Report: Humanity using up the planet

Associated Press
October 22, 2004

GENEVA — Humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels, the spread of cities, the destruction of natural habitats for farmland and over-exploitation of the oceans are destroying Earth’s ability to sustain life, an environmental group warned in a report Thursday.

In its Living Planet Report, WWF said humans consume 20 percent more natural resources than the Earth can produce.

“We are spending nature’s capital faster than it can regenerate,” said Claude Martin, WWF’s international director-general. “We are running up an ecological debt which we won’t be able to pay off unless governments restore the balance between our consumption of natural resources and the Earth’s ability to renew them.”

But Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, said he was skeptical. In a telephone interview, Smith said the study failed to take into account the benefits many people get from resource use.

Use of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil increased by almost 700 percent from 1961 to 2001, the 40-page study said.

Burning fossil fuels — in power plants and automobiles, for example — releases carbon dioxide, which experts say contributes to global warming. The planet is unable to keep pace and absorb the emissions, said WWF, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund.

Populations of land, freshwater and marine species fell, on average, by 40 percent from 1970 to 2000. The report cited urbanization, forest clearance, pollution, overfishing and the introduction by humans of nonnative animals, such as cats and rats, which often drive out indigenous species.

“The question is how the world’s entire population can live with the resources of one planet,” said Jonathan Loh, one of the report’s authors.

The study examined the “ecological footprint” of the planet’s entire population.

Most of a person’s footprint is caused by the space needed to absorb the waste from energy consumption, including carbon dioxide. The report also measured the total area of cities, roads and other infrastructure and the space required to produce food and fiber — for clothing, for example.

“We don’t just live on local resources,” so the footprint is not confined to the country where consumers live, said Mathis Wackernagel, head of the Global Footprint Network, which includes WWF.

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