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Abstract
It may be the ultimate irony that, in the effort to make the Earth yield more for the human species, the planet's ability to sustain life of all kinds, humans included, is diminishing. As a result of the population size, consumption patterns, and technology choices, human beings have surpassed the planet's carrying capacity. The days of the frontier economy, in which abundant resources were available to propel economic growth and living standards, are over. An era has begun in which global prosperity increasingly depends on using resources more efficiently, on distributing them equitably, and on reducing consumption levels overall. A successful global effort to lighten humanity's load on the Earth would directly address the 3 major driving forces of environmental decline - the grossly inequitable distribution of income, resource-consumptive economic growth, and rapid population growth - and would redirect technology and trade to buy time for this great movement.