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While one – fifth of humanity lives better than the kings of yore, another one-fifth still lives on the very margin of existence, struggling just to survive. An estimated 841 million people are undernourished and underweight, 1.2 billion do not have access to safe water. The income gar between the more affluent and the more poverty-stricken in the world is widening each year. While growth has become the norm everywhere since mid-century, some countries have been more successful in achieving it than others, leading to unprecedented income disparities among societies.

As the century comes to a close amidst financial crises from Indonesia to Russia, doubts about the basic soundness of the global economy have mounted. The needs of billions are inadequately met in the best of times, and as Indonesia's recent experience shows, even a brief reversal of economic growth can leave millions on the brink of starvation. More fundamentally, our current economic model is overwhelming the Earth's natural systems.

Depleting the Earth's Resources

Easter Island was one of the last places on Earth to be settled by human beings. First reached by Polynesians 1,500 years ago, this small island 3,200 kilometers west of South America supported a sophisticated agricultural society by the 16^th century. Easter Island has a semiarid climate, but it was ameliorated by a verdant forest that trapped and held water. Its 7,000 people raised crops and chickens, caught fish, and lived in small villages. The Easter Islander's can be seen in massive 8– meter –high obsidian statues that were hauled across the island using tree trunks as rollers.

By the time European settlers reached Easter Island in the 17^th century, these stone statues, known as ahu, were the only remnants of a once impressive civilization – one that had collapsed in just a few decades. As reconstructed by archeologists, the demise of this society was triggered by the demotion of its limited resource base. As the Easter Island human population expanded, more and more land was cleared for crops, while the remaining trees were harvested for fuel and to move the ahu into place, the lack of wood made it impressible to build fishing boats or houses, reducing an important source of protein and forcing the people to move into caves. The loss of forests also led to soil erosion, further diminishing food supplies. As pressures grew, armed conflicts broke out among villages, slavery became common, and some even resorted to cannibalism to survive.

As an isolated territory that could not turn elsewhere ran out, Easter Island presents a particularly stark picture of what can happen when a human economy expands in the face of limited resources. With the final closing of the remaining frontiers and the creation of a fully interconnected global economy, the human race as a whole has reached the kind of turning point that the Easter Islanders reached in the 16th century.

For us, the key limits as we approach the 21st century are fresh water, forests, range land, oceanic fisheries, biological diversity, and the global atmosphere. Will we recognize the world's natural limits and adjust our economies accordingly, or will we proceed to expand our ecological footprint until it is too late to turn back? Are we headed for a world in which accelerating change outstrips our management capacity, overwhelms our political institutions, and leads to extensive breakdown of the ecological system on which the economy depends?