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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] "World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse" by Lester R. Brown, excerpts from book.
  • Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:57:32 -0400

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [fukuoka_farming] "World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse" by Lester R. Brown
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:42:26 +0530
To: fukuoka_farming@yahoogroups.com

"World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse"
by Lester R. Brown
http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/book_files/wotebook.pdf

Page 7:
A 2002 study by a team of scientists led by Mathis Wackernagel aggregates the use of the earth's natural assets, including CO2 overload in the atmosphere, into a single indicator,
the ecological footprint. The authors concluded that humanity's collective demands first surpassed the earth's regenerative capacity around 1980. By 1999, global demands on the earth's
natural systems exceeded sustainable yields by 20 percent. Ongoing calculations show it at 50 percent in 2007. Stated otherwise, it would take 1.5 Earths to sustain our current consumption.

Page 9:
Archeologist Robert McC. Adams describes the site of the ancient Sumerian civilization on the central floodplain of the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq as an empty, desolate area now outside the frontiers of cultivation. He says, 'Vegetation is sparse, and in many areas it is almost wholly absent?.Yet at one time, here lay the core, the heartland, the oldest urban, literate civilization in the world. For the Mayans, it was deforestation and soil erosion. As more and more land was cleared for farming to support the expanding empire, soil erosion undermined the productivity of their tropical soils.


Page 10:
Although we live in a highly urbanized, technologically
advanced society , we are as dependent on the earth?s
natural support systems as the Sumerians and Mayans
were. If we continue with business as usual, civilizational
collapse is no longer a matter of whether but when. We
now have an economy that is destroying its natural support systems, one that has put us on a decline and collapse path. We are dangerously close to the edge. Peter Goldmark, former Rockefeller Foundation president, puts it well: ?The death of our civilization is no longer a theory or an academic possibility, it is the road we're on.

Pages 10 and 11:
As environmental degradation and economic and
social stresses mount, the more fragile governments are having difficulty managing them. And as rapid population growth continues, cropland becomes scarce, wells go dry, forests disappear, soils erode, unemployment rises, and hunger spreads. In this situation, weaker governments are losing their credibility and their capacity to
govern. They become failing states?countries whose
governments can no longer provide personal security,
food security, or basic social services, such as education
and health care. For example, Somalia is now only a
place on the map, not a nation state in any meaningful
sense of the term.

Pages 13 and 14:
Water based 'food bubbles' that artificially inflate grain
production by depleting aquifers are starting to burst, and
as they do, irrigation-based harvests are shrinking. The
first food bubble to burst is in Saudi Arabia, where the
depletion of its fossil aquifer is virtually eliminating its 3-
million-ton wheat harvest. And there are at least another
17 countries with food bubbles based on over pumping.
The Saudi loss of some 3 million tons of wheat is less
than 1 percent of the world wheat harvest, but the potential losses in some countries are much larger. The grain produced by overpumping in India feeds 175 million Indians, according to the World Bank. For China, the comparable number is 130 million people. We don't know
exactly when these water-based food bubbles will burst,
but it could be any time now.

Page 21:
Using oil-drilling technology , they tapped into
an aquifer far below the desert to produce irrigated
wheat. In a matter of years, Saudi Arabia was selfsufficient in wheat, its principal staple food. But after more than 20 years of wheat self-sufficiency, the Saudis announced in January 2008 that this aquifer
was largely depleted and they would be phasing out
wheat production. Between 2007 and 2010, the wheat
harvest of nearly 3 million tons dropped by more than
two thirds. At this rate the Saudis will harvest their last
wheat crop in 2012 and then will be totally dependent on
imported grain to feed nearly 30 million people.


Page 23:
As the world demand for food has soared, millions of
farmers have drilled irrigation wells to expand their harvests. In the absence of government controls, far too many wells have been drilled. As a result, water tables are falling and wells are going dry in some 20 countries, including China, India, and the United States?the three
countries that together produce half the world?s grain.


Page 36:
As long as soil erosion on cropland does not exceed
new soil formation, all is well. But once it does, it leads
to falling soil fertility and eventually to land abandonment.
Sadly, soil formed on a geological time scale is
being removed on a human time scale.

Losing productive topsoil means losing both organic
matter in the soil and vegetation on the land, thus releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Rattan Lal, a soil scientist at Ohio State University , notes that the 2,500 billion tons of carbon stored in soils dwarfs the 760 billion tons in the atmosphere. The bottom line is that land degradation is helping drive climate change.

Soil erosion is not new. It is as old as the earth itself.
What is new is that it has gradually accelerated ever since
agriculture began. At some point, probably during the
nineteenth century , the loss of topsoil from erosion
surpassed the new soil that is formed through natural
processes.

Today, roughly a third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil at an excessive rate, thereby reducing the land's inherent productivity.
An analysis of several studies on soil erosion?s effect on U.S. crop yields concluded that for each inch of topsoil lost, wheat and corn yields declined by close to 6 percent.



  • [permaculture] "World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse" by Lester R. Brown, excerpts from book., Lawrence F. London, Jr., 03/23/2011

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