single-family housing market; by 1981, that number had shrunk to 11 percent. Ifgasoline costs are any indicator, this trend will only intensify. In 1971 the average cost of a gallon of gas in the U.S. was $.25; by mid-1981 that cost had risen to $1.16. By the beginning o f. the next decade, according to one industry forecast, the cost of gasoline, in 1990 dollars, will be $10.00 per gallon. At these figures, the prototypical Portland "Street of Dreams" will be a thing of the past; a duplex in town and a moped in the driveway may look luxurious. The point is self-evident; the way in which the Portland area provides for its people and accommodates new growth will, of necessity, change radically. A newpremium will be put on low-cost, resource-conserving solutions. This lesson will not only apply to housing and transportation, but to employment, education, health care and dozens of other life support systems caught in our society's transition from an age of abundance to one of limitations. The real limits to growth are well upon us. This sobering fact is, pure and simple, the fabric of the coming decade. Thinking Globally, Acting Locally Portland is not alone in facing this predicament—nor hardly the most seriously affected. The interplay of driving forces creating these local conditions is now manifest worldwide. Acknowledgement of this fact came from none other than the U.S. government itself last year with the release of its Global 2000 Report to the President. Admittedly flawed, this study was nonetheless the first attempt ever of a major government to systematically analyze the impact of world trends. Examining such factors as population, resources and the environment. Global 2000 underscored the fact that a coming global crunch is highly probable. According to its findings, there will be 6.35 bijlion people worldwide in the year 2000. All trends indicate that the resources required to sustain that population—given the existing international economic system—will not keep pace. The burden will increasingly be foisted upon the poorer nations and peoples of the world. For example, the study predicts the world's supply of arable land will increase only four percent by the year 2000 and regional water shortages will become more pronounced. Soil erosion will create new desert land equivalent in size to the state of Maine every year, while an area half the size of California will be deforested annually. Food supplies will increase only 15 percent by the year 2000 and become increasingly maldistributed, leaving millions more in the Third World facing the prospect of famine. World oil production, upon which such supplies have become overdependent, will begin dropping off after 1990, with industrialized nations dominating the market for these and all other scarce resources. The warnings of Global 2000, and its kindred studies, are so staggering they tend to elude our comprehension. We are alternately horrified or numbed. But the important message is not so much one of numbers and trends as it is of scale and interdependence. The growing industrialized demands on the world's carrying capacity are not sustainable. As a result, the problems confronting the nations of the world, both rich and poor, have become precariously intertwined. Since 1973, the fast lane politics of world oil markets alone have demonstrated this fact time and again. There is, however, another side to this global condition. The spread of electronic media, satellites and telecommunications have helped pull down the barriers that obscure these dangerous trends. Nations today are more immediately in touch, more connected in their awareness of our tenuous predicament than ever before. For the first time, people everywhere have the ability to identify a common goal for humankind: survival. In short, we have become the citizens of a planet. The great paradox is that there's not 39 Ancil Nance
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