Planetary Collapse

One of the forces driving us toward a planetary civilization is the fear of planetary collapse, exemplified
by the possible disintegration of the ozone layer, which has overcome governmental inertia and national
rivalries and galvanized the United Nations. Ozone is a thin life-protecting layer fifteen miles above the
earth's surface which absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation. The discovery in 1982 that there was a huge
hole in the ozone layer opening up over the South Pole, about the size of the United States, caused great
international concern. Satellite data confirmed that ozone levels were also dropping ominously over the
Northern Hemisphere by almost 1 percent per year in some areas. If ozone depletion is not reversed, there
could be 60 million more skin cancers by 2075, not to mention the withering of important food crops and
the deaths of animals crucial to the food chain.

When scientists finally proved that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), commonly used as a refrigerant, posed a
clear and immediate danger to the ozone layer, thirty-one nations rapidly banded together and signed a
historic agreement in Montreal in 1987 to begin phasing out our CFCs by the year 2000.

The Montreal Protocols on ozone depletion and the historic UN-

sponsored Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro were watershed events focusing international attention
on the issues of biodiversity, pollution, overpopulation, etc. At present, there are now over 170
international treaties in force guarding different aspects of the environment.

The threat of atmospheric collapse, however, does not always generate planetary cooperation. On the
contrary, although scientists almost universally believe that the greenhouse effect could raise global
temperatures to dangerous levels in the next century, nations have dragged their feet on this question. The
threat of global warming was clearly laid out in the UN's 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), representing the authority of 2,000 scientists around the world. The report presented a
grim tale of planetary collapse in the next century if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise: one-third to
one-half of the world's mountain glaciers could melt, one-third of all ecosystems could be radically
disrupted, sea levels could rise 15 to 90 centimeters by 2100, 92 million people in coastal areas like
Bangladesh would be at risk, millions could die as malaria and other deadly tropical diseases spread,
starvation could be widespread as growing areas turn into dust bowls and desert.

Because global warming is driven by fossil fuel consumption, and since many nations are heavily
dependent on oil and coal, carbon dioxide levels (already the highest in 150,000 years) will continue their
steady rise into the next century. In the decades ahead, when global warming begins to visibly disrupt the
world's weather and ecology, the reluctant nations of the world may finally become frightened enough to
take action, including levying a "carbon tax" or phasing out oil and coal burning. The threat of planetary
collapse will inevitably forge international cooperation, even if done reluctantly.

Population Explosion vs. Diminishing Resources

One of the most pressing long-range global problems, both environmentally and socially, is the human
population explosion, which puts a tremendous strain on the planet's resources. It took several million
years to reach a world population of a billion people, which happened about 1830. The next billion was
added only a century later. The population doubled again by 1975 to 4 billion. In the twenty years that
followed, the world population has soared to 5.7 billion people. Every year, we add 90 million more
people to the planet. One twentieth of all the humans who have ever walked the earth are alive today.

This unprecedented population explosion places enormous stress on the food supply, the ecosystem, and
biodiversity. According to the World Watch Institute, in 1997 worldwide harvesting of fish peaked at 100
mil-
lion tons per year. Similarly, world grain production is peaking at around 1.7 billion tons per year.
Meanwhile, the total area of deforestation is equal to the size of the continental United States. This means
fewer croplands for growing food and the extinction of entire species of plants and animals. Some
biologists estimate that we might lose a million species by the end of the century, and as many as a
quarter of all species on the earth by the middle of the twenty-first century.
Biologist Robert W. Kates emphasizes that historically there have actually been three waves of
population explosions, all of them coinciding with the introduction of new technology and science. The
first population explosion began about a million years ago when humans discovered tool making,
triggering an increase in world population from a few hundred thousand individuals to 5 million. The
second revolution, which started about 10,000 years ago, came with the discovery of agriculture and the
domestication of animals and plants. This time, the population grew a hundredfold, to about 500 million.
The third population explosion started several hundred years ago with the industrial revolution.

The question is: can the world continue to feed its people when the population is still galloping ahead at a
rapid pace?

This tremendous rise in population may one day come to an end. The UN estimates that the world's
population will gradually slow down, reaching 6 billion in 1999, 7 billion in 2011, 8 billion in 2025, 9
billion in 2041, and 10 billion in 2071. It may even ultimately level off at around 12 billion in the twenty-
second century.

The reason for this is that every industrialized nation has stabilized its population. In fact, Japan and
Germany are even experiencing negative population growth. Every industrialized country experiences a
rapid increase in population as modern medicine and sanitation reduce the death rate, then a stabilization
of the population growth as it industrializes. At present, thirty nations (representing 820 million people)
have reached a stable population.

As biologist Kates says: "Development is the best contraceptive." This is because economic development,
he notes, "lessens the need or desire for more children because more children survive, which decreases
the need for child labor and increases the need for educated children. Development also cuts the time
available for childbearing and rearing and creates more opportunity for women to gain an education and
find salaried work. Finally, it improves access to birth control technology." (Ironically, the elderly are the
fastest-growing sector in the industrialized world, while the young are the fastest-growing sector in the
Third World.) with each other may be forced to address these global issues and work cooperatively.

Reversing the Great Diaspora

Culture has been both a gift and a curse to humanity. For 99 percent of human existence, we lived in
small primitive, nomadic tribes that could economically support perhaps no more than fifty or so
individuals. (Studies have shown that when a tribe expands beyond roughly this number, it cannot support
and feed all the additional members and it will split up.) What held these tribes together was culturethe
rituals, customs, and language that provided protection and support on the part of friends and relatives.
The heroic tales and myths told around ancient campfires cemented the bonds within the tribe. This also
gave us the current diversity of humanity and the rich mosaic of thousands of languages, religions, and
customs of today.

But culture was also a curse. Many of these mythologies enforced an "us" versus "them" ideology that
caused fierce rivalries and tribal wars between these nomadic cultures.
About 100,000 years ago, soon after modern Homo sapiens emerged in Africa, the Great Diaspora began,
when these small wandering tribes began to spread out from Africa, probably due to changing climatic
conditions. Perhaps no more than a few thousand individuals ventured north, eventually settling in the
Middle East and Southern Europe. About 50,000 years ago, a second split sent a splinter group into Asia
and eventually even the Americas. But because of the genetic isolation created by this Great Diaspora,
humanity, adapting to the harsh environmental conditions, began to separate into the races we see today.
Thus, not only were these tribes separated by culture, they were now separated by race as well.

In the next century, however, the current scientific revolutions are unleashing forces which, for the first
time in 100,000 years, are beginning to erode the forces maintaining the Great Diaspora. The ancient,
centrifugal tendencies which enforced the Great Diaspora are gradually evaporating. We see this tendency
toward a planetary civilization on several fronts: the rise of a global economy, the decline of nations, the
rise of an international middle class, the development of a common global language, and the rise of a
planetary culture.