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Our growing population has required ever greater quantities of food, and growing incomes have led many societies to diversify and enrich their diets. These burgeoning food demands have been met by a continuing proliferation of new technologies, including the development of more productive crop varieties, the expanded use of fertilizer and irrigation, and the mechanization of agriculture. Grain use has increased nearly fivefold since the century began, while water use has quadrupled. With the acceleration of history have come escalating pressures on the natural world – on which we remain utterly dependent, even in the Information Age. New forms of environmental disruption – stratospheric ozone depletion and greenhouse warming – have begun altering natural ecosystems in the past two decades, doing particular damage to coral reefs and suspected damage to species ranging from frogs to trees. In addition, the continuously growing global economy has collided with many of the Earth's natural limits. These collisions can be seen in such trends as the shrinkage of forests, and the collapse of fisheries.

Our ancestors survived, multiplied, and advanced by continually adjusting their economic patterns and finding new balances with the natural word. The accelerating in the 20^th century has led us to new frontiers and wondrous changes that our ancestors could not have imagined. But the economy that has been created cannot be sustained for another century. It is worth noting that the Fertile Crescent, where the first humans settled and cities emerged, was turned into a virtual desert by ancient farmers and herders, and now supports only a small human population.

History will undoubtedly continue to accelerate, but if our descendants are to prosper, historical trends will have to move in a new direction early in the 21^st century.

The Growth Century

Growth is a defining feature of the 20^th century, and has become the de facto organizing principle for societies around the world. Although growth rates have risen and fallen, the total scale of human activity has expanded continually, reaching levels that would have been unimaginable in earlier centuries.

This growth story starts with human numbers. It took all of human history for world population to reach 1.6 billion [thousand million] in 1900; the total did not reach 2 billion until 1930.the third billion was added by 1960, the fourth by 1977, and the fifth in just 12 years, by 1989. World population passed 6 billion in 1999. If population growth follows the U.N. midlevel projection, human numbers will grow by another 4.6 billion in the next century. There is a key difference, however. During the 20^th century, growth occurred in both industrial and developing countries; during the next century, in contrast, almost all the increase will take place in the Third World – and mainly in cities. Indeed, the population of the industrial world is expected to decline slightly.

The annual rate of population growth climbed from less that 1 percent in 1900 to its historical high of 2.2 percent in 1964. From there it has slowly declined, dropping to 1.4 percent in 1997. Despite this, the number of people added each year kept increasing – from 16 million in 1900 until a peak of 87 million in 1990. Since then the annual addition has also declined, falling to roughly 80 million in 1997, where it is projected to remain over the next two decades before starting downward again.

Population is one area where detailed projections are not only available, they are revised biennially by the United Nations, giving us some sense of where the world is headed. According to the 1996 update, population projections for individual countries vary more that at any time in history. In some 32 countries, human numbers have stabilized, while in others they are projected to double or triple. With the exception of Japan, all the countries in the stable group are in Europe. The number of people in a dozen or so countries, including Russian, Japan, and Germany, is actually projected to decline somewhat over the next half – century. In another 40 countries, which account for nearly 40 percent of the global, fertility has dropped to at least replacement level – roughly two children per couple. Among the countries in this category are China and the United States, the world's first and third most populous nations.