LESTER R.
BROWN
Summaries are given for 1997 trends in food, energy, atmospheric pollution,
transportation, communication, social and military affairs, and environmental,
economic, and social features.
We live, it is often said, in the ‘‘information age.’’ Satellite television, fax machines, cellular telephones and, of course, the Internet deliver instant, round–the–clock entertainment, news and communications to even remote corners of the world. Such technology delivers text, sound and still and moving images via far–flung computer networks at the click of a mouse.
Individuals and organizations can choose from an enormous, often overwhelming array of information. The new technologies make it almost trivially easy to send digitized scientific data and essential news around the globe, yet they convey misleading advertising, disjointed “factoids’’ and mindless entertainment just as easily. Indeed, much of what the information age has to offer caters to the trivial, the transient, or the fashionable.
The problem today is not the quantity of information, or the speed with which it is delivered, but the need to figure out which facts we need, and to separate knowledge from rumors. In our fast–changing world, accurate, relevant information is becoming ever more urgent for policymakers, businesspeople, international diplomats, community activists and ‘‘ordinary’’ citizens alike. The premium is on interdisciplinary perspectives that transcend the confines of any particular academic specialty, international information that goes beyond the limited perspective of any single country or culture, insights on the interaction between human societies and natural systems and ‘‘historical’’ information that is cognizant of the past but attentive to the needs of future generations.
The world today is warmer, more crowded, more urban, economically richer and environmentally poorer than ever before. This past year was one of near–record global economic growth—and of disturbing new signs of environmental stress. In 1997, the Earth’s average temperature was the highest since recordkeeping began in 1866. With each additional year of record or near record temperature, the evidence of human–induced climate change becomes more convincing. In December 1997, government representatives gathered in Kyoto, Japan, to negotiate an agreement to reverse the rise in carbon emissions from human activities, with the hope of eventually checking the increase in temperature.
At the end of 1997, we shared the Earth with 80 million more people than a year earlier. Of this total, nearly 50 million people were added in Asia, the region that is already home to more than half of humanity. Each month, the world adds the equivalent of another Sweden. And it becomes more urban with each passing day: in 1800, only London had a million people. Now there are 326 cities that are at least that size. Sometime in the next decade, the number of people living in cities is expected to surpass those in the countryside.
Despite financial turmoil in Southeast Asia, the global economy expanded by 4.1 percent in 1997, marking the third consecutive year with growth of 4 percent or more. Economic output per person jumped by 2.6 percent. If the global economy continues to expand as projected, output per person worldwide will top $5,000 for the first time in 1998.
Signs of environmental stress continue to accumulate. Among the more disturbing in 1997 was the uncontrolled burning of Indonesia’s rainforests, a conflagration that filled the air in the region with smoke for several months—smoke so intense at times in Indonesia and Malaysia that it caused acute respiratory stress, leaving millions physically sick. It led to the cancellation of 1,100 flights and a precipitous drop in earnings from tourism. The economic mismanagement in Indonesia that has led to bad debt, failing banks and a falling currency has also weakened the rainforests to the point where they now burn out of control during droughts like the one induced by El Niño.
The Yellow River, the northernmost of China’s two major rivers, was drained dry by withdrawals from upstream provinces for several months, failing to make it to the sea for the thirteenth consecutive year. The river ran dry for longer than ever before, and in 1997 failed to reach the sea for 226 days out of 365. Farmers in the lower reaches of the river, deprived of irrigation water, saw their grain output fall.
FOOD: SURPLUSES TO SCARCITY
In 1997, the world’s farmers harvested a record 1,881 million tons of grain, narrowly eclipsing 1996’s record harvest of 1,869 million tons. Although the harvest rose, it did not keep up with population growth, so per capita grain output dropped from 324 kilograms (kg) to 322 kg. The drop in per capita grain production worldwide of more than 6 percent since its all–time peak in 1984 is one indication that the half–century dominated by food surpluses may be coming to an end.
As recently as 1990, the world had two food reserves to call upon—carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when a new harvest begins) and cropland idled under U.S. farm commodity programs that were designed to avoid price–depressing world grain surpluses. In 1995, the farm support programs were dismantled, letting the set–aside land be returned to production in 1996. The 11 million hectares (ha) of grainland held out in 1990, assuming a yield of 4 tons per ha, represented a reserve of 44 million tons–nearly nine days of world consumption.
Even with this land back in production in 1996 and 1997, however, the world was not able to rebuild its depleted grain stocks (Figure 1). With carryover stocks of grain remaining below 60 days of world consumption, the world has little more than pipeline supplies. One poor harvest could lead to chaos in world grain markets.
Along with the scarcity of productive new land to bring under the plow and the diminishing response to the use of additional fertilizer in many countries, water scarcity is emerging as a serious constraint on efforts to expand world food production. For example, in North Africa and the Middle East—from Morocco in the west through Iran in the east—water shortages are making it impossible for farmers to keep up with the growth in demand. As countries in the region push against the limits of their water supplies, the growing demand by cities is typically satisfied by diverting irrigation water from farmers. Countries then are forced to import grain to offset the loss of irrigation water. Importing a ton of wheat is the same as importing a thousand tons of water. In 1997, the water required to produce the grain imported into this region was equal to the annual flow of the Nile River.
Under China’s north central plain, which supplies nearly 40 percent of the country’s grain harvest, the water table is falling by a reported 1.5 meters per year. At some point in the not too distant future, aquifer depletion in this region will lead to sharp cutbacks in irrigation water supplies. The bottom line is that if the world is facing a future of water scarcity, it is also facing a future of food scarcity.
AN APPETITE FOR PROTEIN
Perhaps the single most important distinguishing feature of dietary changes over the last half–century has been the growing appetite for animal protein (Figure 2). It is hunger for protein that spurred an increase in the world fish catch of nearly five–fold, boosting it from 19 million tons in 1950 to 93 million tons today. This has pushed the oceans to their limits and in some cases beyond. Marine biologists at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization report that almost every oceanic fishery is now being fished at or beyond capacity.
As we reach the limits of the oceans to supply animal protein, many countries are turning to aquaculture, or fish farming. The disadvantage of fish farming is that fish in ponds or cages have to be fed—just like chickens in coops. Fish farmers are now competing with poultry and pork producers for grain and protein meal supplements, such as soybean meal. Worldwide, the production of beef and mutton, like that of fish, depends heavily on a natural system— rangelands. And, like oceanic fisheries, rangelands are being pushed to the limits of their carrying capacity and beyond. Once rangelands are fully exploited and substantial growth in beef production can come only from feedlots, then the competition with pork and poultry for grain intensifies. Chickens, which require scarcely 2 kg of grain concentrate to produce one kg of live weight, have a decided advantage over cattle in the feedlot, which require nearly 7 kg of grain per kg of weight gain. As a consequence, world poultry production has now overtaken beef for the first time in history (Figure 3).
Beef and pork production, which were running neck and neck from mid–century until 1978, have now separated: in 1997, pork production was easily a third higher than beef. Much of this surge in world pork production came in China, where half the world’s pork is now produced and consumed.
One consequence of the growing demand for animal protein has been a dramatic growth in world soybean production over the last 50 years, since pork and poultry producers depend heavily on soybean meal as a supplement to grain in their feed rations. At 152 million tons, the world soybean harvest in 1997 was nine times larger than in 1950.
Although the soybean, the world’s leading source of high quality protein, originated in China, it has found its agronomic and economic niche in the United States, which produces half of the global harvest. Grown largely in rotation with corn, especially in the Corn Belt, the U.S. soybean harvest is now worth far more than the wheat harvest.
ENERGY REVOLUTION UNDERWAY
Although the changes in the world protein economy are dramatic to say the least, even more far–reaching changes are in prospect in the world energy economy. Energy historians may remember 1997 as the year in which two of the world’s largest oil companies announced they were making major investments in solar and wind energy. With the commitment of $1 billion and $500 million, respectively, by British Petroleum and Royal Dutch/Shell to the development of wind, solar, and other renewable energy resources, these leading oil companies have, in effect, become energy companies. And they have indicated that they take the threat of global warming seriously.
From a commercial point of view, it is not too surprising that oil companies are beginning to look at renewable energy resources. Thus far during the 1990s, sales of coal and oil have grown just over 1 percent a year. The sale of natural gas, regarded by many as a transition fuel from the fossil fuel era to the solar/hydrogen age, has been growing at 2 percent a year since 1990. Wind power, meanwhile, has grown an amazing 26 percent a year (Table 1 and Figure 4). And sales of solar cells, averaging 15 percent annually from 1990 through 1996, jumped by a phenomenal 43 percent in 1997. At the end of the year, an estimated 400,000 homes, most of them in third world villages, were getting their electricity from solar cell arrays.
Advancing technology is also fueling this growth in solar cell use. The use of a photovoltaic roofing material developed in Japan is now growing by leaps and bounds. The Japanese government plans to have in place 4,600 megawatts of rooftop generating capacity by 2010, an output comparable to the electricity generation of a country the size of Chile.
Corporations in the energy business that are interested in growth are starting to shift investments from oil, coal and nuclear power, where growth is at a near standstill, to wind and solar, which have rather spectacular growth rates. Once thought of as fringe energy sources, wind and photovoltaic cells are seen increasingly as mainstays of the new energy economy now emerging. A wind resource survey by the U.S. Department of Energy, for example, concluded that North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas had enough harnessable wind energy to meet all U.S. electricity needs. Today, the world gets roughly one–fifth of its electricity from hydropower, but its potential is dwarfed by that of wind.
The energy revolution is not limited to new sources of energy. It also involves some dramatic gains in the efficiency of energy use. One of these involves the compact fluorescent light bulb, which provides the same amount of light as traditional incandescence, but with less than one–fourth as much electricity. Sales of compact fluorescent bulbs have climbed from 45 million in 1988 to 356 million in 1997, an eight–fold increase, with China now the leading manufacturer (Figure 5). The estimated 980 million compact fluorescent bulbs in use today lower electricity needs by the output of roughly 100 coal–fired power plants.
THE DESIRE FOR MOBILITY
Evidence of the human desire to become more mobile is reflected in sales of vehicles, such as bicycles, motorbikes and automobiles. Although world production of bikes and cars was roughly the same in 1969, at just over 20 million, the gap between the two has widened dramatically since then (Figure 6). Now more than 100 million bicycles come off the assembly lines each year, compared with fewer than 40 million automobiles. In 1997, car production increased more than 5 percent over 1996. Bicycle production, meanwhile, suffering from too much capacity and excessive inventories, dropped in 1996 (the latest year for which data are available) to 101 million from 109 million the year before.
The enormous differences in the sales volume of bicycles and automobiles reflect more than anything else the number of people reaching the level of affluence that lets them buy bicycles versus the much smaller number who can afford an automobile. In addition, those living in cities, particularly crowded Asian cities, have discovered that they can often be more mobile with a modest investment in a bike than with a far larger investment in an car.
Several countries in Europe systematically try to increase bicycle use. In Danish and Dutch cities, an estimated 20 percent and 30 percent respectively of all trips are taken by bicycle. Bikes have also been strongly encouraged in Germany, where use has increased by 50 percent over the last two decades.
In recent years, electric bicycles have begun to attract attention. Relying on a small battery, these provide electrical assistance on hills and in other situations that enable the average speed of the bicycle to increase. The technology is particularly attractive to older riders, to those who have to contend with hilly terrain, or to those who have a particularly long daily commute.
WORLD GETTING WARMER
In 1997, carbon emissions, carbon dioxide (CO2 ) concentrations in the atmosphere, and the Earth’s average temperature all climbed to record highs. Carbon emissions in 1997 totaled 6.3 billion tons, up 1.5 percent from the 6.2 billion tons of 1996 (Figure 7). Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 climbed to 364 parts per million— the highest in 160,000 years (Figure 8). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of some 1,500 of the world’s leading meteorologists and other scientists, estimates that annual carbon emissions will have to drop below 2 billion tons by 2050 if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are to stabilize.
With the record temperature of 1997, the 14 warmest years since recordkeeping began in 1866 have all occurred since 1979 (Figure 9). And the five warmest have come during the 1990s. Although this strong warming trend over the last two decades does not provide absolute proof of CO2 –induced climate change, it is yet another piece of evidence that global warming is indeed underway.
Additional evidence can be found in melting icecaps in the Andes, shrinking glaciers in the European Alps, and the shrinkage in the sea ice around Antarctica. The combination of ice melting and the expansion of water from warming has raised average sea level between 10 and 25 centimeters over the last century.
ALTERING NATURAL SYSTEMS
By far the most visible human alteration of the planet has been the destruction of forests. Almost half the forests that once covered vast expanses of the Earth are already gone. Between 1980 and 1995, the world lost at least 200 million hectares of forest—an area three times as large as Texas. In recent years, the world has experienced an estimated net loss of 16 million hectares a year.
The amount of nitrogen fixed in forms that plants can use through fertilizer manufacturing, the burning of fossil fuels and the extensive planting of leguminous crops such as soybeans now exceeds the amount fixed by nature. Synthesized nitrogen fertilizer, the use of which has increased nine–fold since 1950, is the major form of nitrogen fixation as a result of human activities. Wherever it leads to excessive nutrient runoff, as it does in the Midwest and the lower Mississippi Valley, it often leads to vast algal blooms that then decay, absorbing the free oxygen in the water and depriving fish of oxygen. The hypoxic region, or “dead zone,” now formed through this process each year in the Gulf of Mexico is roughly the size of New Jersey.
Closely associated with the burning of fossil fuels is the emission of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides, which combine with moisture in the atmosphere to form acid rain. Although emissions of these two pollutants have been sharply reduced in North America and Western Europe, they are still climbing rapidly in Asia. Acid deposition in parts of China is now far higher than the levels reached in Japan in 1975 before that nation established stringent emission limits. Acids can eliminate fish in freshwater lakes, rendering them lifeless.
Another economic activity that is particularly disruptive of the environment is mining. In recent years, mineral exploration has expanded dramatically in developing countries as mines have been depleted in industrial nations. Gold mining is especially disruptive. The 2,400 tons of gold produced in 1997 generated 725 million tons of waste—one ton of waste for every eight people on the planet. In addition to the physical disruption that gold mining brings, the resulting waste includes large quantities of cyanide solution and mercury, which are used to separate gold from the ore.
One of the consequences of the many alterations in the environment just described is an accelerating loss of species. The most recent study of the state of life on Earth by the World Conservation Union—IUCN estimates that 11 percent of all bird species are threatened with extinction. For fish, the figure is far higher—34 percent. In the U.S. Colorado River basin, 29 of 50 native fish species are either endangered or already extinct. Among the 233 species of primates, of which humans are one, half are now threatened with extinction. The surviving populations of some primate species are measured in the hundreds.
CHANGING SOCIAL CONDITIONS
As noted earlier, at the end of 1997 we shared the planet with 80 million more people than at the beginning of the year (Figure 10). Close to 60 percent of these people were added in Asia, in countries that are already densely populated. If recent urbanization trends continue, in a few years—for the first time in human history—more people will live in cities than in the countryside (Figure 11).
Educational levels are rising worldwide. Among the more prominent gains in recent years has been the increase in female education in developing countries. Between 1990 and 1995, female enrollment in some 47 developing countries surveyed by the U.S. Agency for International Development increased from 226 million to 254 million. As a result, nearly 70 percent of girls of primary school age worldwide were in school in 1995. Notwithstanding this progress, a third of all children in the developing world fail to complete even four years of education.
In industrial countries, the big difference between men and women in educational achievement traditionally has been in graduate degrees in professional schools. But now this, too, is changing. Law and business school enrollments are approaching gender parity. In medical schools in the United States and Canada, more than 40 percent of students are female. For veterinary schools, it is nearly 70 percent. In engineering and architecture schools, however, men still greatly outnumber women.
Of the social trends that affect human health most directly, the spread of HIV is among the most destructive. In 1997, nearly 6 million people were newly infected with the virus that causes AIDS, bringing the total infected worldwide to 42 million (Figure 12). Although a majority of HIV infections are found in Africa, the number of new infections is growing fastest in Asia. Some countries, such as Uganda and Thailand, have made impressive progress in checking the spread of HIV. In sheer numbers, the principal threats today are in India and China: prostitutes in Bombay, India, and intravenous drug users in parts of China have infection rates over 50 percent. If the virus cannot be contained in these early centers of infection, it could spread rapidly in these huge populations, infecting record numbers. With 2.3 million fatalities in 1997, this new disease now claims more than twice as many lives as malaria.
One threat to health that affects far more people than AIDS is cigarette smoking. Roughly half of those who smoke will eventually be killed by the effects of this habit, either through heart disease, stroke, or lung cancer, or through one of the many other life–threatening illnesses associated with smoking.
In 1997, the world produced some 5.8 trillion cigarettes, roughly 1,000 for each of its 5.8 billion men, women, and children (Figure 13). The one encouraging sign is that production is not expanding as fast as population. As a result, the number of cigarettes manufactured per person has fallen 4 percent from the all–time high reached in 1990. China is by far the largest manufacturer of cigarettes, followed by the United States.
While cigarette smoking has been declining in industrial countries, it has been expanding rapidly in developing ones. If recent smoking trends continue, tobacco–related deaths, now estimated at 3 million annually, could reach 10 million in 2020, with 70 percent of them being in the developing world. Raising taxes on cigarettes in many countries has helped reduce smoking and the soaring health care costs associated with this deadly habit (Table 2). In some countries, including Norway, the United Kingdom and Denmark, the tax per pack of cigarettes now exceeds $4. This compares with a cigarette tax in the United States of 66¢ per pack.
One developing country that is making progress in reducing cigarette smoking is the Philippines, where a combination of an aggressive educational effort and a stiff new tax on cigarettes lowered cigarette production by 16 percent. In some countries, higher cigarette taxes have achieved dramatic results. For example, in New Zealand an increase in the tax per pack of nearly $2 between 1980 and 1991 reduced the cigarettes smoked per person from 4,100 a year to just over 1,500. And in Belgium, a 46 percent increase in cigarette prices between 1985 and 1995 appears to have cut cigarette consumption by one–fourth. A number of national governments, as well as California and Massachusetts in the United States, use the cigarette tax proceeds to fund educational programs to discourage smoking.
A WIRED WORLD
Although more than a century has passed since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, most people in the world do not yet have ready access to this modern mode of communication. The good news is that the number of new telephone hookups is increasing at 7 percent a year, bringing the total number of hookups to 740 million in 1996 (Figure 14). Since 1960, the telephone network has expanded eight–fold.
The number of telephones per 100 people varies widely from country to country. The United States, for example, has a telephone density of 60 phones per 100 people, while China has four. Most of the growth in phone installations is now coming in developing countries, where the number of telephones is increasing by 19 percent a year.
Even more exciting in terms of facilitating communication among people is the worldwide boom in cellular phones, the number of which has increased by more than half each year since 1991. By 1996, there were 135 million cellular phone subscribers worldwide.
Although this technology was first adopted in industrial countries, it is moving even more rapidly in developing ones. In those that have not yet invested in a vast network of telephone lines strung along poles, the cellular phone— linked either by relay towers or, within the next year or two, by a network of satellites—will conserve millions of tons of copper and wood. It enables developing countries to literally leapfrog into the future, avoiding investment in traditional equipment and networks.
Increasing even more rapidly than the number of telephones is the number of computers linked together electronically. In 1997, there were more than 30 million host computers on the Internet. The number of Internet users was far greater, since one host computer could plug several computers into the global network. The number of personal computers now linked together is estimated at more than 100 million.
Of the 100 million or so people who are online, more than half are in the United States. Most of the rest are in Australia, Europe, Canada and Japan. Thus far, developing countries have only 8 percent of the Internet hookups. But like the telephone network, the Internet is now expanding rapidly in poorer countries. For example, Internet access has grown five–fold in Brazil and Russia in the last two years alone. Hookups are also increasing rapidly in China and India, where the numbers in 2000 are projected at 4 million and 1.5 million, respectively.
One technology facilitating the explosion in electronic communications is satellites. The number of satellites launched annually has exceeded 100 in all but a few years since 1965, typically ranging between 100 and 150. Thirty years ago, just over half the satellites launched were for military purposes—reconnaissance, surveillance and other military uses. With the end of the Cold War, this shifted dramatically. In 1997, only 8 percent of satellites launched were for military uses, while 69 percent were for communications. Over the next decade, some 1,700 additional communications satellites—10 times the number now in orbit—are scheduled for launch. This new generation of satellites, mostly for low orbit, is expected to revolutionize global communications.
DEMILITARIZATION CONTINUES
After peaking in 1984 at $1,140 billion (in 1995 dollars), global military expenditures dropped to $701 billion in 1996, a decline of 39 percent (Figure 15). The United States still accounts for one–third of the total. But at $243 billion in 1997, U.S. military outlays were down from some $370 billion in the late 1980s. The most precipitous drop has occurred in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics, where expenditures have fallen from $247 billion in 1985 to just $21 billion in 1995. The number of armed conflicts is also declining. In 1992, the number exceeded 50, but by 1997 it had dropped to 24. In contrast to earlier historical periods, nearly all these armed conflicts were taking place within rather than between nations. They involved government forces, paramilitary forces, insurgent and guerrilla bands, and drug warlords, among others. Unfortunately, civilians are more often the victims of these conflicts than in earlier eras—rising from 67 percent of the victims in World War II to 90 percent in the 1990s. The heaviest fighting in 1996 was in Afghanistan, Algeria, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Turkey, typically involving ethnic, tribal, or religious conflicts.
This decline in armed conflicts, particularly in countries such as Croatia and Angola, also reduced the UN peacekeeping presence. After peaking at $3.3 billion in 1994, UN peacekeeping expenditures dropped to an estimated $1.3 billion in 1997.
ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE: THE FISCAL FACTOR
As analysts have focused on the magnitude of changes needed to convert the existing fossil–fuel–based, automobile–centered, throw-away economy into one that is environmentally sustainable, it is clear that an increasingly popular instrument for doing this is fiscal policy. At present, most governments tax income and savings heavily. But working and saving are constructive activities and should be encouraged. Activities that should be discouraged include carbon emissions, sulfur emissions, the generation of hazardous waste, the use of virgin raw materials (as opposed to recycled ones) and the use of pesticides.
Six European countries have begun this tax shifting process. Sweden, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Finland have all begun reducing taxes on personal income and wages while raising taxes on such things as carbon emissions, vehicle ownership and landfilling.
The other side of this coin is that governments have long subsidized environmentally destructive activities, with the most important activity being the use of fossil fuels. One reason fossil fuel use and carbon emissions have declined so precipitously in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe is that subsidies have been sharply reduced during the 1990s. In 1991, subsidies for fossil fuel use in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe exceeded $130 billion. By 1995, this had dropped to $40 billion.
Substantial cuts in fossil fuel subsidies have also occurred in China, from $26 billion to $11 billion thus far during the 1990s. These cuts in China have led to higher coal prices and more efficient energy use. The United Kingdom was able to cut its carbon emissions during this decade in part because it largely eliminated the subsidies to coal mines, many of which were too inefficient to compete on their own.
Although the world is still in the early stages of restructuring fiscal policies to achieve environmental goals, this approach does promise to accelerate the shift to an environmentally sustainable economy. One advantage of tax policy over regulation is that it enables policymakers to steer the economy in the right direction while exploiting the inherent efficiency of the market.
Recommended Reading: Extended discussions of the topics described in this overview can be found in Vital Signs 1998, edited by Lester Brown, Michael Renner, and Christopher Flavin, written by the staff of the Worldwatch Institute (Washington, DC) and published by W.W. Norton & Company (1998).
Lester R.
Brown (CC ‘69) is President of the Worldwatch Institute,
1776 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20006;
phone: (202) 452-1992; fax: (202) 296-7365;
email: lrbrown@worldwatch.org.
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