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By Root 1511 0

cost of living has skyrocketed as more people compete for land, lumber, fuel, and food in a growing world market. Of course we know that consumption of all resources increases with population, but that’s only half the picture. Our demands on the planet also increase with prosperity! Certainly prosperity is a good thing, but let’s look at its effect on resources.

Developed nations have multiplied their consumption of product per person exponentially. You consume today over 100 times the resources of your great-grandparent living 200 years ago. During the same time period, the population has increased by a factor of ten. This makes a thousandfold increase in consumption, waste production, and pollution.

Herman Daly, formerly of the World Bank, is an ecological economist. He’s often called the unsung hero of ecologically responsible economics. In his book Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development (see Resources appendix), Daly outlines the reality that the physical world is finite and we cannot continue to grow forever. Can the earth continue to provide for our growing population or will we, like the early Maya, outgrow our ability to support ourselves?

Resource Limitation

Will resources become more scarce and become the reason for wars and famine? Here’s some of the mounting evidence:

◆ In many parts of the world, fresh drinking water is becoming scarce. This will get worse as weather patterns continue to change. What happens when drought leaves populated cites without drinking water?

◆ Electricity and fossil fuels are at a premium. Wars and conflict over energy are increasing. Sustainable energy production is only now gaining widespread attention, years behind the need.

◆ Farming has turned to genetic engineering to produce genetically modified (GM) foods for increased production on less land with decreased needs for fertilizer and pesticides. Sound good? Unfortunate by-products of this technology are increased food allergies, possible new diseases, and corporate control of our legal right to grow our own food.

◆ The destruction of mature forests and the increased demand for lumber and building supplies is overrunning what forests are able to supply.

Codex Cues

This may sound extreme, but GM seed companies are getting laws passed that control people’s ability to grow food in their own gardens. Don’t believe it? Check out these resources:

◆ Stolen Harvest, The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply by Vandana Shiva (South End Press, 2000)

◆ The Future of Food and Unnatural Selection (Lily Films, 2004)

◆ www.organicconsumers.org

The Impact of Today’s Lifestyle

Some indigenous people think of modern man as a cancer on the planet. Maybe they have a point. Cancer cells are normal, natural cells that have forgotten the rules. They grow without respect to the space available, they reproduce without respect to the supply of food, they steal food and nutrition from nearby cells, and they try to live forever.

In Native thinking, there’s a principle called the “Seventh Generation.” This principle requires that every decision is considered in light of the impact it will have seven generations into the future. Now that’s long-term planning! Consider the impact just one generation into the future of our present growth and expansion, let alone seven!

Species Extinction

We have used the coats, skins, oil, meat, and blood of animals to sustain us since the beginning of human life. The animal populations and ecosystems we have depended on are struggling. As reported in Chapter 15, we are losing the rainforest, our most important ecosystem, at the rate of one and a half acres per second. In less than two generations it will be gone. The rainforest is the ecosystem that produces the most new species. Would you believe that biologists estimate many thousands of species living on Earth have not yet even been discovered? Many will be extinct before we ever know they existed.

According to the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), the current worldwide rate of extinction is about 27,000 species