The Headlines Are Still Missing the News

Population Growth. Diminished and Endangered Water Supplies. Desertification. Crisis in Food Supply. We get these headlines everyday, because in some way or another there is breaking news – scientist’s new findings, food riots, some regions’ diminished water supply, UN Agricultural Predictions… To the extent that we’re widely aware of these issues, or make it our business to weave these ideas together into a cogent view of trends – there is a big picture coming together - and the limits to ecological services are a prominant part. It is a picture that was first painted in the very early 19th century by Thomas Malthus.

His context was limited to conditions of the day, but the idea was basically sound. What forestalled Malthus’ gloomy prediction was the darling of the 20th century – and has come to dramatically shape the view of living generations – the technological fix. The wide scale exploitation of fossil fuels that provided for the economic expansion of the industrial age; the chemical-green revolution of the 1950s that tremendously increased the world’s food supply; the technological and scientific advances that living generations were raised on gives us to believe that technology will always provide a solution. What we see is the closing of that chapter. While science and technology will always have a central role in shaping human destiny, there are physical constraints none-the-less, “the limits of nature.” Malthus saw them; they’ve always been there; and you can only push them back so far with clever fixes.

The big picture coming together is a collage of reports, headlines if you will, of the limits to which the application of cheap energy and the attendant technology can push the limits of nature without blowback. Malthus had the first word with “An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness; with an Inquiry into our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils Which it Contains;” but much has been written since then about what to do about it. Economists often characterize it as a matter of distribution efficiencies and internalizing costs. Ecologists provide the scientific context of ecological carrying capacity and ensuring the preservation of ecological services. Lester Brown calls it Plan B.

I get an email every couple weeks from Brown’s current organization, the Earth Policy Institute. (you may know of his work from Worldwatch, an organization he founded some 30+ years ago), that excerpts Plan B. The April 16, 2008 update, titled: WORLD FACING HUGE NEW CHALLENGE ON FOOD FRONT Business-as-Usual Not a Viable Option, links the food challenge to a host of trends arising from ecological and technological constraints that have been pushed as far as possible by human ingenuity – population growth (70 million/yr), a desire for diets richer in meat, ethanol production, viable land to plow, loss of croplands to erosion and sprawl, clearing of rainforest for production, limits to irrigation – and water; while the application of existing technology to expand production depends on oil – ever more expensive. To this Mr. Brown adds the increasingly certain effects of climate change – heat waves, flooding, and the melting of glaciers essential for river flow and irrigation.

Mr. Brown summarizes: “After seven years of drawing down (grain) stocks, world grain carryover stocks in 2008 have fallen to 55 days of world consumption, the lowest on record. The result is a new era of tightening food supplies, rising food prices, and political instability. With grain stocks at an all-time low, the world is only one poor harvest away from total chaos in world grain markets. Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option.” Whew, that summary sentence is an understatement.

The news is not what it appears – we do not just have to deal with a temporary rise in grain prices. The big picture, the context that is missing from the news is that we must address the cumulative effect of trends that threaten the world food supply. Food security is one of the key defining components of civilization; without it, the stability of civilization, as we’ve come to practice it, is at risk. Plan B offers a difficult transition and path forward. It’s worth the read.