" In the December/January "03-"04 publishing of Mother Earth News, it stated that "Climate change threatens the global economy and that environmental protection should come first. Climate change is a major issue that is not getting the attention it deserves from most governments, particularly that of the U.S., the country responsible for a quarter of all the world's carbon emissions. Just as governments in Africa watched HIV infection rates rise and did little about it, the U.S. is watching atmospheric CO2 levels rise and doing little to check the increase." Furthermore, many examples of this are quite apparent such: the of the Aral Sea, the burning rain forests in Indonesia, the collapse of the Canadian cod fishery, the melting of the glaciers that supply Andean cities with water, the dust bowl forming in northwestern China and the depletion of the U.S. Great Plains aquifer. The impacts of all of these are quite apparent that when a government puts the economy above the environment, the environment will fail which in turn will drag the economy down with it along with the society. .
Contention 2: the environment will ultimately kill society. .
a) Society must realize that when it harms the environment, those harms cannot be undone. However, when it harms the economy, it can fix that. As humans continue to expand into the world, they are constantly destroying millions of hectares of trees and other such natural resources that are vital to life, and the economy. Without these resources, life would not exist. China right now is a prime example of seeking economic development first and outstripping the environment. Lester Brown puts it bluntly, "In the deteriorating relationship between the global economy and the Earth's ecosystem, China is on the leading edge. More than one billion people and 400 million cattle, sheep and goats weigh heavily on the land. China's expanding ecological deficits are converging to create a dust bowl of historic dimensions, with little vegetation remaining in parts of northern and western China.
