This sound nice, but no mention is made of the NET ADDITION of over 7
million humans per MONTH to earth's population. Attitides and awareness
must include the responsibilities  and effects of procreation if the below
perceptions are to become meaningfully realized. 

Steve Kurtz
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 25, 1999


WORLD MAY BE ON EDGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL REVOLUTION


As we approach the new millennium, there are growing signs that the world
may be
on the edge of an environmental revolution comparable to the political
revolution that swept Eastern Europe, reports Lester Brown, president of
the
Worldwatch Institute, in an article in the March/April issue of World
Watch. The
social revolution in Eastern Europe led to a restructuring of the region's
political systems.  This global revolution could lead to an environmentally
driven restructuring of the global economy.

"Not all environmentalists will agree with me," said author Lester Brown,
"but I
believe that there are now some clear signs that the world is in the early
stages of a major shift in environmental consciousness.  What is not clear
to me
is whether we will cross this threshold in time to avoid the disruption of
global economic progress."

Across a spectrum of activities, places, and institutions, the atmosphere
has
changed markedly in just the last two years.  The CEOs of some prominent
corporations are now beginning to sound like spokespeople for Greenpeace. 
Some
political leaders are adopting policies long championed by ecologists.  And
literally thousands of environmental NGOs have sprung up around the world,
mobilizing millions of people for change.

For many who track environmental trends, such as collapsing fisheries,
shrinking
forests, rising temperatures, and the wholesale loss of plant and animal
species, it has been clear for some time that economic progress can be
sustained
only if the economy is restructured so that its natural support systems can
be
protected. 

For those not already convinced of the need to replace the Western,
fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy with an economy
that
would be environmentally sustainable, what is happening as China modernizes
offers compelling new evidence.  For example, a car in every garage in
China,
American style, would not only deprive China of scarce cropland, but would
also
drive China's oil consumption to some 80 million barrels a day, well above
the
current world production of 67 million barrels per day.

"If the western industrial development model will not work for China, it
will
not work for India, whose population will reach 1 billion later this year,
or
for the other 2 billion people in the developing world," said Brown.  "And
in an
integrated global economy, it will not work over the long term for the
industrial countries either."

Brown argues that there is an exciting alternative economic model that
promises
a better life everywhere without destroying the earth's natural support
systems.
The new economy will be powered not by fossil fuels, but by various sources
of
solar energy and hydrogen.  Urban transportation systems will be centered
not
around the car, but around high-tech light rail systems augmented by
bicycles
and walking.  Instead of a throwaway economy, we will have a reuse/recycle
economy.

"Twenty years ago when we first outlined this new model at the Institute,
it was
seen as pie-in-the-sky," said Brown.  "Now that view is changing both
because it
is becoming clear that the old model won't work and also because we can see
the
broad outline of the environmentally sustainable economic model emerging."

Nowhere is the new model more visible than in the energy sector.  While oil
and
coal use have expanded by just over 1 percent a year since 1990, the use of
solar cells has expanded by 16 percent per year and wind power by a
prodigious
annual rate of 26 percent.  Wind power already supplies 8 percent of
Denmark's
electricity and 15 percent of the electricity for Schleswig-Holstein, the
northernmost state of Germany.  In Spain's northern state of Navarra, it
has
gone from 0 to 23 percent in just three years.  Worldwide, the wind power
potential is several times that of hydropower, which now supplies just over
one
fifth of the world's electricity.

A new Japanese solar roofing material promises to revolutionize the
electrical
generating industry.  In Germany, the 100,000 roofs program launched in
December
of 1998 by the new coalition government is leading to a joint investment by
Shell Oil/Pilkington in a solar cell manufacturing facility that will be
the
world's largest.

The more enterprising corporate CEOs are beginning to see this economic
restructuring as the greatest investment opportunity in history.  In a
speech on
February 9, Mike R. Bowlin, Chairman and CEO of ARCO, a major oil company,
described the beginning of "the last days of the age of oil" and the
emergence
of the new hydrogen-based energy economy.  He sees ARCO's large holdings of
natural gas playing a key role in the transition from a carbon-based energy
economy to one based on hydrogen.  Within the last two years, British
Petroleum
has committed $1 billion to the development of wind and solar energy and
Royal
Dutch Shell has announced a $500 million investment in renewable energy
sources.

Governments, too, are changing.  Denmark has banned the construction of
coal-fired power plants.  Costa Rica plans to get all its electricity from
renewable sources by 2010.  In mid-August 1998, after several weeks of
near-record flooding in the Yangtze River basin, Premier Zhu Rongji ordered
a
halt to tree cutting in the upper basin, arguing that trees standing are
worth
three times as much as those cut.

If we are indeed approaching a social threshold on the environment that
could
lead to a rapid restructuring of the economy, will it come soon enough?  Is
it
too late to save the Aral Sea? Yes, its fish are gone.  Is it too late to
save
Indonesia's rain forests?  Probably.  Is it too late to avoid global
warming?
Apparently.  The Earth's average temperature now appears to be rising.  Can
we
ameliorate future temperature rises?  Yes.  Can we move fast enough to
prevent
environmental deterioration from disrupting the global economy?  Probably. 
But
only if we cross the threshold soon.

"No challenge in the new century looms greater than that of transforming
the
economy into one that is environmentally sustainable," said Brown.  "This
Environmental Revolution is comparable in scale to the Agricultural
Revolution
and the Industrial Revolution.  The big difference is in the time
available. The
Agricultural Revolution was spread over thousands of years.  The Industrial
Revolution has been underway for two centuries.  The Environmental
Revolution,
if it succeeds, will be compressed into a few decades."

Brown writes that archeologists have uncovered the sites of earlier
civilizations that moved onto economic paths that were environmentally
destructive and could not make the needed course corrections either because
they
did not understand what was happening or could not summon the needed
political
will.

"We do know what is happening," said Brown.  "The question for us is
whether our
global society can cross the social threshold that will enable us to
restructure
the global economy before environmental deterioration leads to economic
decline."

-END-
-- 

"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being 
paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, 
in our age, can still do for those who study it."
Bertrand Russell,  "A History of Western Philosophy"


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