Population growth is exceeding farmers' ability to keep up...Our oldest enemy, hunger, is again at the door.

Humanity's greatest challenge may soon be just making it to the next harvest.

Yet, most of the readily accessible reserves of oil formed over hundreds of millions of years will be consumed within a single generation, spanning the years from 1960 to 1995.

The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.

Nuclear power, once regarded as petroleum's natural heir, has become less and less attractive as its numerous drawbacks come to light. Coal, the other fossil fuel, is ultimately as exhaustible as oil.

The throwaway economy that has been evolving over the last half-century is an aberration, now itself headed for the junk heap of history.

Among the environmental trends undermining our future are shrinking forests, expanding deserts, falling water tables, collapsing fisheries, disappearing species, and rising temperatures. The temperature increases bring crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, more-intense droughts, more forest fires, and, of course, ice melting. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize.