Running on Empty: Why the Financial Crunch Pales in Comparison to Our Looming Ecological Crunch

A word of caution to the reader: The following story is not for the faint of heart. An international report released last week by the World Life Fund for Nature (WWF) warns that the world is rapidly heading towards an "ecological credit crunch" of monumental proportions -- one that will dwarf the current credit crunch. The Living Planet report, as it's called, calculates that we are burning through 30 percent more natural resources than the Earth can sustain every year, contributing to a host of long-term environmental problems including air and water pollution and deforestation.

Going by our current consumption habits, the report estimates that we are tallying an annual debt of roughly $4.5 trillion, or almost double the expected losses made by the world's financial sector. (This figure is based on a UN report which crunched the numbers to determine the economic value of the natural services lost every year.)

Its grim conclusion: The world could run out of steam by 2030 -- or, put another way, we will need at least two planets to keep up our profligate lifestyles. (This is two decades earlier than the last Living Planet report, published in 2005, predicted.) And, the report's authors stress, because it does not take into account the (growing) possibility of "abrupt" climate change or another devastating positive feedback loop, that figure is conservative.

To reach these findings, the authors relied on an index created by the Zoological Society of London (appropriately called the Living Planet Index) which measures the health of the world's ecosystems by weighing the impact of the combined human ecological footprint on 5,000 populations of over 1,600 species. Global biodiversity levels have fallen by almost a third since 1970, with all individual indices -- for different animal and plant species -- recording significant losses. Specifically, the tropical species index collapsed, losing a half, while the temperate species index, though relatively stable, was at historically low levels.

For the first time, the report also scrutinized water scarcity, a serious problem that affect over 50 countries around the world (which it describes as experiencing "moderate to severe water stress on a year-round basis"), concluding that it is fast reaching a tipping point in many areas. Already 27 countries import more than half the water they consume each year -- a list that includes many of the world's richest nations, such as the UK, Norway and the Netherlands.

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