Do You Know?

John C. Darvill

1997

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 4th quarter 1994, No. 337

... The recently completed Presidential election in the U.S. promised many things: jobs, a balanced budget, improved education, improved health services, repairs to the infrastructure and a clamp-down on crime and violence. Business leaders promise that downsizing will result in more efficiency and therefore more JOBS; and the old bugaboo that refuses to die: more technology means more JOBS, even though all indicators point to the exact opposite. All of it hot air, meaningless and misleading; but, even if it were attainable, would still leave the far more urgent problems of the environment and how we are going to sustain a livable planet to survive on.

... Resources are shrinking as population continues to rise. Scarce resources will lead to hostilities and war as nations compete for declining resources. One example is water. Many rivers are shared by two or more nations -- examples are: the Ganges, the Nile, the Jordan, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Amu Dar'ya and the Syr Dar'ya. The Nile River, 86% of this river originates in Ethiopia -- a country that expects to expand its irrigated lands and expand its hydro-electric power. This will severely impact the amount of water flowing into Egypt, a country which receives hardly any rainfall. Of all the water on earth, only about 2.5% is fresh and 66% of this is locked in glaciers and an ice cap. The renewable fresh water supply on land, in the form of precipitation, totals some 110,000 cubic kilometers annually, a mere 0.000008% of all the water on earth. A cubic km. (kilometer) equals a billion cubic meters. Each year nearly 66% of this renewable supply returns to the atmosphere through evaporation or transpiration. About 40,000 cubic kms. per year is run-off. This run-off is the source for all human use. Fresh water is considered renewable, but it is also finite; the land receives roughly the same amount of water today as it did thousands of years ago. Globally, water-use tripled between 1950 and 1990 and now is an estimated 4,430 cubic kms. -- 35% of the accessible supply. An additional 20% is used to dilute pollution, sustain fisheries and transport goods. Therefore, humans are already using directly or indirectly, more than half the water supply that is now accessible. In the next 30 years population is expected to increase by 2.6 billion people, the same as between 1950 and 1990. But worldwide water use cannot triple again, unless there is conservation, pollution control, and an increase in the available water supply. Globally, water is in great excess, but because of operational limits and pollution, it can, in fact, support only one more doubling of demand, which will occur in the next 20 to 30 years. If it was possible to stop all pollution, trap every drop of flood- water, move either the people to the water or the water to the people; and, even if it were possible to capture the full 40,000 cubic kms. of annual run-off for human use, there would only be enough water for 3 or 4 more doublings, a mere 100 years away if current growth rates continue.

... Up to 1995 annual grain consumption averaged about 300 KG (kilogram) per person, assuming that the global average remains at today's levels. Meeting the grain requirements of the projected world population in the year 2025, would take an additional 780 billion cubic meters of water. If we assume that the non-grain portion requires a third as much water to produce, as the grain based portion does, the minimum amount of water used to produce an average diet, would be about 400 cubic meters per person per year. This means that to meet the food requirements of the 2.6 billion people that are expected to be added to the world's population by 2025, would take an additional 1,040 billion cubic meters of water, equal to more than 12 times the average flow of the Nile river, or 56 times the average flow of the Colorado river.

... The U.S.A., is in no position to be smug or complacent. The high- plains aquifer system, which underlies nearly 20% of all U.S. irrigated lands, has been depleted now by some 325 billion cubic meters, roughly 15 times the average annual flow of the Colorado river. Over 66% of this depletion has occurred in the Texas high-plains where irrigated areas dropped 26% between 1979 and 1989. Current depletion is estimated at 12 billion cubic meters a year. California groundwater overdraft averages 1.6 billion cubic meters per year. 66% of this depletion occurs in the Central Valley -- that is this country's, and many parts of the world's fruit and vegetable market. In the south-western U.S., overpumping in Arizona alone totals more than 1.2 billion cubic meters a year. East-of-Phoenix water tables have dropped more than 120 meters. Projections for Albuquerque, New Mexico, show that if ground-water withdrawals continue at current rates, water tables will drop an additional 20 meters, on average. by the year 2000.

... The problem related to water, is just one aspect of our mounting inability to cope with conditions affecting our future well-being. Air pollution, soil erosion, ground contamination, encroachment on wetlands and agricultural land, destruction of forests, overfishing, are just some of the other problems that affect our future well-being. Contamination, as the result of ill advised or dangerous practices, is all too common. 65,000 industrial chemicals are now in regular commercial use. Toxicology data are available on fewer than 1% of them. Every day, three to five new chemicals enter the marketplace. 80% of those chemicals are not tested for toxicity. Every day, one million tons of hazardous waste are generated in the world, 90% of them in the industrialized world. On an average day in the U.S. there are five industrial accidents involving hazardous wastes.

... Mexico City boasts the Western Hemisphere's filthiest air. Ozone levels in some parts of the city can reach as high as 274 points on the government's metropolitan air pollution index, the Imeca scale, exceeding the 250 point level at which a Phase 1 alert is called. Levels above 200 are considered dangerous to one's health. Ozone levels in the city routinely exceed the 100 point "safe" mark. The Imeca scale is far less stringent than international measures. By World Health Organization standard, Mexicans breathe unsafe levels of ozone an average of five hours a day, all year long.

... Our ability to sustain life on this planet much farther into the future is questioned by many prominent scientists and others that study the ramifications of our continued onslaught on this planet's life- support systems. Listening to our politicians and other advocates of the status quo, one would think that our only problems were in providing more jobs and improving our business techniques. The old English adage of "where there's muck there's brass" is still very prevalent in the thinking of our so-called leaders. This approach has changed very little since the advent of the industrial revolution. As we are fed this nonsense on a daily basis, it is little wonder that most people swallow this dangerous stupidity, and, in large part, go along with the absurdities presented by politicians and their business masters. Unfortunately we are paying, and will continue to pay, a high price for going along with the practices of the status quo. As we have barely touched on in this column, the onslaught we are inflicting on this planet, in a mindless pursuit of the bottom line, will have disastrous consequences if not soon arrested. We cannot continue for too much longer to be guided by the short-term monetary expediency dictated by a system that affects its distribution of goods and services by means of commodity valuation, employing any form of debt token or money. If we are to survive as a species, we must be guided by function. We must do what has to be done to arrest our growing population, conserve our resources, protect the environment and, generally, whatever is necessary to protect our future and that of our children and grandchildren and, for that matter, future generations. Money can play no part in this; it is inhibiting and limiting in its application; it only allows for the exchange of a scarcity and can play no part in planning for the continuation of a high-energy civilization. Energy dictates our lives in the form of technology; it must be operated for the benefit of humankind, not to our detriment. A functional government would use energy-accounting as a medium of distribution and also as a means of keeping a running inventory of goods produced, services supplied, and the amount of unused energy still available for use. What is needed is a concept of government in keeping with the age in which we live. Technocracy is such a concept. Investigate it; time is running out.