Posted on 07/10/2002 12:41:34 PM PDT by Mike Darancette
AND ENVIRONMENTAL DOOSMDAY PROPHETS IN THE WEST
By Howard Fienberg 07/09/2002
A World Wildlife Fund (WWF) study, to be released today, warns that over-consumption will force human colonization of other planets within fifty years unless it is curtailed immediately. The WWF report warns that the seas will become emptied of fish, all forests will be destroyed and supplies of drinking water will become polluted or disappear.
However, according to reliable data, the Day of Judgment is not just around the corner. In fact, economic and scientific advances have made it possible for the developed world to be more efficient in its natural resource usage, to find or make new resources, and maintain or revive endangered species.
The WWF follows in the footsteps of the Reverend Thomas Malthus, who famously predicted in his 1798 tract "An Essay on the Principle of Population" that exponential human population growth would inevitably outstrip food supplies, leading to starvation, war and mass deaths. The WWF is not alone, as Paul Ehrlich reworked Malthus' mathematically-based theories for the modern era, predicting large numbers of fatalities from famine in the 1970's in his 1968 book "The Population Bomb." Others like the Club of Rome have adhered to essentially the same arguments. But we never starved to death and humans and Earth survive to this day. Will 'present trends' continue, forcing us to begin terra-forming Mars for a mid-century move? The data says no.
Will deforestation leave us with no trees? Data from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization show a relatively consistent trend line from 1948 to the mid-nineties, with about 30 percent of the planet's land surface covered by forest. If these trends continue, nothing bad will happen. It is likely that forest coverage will increase rather than decrease. Ongoing improvement in modern agriculture means that less and less space is needed to produce more and better food, decreasing the need for clear-cutting. The developed world is already increasing conservation and replacement efforts, which might off-set any decrease in cover caused by excessive consumption in the developing world. Indeed, commercial growers are making use of faster-growing pine stocks -- a good example of market adaptation at work.
Will the seas be empty of fish? Not likely. The WWF claims that stocks of cod in the North Atlantic have declined from an estimated spawning stock of 264,000 tons in 1970, to less than sixty thousand in 1995. Yet while over-fishing of particular stocks and particular regions has yielded a decline in many wild catches, scientific aquaculture and genetically modified fish development mean that farmed fish production is increasing dramatically every year. Already, it accounts for about twenty percent of seafood production. Increased reliance on farmed fish implies lower reliance on wild fish, perhaps giving their stocks a chance to recover and even thrive.
Will we run out of drinking water? No way. While certain regions appear destined for shortages (if they don't have them already), the planet as a whole has an abundance of drinking water. The WWF might make a credible case for new policies in water management and pricing, so that these regions may benefit from other regions' abundance. But drinkable water is not disappearing. Besides, over seventy percent of the Earth's surface is water of some kind (if the worst-case-scenario climate change models are correct, that percentage will grow even further). That water can recycle through the climate, eventually into drinking water, or we can desalinate it if need be.
In short, while many major events are bound to befall us in the next fifty-odd years, the complete eradication of natural resources isn't one of them.
This study comes hard on the heels of other doom-saying research, like Mathis Wackernagel's recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article. Wackernagel and his co-authors claimed to have measured humanity's "footprint" on the Earth. By their calculations, humanity's footprint had already outgrown the planet's "capacity" by 25 percent in 1999. However, as pointed out by Reason magazine's Ron Bailey and Spiked's Jennie Bristow, the researchers' model fails to account for technological innovation. While charting the need for farmland, the researchers do not control for agricultural advancements, which will dramatically reduce the requisite amount of land. Efficiency gains in all kinds of resource consumption combined with resource restoration make Wackernagel's claims seem outlandish. Similarly, the UN Environment Program made headlines last month when it declared that a quarter of the world's mammal species could face extinction within the next 30 years. But all they actually documented were possible species that whose habitats were "threatened."
Why was the WWF study released at this particular moment? At the end of August, the United Nations will hold an Earth Summit. Both the Wackernagel and WWF studies seem to single out the United States for environmental transgressions. It is possible they hope to shame the U.S. into concessions at the conference. As the Observer reported on July 7, "WWF wants world leaders to use its findings to agree on specific actions to curb the population's impact on the planet." One would hope that, whatever dramatic proposals are considered at the Earth Summit, U.S. policy-makers will at least consult freely-available scientific data before making any rash decisions.
© 2002 Tech Central Station
Dunno, but Randy "Macho Man" Savage and Hulk Hogan should put the sleeper hold on these WWF doomsayers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.