The Big Picture

A world unfit for life?

There is little denying that the earth is changing in significant and potentially catastrophic ways. How serious is the problem? Former United Nations Development Group chair and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Professor James Gustave Speth writes that if we continue to do exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the world economy or population, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. These words resonate clearer as we consider the current state of the earth’s environment.

Our resources and ecosystems are disappearing at an unprecedented rate

Close to half of the world’s temperate and tropical forests are now gone with most being destroyed in the last three decades. In the tropics the rate of deforestation continues at a rate of 170,000 square kilometers a year or an acre a second. About half the world’s wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. Arable land is being lost at 30-35 times the historical rate. One billion people have access to little or no renewable water resource. The amount of freshwater being withdrawn globally has doubled since 1960 and now accounts for over half of accessible rainwater runoff. Only 20% of the world’s drainage basins hold nearly pristine water as the majority are now contaminated with inorganic nitrogen and phosphorous from industrial fertilizers. The Colorado, Ganges, Nile, and Yellow Rivers no longer reach the ocean in the dry season. Close to 75% of marine fisheries are either depleted, overfished, or fully exploited. Ninety-percent of large predator fish are gone. Twenty-seven percent of the planet’s coral reefs have been effectively lost. There are over two hundred marine ‘dead’, or de-oxygenated, zones as a result of overfertilization, sewage, and animal waste runoff. The stratospheric ozone layer has been severely depleted. Toxic chemicals can be found in almost each and every one of us. Species are disappearing at rates one thousand times faster than normal. Not since the dinosaurs disappeared sixty-five million years ago has the planet experienced such a “spasm of extinction”.

It comes down to how we do business

Furthermore, evidence of a warming climate is unequivocal . Eleven of the twelve years between 1995-2006 rank among the twelve warmest years since 1850 . Heat waves have become more frequent as cold days, cold nights, and frost have become less frequent . Everywhere the earth’s ice fields and glaciers are melting causing average global sea levels to rise . Intense tropical cyclone activity has increased in the North Atlantic since 1970 . By the end of the 21st century global average surface temperature will have risen anywhere between 1.8 and 4 degrees Celsius (3 – 7 degrees Fahrenheit) and the sea level between 0.18 and 0.59 meters (7 – 23 inches). The food supply, infrastructure, health, water resources, coastal systems, ecosystems, global biogeochemical cycles, ice sheets and modes of oceanic and atmospheric circulation will all be likely affected.
And what is the cause of all this? Most basically, it is the economic activity of human beings since the industrial revolution.

You can play a role mitigating our environmental impact

Nevertheless, these facts should not push you to despair but to action. Many organizations, including our own Sonoma County Climate Protection Action Campaign, explain that Business has a vital role to play in the transition from environmental crisis to sustainability, and we have set bold goals as a community: 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2015. There are real and practical steps that your business can take today to mitigate its ecological impact and its contribution to climate change.

Take the first step

This site contains an abundance of resources and strategies to help your business adopt environmentally responsible practices. Utilize the business toolkit in a meaningful way by implementing its recommendations. Dedicate yourself and your business to environmental sustainability over the long term by investing in more efficient appliances, green building renovations, and clean and renewable energy with the SCEIP financing program for example.
Here in Sonoma County, it can no longer be the case that economic activity degrades our natural environment. The stakes are simply too high. Profitability through sound environmental practice is possible. Do your part to ensure that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Get started today!