As land and water become scarce and as competition for these vital
resources intensifies, we can expect mounting social tensions within societies, particularly between those who are poor and dispossessed and those who are wealthy, as well as among ethnic and religious groups. Population growth brings with it a steady shrinkage of life-supporting resources per person. That decline, which is threatening to drop the living standards of more and more people below survival level, could lead to unmanageable social tensions that will translate into broad-based conflicts.

Worldwide, the area in grain expanded from 590 million hectares (1,457 million acres) in 1950 to its historical peak of 730 million hectares in 1981. By 2004, it had fallen to 670 million hectares. Even as the world’s population continues to grow, the area available for producing grain is shrinking. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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DEAD ZONES INCREASING IN WORLD'S COASTAL WATERS
Janet Larsen | 16 June 2004

As summer comes to the Gulf of Mexico, it brings with it each year a giant “dead zone” devoid of fish and other aquatic life. Expanding over the past several decades, this area now can span up to 21,000 square kilometers, which is larger than the state of New Jersey. A similar situation is found on a smaller scale in the Chesapeake Bay, where since the 1970s a large lifeless zone has become a yearly phenomenon, sometimes shrouding 40 percent of the bay.

Worldwide, there are some 146 dead zones—areas of water that are too low in dissolved oxygen to sustain life. Since the 1960s, the number of dead zones has doubled each decade. Many are seasonal, but some of the low-oxygen areas persist year-round. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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WORLD FOOD SECURITY DETERIORATING:
Food Crunch in 2005 Now Likely
Lester R. Brown | 5 May 2004

Closing the gap in the world grain harvest this year following four consecutive grain harvest shortfalls, each larger than the one before, will not be easy. The grain shortfall of 105 million tons in 2003 is easily the largest on record, amounting to 5 percent of annual world consumption of 1,930 million tons.

The four harvest shortfalls have dropped world carryover stocks of grain to the lowest level in 30 years, amounting to only 59 days of consumption. Wheat and corn prices are at 7-year highs. Rice prices are at 5-year highs. (See data.)

Can the world's farmers close the gap this year? In addition to the usual uncertainties farmers face, they must now contend with two newer trends—falling water tables and rising temperatures. If there is another large shortfall, grain prices will continue the rise of recent months, driving up food prices worldwide. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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SAUDIS HAVE U.S. OVER A BARREL: The Shifting Terms of Trade Between Grain and Oil
Lester R. Brown | 14 April 2004

In 1970, a bushel of wheat could be traded for a barrel of oil in the world market. It now takes nine bushels of wheat to buy a barrel of oil. The two countries most affected by the dramatically shifting terms of trade between grain and oil are the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The United States, the world's largest importer of oil and its largest exporter of grain, is paying for this shift in the wheat-oil exchange rate with higher gasoline prices. The nine-fold shift is also driving the largest U.S. trade deficit in history, which in turn is raising external debt to a record level, weakening the U.S. economy. In contrast, Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil exporter and a high-ranking grain importer, is benefiting handsomely.

During the early 1970s before the oil price hikes by OPEC, the United States largely could pay its oil import bill with grain exports. But in 2003, grain exports covered only 11 percent of the staggering U.S. oil import bill of $99 billion. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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THE SIXTH GREAT EXTINCTION: A Status Report
Janet Larsen | 2 March 2004

Almost 440 million years ago, some 85 percent of marine animal species were wiped out in the earth's first known mass extinction. Roughly 367 million years ago, once again many species of fish and 70 percent of marine invertebrates perished in a major extinction event. Then about 245 million years ago, up to 95 percent of all animals—nearly the entire animal kingdom—were lost in what is thought to be the worst extinction in history.

... After each extinction, it took upwards of 10 million years for biological richness to recover. Yet once a species is gone, it is gone forever.

The consensus among biologists is that we now are moving toward another mass extinction that could rival the past big five. This potential sixth great extinction is unique in that it is caused largely by the activities of a single species. It is the first mass extinction that humans will witness firsthand—and not just as innocent bystanders. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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WIND POWER SET TO BECOME WORLD'S LEADING ENERGY SOURCE
Lester R. Brown | 25 June 2003

In 1991, a national wind resource inventory taken by the U.S. Department of Energy startled the world when it reported that the three most wind-rich
states--North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas--had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Now a new study by a team of
engineers at Stanford reports that the wind energy potential is actually substantially greater than that estimated in 1991.

Advances in wind turbine design since 1991 allow turbines to operate at lower wind speeds, to harness more of the wind's energy, and to harvest it
at greater heights--dramatically expanding the harnessable wind resource.
Add to this the recent bullish assessments of offshore wind potential, and
the enormity of the wind resource becomes apparent. Wind power can meet not only all U.S. electricity needs, but all U.S. energy needs. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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WORLD CREATING FOOD BUBBLE ECONOMY BASED ON UNSUSTAINABLE USE OF WATER
Lester R. Brown | 13 March 2003

On March 16, 2003, some 10,000 participants will meet in Japan for the third World Water Forum to discuss the world water prospect. Although they will be officially focusing on water scarcity, they will indirectly be focusing on food scarcity because 70 percent of the water we divert from rivers or pump from underground is used for irrigation.

As world water demand has tripled over the last half-century, it has exceeded the sustainable yield of aquifers in scores of countries, leading to falling water tables. In effect, governments are satisfying the growing demand for food by overpumping groundwater, a measure that virtually assures a drop in food production when the aquifer is depleted. Knowingly or not, governments are creating a "food bubble" economy.

As water use climbs, the world is incurring a vast water deficit... [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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AIR POLLUTION FATALITIES NOW EXCEED TRAFFIC FATALITIES BY 3 TO 1
Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts | 17 September 2002

The World Health Organization reports that 3 million people now die each year from the effects of air pollution. This is three times the 1 million who die each year in automobile accidents. A study published in The Lancet in 2000 concluded that air pollution in France, Austria, and Switzerland is responsible for more than 40,000 deaths annually in those three countries. About half of these deaths can be traced to air pollution from vehicle emissions.

In the United States, traffic fatalities total just over 40,000 per year, while air pollution claims 70,000 lives annually. U.S. air pollution deaths are equal to deaths from breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. This scourge of cities in industrial and developing countries alike threatens the health of billions of people. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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ILLEGAL LOGGING THREATENS ECOLOGICAL & ECONOMIC STABILITY
Janet Larsen | 21 May 2002

Extensive floods in Indonesia during early 2002 have killed hundreds of people, destroyed thousands of homes, damaged thousands of hectares of rice paddy fields, and inundated Indonesian insurance companies with flood-related claims. Rampant deforestation, much of it from illegal logging, has destroyed forests that stabilize soils and regulate river flow, causing record floods and landslides.

In just 50 years, Indonesia's total forest cover fell from 162 million hectares to 98 million. Roads and development fragment over half of the remaining forests. More than 16 million people depend on fresh water from Indonesia's 15 largest watersheds, which between 1985 and 1997 lost at least 20 percent of their forest cover. Loggers have cleared almost all the biologically diverse lowland tropical forests off Sulawesi, and if current trends continue, such forests will be gone from Sumatra in 2005 and Kalimantan by 2010. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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OUR CLOSEST RELATIVES ARE DISAPPEARING
Janet Larson | 5 March 2002

After more than a century of no known primate extinctions, scientists recently confirmed the disappearance of a subspecies of a West African monkey. The loss of this monkey, known as Miss Waldron's red colobus, may be a harbinger of future losses of our closest evolutionary relatives.

Out of some 240 known primate species, 19 are critically endangered, up from 13 in 1996. This classification refers to species that have suffered extreme and rapid reductions in population or habitat. Their remaining numbers range from less than a few hundred to, at most, a few thousand individuals. If their populations continue to shrink at recent rates, some species will not survive this decade. This group, according to the World Conservation Union's 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, includes 8 monkeys from Brazil's Atlantic rainforest, where 97 percent of the forest has been lost, 2 apes and a monkey from Indonesia, 3 monkeys from Viet Nam, 1 each from Kenya and Peru, and 3 lemur species from Madagascar. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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WORLD'S RANGELANDS DETERIORATING UNDER MOUNTING PRESSURE
Lester R. Brown | 5 February 2002

In late January, a dust storm originating in northwestern China engulfed Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, closing the airport for three days and disrupting tourism. Such dust storms are no longer uncommon. Dust storms originating in Central Asia, coupled with those originating in Saharan Africa that now frequently reach the Caribbean remind us that desertification of the world's rangelands is ongoing. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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DUST BOWL THREATENING CHINA'S FUTURE
Lester R. Brown | 23 May 2001

On April 18, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, reported that a huge dust storm from northern China had reached the United States “blanketing areas from Canada to Arizona with a layer of dust.” They reported that along the foothills of the Rockies the mountains were obscured by the dust from China.

This dust storm did not come as a surprise. On March 10, 2001, The People’s Daily reported that the season’s first dust storm — one of the earliest on record — had hit Beijing. These dust storms, coupled with those of last year, were among the worst in memory, signaling a widespread deterioration of the rangeland and cropland in the country’s vast northwest. [Keep Reading | Top ^]

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POPULATION GROWTH SENTENCING MILLIONS TO HYDROLOGICAL POVERTY
Lester R. Brown | 21 June 2000

At a time when drought in the United States, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan is in the news, it is easy to forget that far more serious water shortages are emerging as the demand for water in many countries simply outruns the supply. Water tables are now falling on every continent. Literally scores of countries are facing water shortages as water tables fall and wells go dry.

We live in a water-challenged world, one that is becoming more so each year as 80 million additional people stake their claims to the Earth’s water resources. Unfortunately, nearly all the projected 3 billion people to be added over the next half century will be born in countries that are already experiencing water shortages. [Keep Reading | Top ^]