The Problem of Sustainability (1992)

Abstract

T hree crises loom dead ahead. The first is a food crisis evident in two curves that intersect in the not too distant future: one showing worldwide soil losses of 24 billion tons, the other a rapidly rising world population. The second crisis is that caused by the era of cheap fossil energy and its conclusion. We are in a race between the exhaustion of fossil fuels, global warming, and the policy requirements necessary to transition to a new era based on efficiency and solar energy. The third crisis, perhaps best symbolized by the looming prospect of a global climate change, has to do with ecological thresholds and the limits of natural systems. We can no longer assume that nature will be either bountiful or stable or that the Earth will remain hospitable to civilization. These three crises feed upon one another. They are interactive in ways that we cannot fully anticipate. Together they constitute the first planetary crisis, one that will either spur humans to a much higher state or cause our demise. It is not too much to say that the decisions about how or whether life will be lived in the next century are being made now. We have a few decades, perhaps, in which we must make unprecedented changes in the way we relate to each other and to nature.