TONY BOYS, SHION JUNIOR COLLEGE, HITACHI CITY, IBARAKI KEN, JAPAN (Home Page)
 CONTENTS

0. Introduction .....(this page)
 

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Part One: The 'Compound Crisis' of Population, Food, Oil, Soil, and Water
• 1-1 Population
• 1-2 Food
• 1-3 Oil, Other Fossil Fuels, and Other Energy Sources
• 1-4 Soil and Water

 

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Part Two: The Growth Treadmill and the Globalized Economy
 
 
• 2-1 Growth for what?
• 2-2 So Why Do We Bother?
• 2-3 Globalization and the World Food Strategy

 

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Part Three: As You Sow, So Shall You Weep
 
 
• 3-1 Who are We?
• 3-2 Why Can't We Even Feed Ourselves?
• 3-3 What's Wrong With Us?

 

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Part Four: Brief Glory or Long, Dull Obscurity?
 
 
• 4-1 Rethinking Population
• 4-2 What Does a 'Sustainable' Future Look Like?
• 4-3 A New Vision

 

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References and Bibliography
 
 

If you have any comments or questions concerning this work, I would be very happy if you would send me e-mail at:
 

aboys@icc.ac.jp

Introduction

 
 

The population of the world is growing, food production is stagnating, oil is running out, and we are destroying the resource base we depend on for life. These are all related in interlocking ways that are sure to result in a global crisis (already begun) in the easily foreseeable future; the compound crisis of population, food, oil, soil, and water. Politics and business have joined hands to tell us that poverty and famine can be eliminated by economic growth, but economic growth appears to be the engine behind the compound crisis, rather than the panacea that it is being made out to be. This paper shows how conventional economic thought has been mistaken and harmful, how very basic and unquestioned assumptions have led humanity into an ecological impasse, and suggests a method for attempting to avoid the oncoming disaster.

This paper does not mention, or makes only very brief mention of, the 'pollution-type' problems (global warming, ozone layer destruction, acid rain, toxification of the environment by radiation or synthetic chemicals), as these are considered to be a subset of the human-induced ecological crisis described below. It is not intended to deny or lessen the importance of these issues, any one of which could have a serious bearing on the ability of humanity to live harmoniously with the Earth. On the other hand, progress in alleviating the effects of the ecological crisis will almost certainly result in positive trends concerning these problems, as should be clear from the argument.
 

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