We live in interesting times, no doubt about that!
Viewing the world through the corporate lens, the economic productivity and business profitability have never been better. Global economic growth is surging led by India and China whose stock markets are reaching new highs along with global oil production — coincidence? Technological innovation continues at an accelerated pace. Consumers in the more developed countries like the United States are taking advantage of cheaper goods being imported into this country by big box retailers like WalMart. It appears that both business and consumers are profiting from the latest global industrial expansion.
As corporate earnings improve many large companies are generating so much free cash flow that they are now buying back their own stock to increase its value, but a few storm clouds are lurking on the economic horizon. The increased global demand for oil has pushed the price to nearly $100/barrel for the first time and global warming resulting from excessive amounts of carbon collecting in the atmosphere is reaching critical levels. Most scientists now agree that global warming will have a major impact on the global climate in the years ahead. Unfortunately, the global corporate media prefers not to recognize the potential environmental crisis on the horizon even as the warning signs grow. For those of us who follow the “alternative” media, barely a day goes by when we don't see an article written about one of these topics – peak oil or global warming. Here are some excerpts from an article published on October 25th in the International Herald Tribune about the latest United Nations report on the environment: UN Issues “Final Wake-Up Call” on Population and Environment by James Kanter.
“The human population is now so large that the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available at current consumption patterns,” Achim Steiner, the executive director of the Environment Program, said in a telephone interview. Efficient use of resources and reducing waste now are “among the greatest challenges at the beginning in of 21st century,” he said.
The program described its report, which is prepared by 388 experts and scientists, as the broadest and deepest of those the United Nations has issued on the environment and called it “the final wake-up call to the international community.” Many biologists and climate scientists have concluded recently that human activities have become a dominant influence on the planet's climate and ecosystems. Underscoring the depth of those concerns was the recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to former Vice President Al Gore and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists that the Environment Program helped found and helps finance. But there is still a range of views on whether the altering climate could result in a catastrophic depletion of natural resources as the human population heads toward 9 billion by mid-century, or more of a steady diminution in diversity. Over the last two decades the world population has already increased by almost 34 percent, to 6.7 billion from 5 billion. But the land available to each person is shrinking, from 19.5 acres in 1900 to 5 acres by 2005, and is projected to drop to 4 acres by 2050, the report said.
Population growth combined with unsustainable consumption has resulted in an increasingly stressed planet where natural disasters and environmental degradation endanger millions of human beings as well as plant and animal species, the report said. Persistent problems identified by the report include a rapid rise of so-called dead zones, where marine life no longer can be supported because of depleted oxygen levels from pollutants such as fertilizers, as well as the resurgence of diseases linked with environmental degradation. The report comes two decades after a commission chaired by the former Norwegian prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, warned that the survival of humanity was at stake from unsustainable development.
Mr. Steiner said parts of Africa could reach an environmental tipping point if changing rainfall patterns stemming from climate change turned semi-arid zones into arid zones and made the agriculture that sustains millions of people much harder. Mr. Steiner said another tipping point could occur in India and China if Himalayan glaciers shrink so much that they no longer supply adequate amounts of water to populations in those countries. He also warned of a global collapse of all species being fished by 2050, if fishing around the world continued at its present pace. The report said 250 percent more fish are being caught than the oceans can produce in a sustainable manner, and that the level of global fish stocks classed as collapsed had roughly doubled to 30 percent over the past 20 years. The report said that current changes in biodiversity were the fastest in human history, with species becoming extinct a hundred times faster than the rate in the fossil record. It said 12 percent of birds are threatened with extinction; for mammals the figure is 23 percent and for amphibians it is more than 30 percent. “Scientists now refer to a sixth major extinction crisis that's under way,” Steiner said. The report said that annual emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels have risen by about one-third since 1987 and that the threat from climate change now was so urgent that only very large cuts in greenhouse gases of 60 to 80 percent could stop irreversible change. The effects of global warming, like the melting ice in the Arctic are “accelerating at a pace that goes beyond the scenarios and models we've been using,” Steiner said.
Will corporate America finally heed the call this time around and make the change necessary to avoid disaster or will it just be business as usual? Based on the lack of immediacy and recognition in the corporate media, it doesn't appear that the business world is willing to make the serious commitment required to avert the damaging environmental and economic impacts of global warming. Hopefully, they will prove us wrong - we still have some time, but not very much. .
Right Panel: Links and various text items here.