The problem with water, though, is that the shortfalls don't show up until the very end. You can go on pumping unsustainably until the day you run out. Then all you have is the recharge flow, which comes from precipitation. This is not decades away, this is years away. We're already seeing huge shortages in China, where the Yellow River runs dry for part of each year. The Yellow River is the cradle of Chinese civilization. It first failed to reach the sea in 1972, and since 1985 it's run dry for part of each year. For 1997 it was dry for 226 days.

Our early 21st century civilization is in trouble. We need not go beyond the world food economy to see this. Over the last few decades we have created a food production bubble-one based on environmental trends that cannot be sustained, including overpumping aquifers, overplowing land, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.

Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance.

Farmers...can no longer keep up with rising demand; thus the outlook is for chronic scarcities and rising prices.

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

In today's integrated world economy, ... eradicating poverty may contribute as much to U.S. security as eradicating terrorism.

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