GOOD PLANETS ARE HARD TO FIND
Reports form the State of the World 1989 from Lester Brown's Worldwatch Institute, including good news and bad news.
May/June 1989
By the Mother Earth News editors
LAST LAUGH
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State of the World 1989: some good news and some bad news
Will the United States and the Soviet Union agree to a "greenhouse glasnost"?
AND THEY'RE HARDER TO TAKE CARE, according to the recently released State of the World 1989 from Lester Brown's Worldwatch Institute. Reading the entire 243-page report is like taking a short course in earth medicine: a fine way to gain a balanced view of current global problems and possibilities.
Here are a few "snapshot" examples:
Bad News
In March 1988, more than 100 international experts reported that the ozone layer around the entire globe was eroding much faster than any previous model had predicted. Indeed, from 1969 to 1986, atmospheric ozone decreased between 1.7 and 3% in the heavily populated band of the Northern Hemisphere that encompasses virtually all of continental U.S. and Europe (winter losses ranged from 2.3 to 6.2%).
An astonishing 8 million hectares of rain forest-an area about the size of Austria were burned in 1987 in the Amazon basin alone.
Poland recently declared five villages unfit for human habitation due to the extremely high levels of heavy metals in the air and soil.
Humanity added 5.5 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere in 1988. The United States was the largest contributor.
Industrial countries are dumping waste in Third World nations. Some 3,800 tons of Italian toxic waste were illegally dumped in the small Nigerian port town of Koko. The Nigerian government now plans to evacuate Koko's 5,000 residents.
Between 1984 and 1988, per capita world grain production fell 14%, back to 1970 levels.
The new and growing category of "environmental refugees"--people driven from their homes by environmental, not political, disaster-is estimated to total at least 10 million people. These refugees will soon outnumber all other types.
Fully 35% of the earth's land surface is in various stages of desertification.
Some 22 wars have been raging in the '80s, more than in any previous decade in recorded military history. However, military aggression is becoming less successful: Only one out of 10 aggressors has won its war (the ratio used to be four out of 10).
China plans to more than double its use of coal, which could push it past the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's leading carbon emitter.
The grain used in producing a quarter-pound hamburger could feed a person in a low-income country for two days.
Good News
Last October, President Jose Sarney of Brazil announced a 90-day suspension of the tax breaks and other incentives that had spurred the clearing and burning of large tracts of Amazon rain forest.
