1. What threat does overconsumption of the Earth and its resources pose to the stability of human society?
On October 31st
2011, according to some estimates, the world’s population passed 7 billion
(Gharzeddine, 2011), roughly 12 years after it passed the 6 billion mark in 1999. More than ever
before, this milestone was overshadowed by growing concerns about whether our planet, of which we
have only one – Earth, is capable of supporting this ever growing population, and satisfying it’s ever
increasing demands for everything from the basics of food and water to the latest consumer electronics.
After very gradual increases through most of human history, the global population probably
surpassed a billion in the first decade of the 19th
century. From then on, it grew at an unprecedented
speed, illustrated in the graph below, accelerated mainly by rapid medical advances that slashed infant
mortality rates and drove up life expectancies (DHHS, 2006), but also by the rise of large cities and
intensive food production brought on by the industrial revolution. While the rate of growth peaked at
2.2% during the 1960s (Nielsen, 2006), the human population is still predicted to grow to upwards of 9
billion by the middle of the 21st
century, after which it may start to fall, plateau or continue rising at a
reduced rate, it is impossible to foresee. But while the number of people living on this planet may not
grow forever, what is far less likely to stop growing is their appetite for the lifestyles we in the West
have enjoyed for decades, of having plentiful food, electricity, cars, televisions, computers, mobile
phones, video games and so on. As economies such as India and China grow, their citizens become
richer, and these higher standards of living are what the trend is towards. However, it is estimated that
if everyone were to live like those in the ‘developed’ world – like those in Europe, North America and
Japan in particular – we would require 4 Earths to satisfy our needs for land and resources, and that is
ignoring the land that must be set aside for the millions of other species we share our planet with
(Simmons, 2001). We obviously do not have 4 Earths at our disposal, so here lies a very big problem.
Modern civilisation has come to depend on an astonishing variety of resources to sustain itself,
from the silicon used in computer circuits to the metals that we build our cities out of, but above all else
stand two things whose importance to society is greatest, whose impact on our planet is most dramatic,
and whose scarcity is felt most severely. These are the resources of food and energy. In producing
food, mankind has turned vast areas of land over to agriculture and exploited the wealth of the oceans
for fish stocks. In producing energy, it has spent the past two centuries primarily burning fossil fuels in
order to drive its vehicles, light its cities and power its factories. The ever expanding production of
food and energy that has accompanied the rapid growth in global population and industry is thus
generating a broad spectrum of environmental problems while our overdependence on them poses a
serious issue in the event that they run out. The problems we are creating now by this overconsumption
of the Earth and the resources it supplies us may at some point in the near future combine to threaten
the nature, and possibly even the very survival, of human society itself. In the following essay, I will
attempt to identify what these threats are, how great a threat they are, and how we might avert them.
I chose to examine this particular topic as I have a strong personal interest in issues of the
environment and sustainability, and wished to explore these further. I also hoped to highlight the
impact on humans of their own unsustainable practises, as people are already very well exposed to the
effect these are having on the Earth’s other species and ecosystems, in the hope of promoting more
action on halting and changing these various practises to more sustainable ways of living.
It should be noted throughout that any predictions made henceforth are of course not definite
and carry a degree of unreliability due to the litany of human and natural factors that may be involved,
however, they are what I have determined to be the most likely scenarios.
1
Time
World population from 10,000 BC – 2000 AD
(USCB, 2008)

2. The Problem of Food
As of 2010, it is estimated that there are 925 million people in the world suffering from
malnourishment and 1.1 billion people with inadequate access to clean water (FAO, 2010). As a direct
consequence of this, 25,000 are killed each day by hunger and hunger related illnesses (Poverty.com,
2007), and 3.575 million people die each year from diseases contracted from inadequate or
contaminated water supplies (Prüss-Üstün et al, 2008). In contrast, approximately a billion adults
worldwide are overweight, and over 300 million of them are classed as obese (Puska et al, 2003), the
majority of them found in industrialised nations such as the U.S., where two thirds of the adult
population is overweight or obese (Ogden et al, 2010). From these statistics, it is clear to anyone that
the world has enough of a problem on its hand feeding the people who are already alive thanks to the
unequal spread of food, let alone the 2 or more billion extra people who will be added by 2050. And as
obesity rates in the developed world show, with wealthier lifestyles come more overconsumption of
food, further amplifying this inequality. This combination of population growth and growth in
consumption means that by 2050, demand for food worldwide may increase by 70-100%
(Schuttenhelm, 2011), requiring the production of an additional billion tonnes of cereals (wheat, maize,
rice etc) and 200 million tonnes of meat (FAO, 2009). In order to meet this demand, it is highly likely
that a huge amount of land will have to be turned over to agriculture. Estimates of how much extra land
will be needed vary from a staggering 1 billion hectares (an area roughly the size of the U.S) if current
inefficient farming practises in developing countries are continued, to 200 million hectares – still a
huge area – if more intensive practises that already exist are implemented. It is the acquiring of these
huge amounts of land that is already presenting huge problems.
This is because one of the easiest environments to convert to farming is forests – being scarcely
populated with a favourable climate – in particular, the tropical rainforests of South America, Central
Africa and Southeast Asia. In the Amazon rainforest of South America alone, deforestation is clearing
an area the size of 3 football pitches every minute. On the island of Borneo in South East Asia, half the
rainforest has already been cleared, and this figure is two thirds for the rainforests of Madagascar
(WWF, 2012). It is believed that 80% of deforestation is caused by agriculture (UNFCCC, 2007), in
particular, to make way for cattle ranches, soya bean production and palm oil plantations (palm oil is
found in 43 of the UK’s top 100 grocery brands), in order to satisfy growing world food demands
(Hickman, 2009). With this demand set to continue growing and deforestation already taking place at
unsustainable levels, we could see most of the world’s rainforests being lost during the 21st
century,
which would be a disaster for humanity for a number of reasons.
The two photographs are of the same area of the Amazon Rainforest in Bolivia, taken 30 years apart. By 2003,
most of the forest has been cut down to make way for agriculture, in particular, growing soya beans.
(UNEP, 2003)
After forests are cut down, soils that are normally held stable by tree roots and shielded from
rain by the canopy cover become far more vulnerable to erosion by the wind and rain. This drains soils
of nutrients and organic matter needed by organisms to grow successfully, which in turn reduces its
ability to hold water. Consequently, soil rapidly dries out and decreases in fertility unless treated with
large quantities of expensive fertiliser. After just a few years, the soil is rendered virtually unusable for
2

3. growing crops or grazing cattle, making it useless both economically and ecologically (as it is very
difficult for rainforest to recolonise this barren soil). Farmers therefore have to move on and cut down
new areas of rainforest, further exacerbating the problems created by deforestation. Furthermore,
rainforests are very important in maintaining the climate they are found in. Trees accumulate huge
amounts of water that they recycle back into the atmosphere by the process of transpiration. This
pumping of moisture into the air builds up precipitation that falls as rain downwind, helping to make
tropical rainforests one of the wettest and most humid environments on Earth (Lynas et al., 2006). It
follows therefore, that as you remove rainforests, you cut the amount of rain received in that region.
Combined with the drying out and eroding of soil, you have the perfect recipe for desertification.
Desertification is the process by which arable or habitable land is converted to desert, and the
destruction of vegetation, especially forests, is believed to be a reason why it is occurring so rapidly in
many places around the world. In China, 92,100 square kilometres of land has been lost to deserts since
the 1950s (Lynas et al., 2006). The Sahara Desert is continually expanding, believed to be abetted by
the destruction of rainforest in West Africa, as are the various other deserts depicted on the map below
(MAP). With the advance of deserts, agricultural land is destroyed as soil disappears, water supplies
dry up, buildings are covered and traditional ways of life are threatened. The spread of deserts is
therefore a huge threat to global food security, as it has the potential to render huge areas of land
permanently unavailable to food production, and as discussed earlier, the world cannot afford to
sacrifice any agricultural land. In Mexico alone, 400 square miles are abandoned each year because of
it (Schwartz, Notini, 1994). In addition, deserts, being among the driest, most inhospitable places on
Earth, are practically impossible to sustain large populations in. People can either gather around small,
isolated oases, as they have done in the Sahara for millennia, or they have to leave in search of more
welcoming homes that can provide them with food and water. This becomes a very serious issue when
you consider the encroachment of deserts on huge, sprawling population centres like Beijing, which
now lies just 70 km from the Gobi Desert (Lynas et al., 2006). Desertification has already caused the
uprooting of one sixth of the populations of Mali and Burkina Faso (amounting to over 5 million
people), and is believed to be the reason behind the migration of nearly a million people each year in
Mexico (Shwartz, Notini, 1994). If deserts continue expanding at current rates – or even faster than this
– and the world’s forests and fertile plains continue receding, the number of people who would be
forced to move could start to number in the tens, or even hundreds of millions. Such a mass migration
would be unprecedented in human history, and the effects could be disastrous, as will be discussed
later.
Another problem created by deforestation is the immediate displacement or loss of livelihood for
people who directly depend on the rainforest ecosystem for survival and/or income. Hundreds of
millions of people’s jobs depend on the existence of intact rainforests, such as those involved in the
industries for everyday products like naturally derived latex/rubber, Brazil nuts, various medicines and
sustainable timber, as well as tourism to these areas. Deforestation perhaps most directly affects the
indigenous tribes who live in the forests, believed to include around 60 million people, such as those
found in the Amazon Basin (YPTE, 2011). For thousands of years, they practiced small scale
sustainable farming in the rainforests, but in the past few decades, hundreds of thousands have been
forced out of their ancient homes by the expansions of cattle ranches, farms and plantations. If they are
unable to find new homes in the shrinking rainforests, these people find it very difficult to adapt to
lives in the modern, urban world, and if they do they face the loss of their languages, culture and
traditions. They are unlikely to find jobs due to their unfamiliarity with modern technologies, so their
care either falls to the
state, or, as is
generally the case in
3
Sandstorms are a regular occurrence in Beijing thanks to the advance of the Gobi Desert.
(Foster, 2010)

4. developing countries, they, like many others who lose business and income to deforestation as
mentioned above, simply fall into poverty – a threat to society as a whole that will be discussed later.
The third main problem presented to the world by excessive deforestation is the enormous
amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere in the process. When wood decays, or is
burnt – as often happens during ‘slash and burn’ clearing of forests – carbon dioxide is released, the gas
that is generally considered to be the primary cause of current global warming. Destruction of just 1
square kilometre of forest typically releases 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and it is estimated that up
to 20% of the current warming the Earth is experiencing is a consequence of CO2 released by
deforestation (Lynas et al., 2006). The problems created by human-induced global warming will be
outlined in more detail in the Energy section. It should also be noted that as well as being partly caused
by deforestation, global warming is predicted to cause drying and heating of the tropics, increasing the
level of desertification and thus accelerating the loss of rainforests.
In its search for food, society has presented another problem for itself in the form of overfishing.
According to current estimates, 70% of the world’s edible fish species are either fully exploited or
depleted due to intensive commercial fishing (Nuttal, 2006). This is a direct consequence of the huge
rise in global food demand experienced during the last 50 years that accompanied the massive increase
in global population from 3 to 7 billion, and with demand expected to double again within the next 50
years, the pressure on fish stocks can only multiply. With more and more demand, fishermen take
bigger and bigger catches at a greater frequency. This makes it virtually impossible for fish populations
to recover, and inevitably their numbers plummet. When there aren’t enough left, fishermen simply
move on either to other areas of the oceans, or to species other than traditional catches like cod and
tuna, such as the Orange Roughy – originally called ‘Slimehead’ until its commercialisation required a
more appetising name (Allen, 2007) – and the cycle repeats itself. By some predictions, this could
result in the total collapse of world fisheries by 2048 (Stokstad, 2006).
Such an event would be an unmitigated disaster for society. In 1992, when Atlantic Cod stocks
for the Newfoundland fisheries collapsed, nearly 40,000 jobs were lost (Mason, 2002), alongside all the
economic value of these fisheries. If you extrapolate that to fish stocks all across the world, on which
an estimated 200 million people depend on for their livelihoods (Nuttal, 2006), there is a potential for
tens of millions of job losses, not just for those catching fish but for everyone involved in the fishing
industries from transport to processing and packaging to retail, alongside huge economic damage that
would be wrought by the collapse of such a huge industry. In some developed countries, the care of
those made unemployed may fall to the state, putting an incredible strain on government budgets, but
in most of the world, this unemployment will be another contributing factor to increasing poverty. We
would also see the social breakdown of fishing communities left without any source of income, with
rises in crime and suicide rates that traditionally accompany economic collapse and large scale
emigration in search of better fortunes elsewhere.
However, the most profound impact of the loss of global fisheries would be the simple loss of an
enormously important source of food. 1 in 5 humans are dependent on fish as a primary source of food
(amounting to approximately 1.4 billion people) (Nuttal 2006), and in developed countries – and
increasingly in rapidly developing countries such as China and India – it is an important foodstuff that
is a regular part of most people’s diets. With no more fish, we face the risk of mass starvation for a
huge chunk of the world’s population – whose affects will again be discussed later – which will
4
This graph shows the decline in estimated biomass of the Atlantic Cod population in the
fishing area of Georges Bank off the coast of North America, a result of overfishing.
(NMFS, 2003)

5. inevitably lead to huge additional pressure on land-based sources of protein, further exacerbating
deforestation by intensifying livestock farming such as cattle ranching. Even with a greatly reduced
number of fish or in the run-up to a global collapse, prices would skyrocket as supply falls vastly short
of demand, making it an unaffordable luxury for those who don’t require it while swiftly draining the
pockets of those who need it – a very large number of people – and likely forcing them into poverty as
a consequence.
The Problem of Energy
In 1775, the inventor James Watt built the first reliable steam engine. This marked the opening shots in
what was to become the industrial revolution, arguably the most important and profound period of
change in the history of civilisation. The technologies that were developed in the late 18th
and 19th
centuries brought about the advent of electricity, mass manufacturing, mechanised farming and rapid
transport in the form of the railways. The telephone in 1876 enabled instant communication over
distance, with the incandescent light bulb in 1879, the cities of Europe and America were forever
illuminated, and the diesel engine in 1892 signalled the dawn of the age of the automobile as the
primary means of transit (Kelly, 2012). The airplane, radio and television followed soon after as the
rate of technological progress accelerated to a level unseen in human history, giving us the astonishing
variety and complexity of technologies we see today. However, there was by and large just one source
of energy that powered this extraordinary development – fossil fuels. Coal at first, then more
predominantly oil and gas during the 20th
century. 90% of all the world’s energy needs are met by the
combustion of these three fuels, and moves towards alternatives energy sources such as solar, wind and
hydroelectric have had little success in reducing this figure. With global energy demand predicted to
double by 2050 (Caillé et al, 2007), this overdependence on fossil fuels presents huge problems for the
world, both from what is released when you burn them and what happens when there is none left to
burn.
When you burn fossil fuels, be it coal, oil or natural gas, you release carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. In the past two centuries, mankind has been burning such colossal quantities of fossil fuels
to meet its ever rising energy demands that the amount of CO2 released has begun to change the nature
of the Earth’s atmosphere, and with it, the whole biosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means it
absorbs infrared radiation and is thus responsible for the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is
where radiation from the sun is absorbed by the Earth’s surface, which then reemits some of this as
infrared radiation. Some of this radiation is released back into space, ensuring that the Earth does not
get too hot, while some of it is trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, ensuring that the Earth
does not get too cold (Redmond, 2009). It is what keeps the Earth within habitable temperatures and is
a natural process, but since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been
increasing as a result of fossil fuel burning and large scale deforestation (as discussed earlier). At
present, carbon dioxide concentrations stand at 389 ppm (parts per million), up from 280 ppm prior to
the industrial revolution, and is rising at around 2.5 ppm every year, predicted to reach up to 600 ppm
by 2050 if CO2 emissions are not reduced (King, 2011). There is a comprehensive scientific consensus
that this dramatic release of CO2 by man’s activities is the principle cause of the phenomenon known as
‘climate change’, or as it is often called interchangeably, ‘global warming’. If there is more CO2 in the
atmosphere, more heat will be trapped, increasing the effectiveness of the greenhouse effect and
therefore raising the temperature of the planet. This relationship is illustrated in the graph below:
5(The Conservation Report, 2009)

6. Over the past century, mean global temperatures have risen by 0.8 C. The Intergovernmental̊
Panel on Climate Change, an international body of scientists and experts set up by the United Nations
to assess the threat of climate change, estimated in its 2007 annual report that during the course of the
21st
century, the mean global temperature will rise between 1.1 C and 6.4 C, most likely falling̊ ̊
somewhere in the middle of this range, but the level of warming will ultimately be determined by how
much carbon dioxide we carry on emitting (IPCC, 2007). For the past 10,000 years, the period in which
all of civilisation developed, the temperature has remained fairly constant, varying only very slightly. It
is these climatic conditions that we have built our whole world on, and have come to depend on their
constancy. That is why any change or disruption to our climate, especially anything above a rise of 2 ̊
C, presents such a massive array of problems, and perhaps makes climate change the single biggest
threat to human society that we have ever encountered.
The first problem presented to the world by climate change is the rise in sea levels expected to
occur as a result. As temperatures rise, oceans undergo thermal expansion, where increased heat causes
particles to move further apart, increasing the size of water bodies. Furthermore, any increase in the
Earth’s temperature is magnified at the Polar Regions, which is likely to cause, or is already causing,
the melting of the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. As a consequence of rising temperatures,
the Arctic ice sheet is decreasing in size virtually year-on-year, and by some estimates may be ice-free
during the summer by as early as 2030 (Vidal, 2011). The Greenland ice sheet also appears to be
melting rapidly, and if it collapses, either by sliding into the sea or melting, it is predicted it would
cause a sea level rise of 7 metres. While not yet experiencing significant melting, the vast Antarctic Ice
sheet could raise sea levels by a staggering 60 metres if it were to break up, raising sea levels to heights
not seen in tens of millions of years (McKie, 2009). This appears unlikely, for now, so we will instead
examine the far more current threat of the Greenland ice sheet collapsing.
If sea levels were to rise just 1 metre, numerous island states such as the Maldives, Polynesia
and Tuvalu would simply cease to exist, being completely submerged by the ocean, their entire
populations requiring new homes in other countries. 17 percent of Bangladesh would be flooded,
displacing tens of millions of people. If sea levels were to rise 7 metres, 60 million people in both
Bangladesh and neighbouring Calcutta in India would lose their homes and all their livelihoods.
China’s capital, Beijing, and the surrounding area, would need its population of 20 million to be
evacuated to escape the advance of the South China Sea. Shanghai, by some definitions the largest city
on Earth, and China’s most important city economically, would suffer a similar fate along with a huge
surrounding region, forcing 40 million people to leave. Other huge cities such as San Francisco, New
York, London and Bangkok will be flooded without incredibly costly coastal defences, and whole areas
of low-lying regions such as Florida and the Netherlands face submersion (Gore, 2006). When you
consider the huge number of major cities situated on coasts, as well as the large proportion of the
world’s population that lives along coastlines for their obvious benefits of transport, climate,
agriculture, and marine resources, we are looking at the destruction of a huge amount of infrastructure,
leading to inevitable economic damage, but even more catastrophically, the forced evacuation of
hundreds of millions of people, and in the worst case scenarios, billions. This easily amounts to
potentially the greatest mass migration in human history.
The second main problem posed by climate change is the havoc it may wreak in the form of
freak weather events such as hurricanes, flooding and droughts, which are predicted to become both
more frequent and more severe as temperatures rise. There is some evidence to suggest that as water
6
Flooding in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina
(Patriana, 2010)

7. temperature goes up – as will occur due global warming – wind velocity and storm moisture content
also increases (Gore, 2006). As a consequence, the intensity of storms and hurricanes may increase
over the coming century, and with it, their potential to inflict lethal damage on people’s lives and
infrastructure. There has been an estimated 50% increase in the duration and intensity of hurricanes in
the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans since the 1970s that correlates with the rise in oceanic temperatures
(Gore, 2006), and no where has the destructive capability of such powerful storms been demonstrated
than with Hurricane Katrina. When it struck New Orleans in 2005, it flooded the entire city, claiming
the lives of over 1,800 people and inflicting over 100 billion dollars in damage (ScienceDaily, 2009). It
was the costliest disaster in U.S. history, and while there is no concrete evidence blaming it directly on
climate change, the chances of events like it happening again are considered increasingly likely as the
world warms. There have been other devastating hurricanes and typhoons since Katrina, and with the
damage they cause, economies will be put under severe strain and more and more people will be made
homeless, potentially falling into poverty or being forced to migrate to safer areas.
Alongside the threat of extremely violent weather comes the threat of extremely hot weather. As
global temperatures rise, places that are normally used to cooler, wetter climates – particularly
countries in Europe and North America – may be increasingly exposed to prolonged periods of hot, dry
weather. This occurred in the summer of 2003, where a huge heat wave swept Europe, claiming the
lives of 35,000 people, which many have attributed to global warming. It sparked destructive forest
fires across France, Spain, Portugal and Italy and caused many train services to be suspended amid
fears the tracks would buckle in the intense heat. It put great pressure on health services due to the
extraordinary number of heat-related illnesses and power grids due to millions of people
simultaneously running their air conditioning to keep their homes cool (Earth Observatory, 2003). Heat
waves can also damage roads and electrical transformers, cause water pipes to burst and also lead to
water use restrictions as a result of dried up reservoirs, such as the hosepipe bans we experience every
so often in the UK. This inevitably afflicts a large economic cost, alongside the human cost, that both
developed and developing countries may have to get used to very soon.
The third and final problem presented by climate change is the threat it poses to our food and
water security. The threat to agriculture comes primarily as a result of higher temperatures, increased
frequency and severity of droughts, a generally drier climate, and more regular erosion and water
logging of soil by ‘heavy precipitation events’ such as the aforementioned storms, floods and
hurricanes (IPCC, 2007). Higher temperatures cause heat stress, where a plant simply overheats and
can’t function properly. Without enough water, plants dry out and die, and without stable, mineral-rich,
aerated soil, plants cannot establish stable roots, access the nutrients they need to grow or get enough
oxygen. As a consequence of this, it is predicted that crop yields, particularly in the tropics and more
arid areas may decline significantly during the 21st
century, possibly by up to 50% in places such as
Africa (IPCC, 2007). Indeed, some decline has already been observed, with global wheat yields having
dropped by 5.5% since 1980 which has been strongly linked to changes in the Earth’s climate (Kinver,
2011). With lower crop yields, food prices will rise, and eating will become more and more expensive.
As a consequence, more and more people will slide into poverty and potentially face starvation.
Additionally, as mentioned above, we are likely to see more frequent, more severe and more sustained
droughts, and during their duration, people in affected areas will experience acute famine and water
shortages from the lack of rain. A drought in East Africa in the summer and autumn of 2011 led to a
famine that left some 13 million people dependent on foreign food aid and may have killed up to
150,000 people (Palitza, Teidouma, 2012). These kinds of events will only become more common as
the climate warms, creating an endless wave of humanitarian catastrophes that rapidly break down the
social framework of the affected countries, crippling them both politically and economically and often
rendering them unstable, threatening the safety of both their citizens and the citizens of surrounding
countries.
As a result of rising temperatures, nearly all of the world’s glaciers are melting. For example, the
glaciers of the Andean Mountains in Peru have lost a third of their mass in the past few decades, with
some retreating at a rate of 155 metres per year. Melting snow or ice feeds water to many of the
world’s major rivers, so in the long term; their disappearance has hugely detrimental effects on the
world’s fresh water supplies as the melt water drains into the oceans and is not replaced by new
precipitation on the glaciers (Lynas et al., 2006). 40% of the Earth’s population depend on the
Himalayan Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau for more than half of their drinking water, as they drain into
several hugely important rivers such as the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in China and the Ganges and
Indus Rivers in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan (Gore, 2006). 800 million people live in the Ganges
and Yangtze river basins (Arnold, 2000; Lynas et al., 2006) These glaciers are retreating rapidly, and as
they disappear, so does the water security for an enormous number of people. This will put huge
7

8. pressure on other less threatened water sources, most of which are already exploited by man. Some of
these other sources already face a threat to their integrity from rising sea levels.
As a consequence of rising sea levels encroaching further inland, river estuaries and
underground aquifers (rocks from which fresh water is extracted) increasingly face the threat of
‘salinisation’, where intrusion by seawater turns the water saline (salty). Contamination of just 5%
seawater renders the water unsuitable for irrigating crops, adding another problem for agriculture, and
makes it unsafe to drink, cutting off another supply of drinking water for humans (Timms, Andersen,
Carley, 2008). In the coming century, we are looking at a situation where freshwater salinisation and
glacial loss make it increasingly unlikely that there will be enough clean water to satisfy humanity’s
collective thirst, especially given the huge number of people without access to adequate water today,
and the billions more people who will need it as the population grows. Competition over water
resources is certain to intensify, and if the situation deteriorates enough, we could be looking at
countries and populations fighting over them, leading to war – the third main threat to society that will
be discussed in the next section. The competition may also contribute to large-scale migrations, as
people move between locations searching for water, just as animals migrate in search of water-holes,
drinking them dry and then moving on again.
Most of the world’s coal, oil and gas reserves were formed hundreds of millions of years ago,
when conditions on Earth were very different to what they are now. Most coal was formed some 250
million years ago by trees falling into swamps where they could not decay due to the anaerobic
conditions. Oil and gas were formed by the accumulation of dead marine plants and plankton on the
beds of prehistoric seas and lakes, which were buried and compressed by high temperatures and
pressures over millions of years (Redmond, 2009). It is for these reasons that fossil fuels are considered
‘non-renewable’, when we burn them for energy, they are gone forever and will not be reproduced
within any conceivable timescale. It follows logically, that there will come a point when there are no
fossil fuels left to burn, and when you consider that as mentioned earlier, they account for 90% of the
world’s energy needs, that point may be getting closer and closer. Estimated and predicted reserves of
coal and natural gas are large enough that they are unlikely to run out during the 21st
century, so while
their inevitable depletion may one day pose a serious problem, for now we will examine the depletion
of oil, which could potentially start to run out well within our lifetimes.
When the last drop of oil is sucked out of the ground, the effects of oil’s departure will have long
since been experienced, and all the damage brought about will have already been wrought. These
effects and damages will instead begin either just before or at the point of ‘Peak Oil’. This term was
first coined by a geologist named Marion King Hubbert in a paper published in 1956 (Tristram, 2011).
The term describes the moment at which world oil production reaches its maximum. From that moment
onwards, production will start to decrease, slowly at first, but then with increasing rapidity as the
supply falls ever more short of demand. Peak oil has already occurred on a national level in some
countries, being reached in the United States in 1972 where production reached 10 million barrels per
day (Leder, Shapiro, 2008). Since then, production has nearly halved, though its effects have been
offset by importing foreign oil from places such as Canada and the Middle East. Various predictions
date peak oil from as early as 2014 to a more likely date of 2030 (Nashawi, Malallah, Al-Bisharah,
8
Graph showing the length of various glaciers, nearly all have decreased in recent years, believed to be the
result of rising temperatures.
(IPCC, 2001)

9. 2010; Connor, 2009), although ever rising demand for energy will make it sooner and sooner. When it
occurs on a global scale, the consequences may serve to drastically alter our society.
We live in a society that functions on oil. The various derivatives of crude oil are used to make
most fertilisers needed for agriculture and petrochemicals for industrial processes and plastics, which
are found in an astonishing variety of goods from food packaging, clothing and furniture to piping,
electronic appliances and polycarbonate discs (CDs, DVDs etc). But the most important derivatives are
those used for transport – petroleum, diesel and aviation fuel. Nearly all modern transport systems with
the exception of electrically powered passenger trains run on these fuels, and even they usually have
their electricity generated by other fossil fuels. That includes cars, buses and planes that people use to
get around as well as the lorries, freight trains and huge container ships that we use to transport all
manner of goods and commodities to every corner of the globe. As supplies of oil dwindle following
peak oil but demand continues growing, the price of oil will spiral upwards, in turn driving up the cost
of manufacturing all the things listed above but even more significantly, making it more and more
expensive to transport anything. Our systems of trade and transport in the globalised modern world are
so comprehensively dependent on the energy harnessed from oil that if its price increases, the price of
everything increases. The effects of these increases will be felt by no one worse that we in the
developed, industrialised, consumer-driven world. Countries like the UK are hugely dependent on
imports of food and manufactured goods to sustain their way of life, ensuring that the rising cost of
transportation hits them hardest.
In the post-peak oil world, the price of a ‘Western’ lifestyle skyrockets. The price of food goes
up. The price of driving to the supermarket goes up. The price of clothes goes up. The price of a
computer and a TV goes up. The price of your DVDs and your books and your mobile phone and your
mp3 player and your children’s toys and your laminate flooring and your nylon guitar strings and your
holiday abroad and your ambulance service and your defence budget, they all go up. It is for reasons
such as this that every 10% rise in the price of oil is suspected to inflict a 0.2% hit on global GDP, and
it is perhaps telling that in the 3 years prior to the 2008 financial crisis, the price of crude oil rose from
$40 a barrel to $140 dollar a barrel, a 350% increase (King, 2011). People in the developed world are
however, unlikely to give up the consumerist lifestyles that they have lived their whole lives. These
luxuries and conveniences will not be let go easily, and instead, it is probable that people will simply
sacrifice more and more of the contents of their wallets to maintain them, alongside necessities such as
food. In the developed world and the world as a whole, this great ascendance of cost is likely to be the
catalyst for unimaginable economic turmoil and descent into poverty for a vast proportion of human
society, who may end up having to sacrifice their whole way of life, resorting to far simpler, less oil
dependent standards of living without many of the technologies we enjoy today, at an inevitable
sacrifice of quality of life.
However, a significant proportion of humanity will be unwilling or unable to accept such a
scaling back of their lifestyles. They are almost certain to turn to military action as a means of securing
their own access to oil resources, leading to wars between countries and between different groups (eg
tribal or ethnic) within countries. These conflicts will only intensify as oil supplies continue
diminishing, with sides vying for control of the last remaining oil reserves. Some of the world’s richest
and most powerful countries, particularly the United States, have some of the largest and most
9
The many products we obtain from crude oil.
(Black-Tides, 2012)

10. advanced militaries. Emerging competitors such as China, Brazil, Russia and India are also seeking to
develop their military capabilities, and with that comes the potential for wars more deadly than ever
before as the resources they all need to survive are drastically depleted. Wars induced by oil are not an
unfamiliar occurrence. It is perhaps no coincidence that one of the most important oil producing
regions in the world – the Middle East – is also one of the most unstable, with wars having occurred in
oil-rich countries like Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Libya over the past few decades. One direct example of a
war created by oil is the Japanese military campaigns of the late 30s and 40s that led to its involvement
in the Second World War. Japan, relying heavily on American oil imports, saw itself as incredibly
vulnerable to fuel starvation if America decided to impose a trade embargo in response to its military
conquests in northern China. It consequently launched an offensive in southern China and French
Indochina to secure the petroleum resources found there. When the American embargo was finally
imposed in 1941, the Japanese saw no choice but to invade the Dutch East Indies and British Borneo
for their oil resources to replace the fuel they could no longer receive from America. As part of this
offensive, they needed to secure their flank from the threat of the American Pacific Fleet, for which
they launched an attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbour on December 7th
, 1941
(Friedrichs, 2010). ‘A date which will live in infamy’, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, this attack brought
America into the War, radically upping the scale of World War Two and probably significantly
changing the course of world history. From this, it can be seen that oil scarcity has a huge potential to
cause wars.
The Cycle of Chaos
Throughout this discussion, I have referred to three principle threats to society posed by the various
problems created by humanity’s overconsumption of our planet and its resources. These threats are
migration, poverty and war.
As a result of rapid desertification caused by deforestation and climate change, inundation of
low-lying areas by rising sea levels, the collapse of fishery communities, displacement of indigenous
rainforest populations and the drying up and contamination of water supplies, vast numbers of people,
in the order of hundreds of millions, will be forced to migrate in search of new homes with better
prospects for their survival.
Whole populations face a descent into poverty as they find themselves unable to afford or access
an adequate standard of living. This will be a result of rising food prices – caused by desertification,
fisheries collapsing and declining crop yields – rising oil prices caused by the advent of peak oil (along
with all the accompanying cost increases), destruction of homes and livelihoods by disasters such as
hurricanes, droughts, and the general economic havoc created by all of these. There will be a further
risk of mass starvation if their degree of poverty worsens enough, which could potentially kill millions
of people and leave the world with a human tragedy of unimaginable scale.
The third threat of war will come as people begin fighting over the planet’s diminishing
resources, in particular oil and fresh water supplies.
Each of these three threats is not just a huge problem in itself. Where they occur, the effects of
each one are likely to set in motion all manner of other events that may in turn cause another of these
three. Poverty can lead to war, war can lead to migration, and migration can lead to poverty. Poverty
can also lead to migration, migration can also lead to war, and war can also lead to poverty. This
relationship forms a continuous cycle that is illustrated below:
10
War
Migration
Povert
y

11. Poverty breeds crime, discontent and civil strife that together can destabilise a country,
increasing the likelihood of riots, revolt and even civil war. For example, rising food prices coupled
with extreme poverty triggered large scale rioting across Haiti in 2008 (BBC, 2008). The hardships of
extreme poverty can also distract people from the actions of their government, allowing corruption,
ineptitude, oppression and authoritarianism to flourish. It is no surprise that some of the world’s
poorest nations, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Zimbabwe and Angola, are also ranked among the
most corrupt (Rogers, Provost, 2011). When these components are established, the risk of revolutions,
coups and sectarian divisions are elevated, all of which can easily plunge a country into war. The
desperation of poverty also risks turning people to more extreme, more murderous forms of
government, as was witnessed on a grand scale in Germany during the 1930s, when the Nazis rose to
power amidst the Great Depression. And as we all know, the war that followed as a result was worse
than anything seen before.
As soon as a war starts, there is an imminent danger to everyone in the region. Most ordinary
civilians do not want to risk being caught in the crossfire, or their children being caught in the crossfire,
and often the response is to leave the region, as the world regularly witnesses when scores of refugees
flee war torn countries – such as the hundreds of thousands who fled Iraq in the chaos that followed the
2003 American invasion. War also allows persecution of certain groups to occur relatively unhindered,
which can quickly escalate to mass murder and genocide. Most people will not stick around waiting for
this to happen, and the only escape for civilians is usually just to leave. One such event like this
happened in 2004, when 100,000 people fled the Darfur region of Sudan into neighbouring Chad to
escape attack by government sponsored militia (BBC, 2012).
With massive migrations such as these comes huge pressure on the space and resources of the
recipient regions, which may need to provide food and shelter for these huge numbers of people,
incurring large financial costs and straining infrastructure. Migrants may alternatively be forced to
compete with the local population for resources if they are to survive. Inevitably, some people will lose
out in this competition, creating poverty. Refugees are invariably disadvantaged in this competition,
having usually left behind their homes, possessions and livelihoods. Furthermore, in the wake of large-
scale emigration, countries are sapped of their own workforces. This prevents their economies
functioning sufficiently, and stagnation or depression may follow, which again breeds poverty.
The cycle also works in the opposite direction. Poverty is a very common catalyst for migration
– if there is insufficient food, water, space or jobs in one area, people are likely to move to another area
where these are more plentiful. This is one of the principle reasons for migration in the modern era; it is
why thousands of Irishmen emigrated to the United States in the 19th
century to escape the Great
Famine and why millions of Mexicans cross the northern border every year to this day.
In turn, huge influxes of people into countries may be unwelcome to the native populace, who
may resent the drain on resources they present or simply be unable to spare them any at all. This is
likely to lead to conflict between the local and migrant populations over resources, creating a potential
for war. Alternatively, governments may bring about persecution of migrant groups as the world has
witnessed happen countless times before, most prominently in the case of the Jews, who were expelled
from or oppressed in various countries throughout Europe and Asia by unwelcoming native populations
and governments. Such persecutions are unlikely to go without response, adding another avenue for
war to occur.
Lastly, wars can lead to poverty. When a war is on, foreign corporations rapidly withdraw
workers and investment as the world witnessed at the start of the Libyan Civil War in 2011.
Infrastructure, businesses and homes are destroyed. It becomes unsafe for children to go to school,
stunting their education, and unsafe for adults to go to work, ruining their livelihoods. Death on a large
scale destroys communities and often the primary breadwinners in a family – the father, will be killed,
leaving the rest of the family penniless. Supplies of food, water and fuel are often siphoned away from
civilians for military use, and government services such as healthcare as well as foreign aid are cut off.
All of this allows war to suffocate an economy and force people into poverty on a scale like no other.
The evidence for this is on display all across the world: as mentioned earlier, Afghanistan, one of the
world’s poorest countries, has also been in a state of perpetual war since the late 1970s. And much of
Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region on Earth, has experienced civil or multinational war in the past
few decades, in particular Somalia, which collapsed into an ongoing civil war in 1991.
Because of the feedback when you instigate poverty, migration or war, it becomes more and
more likely that you will begin experiencing all three in increasing severity and regularity, creating this
cycle of chaos. As the cycle occurs more and more, the harm to society becomes greater and greater,
until the very existence of society itself is threatened. This cycle is why the various problems created
by our overconsumption of the planet pose such a serious threat to the stability of human civilisation.
11

12. Conclusions
In 1798 the English scholar Thomas Malthus suggested that in the coming years, the ability of the
Earth to provide for humanity will become far outweighed by the needs of the growing human
population, after which point the only outcome can be a dramatic scaling back of the size and scope of
our society, which people have since termed a ‘Malthusian Catastrophe’ (Barta, Batson, Lahart, 2008).
Due to the problems I have outlined that humans are creating now in their quest for food –
deforestation and overfishing, and in their quest for energy – climate change and the threat of peak oil,
this catastrophe appears ever more likely as the cycle of chaos described above begins to form. The
simple answer to the question of ‘What threat does overconsumption of the Earth and its resources pose
to the stability of human society?’, is an enormous one. Our overconsumption is very likely to rattle the
foundations of society over the coming century, potentially leading to a slide into conflict and disaster
that will inflict tremendous human cost and destroy much of what humanity has laboured to build.
This catastrophe is by no means inevitable though. We possess the technology and means to
overcome the challenges we face and build a more sustainable existence, perhaps the only thing lacking
so far is the will, and the time to summon that will is running out. To solve the problems of food,
humanity will need to radically increase the efficiency of agriculture on the land it already uses, find
ways of growing food in less ecologically important areas – such as deserts – and look to different
kinds of foods that require less land or less water to grow. It must also turn to more sustainable fishing
practises, including fishing quotas and the creation of large marine reserves. We will further need to
vastly cut the amount of food we waste in order to reduce our demand, which currently stands at more
than a quarter of all food produced in some Western countries (Scientific American, 2010). This will
halt the threat to food supplies, ensuring their long term continuation. To solve the problems of energy,
mankind needs to rapidly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and turn to alternative, non-polluting,
renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar and tidal, as well as ramping up its energy efficiency.
This will stop the colossal release of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, potentially preventing
dangerous climate change while at the same time ending the possibility of a peak oil scenario.
The cost of making these changes will indeed be high, in fact they may represent one of the
biggest challenges we as a race have ever encountered. As Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific
Advisor to the British Government says: “these challenges will require a global cultural and
technological transformation on much the same scale as the European Renaissance or the Industrial
Revolution itself” (King, 2011). However, the cost of doing nothing at all, and allowing our
overconsumption of the Earth to continue unabated, will be inconceivably higher. We have just one
planet. We must now decide: do we change our ways and find a way to live sustainably with the
resources it can provide? Or do we carry on as we are, and risk losing the wealth it provides forever,
for which we will all suffer the consequences.
By Edward Bains
12

13. Bibliography:
Allen, V. (2007), ‘Pilchards and Slimehead fish renamed to boost popularity’, The Daily Mail, 24
September. [Online]. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-483457/Pilchards-
slimehead-fish-renamed-boost-popularity.html (accessed 09/02/2012).
Arnold, G. (2000), World Strategic Highways. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.
Barta, P., Batson, A., Lahart, J. (2008), ‘New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears’, The Wall
Street Journal, 24 March. [Online]. Available at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1206131383791557
07.html (accessed 11/02/2012).
BBC (2008), ‘Food riots turn deadly in Haiti’, BBC News, 05 April. [Online]. Available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7331921.stm (accessed 10/02/2012).
BBC (2012), ‘Sudan Profile’, BBC News, 22 February. [Online]. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.
uk/news/world-africa-14095300 (accessed 10/02/2012).
Black-Tides (2012), ‘Oil in our everyday lives’, Black-tides.com. [Online]. Available at: http://www.b
lack-tides.com/uk/oil/oil-everyday-lives/consumption.php (accessed 11/02/2012).
Caillé et al (2007), ‘Deciding the Future: Energy Policy Scenarios to 2050’, World Energy Council.
[Online]. Available at: http://www.worldenergy.org/documents/scenarios_study_es_online.pdf
(accessed 09/02/2012).
Connor, S. (2009), ‘Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast’, The Independent, 03 August. [Online].
Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/warning-oil-supplies-are-running-
out-fast-1766585.html (accessed 10/02/2012).
Department of Health and Human Services (2006), National Vital Statistics Reports, National Center
for Health Statistics , vol. 54 no. 19, 28 June .[Online]. Available at: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A
0005140.html (accessed 05/02/2012).
Earth Observatory (2003), ‘European Heat Wave’, 16 August. [Online]. Available at:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=3714 (accessed 09/02/2011).
FAO (2009), ‘How to feed the world in 2050’, Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United
Nations. [Online]. Available at: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_t
o_Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf (accessed 07/02/2012).
Foster, P. (2010), ‘Beijing Sandstorm: we are experiencing environmental meltdown’, The Telegraph,
22 March. [Online]. Available at: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100030808/china-
living-with-environmental-meltdown/ (accessed 27/02/2012).
Friedrichs, J. (2010), ‘Global energy crunch: How different parts of the world would react to a peak oil
scenario’, Energy Policy, 38, pp 4562-4569.
Gharzeddine, O. (2011), ‘World Population to reach 7 billion on 31 October’, United Nations
Population Fund, 03 May. [Online]. Available at: http://www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/7597
(accessed 05/02/2012).
Gore, A. (2006), An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We
Can Do About It. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press.
Hickman, M. (2009), ‘The guilty secrets of palm oil, are you unwittingly contributing to the
devastation of the rainforests?’, The Guardian, 02 May. [Online]. http://www.indep
endent.co.uk/environment/the-guilty-secrets-of-palm-oil-are-you-unwittingly-contributing-to-the-
devastation-of-the-rain-forests-1676218.html (accessed 08/02/2012).
13

14. IPCC (2001), ‘Third Assessment Report: Climate Change 2001’, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. [Online]. Available at: http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?
src=/climate/ipcc_tar /wg1/fig2-18.htm (accessed 10/02/2012).
IPCC (2007), ‘Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report’, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
[Online]. Available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms3.html#table-spm-1
(accessed 09/02/2012).
Kelly, M. (2012), ‘Industrial Revolution Inventors’, American History. [Online]. Available at:
http://americanhistory.about.com/library/charts/blchartindrev.htm (accessed 09/02/2012).
King, D. (2011), ‘The Science and Politics of Climate Change’. [Lecture to Royal Institution]. 25
November.
Kinver, M. (2011), ‘Climate shifts ‘hit global wheat yields’’, BBC, 06 May. [Online]. Available at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13297004 (accessed 10/02/2011).
Leder, F., Shapiro, J. (2008), ‘This time it’s different - An inevitable decline in world petroleum
production will keep oil product prices high, causing military conflicts and shifting wealth and power
from democracies to authoritarian regimes’, Energy Policy, 36, pp 2850-2852.
Lynas, M., Flannery, T., Pearce, F., Kolbert, E., Lomborg, B., Dauncey, G., Allaby, M. (2006), Fragile
Earth: Views of a Changing World. London: Collins.
Mason, F. (2002), ‘The Newfoundland Cod Stock Collapse: A Review and Analysis of Social Factors’,
Electronic Green Journal, Issue 17. [Online]. Available at: http://www.geography.ryerson.ca/jmaur
er/702Mason_C od_article.htm (accessed 09/02/2012).
Mckie, R. (2009), ‘Scientists to issue stark warning over dramatic new sea level figures’, The
Guardian. [Online]. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/08/climate-change-
flooding (accessed 09/02/2012).
Nashawi, S., Malallah, A., Al-Bisharah, M. (2010), ‘Forecasting World Crude Oil Production Using
Multicyclic Hubbert Model’, Energy and Fuel, 24 (3), pp 1788-1800.
Nielsen, R. (2006), The Little Green Handbook. New York: Picador.
NMFS (2010), ‘FishWatch – U.S. Seafood facts’, National Marine Fisheries Service. [Online].
Available at: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fi shwatch/species/atlantic_cod.htm (accessed 11/02/2012).
Nuttall, N. (2006), ‘Overfishing: a threat to marine biodiversity’, United Nations Environment
Programme. [Online]. Available at: http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/06/story.asp?story ID=800
(accessed 09/02/2012).
Ogden et al (2010), ‘Prevalence of Overweight, Obesity, and Extreme Obesity Among Adults: United
States, Trends 1960–1962 Through 2007–2008’, National Centre for Health Statistics. [Online].
Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/hestat/obesity_adult_07_08/obesity_adult_07_08.pdf
(accessed 07/02/2012).
Palitza, K., Teidouma, G., (2012), ‘Lessons Unlearned: Why Another Gigantic Famine Looms in
Africa’, Time, 10 February. [Online]. Available at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599 ,
2106546,00.html#ixzz1lz9Mg6Xn (accessed 26/02/2012).
Patriana, Z. (2010), ‘Hurricane Katrina, Five Years Later’, Global Exchange, 27 August. [Online].
Available at: http://www.globalexchange.org/blogs/peopletopeople/2010/08/27/hurricane-katrina-five-
years-later/ (accessed 11/02/2012).
Poverty.com (2007), ‘Hunger and World Poverty’. [Online]. Available at: http://www.poverty.com/
(accessed 07/02/2012).
14

15. Prüss-Üstün et al (2008), ‘Safer water, better health: costs, benefits and sustainability of interventions
to protect and promote health’, World Health Organisation. [Online]. Available at:
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2008/9789241596435_eng.pdf (accessed 07/02/2012).
Puska et al (2003), ‘Obesity and Overweight’, World Health Organisation. [Online]. Available at:
http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/media/en/gsfs_obesity.pdf (accessed 07/02/2012).
Redmond, K. (ed.) (2009), Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology for Edexcel A2 Biology. Harlow, Essex:
Pearson Education Limited.
Rogers, S., Provost, C. (2011), ‘Corruption index 2011 from Transparency International: find out how
countries compare’, The Guardian, 01 December. [Online]. Available at: http:/www.guardian.co.%20
uk/news/datablog/2011/dec/01/corruption-index-2011-transparency-international (accessed
10/02/2011).
Schuttenhelm, R. (2011), ‘World food demand could double by 2050 – if so agricultural intensification
could save 2 billion tonnes of CO2 per year’, Bits of Science. [Online]. Available at:
http://www.bitsofscience.org/world-food-demand-2050-agricultural-intensification-co2-4226/
(accessed 07/02/2012).
Schwartz, M., Notini, J. (1994), ‘Desertification and Migration: Mexico and the United States’, US
Commission on Immigration Reform. [Online]. Available at: http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/uscir/r
espapers/dam-f94.pdf (accessed 08/02/2012).
ScienceDaily (2009), ‘Hurricane Katrina: Why some people stayed behind’, 02 July. [Online].
Available at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090702110501.htm (accessed
09/02/2011).
Scientific American (2010), ‘Waste Land: Does the Large Amount of Food Discarded in the U.S. Take
a Toll on the Environment?’, 03 March. [Online]. Available at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/arti
cle.cfm?id=earth-talk-waste-land (accessed 26/02/2012).
Simmons, C. (2001), ‘Can the Earth keep up with human consumption?’, The Guardian, 22 February.
[Online]. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/greenliving/story/0,,441590,00.html (accessed
05/02/2012).
Stokstad, E. (2006), ‘Global Loss of Biodiversity Harming Ocean Bounty’, Science, Vol. 314, Number
5800, pg. 745.
The Conservation Report (2009), ‘Climate Change: Conservative pundit George Will asserts false
claims to make anti-climate change arguments in Washington Post column’. [Online]. Available at:
http://conservationreport.com/2009/02/28/climate-change-conservative-pundit-george-will-asserts-fals
e-claims-to-make-anti-climate-change-arguments-in-washington-post-column/ (accessed 11/02/2012).
Timms, W., Andersen, M.S., and Carley, J. (2008), ‘Potential impacts of sea-level rise and climate
change on coastal aquifers’, University of New South Wales. [Online]. Available at:
https://www.connectedwaters.unsw.edu.au/resources/articles/coastal_aquifers.html (accessed
10/02/2012).
Tristam, P. (2012), ‘What is Peak Oil?’, About.com. [Online]. Available at:
http://middleeast.about.com/od/oilenergy/f/peak-oil-faq.htm (accessed 26/02/2012).
UNEP (2003), ‘Santa Cruz – Bolivia’, United Nations Environment Programme. [Online]. Available
at: http://na.unep.net/atlas/webatlas.php?id=31 (accessed 07/02/2012).
UNFCCC (2007), ‘Investment and financial flows to address climate change’, United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change. [Online]. Available at: http://unfccc.int/files/esse
ntial_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/application/pdf/pub_07_financial_flows.pdf
(accessed 08/02/2012).
15

16. USCB (2008), ‘Total Midyear Population for the World: 1950-2050’, United States Census Bureau.
[Online]. Available at: http://www.census.gov/population/international/ (accessed 05/02/2012).
Vidal, J. (2011), ‘Record melt with see Arctic ice-free in summer by 2030’, The Age, 13 July. [Online].
Available at: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/record-melt-will-see-arctic-
icefree-in-summer-by-2030-20110712-1hcah.html (accessed 09/02/2012).
WWF (2012), ‘Amazon’; ‘Heart of Borneo’, World Wide Fund for Nature – UK. [Online]. Available
at: http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/safeguarding_the_natural_world/forests/forest_work/amazon/
(accessed 08/02/2012); http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/safeguarding_the_natural_world/fo
rests/forest_work/borneo_forest/ (accessed 08/02/2012).
YPTE (2011), ‘Rainforests’, Young People’s Trust for the Environment. [Online]. Available at:
http://www.ypte.org.uk/environmental/rainforests/89 (accessed 08/02/2012).
16