The crux of it all...diminishing resources and "overshoot." [View All]

"Limits to Growth," originally published in 1972, and recently updated to reflect on the last thirty years brings up some key points that clearly explain all of the seeming madness we are witnessing today:

By definition, overshoot is a condition in which the delayed signals from the environment are not yet strong enough to force an end to growth. How, then, can society tell if it is in overshoot? Falling resource stocks and rising pollution levels are the first clues. Here are some other symptoms:

# Capital, resources, and labor diverted to activities compensating for the loss of services that were formerly provided without cost by nature (for example, sewage treatment, air purification, water purification, flood control, pest control, restoration of soil nutrients, pollination, or the preservation of species).

# Capital, resources, and labor diverted from final goods production to exploitation of scarcer, more distant, deeper, or more dilute resources.

# Technologies invented to make use of lower-quality, smaller, more dispersed, less valuable resources, because the higher-value ones are gone.

# Failing natural pollution cleanup mechanisms; rising levels of pollution.

# Capital depreciation exceeding investment, and maintenance deferred, so there is deterioration in capital stocks, especially long-lived infrastructure.

# Growing demands for capital, resources, and labor used by the 176 World3: The Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World military or industry to gain access to, secure, and defend resources that are increasingly concentrated in fewer, more remote, or increasingly hostile regions.

# Investment in human resources (education, health care, shelter) postponed in order to meet immediate consumption, investment, or security needs, or to pay debts.

# Debts a rising percentage of annual real output.

# Eroding goals for health and environment.

# Increasing conflicts, especially conflicts over sources or sinks.

# Shifting consumption patterns as the population can no longer pay the price of what it really wants and, instead, purchases what it can afford.

# Declining respect for the instruments of collective government as they are used increasingly by the elites to preserve or increase their share of a declining resource base.

# Growing chaos in natural systems, with "natural" disasters more frequent and more severe because of less resilience in the environmental system.


Sound familiar?

:nuke:


See the full article:

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/18978/