344 Big pictures
vegetation is removed, and key habitats are fragmented and degraded, all wor-
risome trends for society’s ecosystem services. Climate change due to human
activity becomes more obvious, as air temperatures increase, ice sheets melt,
sea level rises, and droughts become more severe.
Thesefour giants-- urban tsunami, water scarcity, species extinction, and cli-
mate change -- have begun joining forces. Climate change and water scarcity
combine to accentuate species loss. The urban tsunami together with climate
change makes water scarcity worse and the urban heat-island effect more severe.
When will the giant forces reach us? That is, when could the extensive degra-
dation of natural systems overwhelm society’s response capability, producing
masses of environmental refugees and widespread disruption of social order?
Thresholds or tipping points (Gladwell2000)resulting in clearly identifiable
crises may not appear. Each force, or all four together, may continuously and
perhaps exponentially gather, until, as Aldo Leopold (1944) expressed the idea,
‘‘ One simply woke up one fine spring to find the range dominated by a new
weed.” Expected scenarios for all four forces suggest grim global conditions in
some two to three decades. Will they arrive in tandem or together? Or could the
urban tsunami catch and overwhelm us first?
If one has full faith in growth and market economics (Chapter3), with infinite
substitutability, or in serendipity -- something will come along and solve the
problem, then there appears to be no problem. Society can continue as is, and
natural systems can keep on degrading. The analyses in this book, along with
thegrowing importance of ecological economics (Chapter3), find that to be a
flawed approach. Society can do better.
The four giants are certainly after us, and wisdom suggests that we ponder
what can be done at least in today’s urban regions. First a reality check is useful.
An urban region teems with people (hundreds of thousands, millions), buildings
of varied heights and sizes, streets and roads with an extensive permeating sur-
face area, and vehicles in huge numbers consuming fuel and liberating wastes.
Moreover, the people’s ecological footprints cover large areas of land. Such a
massive system, perhaps paradoxically, has both enormous inertia and extreme
instability. Some components, such as an extensive impermeable surface or a
road network, can resist almost anything. Meanwhile others, including a water-
supply system or tall buildings, can change catastrophically fast.
Most people considering significant improvement of an object such as an
urban region conclude that it is simply too big and too difficult. Wait for a cri-
sisevent...out of water, massive diseaseoutbreak, bombing, earthquake. Then
address problems, rebuild, or even move away. Predicting or waiting for a cri-
sis event is an unlikely strategy for improvement. ‘‘Muddling along” is probably
themost likely scenario. Unfortunately, for such a large system this normally