Not2 b a buttinski, more an add-onski or jus2 follow the ragged path forward/not-forward. Stoic white gentlemen of blind id & indifference need not apply, I suppose, …unless hit in the braincase like a ton o bricks  (…………….finally!)

• published 15 f#cking years ago (knock-knock ... who's there?) •

The Global Trajectory 

Richard A. Anthes

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Boulder Colorado

(This paper was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 74, No. 6, 1993, pp 1121-1130; copyright 1993 American Meteorological Society.)

If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.Chinese Proverb

1. Introduction

As president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) , I have become increasingly aware that the atmospheric sciences are only part of a global change drama that is unfolding around the globe at an ever increasing pace. So the purpose of this paper is not to rehearse the good things that atmospheric sciences has done for society in the past, nor all of the exciting potential for the future, including improved forecasts and warnings as a result of the modernization of the National Weather Service; the exciting science underway in the universities,the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and other laboratories; the likelihood of global models with fine-scale resolution; and the marvelous observations of the atmosphere, oceans and land to come from the Earth Observing System (EOS) early in the next century. Instead, I want to offer some thoughts about global change, very broadly defined, of which environmental science, weather and climate are significant parts, but only parts, and how environmental science fits into the larger picture of our global society. Many of the ideas in this essay, including the title, were developed, borrowed, or stolen shamelessly from scores of articles and reports that I have studied over the past year.

In fact, the very title of this essay -- The Global Trajectory -- is borrowed from a 1991 Sigma Xi Forum on Global Change (Malone 1992). "Global Trajectory" refers to the projected quality of human life on Earth in the 21st century and beyond. The results from this forum, Global Change and the Human Prospect: Issues in Population, Science, Technology, and Equity, do not make for comfortable reading, but I am convinced that the seriousness of the times argues against comfort, complaisance, and business as usual. Lester Brown, in the just-published State of the World 1992, calls for an Environmental Revolution, a Revolution that will rank with the Agricultural Revolution of 10,000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution, which began 200 years ago, in changing society forever. The scientific community, as well as every segment of society, must participate in this revolution, and I argue that scientists should be among its leaders.

Table 1 lists some facts of our present-day condition. The overwhelming point of consensus in the many related documents and discussions is that the health of the planet's environment, taken as a whole, has never been worse in human history, and the global trajectory we are now on is toward an increasingly unsustainable state. In just the past few decades humanity has become a planetary force which many believe is out of control.

Table 1

Some Facts about our present condition

• The present world population is 5.4 billion and growing at a rate of
• 1.8% per year.
• At this growth rate, the population is increased annually by more
• than 90 million people (equivalent to a population the size of Mexico) and will double in 40years.
• For every one person added in the North, 20 persons are added to the South (Malone 1992).
• North contains 20% of the world's population but consumes 80% of all the goods and services each year (Malone, 1992).
• The average person in the North consumes 16 times the amount of resources as the average person in the South.
• Forests are vanishing at a rate of 15 million hectares per year, an area about half the size of Finland (Aldhous, 1993).
• The present concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than it has been for the last 160,000 years.
• The U.S. is spending about $4.5 billion on environmental research---about 86 cents for every man, woman and child on earth. Coincidentally, this is the same
• amount of money spent on family planning world wide.
• The U.S. spent $115 billion in direct costs on environmental regulations in 1991; this cost is expected to increase by 50% by 2000 (Abelson,1993; Carnegie
• Commission, 1992).
• Since 1970, the number of automobiles has more than doubled to 540 million and air travel tripled globally (Carnegie Commission, 1992).

2. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Revelation 6:8

The Biblical Chapter Revelation, is also known as the Apocalypse. The "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" were war, conquest, famine and death (fig.1). A modern version of these four death-dealers might be overpopulation, unsustainable economic development, poverty and environmental degradation.

2.1 Overpopulation

Maximum welfare, not maximum population is our human objective.

Arnold Toynbee, Man and Hunger, 1963

It has been almost 200 years since Thomas Robert Malthus wrote his 1798 classic An Essay on the Principles of Population. Malthus argued that population tends to grow exponentially while food supplies grow only arithmetically, and hence there is, and always will be stress associated with overpopulation in human societies. Perhaps because Malthus' arguments were by his own admission based mainly if not exclusively on his opinions rather than facts, for years the potential dangers of overpopulation were ignored or countered with arguments that "technology" or "agricultural revolutions" would solve the problem. And for years advances in technology, including the "green revolution," did increase the standard of living for growing numbers of people, and the apocalypse predicted by Malthus seemed avoidable forever, or at least comfortably distant in the future.

But the Malthusian clock is still ticking, and the evidence that we are running out of time grows daily. As shown in Figure 2, global population continues to increase exponentially, a trajectory that is clearly unsustainable in our finite world.

A colleague at the University of Colorado in Boulder (Bartlett, 1978) emphasizes this actuality with a parable which I call "The Bugs in a Bottle." It goes like this: Suppose a hypothetical colony of bugs, which doubles every minute, is in a bottle and at 11:00 AM there are two bugs; at 11:01 four bugs, etc. By 12:00 noon it is observed that the bottle is full. Consider

three questions:

1. At what time is the bottle half full? Answer: 11:59 AM!

2. If you were a bug in the bottle, at what time would you first realize you were running out of space? Of course, this depends on how smart you are and how many data are available to you, but let's consider 11:55 AM when the bottle is 3% full and 97% is "open space." I can easily imagine some bugs in the colony making arguments such as "technology will take care of us," "the data are incomplete," "uncertainties in future predictions exist," and, therefore, "it is premature to take action." However, suppose that at 11:58 AM some far-sighted inhabitants of the bottle discover new data that indicate -- with certainty -- that there are only two minut es left, and devote all their resources and energies to a search for a new bottle. Miraculously, at 11:59, not one but three new empty bottles are discovered. Great celebrations ensue because the discovery produces three times the amount of space previously known. This leads to the third question,

3. How much more time does this great discovery give the colony? The answer: 2 more minutes!

So, what does this have to do with the today's human population? I will not attempt to define an optimum total human population but I will give you a view of an upper bound. Most people will agree that a density of one person per square meter of land su rface (excluding Antarctica) is an extreme upper limit to human population. At the present growth rate of 1.8% per year, this limit will be reached in about 600 years, about one-fifth the span of human civilization. This is not to suggest that I believe this limit to be a realistic one, or that the population will continue to increase at it's present rate -- it almost certainly cannot. The point is that since no one knows the capacity of the Earth to sustain human population with a reasonable quality o f life, it is very dangerous to determine that capacity experimentally -- which is what we are now doing.

2.2 Unsustainable Economic Development

Click on Section 2.2 title to continue.

Selected References

• Ableson, P. H., 1993:Regulatory costs. Science,259,159. Press here to return to text.

• Aldhous, P., 1993: Tropical deforestation: Not just a problem in Amazonia. Science, 259, 1390. Press here to return to text.

• Bartlett, A. A., 1978: Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crises. Am. J. Phys. 46 (9), 876-888. Press here to return to text.

• Brown, L. R.; Launching the envorinmental revolution. state of the World, 1992> worldwatch Institute, W. W. Norton and Co. 4. Press here to return to text.

• Carnegie Commission, 1992: International environmental research and assessment: Proposals for better organization and decision making, Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government, New York, 82pp.

• Malone, T.F., 1992: The World after Rio, American Scientist, 80,530-532. Press here to return to text.

• Malthus, T. R., 1798: An Essay on the Principles of Population (First essay on population). reprinted for the Royal Economic society and published by Macmillan and Co. Ltd. London, 1926. Press here to return to text.

• Toynbee, A.,1963: Man and Hunger: The Perceptives of History. Major addresses and Speeches, Vol. 2, World Food Congress, Washington D. C. 1-9. Press hereto return to text.

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