Energy and the economy -a global and national analysis

When energy-GDP relationship is analyzed on a global scale for any one-time period the correlations derived are always very high. Yet these results are deceiving-and of lattle practical value-because of regional and income differences and the dynamic and highly individual behavior of the various countries. Consequently, the only meaningful approach is to analyze energy-GDP patterns over a long time on an individual country basis and to do so by defining GDP in terms of national currency.Correlations obtained by the latter method are uniformly and extremely high enabling a planner who can forecast the GDP levels of a country with some confidence to derive energy consumption from an appropriate regression equation with almost a pinpoint precision.Needless to say that these results, reflecting the developmentsduring a highly stable period of economic growth and low-and fairly stable-energy prices, should be applied with caution, especially as far as long-range projections are concerned. Each country's energy-GDP pattern is determined predominantly by climate, orientation of the economy, efficiency of industrial and household conversions and the share of non-productive energy uses.     

Harvesting the biosphere: the human impact

The human species has evolved to dominate the biosphere: global anthropomass is now an order of magnitude greater than the mass of all wild terrestrial mammals. As a result, our dependence on harvesting the products of photosynthesis for food, animal feed, raw materials, and energy has grown to make substantial global impacts. During the past two millennia these harvests, and changes of land use due to deforestation and conversions of grasslands and wetlands, have reduced the stock of global terrestrial plant mass by as much as 45 percent, with the twentieth-century reduction amounting to more than 15 percent. Current annual harvests of phytomass have been a significant share of the global net primary productivity (NPP, the total amount of new plant tissues created by photosynthesis). Some studies put the human appropriation of NPP (the ratio of these two variables) as high as 40 percent but the measure itself is problematic. Future population growth and improved quality of life will result in additional claims on the biosphere, but options to accommodate these demands exist without severely compromising the irreplaceable biospheric services.     

Limits to Growth Revisited: A Review Essay*

Robert William Fogel The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America, and the Third World E. A. Wrigley Poverty, Progress, and Population Tomas Frejka and Jean ‐Paul Sardon Childbearing Trends and Prospects in Low‐Fertility Countries: A Cohort Analysis Roderic Beaujot and Don Kerr Population Change in Canada (second edition) Wolfgang Lutz , Warren C. Sanderson , and Sergei Scherbov (eds. ) The End of World Population Growth in the 21st Century: New Challenges for Human Capital Formation and Sustainable Development Emmanuel Todd After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, translated by C. Jon Delogu     

Eating Meat: Evolution,Patterns, and Consequences

Carnivorousness is a part of human evolutionary heritage, but typical meat intakes were limited in virtually all preindustrial societies. Rising meat consumption has been a key marker of the universal dietary transition that has accompanied economic modernization. Meat is now the largest source of high‐quality animal proteins, and in some countries its annual supply is as high as 100 kg or more per capita. At the same time, high average intakes of red meat and poultry have had a number of undesirable agronomic, economic, nutritional, and environmental consequences. Fortunately, most of these negative effects can be alleviated by reducing excessively high meat consumption and by managing better both the production of feeds and the feeding of animals.     

The Next 50 Years: Fatal Discontinuities

Modern civilization is subject to gradual environmental, social, economic, and political transformations as well as to sudden changes that can fundamentally alter its prospects. This article examines a key set of such fatal discontinuities by quantifying the likelihood of three classes of sudden, and potentially catastrophic, events—natural disasters (the Earth's collision with nearby asteroids, massive volcanic eruptions and mega‐tsunami generated by these events, as well as by huge landslides); viral pandemics; and transformational wars—and by comparing their likelihood with other involuntary risks (including terrorism) and voluntary actions and exposures.     

Energy and the environment—A Delphi forecast

The author is currently an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. In the long range forecasting project ‘Energy and the Environment’, discussed in this article (conducted in 1970|1971 at the Pennsylvania State University), the Delphi method was employed to evaluate potential breakthroughs in energy technologies and environmental protection, management and planning innovations during the next 50 years. The priorities for energy—environmental problems, the growth of the traditional energy technologies and the probabilities of environmental ‘episodes’ in the 1970's were additional topics in the Delphi study.     

Rocky Mountain Visions: A Review Essay*

George J. Borjas, Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy Douglas S. Massey, Joaquin Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, Aistd J. Edward Taylor, Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World Joseph P. Ferrie, Yankeys Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum United States 1840–1860 Francine M. Deutsch, Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works     

The Next 50 Years: Unfolding Trends

Change in modern societies comes both because of sudden, and often catastrophic, events and because of the gradual unfolding of fundamental demographic, social, economic, strategic, and environmental trends. A previous essay by the author assessed the probabilities over the coming five decades of the most important natural and anthropogenic catastrophes with possible global impacts. This essay surveys key socioeconomic trends of the next 50 years. While the ranking and comparative assessments of the importance, intensity, and durability of these trends may be elusive, their historic background, complexity, linkages, and likely consequences can be illuminated by focusing on the long‐term futures of six major global actors: the United States, the European Union, the Muslim world, Japan, Russia, and China. This appraisal suggests a likelihood of a world without a dominant power (or a grand alliance) and subject to a potentially worrisome fragmentation.     

Contaminated consignment simulation to support risk-based inspection design

Invasive nonnative plant pests can cause extensive environmental and economic damage and are very difficult to eradicate once established. Phytosanitary inspections that aim to prevent biological invasions by limiting movement of nonnative plant pests across borders are a critical component of the biosecurity continuum. Inspections can also provide valuable information about when and where plant pests are crossing national boundaries. However, only a limited portion of the massive volume of goods imported daily can be inspected, necessitating a highly targeted, risk-based strategy. Furthermore, since inspections must prioritize detection and efficiency, their outcomes generally cannot be used to make inferences about risk for cargo pathways as a whole. Phytosanitary agencies need better tools for quantifying pests going undetected and designing risk-based inspection strategies appropriate for changing operational conditions. In this research, we present PoPS (Pest or Pathogen Spread) Border, an open-source consignment inspection simulator for measuring inspection outcomes under various cargo contamination scenarios to support recommendations for inspection protocols and estimate pest slippage rates. We used the tool to estimate contamination rates of historical interception data, quantify tradeoffs in effectiveness and workload for inspection strategies, and identify vulnerabilities in sampling protocols as changes in cargo configurations and contamination occur. These use cases demonstrate how this simulation approach permits testing inspection strategies and measuring quantities that would otherwise be impossible in a field-based setting. This work represents the first steps toward a decision support tool for creating dynamic inspection protocols that respond to changes in available resources, workload, and commerce trends.