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Chapter 1. the Economy and the Earth 1 from Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth (W. W. Norton & Co., NY: 2001) Notes © 2001 Earth Policy Institute®. All Rights Reserved. 277 Notes Chapter 1. The Economy and the Earth 1. Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, Libri VI (Six Books on the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) (1543). 2. Growth in global economy from historical series compiled by Worldwatch Institute from Angus Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy 1820–1992 (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1995), using deflators and recent growth rates from International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Economic Outlook (Washington, DC: October 2000). 3. Grain prices from IMF, International Financial Statistics (Washington, DC: various years); share of global population fed by grain produced by overpumping aquifers calculated using grain consumption from U.S. De- partment of Agriculture (USDA), Production, Supply, and Distribution, elec- tronic database, Washington, DC, updated May 2001, and annual water deficit of 160 billion cubic meters in Sandra Postel, Pillar of Sand (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), p. 255. 4. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, November 1996). 5. The International Society for Ecological Economics, <www. ecologicaleconomics.org>, viewed 31 July 2001; Redefining Progress, “2,500 Economists Agree That Combating Global Warming Need Not Necessarily Harm the U.S. Economy Nor Living Standards,” press release (Oakland, CA: 29 March 2001). 6. Economic expansion from Worldwatch Institute, op. cit. note 2; Dow Jones Index available from <www.djindexes.com/jsp/index.jsp>. 7. Loss of topsoil calculated from Mohan K. Wali et al., “Assessing Terrestrial Ecosystem Sustainability,” Nature & Resources, October-December 1999, pp. 21–33, and from World Resources Institute (WRI), World Resources 2000–01 (Washington, DC: September 2000); grassland deterioration from Robin P. White et al., Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Grassland Eco- 278 Notes: chapter 1 systems (Washington, DC: WRI, 2000), p. 3; shrinking of forests from U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2000, <www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/index.jsp>, updated 10 April 2001; overfishing from FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2000 (Rome: 2000), p. 10; overpumping from Postel, op. cit. note 3, p. 6. 8. USDA, Farm Service Agency Online, “History of the CRP,” The Conserva- tion Reserve Program, <www.fsa.usda.gov/dafp/cepd/12logocv.htm>, viewed 5 July 2001. 9. Loss of productive land in Nigeria from Samuel Ajetunmobi, “Alarm Over Rate of Desertification,” This Day (Lagos, Nigeria), 23 January 2001; Kazakhstan from FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture 1995 (Rome: 1995), pp. 174–95; grain production from USDA, op. cit. note 3, and from Sharon S. Sheffield and Christian J. Foster, Agricultural Statistics of the Former USSR Republics and the Baltic States (Washington, DC: Economic Research Service, USDA, September 1993), p. 147; grain prices from IMF, op. cit. note 3. 10. Livestock herd size from FAO, FAOSTAT Statistics Database, <apps.fao.org>, updated 2 May 2001; cost of lost livestock production from H. Dregne et al., “A New Assessment of the World Status of Desertification,” Desertifica- tion Control Bulletin, no. 20, 1991, cited in Lester R. Brown and Hal Kane, Full House (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994), p. 95; country gross domestic products from IMF, World Economic Outlook (WEO) Data- base, <www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2000/02/data/index.htm>, Septem- ber 2000. 11. Expansion of Chinese economy calculated from IMF, op. cit. note 10; plow- ing of China from Hong Yang and Xiubin Li, “Cultivated Land and Food Supply in China,” Land Use Policy, vol. 17, no. 2 (2000); Hou Dongmin, Duan Chengrong, and Zhang Dandan, “Grassland Ecology and Population Growth: Striking a Balance,” China Population Today, June 2000, pp. 27– 28. 12. FAO, op. cit. note 10. 13. Dong Zhibao, Wang Xunming, and Liu Lianyou, “Wind Erosion in Arid and Semiarid China: An Overview,” Journal of Soil and Water Conserva- tion, vol. 55, no. 4 (2000), pp. 439–44; Erik Eckholm, “Chinese Farmers See a New Desert Erode Their Way of Life,” New York Times, 30 July 2000. 14. Water tables in key food-producing areas from Postel, op. cit. note 3; share of China’s grain harvest from the North China Plain based on Hong Yang and Alexander Zehnder, “China’s Regional Water Scarcity and Implications for Grain Supply and Trade,” Environment and Planning A, vol. 33, Janu- ary 2001, pp. 79–95, and on USDA, op. cit. note 3; water tables falling in China from James Kynge, “China Approves Controversial Plan to Shift Water to Drought-Hit Beijing,” Financial Times, 7 January 2000; water tables in China and India from International Water Management Institute, “Ground- water Depletion: The Hidden Threat to Food Security,” Brief 2, <www.cgiar.org/iwmi/intro/brief2.htm>, 2001; Bonnie L. Terrell and Phillip N. Johnson, “Economic Impact of the Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer: A Case Study of the Southern High Plains of Texas,” paper presented at the Notes: chapter 1 279 American Agricultural Economics Association annual meeting in Nashville, TN, 8–11 August 1999. 15. Jim Carrier, “The Colorado: A River Drained Dry,” National Geographic, June 1991, pp. 4–32; loss of Aral Sea in Postel, op. cit note 3, pp. 93–95, and in Philip P. Mickin, “Desiccation of the Aral Sea: A Water Management Disaster in the Soviet Union,” Science, 2 September 1988; Aral Sea fishery from Lester R. Brown, “The Aral Sea: Going, Going…,” World Watch, Janu- ary/February 1991, pp. 20–27; Eric Zusman, “A River Without Water: Ex- amining the Shortages in the Yellow River Basin,” LBJ Journal of Public Affairs, spring 1998, pp. 31–41. 16. FAO, Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2000, op. cit. note 7. 17. Cindy Shiner, “Thousands of Fires Ravage Drought-Stricken Borneo,” Wash- ington Post, 24 April 1998; World Wide Fund for Nature, The Year the World Caught on Fire, WWF International Discussion Paper (Gland: Swit- zerland: December 1997). 18. “Flood Impact on Economy Limited,” China Daily, 1 September 1998; Doug Rekenthaler, “China Survives Fourth Yangtze Flood Crest as Fifth Begins its Journey,” Disaster Relief, 11 August 1998; removal of tree cover from Carmen Revenga et al., Watersheds of the World (Washington, DC: WRI and Worldwatch Institute, 1998). 19. Eneas Salati and Peter B. Vose, “Amazon Basin: A System in Equilibrium,” Science, 13 July 1984, pp. 129–38. 20. Overfishing from FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2000, op. cit. note 7; Mark Clayton, “Hunt for Jobs Intensifies as Fishing Industry Implodes,” Christian Science Monitor, 25 August 1993; Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Cod are Almost Gone and a Culture Could Follow,” New York Times, 28 May 1994. 21. Chesapeake Bay from Anita Huslin, “In Bay Water Off Virginia, Seeds of Hope for Oyster,” Washington Post, 5 June 2001; “Regional Crisis Adds to Danger of Overfishing in Gulf of Thailand,” Agence France Presse, 22 July 1998; “Bans on Fishing Gear Widens,” Bangkok Post, 14 February 2001. 22. Species Survival Commission, 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Gland, Switzerland, and Cambridge, UK: World Conservation Union–IUCN, 2000). 23. Robert James Lee Hawke, “Launch of Statement on the Environment,” speech by the Prime Minister, Wentworth, NSW, 20 July 1989; John Tuxill and Chris Bright, “Losing Strands in the Web of Life,” in Lester R. Brown et al., State of the World 1998 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), p. 53. 24. J. Hansen, “Global Temperature Anomalies in .01 C,” <www.giss.nasa.gov/ data/update/gistemp>, viewed 8 June 2001. 25. Munich Re, Topics 2000: Natural Catastrophes—The Current Position (Munich: Münchener Ruckversicherungs-Gesellschaft, December 1999), and MRNatCatSERVICE, Significant Natural Disasters in 1999 (Munich: REF/ Geo, January 2000); United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision (New York: February 2001). 280 Notes: chapter 1 26. Janet N. Abramovitz, “Averting Unnatural Disasters,” in Lester R. Brown et al., State of the World 2001 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), pp. 123–24. 27. Ibid.; gross domestic product from IMF, op. cit. note 10. 28. Munich Re, op. cit. note 25, p. 43. 29. Andrew Dlugolecki, “Climate Change and the Financial Services Industry,” speech delivered at the opening of the UNEP Financial Services Roundtable, Frankfurt, Germany, 16 November 2000. 30. Ibid.; “Climate Change Could Bankrupt Us by 2065,” Environment News Service, 24 November 2000. 31. Lars H. Smedsrud and Tore Furevik, “Towards an Ice-Free Arctic?” Cice- rone, 2/2000; John Noble Wilford, “Ages-Old Icecap at North Pole Is Now Liquid, Scientists Find,” New York Times, 19 August 2000. 32. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, “The Greenland Ice Sheet Reacts,” Science, 21 July 2000; Bangladesh inundation estimate from World Bank, World Develop- ment Report 1999/2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, September 1999). 33. Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Civilizations (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1988), p. 1. 34. Ibid. 35. Postel, op. cit note 3, pp. 13–21. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. “Maya,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, online encyclopedia, viewed 7 August 2000. 39. Ibid. 40. Jared Diamond, “Easter’s End,” Discover, August 1995, pp. 63–69. 41. Ibid. 42. Population addition from United Nations, op. cit. note 25. 43. Ibid.; expanding economy from IMF, op. cit. note 10. 44. FAO, op. cit. note 10; population for per capita calculation from United Nations, op. cit. note 25; conversion ratio of grain to beef from Allen Baker, Feed Situation and Outlook staff, Economic Research Service, USDA, Wash- ington, DC, discussion with author, 27 April 1992. 45. Seafood consumption from FAO, Yearbook of Fishery Statistics: Capture Production (Rome: various years); population from United Nations, op. cit. note 25. 46. Joseph Kahn, “China’s Next Great Leap: The Family Car,” Wall Street Jour- nal, 24 June 1994; oil production and consumption levels from BP, BP Sta- tistical Review of World Energy 2001 (London: Group Media Publications, June 2001), p.
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