Absurdities of 2003

Mad cow disease pops up in the United States, causing a massive meat recall, while agronomists look for new and cheaper ways to produce beef, the same quest which led to the incorporation of dead cow parts in feed for live cows, the very practice which causes mad cow disease.

The annual shop-till-you-drop Christmas spree is on in the United States and elsewhere as millions of gluttonous "Christians" gorge themselves, oblivious to the lean Christmases their grandchildren may experience.

Nature proves it is not to be toyed with as deforestation in Indonesia results in a devastating flood which kills dozens, not inappropriately including a number of foreign tourists to whose home countries much of the cut timber was exported to meet the ever-increasing demands of growth.

Immigration becomes a volatile issue in the California gubernatorial race as that state absorbs a third of the legal immigrants who enter the United States every year (and an unknown percentage of the illegal ones), pushing the state towards a predicted population of 54 million by 2025 and causing it to lose 1.5% of its open space to urban sprawl every year.

Dirt poor Central American countries - El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua - send troops to help secure the West's supply of Middle Eastern oil, while unctious diplomats from such international basketcases as Ghana and Pakistan piously intone about "rebuilding Iraq". Look homeward, angels.

Pollution, overfishing and climatechange are blamed for severe damage to one-third of the world's coral reefs and could destroy another third over the next thirty years.

In Ghana, foreign mining interests are pressuring the government to allow mining in the nation's protected forests, despite the fact cyanide spills by the mining industry have already devastated the country's rivers and marshlands and that only 2% of Ghana's forests are still intact.

According to the Population Reference Bureau, Africa's population could soar by one billion over the next half-century, while governments on that impoverished, strife-torn continent are forced to cut family planning programs for lack of money.

While the rich countries lived it up through the boom years of the 1990's, the UN Development Program reports that poverty in 59 countries increased during the go-go-growth years.

After huge improvements in the water quality of San Francisco Bay over the preceding 30 years, the pollution level in the world-renowned bay has failed to improve over the last decade, as - not coincidentally - growth in the area has continued unabated.

According to a report published in the journal "Nature", industrial fishing fleets have stripped 90% of the giant tuna, swordfish, marlin, and other big fish from the world's oceans, threatening a total collapse of these stocks, as happened to the cod off the Grand Banks.

Consider the lowly (and endangered) California whipsnake, who sees his habitat subdivided and paved over as communities in San Francisco's East Bay revise their Urban Limit Line to make way for anticipated growth.

In California, the number of cases of autism has doubled over the last four years - from 10,360 in 1998 to 20,377 in 2002 - corresponding to a world-wide, or rather industrialized countries-wide phenomenon, and some scientists point to environmental factors aggravated by continued growth, such as pesticide use, as the cause.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation predicts there won't be enough water for all the farms, businesses, lawns, and people in the American West by the year 2025, forcing cities like Denver, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles to cut back usage, but little more than hand-wringing over this growth-induced crisis is done.

Canada bans all fishing for cod - both commercial and recreational - as the former mainstay of the Grand Banks economy continues its decline, while experts debate whether overfishing or climate change - both attributable to gorwth - is the cause.

With oil center-stage in this growth-addicted theater of the absurd, U.S. claims to control the oil fields of Iraq seem to leave Congress unimpressed as the House raises yet again the prospect of drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

With Great Britain imposing a surcharge on driving into London's city center, can tolls for "free"way use and a land-use tax on parking your car in front of your house be far behind?

A hint of how much easier it would be to deal with environmental problems in a zero growth world is provided by the United States where emissions of greenhouse gases declined for the first time in a decade in the West because of the economic downturn, but the forecast is for an increase in the rate of emissions over the next 20 years because of the assumption of continued mindless growth.

Those who would do right by the planet often find themselves in a quandary choosing the appropriate actions because of equally undesirables choices (for instance, choosing a cotton T-shirt over polyester only supports the industry that uses 25% of the insecticides and 10% of the pesticides in the world; a similar quandary faces those who would choose between paper and plastic bags), while their best efforts are buried under the sheer quantity of it all in any case.

With its budget deficit growing faster than the unemployment rate, California seeks to economize by abandoning the five-year-old effort to reduce the classroom student-to-teacher ratio to 20-1, despite the fact that the current 21-1 ratio prevailing statewide is the second worst of all the united states, surpassed only by Utah's.

Some hail the success of the Forest Stewardship Council in certifying more than 60 million ares as sustainably harvested, but critics point out the many compromises accorded lumber companies by the FSC, which, for example, allow the Mendocino Redwood Company in California to clear-cut for another 50 years, to continue use of toxic herbicides, and to log old-growth redwoods.

High and lofty motives are self-ascribed by the United States Government as it prepares to invade and perhaps occupy Iraq for years, but cynics see a much less lofty motive: control of Iraqi oil. Perhaps a presage of the sort of resource wars to plague future generations as continued growth puts contentious pressure on finite supplies?

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