From Resource Scarcity To Ecological Security ― Exploring New Limits To Growth

From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security revisits the findings of The Global2000 Report to the President -- commissioned by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 -- and presents anup-to-date overview, informed by the earlier projections, of such critical topics as population,water, food, energy, climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity. It examines currentenvironmental trends in order to consider the state of the global environment over the next thirtyyears and discusses what can be done now to achieve ecological security.The authors of From ResourceScarcity to Ecological Security find that the world population will likely continue to level off,but the population decline in many industrialized countries will create new socioeconomic andpolitical problems -- including the "reverse demographic shock" of disproportionately large agingpopulations. Although world food production is likely to increase at a rate that keeps up withpopulation growth, greater demand in China as well as distributional issues will keep significantnumbers of people malnourished. In addition to these continuing scarcity issues, ecologicalinsecurity may increase because of new threats that include global warming, loss of biodiversity,bioinvasion, and the rapid worldwide growth of new diseases. Assessing Limits to Growth not onlyanalyzes the nature of these impending problems but suggests ways to solve them.

Ken Cousins is a doctoral student at the University of Maryland.