THE ENVIRONMENTALIST AND THE BOMB UPDATE: DAVE BROWER

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However, whether you agree with my route toward disarmament or not, the fact is that we do have to get rid of nuclear weapons somehow. But still more than that is required. We have to ask, as Moorhead C. Kennedy, Jr. puts it, "What are you saving the earth for , not just from ?" We need to outline what we want our planet to be like and how we'll all manage to live on it sustainably. If we can come up with those scenarios, it's going to be easier to disarm in the first place.

Right now, the world's economic systems heavily discount the future. Instead, the superpowers are in a growth race as well as an arms race. The vigorous growing economy all our leaders keep exhorting us to produce is simply not eternally possible on an earth of fixed size, and continuing attempts to produce such growth constitute the basic threat to peace. So we need a blueprint for an economy that will endure in peaceful stability . . . that will not require the war with the environment that leads to war with fellow humans.

Now I'm not saying all growth is bad. The key question is, "What kinds of growth must we have and what kinds can we no longer afford ?" I think if you wrote down the two answers to that question, you'd find that the first list would be a fairly short one, and the second very long. We should treat the matter the way nature does. In spring there's a great deal of promise of vigorous new growth, and that's good. We're going to need it. Throughout summer the growth is exploding, and by fall its yield is harvested. But then winter comes and the world undergoes a very severe editing. What is no longer needed won't show up again. Editing out the things that must not come back is what we've forgotten to do with our economy. We do need growth, a new blossoming every so often . . . but we also need to balance that off with what we let die.

We need to stop building roads and dams . . . we already have plenty of those. We need to quit destroying wild places . . . we need all the ones we've got left. We who live in America need to stop using so many "advanced" lifestyle trinkets ... we're creating almost half the world's resource drain. And everyone needs to work to halt — nay, to reverse — the global population increase. I'd be happy to "grandfather clause" all the people who are alive now, but those who aren't here yet should quit arriving in such large numbers.

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