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Earth Day: 30 Years and Counting

April 22 marks the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. It is fitting that those of us especially in the developed world pause to remind ourselves of our umbilical connectedness to our environment and the earth's natural resources. From the food that sustains us to the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, and the resources and energy that provide us a basis for our infrastructure and powers our economy, it is the earth's yielding of its bounty of resources that undergirds our lifestyle as well as civilization, itself.

Despite the environmental footprints and scars left behind our extraction, processing, and utilization of this natural resource bounty, planet earth continues to sustain us. Nevertheless, its capacity for resilience is not immune from being short-circuited by human perturbations in the name of unbridled personal interests and economic growth. Humankind is now the principal agent of environmental change. We must stop fouling our nest and become better stewards of our planetary 'oikos' or household.

Calls for sustainable natural resource utilization and economic development, therefore, are not simply the philosophical mantra idly chanted at the radical fringes of society. Such calls cut to the heart of what must be central for a sustainable future, namely sustaining the ecological integrity of this planet and getting the prices right through full cost accounting of our consumerism.

The goal of a sustainable future presents a Herculean task. Our planetary family totals more than six billion. Yet 15 percent of the world's richest counties account for about 80 percent of the world's income and resource consumption. Most people still cultivate the land for their sustenance or are involved in low-income pursuits to sustain themselves. And for many, life plays out under the tyranny of poverty and despair. Roughly half of our human family lives on less that $3 per day. Their aspirations are no different than our own. As many of these people move up on the income scale in their quest to enter the avenue of affluence, the demands on the earth's natural resource base and its assimilation capacity will be taxed even more.

How can this human inertia, driven by desperation for many, necessity for most, and consumptive-based comfort for a relatively few, be shifted toward a more sustainable future? The human propensity for procreation, mining the earth, and pursuing affluence will ultimately be reigned by the shear limitations of the earth's natural resources and ecological processes. Fresh water supplied by the hydrologic cycle, the amount of arable land, and mineral and fossil fuel stores do not automatically increase with population or consumption. Certainly we can do better than wait for nature to dictate our destiny.

There are reasons for optimism. A "no growth" economic future appears neither culturally acceptable nor necessary. Global population growth is decelerating. Resource substitutions, greater energy efficiencies, and more environmentally benign technologies and production systems will continue to be developed and enter the market place. Many more consumer goods will be designed for recycling. Nations are beginning to add minus signs to their national adding machines to distinguish from negative economic activity, including the costs of environmental and social impacts. More sustainable ecosystem management strategies are replacing single resource-based management philosophies.

This Earth Day, therefore, marks not only the 30th anniversary of its origins but also the threshold of the next millennium, which promises to be a new era in the way we humans perceive and manage our planet. We are beginning to adjust our economic and institutional systems to bring about a more sustainable future. We have a long way to go. But the compass has been correctly set. And so on this 30th Earth Day, it is well to pause and reflect upon the source of our sustenance and commit ourselves to a sustainable future. It is a humbling exercise. An old Chinese saying captures the essence of our earth-connectedness by stating that, "man despite his artistic pretensions and his many accomplishments owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."