State of the World 22 Years Later

In the here and now, looking back over 22 years since the purchase of my first (and only) primary living quarters commonly called a house, I review the State of the World report (subtitled A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society) published in the same year, 1987. Beside me, a vinyl LP album titled Radio-Activity by Kraftwerk converts from analog to digital format so that in the future I may listen to the MP3 version of this album from 1975. I drink a glass of blackberry wine from Keg Springs Winery.

The contents of the 1987 report are as follows:

1. Thresholds of Change, by Lester R. Brown and Sandra Postel
2. Analyzing the Demographic Trap, by Lester R. Brown
3. Assessing the Future of Urbanization, by Lester R. Brown and Jodi Jacobson
4. Reassessing Nuclear Power, by Christopher Flavin
5. Electrifying the Third World, by Christopher Flavin
6. Realizing Recycling’s Potential, by Cynthia Pollock
7. Sustaining World Agriculture, by Lester R. Brown
8. Raising Agricultural Productivity, by Edward C. Wolf
9. Stabilizing Chemical Cycles, by Sandra Postel
10. Designing Sustainable Economies, by William U. Chandler
11. Charting a Sustainable Course, by Lester R. Brown and Edward C. Wolf

The book poses the following statements:

• Economic activity could be approaching a level where future growth in gross world product costs more than it is worth.
• By 2000, three out of five cities with populations of 15 million or more will be in the Third World.
• Over two-thirds of the people in most European countries are now against the construction of nuclear plants.
• More than half the cities in the United States will exhaust their current landfills by 1990.
• Climate change could carry a global price tag of $200 billion for irrigation adjustments alone.
• The existing scientific effort falls short of what is needed to assess the impacts of human activity on the global environment.
• For some of the major adjustments facing humanity, a relatively small number of countries hold the key to success.

For some of these statements, the future has fulfilled the promises implied. For others, I have yet to decide if the statements were sufficiently detailed to point to a future “answer.”

Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” has covered much of the territory that the Worldwatch Institute discusses in their annual report so I’m not here to repeat, support, deny or imply any opinion in the realm of statistical data about sustainable societies. What I do know is that the house next door to me is now for sale at the astonishing price of $494,000, a far cry from the $91,900 I paid for mine 22 years ago, a 538% increase in neighborhood house value, even in today’s depressed housing market!

What does that say about the rest of the world?

For instance, a gallon of gas should cost almost $5 by now in the United States and it did, briefly, late last year. It’s back down to less than $2 again, however.

What does that mean to me?

Well, looking at the 1987 State of the World report, I expect I would find that extrapolated predictions may or may not match a calculated formulaic rise that one item we all use has followed. Too many extenuating circumstances, too many factors accounted and not accounted for get in the way of seeing the future clearly.

Therefore, when I hear politicians and experts making claims that their plans will make the future better, I smile to myself, knowing that the likelihood of all the claims lining up with plans is small. Not impossibly small and not impossible. Just small. There’s a chance all the claims and plans will line up as if everyone knew they would and made it happen.

I will stay the course. I will continue to invest in the stock market, put money in mutual funds, buy bonds, watch my neighborhood for suspicious activity and…you know what, that last one is a doozy, because everything is suspicious to me – no wonder Clint Eastwood decided to make the movie, “Gran Torino.” You try watching your neighborhood to determine what is ‘normal’ activity against which you can decide that something stands out enough for you to call a neighbor or police. But I digress.

The state of the world is changing every second. We can track trends and guess within fairly accurate limits where we can make our next measurement. We know species will lose sustainable environments and disappear from the face of the Earth forever. We also know that the human population will continue growing, but not indefinitely.

I say, so what? Billions of people have no control over the state of the world. They (we?) live rather uneventful lives by world recognition standards. Instead of preaching about the general state of the world, let’s talk about what we’re going to do tomorrow to put food on our individual tables.

I want to eat three or four small meals each day, with the first meal, breakfast, already determined – three/fourths of a cup of oatmeal, three tablespoons of ground flax seed, a cup of tea and a banana an hour later. For a middle-aged man, that meal is sufficient. What about for you? What’s sufficient to get your day started? I doubt it’s preprocessed refined sugar wrapped around a square, rectangle or toroid object. If you believe it is, then ask yourself what exactly you are eating and where it came from.

See, it’s not some pie-in-the-sky state of the world report that makes a difference in how you’re using the world and leaving it in a better shape for your next generation. It’s really only a matter of how you go through the day, each hour and minute doing whatever it is that you do to say you make a difference in your circle of influence.

Oh, and in case you hadn’t looked at the link to 1987 above, there was a stock market crash that year:

• US Stock Market Crashed on Monday, October 19th, 1987 with a 508 point drop or 22.6%.
• Stock markets around the world followed with falls, by the end of October Australia had fallen 41.8%, Canada 22.5%, Hong Kong 45.8%, and the United Kingdom 26.4%.
• The World's Population reached approx five billion (5,000,000,000).

And guess what, despite all the doom-and-gloom news that year, we’re still here. Yes, the average world temperature is a little warmer, and before long, ship traffic through the Arctic Ocean in summer will be unfettered while at the same time the only polar bears may be the ones in zoos. I’m not saying the world will be a better place or a worse place 22 years from now, if you and I are still around to talk about it. I’m just saying that to become the quiet millionaire next-door, you gotta stick to a plan. Money doesn’t grow on trees, it grows in the marketplace of ideas. Some ideas will falter. But many of them will grow and take your investments up to new heights.

Pick a plan. I don’t care what it is but make it a smart one. Just like a treehouse built in a single tree is more likely to fall than one spread among several trees, you should spread your investments around. That’s about as smart as it gets. Playing the odds, not playing it odd.

How about in 22 years, you and I meet up in a space hab unit for a few days of weightless spa treatments? Maybe a vacation arranged by the company that will buy out Bigelow Aerospace in the future, including a flight on Virgin Galactic. I’ll go ahead and set my calendar now for the 10th of January 2031. Of course, by then we’ll have some sort of biological implants that’ll let us communicate “telepathically” so when our brain patterns match up while we’re getting our epidermis revitalized and our DNA rejuvenated, we can compare notes on how well the past 22 years have been to those of us who weren’t spooked by the occasional dip, drop or plop in the world economy. We can ROFL with LOL all we want by then!