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WASTED WORLD

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Contents

Introduction..........................................................ixPART 1 NATURAL PROCESSES..............................................11. The Nature of Life: Making Waste...................................32. Nature Goes in Cycles..............................................15PART 2 ONGOING PROCESSES IN THE HUMAN POPULATION......................23I. POPULATION GROWTH AND ITS LIMITATIONS..............................25A. The Growing Problem of Mankind.....................................273. Population Growth and Agricultural Production......................284. Population Growth and Industrial Production........................475. Agribusiness and Corporate States..................................57B. Exhausting and Wasting Our Resources...............................716. Peak Oil and Beyond................................................727. Limited Resources..................................................868. Man-Made Waste.....................................................949. When It's Gone, It's Gone..........................................106C. Exhausting and Wasting Our Environment.............................12110. Our Freshwater Is Running Out!....................................12211. Polluting the Air and Warming Our Climate.........................13612. Deforestation and Its Consequences................................15313. The Loss of Biodiversity..........................................16314. Wasted Land.......................................................173II. TOWARD A COLLAPSE OF OUR SOCIETY?.................................185D. Processes within the Human Population..............................18715. What Is Overpopulation?...........................................18816. Bursting Out of Eden..............................................20217. Urbanization......................................................21418. Migration.........................................................22019. The Spread of Diseases............................................22920. The Dynamic Structure of Society..................................241E. Processes within the Global Society................................25321. From a Concrete to an Abstract World..............................25422. The Energy and Information Content of Society.....................26423. Can Our World Population Collapse?................................278III. THE PERSISTENCE OF MANKIND.......................................293F. Another Future for Our Human World?................................29524. The Road We Took, and the Way Forward.............................296Epilogue. The Emperor's New Clothes...................................307About the Author......................................................313Acknowledgments.......................................................315Selected Bibliography.................................................317

Chapter One

Feeding adds matter and energy to an organism. Yet, after some time, an organism gets hungry and begins to feed again. Having to feed again means that energy and matter have been used somehow; they are used to sustain the organism's life, and the byproduct is waste expelled from the organism.

In very broad terms, this is what happens to all organisms all the time. Organisms big and small, simple and complex. Plants and animals, bacteria, and molds. Life is a never-ending stream of energy and matter—a stream entering a system as energy-rich food, doing work inside, and leaving it again as energy-poor waste. Actually, this stream has already flowed uninterruptedly for almost four billion years. Before they die and hand over the flame to their off spring, all organisms feed and turn food into waste, which they expel. This continues for generation after generation of organisms. Their waste, and eventually their bodies, become food for yet other organisms. And so on, and so on. Indefinitely. This food can be water or minerals from the soil, plants or animals, or gases from the air. The same perpetual cycle applies to waste: the water vapor we breathe out, the minerals returning to the soil, the oxygen plants release into water or air—or the dead elephant decaying away, over the months returning to the soil and air all its constituents assembled and used over the years. Except, of course, its energy, which it has continually dissipated throughout its life, first into the environment, and from there eventually into outer space—from which it originally reached us as solar energy.

In one way or another, the result is a never-ending stream of energy and matter flowing through several kinds of organism: from food to plant to animal to waste. Put crudely, an organism is an organized flow of energy and matter, ending up as waste. Or, more succinctly, it is a mechanism processing resources into waste. The energy and matter together form this mechanism, which both transfers and stores them for some time. This extremely intricate mechanism is what we know as an organism. And together, many organisms using each other's waste as their resource, as food, form a mechanism recycling mineral resources. These cycles are driven by energy that at present comes from the sun.

In slightly more detail, what happens is more complicated: the food has oft en first been stored within the organism and is used to power various life functions. Apart from storing energy and matter, organisms also grow, becoming larger and larger. Obviously, energy and matter are needed just to enable an organism to become larger (that is, an organism needs food so it can grow). Energy and matter are also used to maintain the organism. Like most things, all organisms wear out and decay; unavoidably, something goes wrong in the very complex and intricate processes within the organism's body so that its parts must constantly be repaired if they are to maintain their original function. These ongoing repairs are powered by the energy and matter in the organism's food. This maintenance is usually insufficient to restore all functions adequately, however, and ultimately the organism dies.

Yet another way matter and energy are used is for reproduction. Parents reproduce themselves in new, young organisms—their off spring; these new organisms eventually take the place of their parents when the latter wear out and die. Finally, some types of organisms, most of them animals (but never plants and molds), are mobile. This means that to feed or reproduce, for example, they can move from one place to another, using some of the energy which they have ingested.

Having lost energy and material in these various ways, the organism has to replace them. That is why animals get hungry and begin to search for food. Plants also get hungry but they use their food mainly for storage, maintenance, and growth, and at some point in their life cycle also for reproduction, that is, for making flowers and seeds. Plants also get thirsty: they evaporate water with their leaves, and also use part of it for building up their body. They drink water from the soil using their roots. The difference between plants and animals is that it is customary that we never talk about hunger or thirst, eating or drinking of plants, which we do in connection with animals. But in fact, they are doing the same.

Although for some time the energy and matter form part of the...