Earth 2100 is an ABC News (U.S.) special that will air the evening of June 2. At the show’s little-tended website one finds hope for a remarkably candid (especially for the U.S.) look at the sustainability predicament we find ourselves in. From the program description:

What could our world look like over the next one hundred years if we don’t act now to save our troubled planet? The world’s brightest minds agree that the “perfect storm” of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results.

This is heady stuff, since climate change makes a few headlines, resource depletion fewer, and population growth is almost universally ignored as a multiplier in the equation that represents human impact on our planet. . . .

This documentary takes a unique slant on sustainability by examining how public policies and superstitions at every level of government affect the sustainability of our behavior. I often ask, “How can we expect to achieve global sustainability if our planet is full of communities acting unsustainably?’

Of course I’ve been working on that very issue in my own community for years, trying to inject some prudent, rational, long-term thinking into what was rarely even a debate about my community’s addiction to growth.

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t posted in 2 months, it’s because I decided in January to kick it up a notch. I entered a local city council race. I decided to run because my city, like most cities and even the entire U.S., is facing a funding crisis. Instead of rampant consumption, citizens are now being very thrifty, diminishing sales tax revenue. Instead of enjoying the quick hit of sales tax revenue from new construction, the city is now stuck serving subdivisions that have never provided the tax revenue necessary to serve them. . . .

This opinion piece in USA Today really gave me pause. Author Laura Vanderkam celebrates the fact that U.S. fertility rate rose 22% from 1976 to 2007. And she suggests increasing it even further is a worthy goal. I’m not kidding. Here is her rationale:

Between bank bailouts and the stimulus package, it’s no secret that our government is spending like a megafamily at the grocery store. But both of these pale next to the looming problems of Social Security and Medicare. With fewer workers supporting an aging population, Social Security, for instance, will exhaust its trust fund about 2041.

A higher birthrate could ease that. The youngest Boomers won’t retire until 2030 or so,when children born today enter the workforce. A baby bulge over the next few years could push off the day of reckoning, and the economic growth a rising population causes will shrink our debt to a more manageable percentage of GDP. . . .

Since today is Earth Day it seems fitting to write something about the event and our efforts to Save the Planet. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to save the planet, though apparently many self-centered human beings do. So, even more fitting, on Earth Day, is a humorous yet deadly serious Earth Day essay by Joseph Romm. Please spend 8 minutes of your Earth Day reading his commentary. Then let me know what you think. Then, let’s get back to saving the planet, for it is the only way to save ourselves!

Physical expansion & population growth are costly

I owe you an election report on my recent city council run in my hometown of Colorado Springs. I wasn’t sure the citizens were ready to embrace a modern, sustainable economic model that recognizes perpetual growth is impossible. But I thought I might get traction from the fact that growth is no longer profitable. My city, like most, and like our entire nation, is in a state of crisis. Our tax revenue is down thanks to the collapse of the housing and consumption bubbles.

As I feared, current leaders believe we just need to rev up the growth engine to solve this problem (their faith in growth everlasting prevents them from seeing that our growth boom of the past two decades created more problems than it solved). It created costs faster than revenues. And it didn’t exactly do wonders for our quality of life. I wanted to offer an alternative to re-inflating the housing bubble, a smarter, more sustainable long-term solution. . . .