p. 27]

[http://kabir.umd.edu/ISEE/ISEEhome.html
 http://www.islandpress.com
 * See Also: http://newciv.org/worldtrans/whole/warning.html ]

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               INVESTING IN NATURAL CAPITAL:
         THE ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO SUSTAINABILITY

by The International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE)
and Island Press -- 1994. Phone: 800-828-1302 or 707-983-6432

HOW CLOSE TO PRACTICAL LIMITS?
    "There is accumulating evidence that humanity my soon have
to confront the real carrying capacity constraints.  For
example, nearly 40% of terrestrial net primary productivity
(photosynthesis) is already being used ("appropriated") by
humans, one species among millions, and this fraction is
steadily increasing (Vitousek et al. 1986).  If we take this
percentage as an index of the human carrying capacity of the
earth and assume that a growing economy could come to
appropriate 80% of photosynthetic production before destroying
the functional integrity of the ecosphere, the earth will
effectively go from half to completely full within the next
doubling period -- currently about 35 years (Daly 1991).

    "The significance of this unprecedented convergence of
economic scale with that of the ecosphere is not generally
appreciated in the current debate on sustainable development.
Because the human impact on critical functions of the
ecosphere is not uniform "effective fullness" may actually
occur may actually occur well before the next doubling of
human activity.  (Liebig's law reminds us that is takes only a
single critical limiting factor to constrain the entire
system.)  Indeed, data presented in this chapter suggests
that long-term human carrying capacity may already have been
at less than the present 40% preemption of photosynthesis. If
so, even current consumption (throughput) cannot be sustained
indefinitely, and further material growth can be purchased
only with accelerated depletion of remaining natural capital
stocks."  [p. 383]
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[This is a short snip from a longer article that appeared in
 the fall, 1995, EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, 300 Broadway # 28,
 San Francisco, CA  94133 Phone: 415-788-3666
 earthisland@igc.apc.org  or  http://www.econet.apc.org/ei/ ]

                AMERICA'S TREES ARE DYING
                  by Charles E. Little

    I remember what West Virginia landowner and self-taught
naturalist Joe Aliff told me when we were tramping through
the "falling forest" in the Appalachian hollows.  To see what
is happening, he said, "All you got to do is look."  By that
he meant something more than having one's eyelids in the open
position.  And when you look, you see that the trees are
dying.

    I have since learned to see a world of dying trees --
dying because the trunks have been bored into and the leaves
have been stripped by pests;  dying because fungi are girdling
their bases and branches and turning their leaves to black
corpses;  dying because their shrunken roots can no longer
absorb enough nutrients and water to keep them alive;  dying
from the direct effects of too much ozone in the troposphere
and not enough in the stratosphere;  dying because neighboring
trees have been clearcut, allowing cold, heat and drying winds
into their precincts;  dying because of being bathed too often
in the sour gases of industry;  dying because the weather
patterns have changed and they cannot adapt quickly enough.

    The more trees that die, the more trees that will die.
In the forlorn formulation of ecologist George Woodwell,
climate warming from an increasing greenhouse effect could, in
temperate forests especially, increase the respiration rate of
trees to the degree that it may surpass the rate of
photosynthesis . The tree would then no longer be a net
producer of oxygen, but a net producer of carbon dioxide.

    "The amount of carbon dioxide that could be injected into
the atmosphere," wrote Woodwell and longtime associate
Richard Houghton in Scientific American, could theoretically
approach "approximately 750 billion metric tons, or about the
same amount of carbon as there is in the atmosphere
currently."  Implied by this analysis is a devastating
feedback loop in which trees in the vast northern hemisphere
forests, instead of absorbing carbon, add to the global
build-up of CO2 in a nightmarish cycle, whose finale could be
a worldwide policy decision to cut down trees in order to
protect the Earth's oxygen supply!
. . . . . . . . .
from THE DYING OF THE TREES: THE PANDEMIC IN AMERICA'S FORESTS,
by Charles E. Little. Penguin, 1995. To order the book, please
call 1-800-253-6476.
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Ozone depletion: BAS Press Release 2/95, 1 August 1995

OZONE "HOLE" OVER ANTARCTICA STILL DEEPENING

"The Antarctic ozone "hole" is still deepening, according to
 research by Dr Anna Jones and Jonathan Shanklin of the British
 Antarctic Survey (BAS), published in Nature this week.
 Springtime values of ozone recorded at Halley Research Station
 in Antarctica have fallen to less than 40% of the values seen
 in the 1960s. New research shows that the decline is no longer
 restricted to the Antarctic spring but has extended into the
 summertime, increasing the amount of harmful ultra-violet
 radiation reaching the surface of Antarctica and its
 surrounding oceans."

[See also: http://www.acd.ucar.edu/gpdf/ozone/index.html
 http://www.epa.gov/docs/ozone/index.html
 http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/ozone-depletion/
 http://www.ciesin.org/
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Global warming: SCIENCE NEWS, Vol 148, Page 293, Nov. 4, 1995:

         WORLD CLIMATE PANEL CHARTS PATH FOR ACTION

"An international panel of scientists and economists has shifted
 the threat of climate change from the future squarely into the
 present.

"The United Nations-sponsored committee, which carries the
 authority of over 2,000 investigators, has concluded that
 humankind is now altering climate in an identifiable way. It
 also states for the first time that the expected economic
 disruptions caused by climate change are large enough to warrant
 taking action to stem the problem, even if such steps cost
 money."

[break]

"According to the impacts committee, the rise in sea level
 expected by 2100 will put 92 million people at risk of flooding
 each year, a doubling of the current number. Climate change will
 also threaten human health and cause significant loss of life by
 fostering the spread of malaria and other vector-borne diseases,
 according to the panel.

"Warming and changes in rainfall will disrupt agriculture in
 developing countries, reduce Earth's biological diversity, melt
 one-third to one-half of existing mountain glaciers, and cause
 one-third of all ecosystems to shift to another type, such as
 from forest to grassland."

 Published by Science Service Inc., 1719 N. St. N.W.,
 Washington, D.C.  20036  202-785-2255

[See also: http://www.ciesin.org/
 http://solstice.crest.org/environment/global_change/gc.htm
 http://www.unep.ch/ipcc
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