State of the World
State of the World 1999 presents evidence of the birth of an entirely new economy, an Environmental Revolution that may be as sweeping as the Industrial Revolution that put us on our present unsustainable course. The authors argue that, far from being too costly to consider, the transition to an environmentally sustainable economy represents the greatest investment opportunity in history. In country after country, community after community, people are making the changes needed to shift from today's fossil fuel-based, auto-centric, throwaway economy to a solar/hydrogen-powered, bicycle/rail-centered, reuse/recycle economy--an economy that will satisfy human needs while preserving the Earth's ecosystems.
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In this fifteenth edition of State of the World, Lester R. Brown and the Worldwatch research team look at the environmental effects of continuing economic growth as the economy outgrows the earth's ecosystem. As the global economy has expanded from $5 trillion of output in 1950 to $29 trillion in 1997, its demands have crossed many of the earth's sustainable yield thresholds.
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This fourteenth edition of State of the World coincides with two important milestones: the fifth anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and the tenth anniversary of the 1987 Montreal protocol to protect the earth's ozone layer. With these two landmarks in mind, 1997 seemed a particularly good year to review progress in addressing global environmental problems.
In this 1996 edition of State of the World 1996, Lester R. Brown and the other researchers at Worldwatch identify and describe the rapid acceleration of trends that is driving the human experiment across thresholds of change far more rapidly than in the past, challenging our ability to react rationally and quickly.
This twelfth edition in the State of the World series is appearing at a time when more and more people are aware of the effect of a rapidly rising human population on the earth's environmental support systems.
State of the World 1994 is must reading, for it finds that we're at a watershed in human history, invisible at the time, that changes the way we live. Chief among the findings is that the earth's ability to sustain life is severely strained. Grasslands have been overgrazed. Oceans over-harvested. Forests, which help regulate climate, moderate water supply, and give home to much of the planet's life, are disappearing at record rates. In our effort to make the earth yield more for ourselves, we're damaging its ability to support our children.
The world is entering a new era - one in which the future economic progress depends on reversing environmental degradation.
The world today is either in the early stages of an Environmental Revolution or on the verge of environmental collapse and economic decline.
As the dust from the cold war settles, the battle to save the planet will replace the battle over ideology as the organizing theme of the new world order. During the twenty years since the first Earth Day in 1970, the earth lost tree cover over an area nearly as large as the United States east of the Mississippi River. Deserts claimed more land than is devoted to crops in China. Thousands of plant and animal species with which we shared the planet in 1970 no longer exist. The world's farmers lost as much topsoil as covers India's cropland. And more people joined the world's population than inhabited the planet in 1900.
As the world enters the last decade of the century, the environmental problems facing human society have moved to center stage. While awareness of the issues has soared in recent years, no country has yet embarked on the ambitious turnaround strategies needed to make today's societies sustainable.
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