Montclair State University Department of Anthropology

Anth140: Nonwestern Contributions to the Western World:

Professor Richard W. Franke: Spring 2005

Lessons from the Ancestors: The brilliant achievements of the Chimu in Peru and the Maya in Central America were not sufficient to prevent their civilizations from collapsing. Can we learn anything from them to protect our own civilization?

1. Global Warming: Highest Concentration of Carbon Dioxide in 160,000 years – highest temperatures in more than a century. Sources for this Handout

	1960	2002	Increase
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions in ppm (parts per million)	316.7	372.9	17.7%
Average World Temperature	14.01 C 57.2 F	14.52 C 58.1 F	3.6%
Sea Level Rise in 20th Century			4–8 inches
Average Predicted Rise for 21st Century			20 inches

When temperatures go above 100 F (37 C), crops experience “thermal shock,” and photosynthesis stops. Harvests decline by up to 10%.

2. Water Shortages and Water-Induced Global warming

• Only 1% of the earth’s water is available as fresh water
• It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain; 2,000 tons of water to produce one ton of meat.
• Water tables in the Midwest have dropped more than 90 feet in recent years; in China, India, and Pakistan even larger drops have been recorded.
• Declining water tables require motorized pumps which burn fossil fuels and increase global warming.

3. Loss of Topsoils and Forests

• More than half of all forest loss has occurred since 1950.

• Between 1990 and 2000, 7% of all tropical forest lands were converted to other uses – an area equal to the size of Mexico.
• Each year 140,000 hectares (1 ha = 2.47 acres) of forest are lost – an area the size of Nepal
• Soil erosion takes place 34 times faster on agricultural land than on forested land.
• For each inch of topsoil lost, wheat and corn yields decline by 6%
• Total world cropland has been declining since 1981; per capita grain production since 1984
• In the USA 16 million hectares of high quality cropland have been paved over for roads and parking lots.

4. Loss of Biodiversity

• Scientists estimate that human-induced species extinction is now 40,000 times the rate of natural evolution.
• 25% of all mammal and reptile species are endangered, along with 21% of amphibians and 30% of fish.
• 28% of all North American birds are declining in numbers.
• The World Wide Fund for Nature reports that its “Living Planet Index…an indicator of the state of the world’s natural ecosystem…[a composite of] forest, freshwater, and marine species…shows an overall decline of about 37 per cent between 1970 and 2000

5. Global Overshoot

A 2002 report presented as part of the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences suggests that humanity’s “ecological footprint” now requires 20% more than the available resources of the earth. The study weights food crops, animal pasture, timber harvesting, fishing, infrastructure, and fossil fuel burning to generate a standardized per capita “global hectare area (gha):” the amount of the biosphere expressed as a land unit needed to support one human life. In 1999 the area available was estimated at 1.91 gha per person, but the usage was estimated at 2.33. If 12% of the biosphere were to be kept in reserve to protect biodiversity as recommended in various studies, the “overshoot” becomes nearly 40%. The capital reserves of the earth are being drawn down, but it cannot be stated with certainty how long the depletion can go on until a collapse occurs.

6. The U. S. as Percent of:

World population 5.2%

World carbon emissions 24.0%

World private consumption expenditures 31.5%

World military spending 48.0%

7. World Scientists’ Warning: The interconnected nature of the various forms of earth endangerment and the degree of overshoot make each factor potentially more destructive than they might appear separately. This point was emphasized in 1992 when 1,630 of the world’s most eminent scientists, including 102 Nobel Laureates – a majority of the Nobel Laureates alive at the time – issued their “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” which includes the following observation:

Our massive tampering with the world’s interdependent web of life―coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change― could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand. Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threats.

Sources: Sources for this Handout

Supplementary Readings for Anth140: http://chss.montclair.edu/anthro/ANTH140supplementaryreadings.htm