A New World Order: The Coming Transition from Fossil Fuels and Capitalism to Nuclear Energy and Eco-Socialism

By Joseph George Caldwell

This article describes a plan for establishing a long-term-sustainable planetary management system on Earth. The proposed system will enable humankind to live with a high level of freedom and without poverty in harmony with an ecologically rich biosphere.

The current global civilization based on a high level of human population and industrial production has proved disastrous both for mankind and the biosphere. Three-quarters of the human population – about six billion people – live in miserable conditions, enduring poverty, hunger, crowding, disease, oppression, limited freedom, limited access to nature, and lack of opportunities to lead meaningful lives and achieve a significant measure of fulfilment and happiness.

The mechanism by which human population has soared to biosphere-destroying levels is growth-based economic activity, implemented by capitalism. Growth-based economics / capitalism has proved to be the greatest weapon of mass destruction, exhibiting the power to destroy a planetary biosphere in less than two centuries. While growth-based economics / capitalism has played a key role in causing the current ecological crisis, it has at the same time been a tremendously powerful tool for advancing scientific and technical knowledge and technological development. The human population explosion has been accompanied by an explosion in knowledge. This knowledge represents the key both to understanding the nature of the crisis and to resolving it.

Growth-based economics / capitalism has caused the ecological crisis and simultaneously provided the means – science and technology – to resolve it. Through its phenomenal success in achieving truly astounding growth in industrial development and in knowledge, this system has sown the seeds of its own destruction. It has been extremely useful, but it has served its purpose and now poses an existential threat to the biosphere and to the human species. Mankind now possesses profound knowledge of the nature of the physical universe and sophisticated technology to interact with it.

To allow growth-based economics / capitalism to continue to operate will result in the annihilation of the species-rich biosphere, perpetuation of human misery, and, arguably, the extinction of the human species. For mankind to continue to exist, and to achieve a high-quality existence, the operation of this incredible system must now be halted, and it must be replaced with a system that enables mankind to live in harmony with a species-rich biosphere. Such a system is eco-socialism, implemented in the framework of steady-state economics.

This article presents a feasible plan for replacing the planet-destroying system of large-scale industry with a long-term-sustainable system of planetary management, of replacing growth-based economics / capitalism with steady-state economics and eco-socialism. The essence of the plan is to make use of the present system of growth-based economics / capitalism to make preparations for an immediate transition from that system to eco-socialism in the wake of a global catastrophe, such as economic collapse, social collapse, severe pandemic or famine, global nuclear war, ecological collapse, or radical climate change.

The new world order to be established will be designed, implemented, operated and maintained using the methodology of systems engineering. With this methodology, many alternative systems are synthesized, analyzed, evaluated and compared, and a preferred system selected.

The author, Joseph George Caldwell, has written extensively on energy and the environment for the past several decades. He holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BS in Mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph George Caldwell
• Release date: Jul 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9780944848388

Joseph George Caldwell

Joseph George Caldwell is a mathematical statistician and systems and software engineer. He is author of articles and books on divers topics (e.g., population, environment, statistics, economics, politics, defense and music, including The Late Great United States (2008); Can America Survive? (1999); How to Stop the IRS and Solve the Deficit Problem (The Value-Added Tax: A New Tax System for the United States) (1987); How to Play the Guitar by Ear (for mathematicians and physicists) (2000). See Internet website http://www.foundationwebsite.org to view these and other articles. He holds a BS degree in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a PhD degree in Statistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Book preview

A New World Order: The Coming Transition from Fossil Fuels and Capitalism to Nuclear Energy and Eco-Socialism

Joseph George Caldwell

16 February 2021

Copyright © 2021 Joseph George Caldwell. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction and Summary

2. Earth Has Too Many People!

3. The Current Situation

4. How We Got Here: A Summary of Recent Human Development

5. Impact of a Large Human Population on Science and Technology

6. The Demographic Transition

7. The Demographic Transition Double Whammy

8. Prognosis: Forecasts of the Future

9. Historical Population Control Measures

10. Proposals to Address the Situation

11. Analytical Methodologies for System Control

12. What Happened? How Did It Happen?

13. How and Why Did It Get This Far? Why Does It Continue? Why Are Effective Corrective Actions Not Being Taken?

14. Carrying Capacity

15. Energy Sources for Human Activity

16. Growth Cannot Go on Forever; Exponential Growth Is Quickly Over

17. The Nature of Decline of Complex Systems

18. Modes and Mechanisms of the Collapse of Global Industrial Civilization

19. The Half-Earth Proposal

20. Bioregionalism and The Need for a Single World State

21. When Will the Collapse Occur?

22. How Many Will Survive? Who Will Survive? In What Environment?

23. What Will the Aftermath Be Like?

24. Can Anything Be Done?

25. Revisited: Why Is Nothing Effective Being Done to Resolve the Global Environmental Crisis?

26. Should Anything Be Done?

27. Building a Solar or Solar/Nuclear Civilization: Methodology for Designing a New Civilization (Systems Engineering)

28. Corollary: The United States Has Too Many People

Appendix A. Population Forecasts

Appendix B. Proposals to Solve the Environmental Crisis

Appendix C. Excerpts from Bertrand Russell Nobel Lecture

Appendix D. Discussion or Rights, Ethics and Morality

Appendix E. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Appendix F. Reasons Why the Population / Environment Problem Is Not Being Solved

Appendix G. Additional Discussion of the Role of Economics in the Collapse of Global Industrial Civilization

Appendix H. Definitions of Bioregionalism and Related Terms

Appendix I. Sciences and Technologies Involved in Addressing the Global Environmental Crisis

Appendix J. Additional Comments on Mankind’s Purpose and Goals

Appendix K. Information about Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Appendix L. Definitions of Ideological and Related Terms

References

Dedication

1. Introduction and Summary

This article describes a plan for establishing a long-term-sustainable planetary management system on Earth. The proposed system will enable humankind to live with a high level of freedom and without poverty in harmony with an ecologically rich biosphere.

The current global civilization based on a high level of human population and industrial production has proved disastrous both for mankind and the biosphere. Three-quarters of the human population – about six billion people – live in miserable conditions, enduring poverty, hunger, crowding, disease, oppression, limited freedom, limited access to nature, and lack of opportunities to lead meaningful lives and achieve a significant measure of fulfilment and happiness.

The high level of human population and industrial production has caused great damage to the environment, including pollution of the atmosphere, land and oceans; destruction of natural habitat; mass species extinction; and climate change. A recent (2018) report estimated that human activity has destroyed 83 per cent of all wild animals, 80 per cent of marine mammals, 50 per cent of all plants, and 15 per cent of all fish. Almost two-thirds of all tropical rainforest has been destroyed, and much of the old-growth forest has been degraded. The current rate of extinction of species has been estimated at about 1,000 times higher than the natural background extinction rate. The release, caused by human activity, of large amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere is contributing to global warming of the atmosphere and oceans to a degree that represents an existential threat to millions of species, including the human species itself.

While the species that have been exterminated are gone forever, and while it is not considered possible to stop global warming immediately, mankind possesses the technology and resources to bring the destruction of the biosphere to a halt and to provide decent living conditions to all people. Mankind has the capacity to resolve the ecological crisis. All that is lacking is the will to do so. This article examines the reasons for the lack of will, and develops a plan for overcoming this obstacle.

The mechanism by which human population has soared to biosphere-destroying levels is growth-based economic activity, implemented by capitalism. Growth-based economics / capitalism has proved to be the greatest weapon of mass destruction, exhibiting the power to destroy a planetary biosphere in less than two centuries. While growth-based economics / capitalism has played a key role in causing the current ecological crisis, it has at the same time been a tremendously powerful tool for advancing scientific and technical knowledge and technological development. The human population explosion has been accompanied by an explosion in knowledge. This knowledge represents the key both to understanding the nature of the crisis and to resolving it.

Growth-based economics / capitalism has caused the ecological crisis and simultaneously provided the means – science and technology – to resolve it. Through its phenomenal success in achieving truly astounding growth in industrial development and in knowledge, this system has sown the seeds of its own destruction. It has been extremely useful, but it has served its purpose and now poses an existential threat to the biosphere and to the human species. Mankind now possesses profound knowledge of the nature of the physical universe and sophisticated technology to interact with it.

To allow growth-based economics / capitalism to continue to operate will result in the annihilation of the species-rich biosphere, perpetuation of human misery, and, arguably, the extinction of the human species. For mankind to continue to exist, and to achieve a high-quality existence, the operation of this incredible system must now be halted, and it must be replaced with a system that enables mankind to live in harmony with a species-rich biosphere. Such a system is eco-socialism, implemented in the framework of steady-state economics.

Over the past century, there has been much hand-wringing about mankind’s destruction of the environment, but, despite the facts that the nature of the problem is well understood and means for addressing it are available, to date no effective plan has been constructed or course of action has been taken to halt the destruction. This article presents a feasible plan for replacing the planet-destroying system of large-scale industry with a long-term-sustainable system of planetary management, of replacing growth-based economics / capitalism with steady-state economics and eco-socialism. The essence of the plan is to make use of the present system of growth-based economics / capitalism to make preparations for an immediate transition from that system to eco-socialism in the wake of a global catastrophe, such as economic collapse, social collapse, severe pandemic or famine, global nuclear war, ecological collapse, or radical climate change.

The new world order to be established will be designed, implemented, operated and maintained using the methodology of systems engineering. With this methodology, many alternative systems are synthesized, analyzed, evaluated and compared, and a preferred system selected. Here follow the major characteristics of one such candidate system.

As global petroleum reserves exhaust, the world will soon see a massive wave of construction of nuclear power reactors, to generate both heat and electricity energy. The following alternative incorporates this feature, of moving from the petroleum age to the nuclear age.

Government: A unitary system of government, based on representative democracy and eco-socialism.

Global organizational structure: The world is divided into approximately 100 city-states based on the concept of bioregionalism, with maximum population of eight million per city-state. Industrial activity is permitted only within the cities.

Economic features: No capitalism. No private ownership of means of production. No property income (rents, interest-bearing loans, profits). Fiat money. (Economics is the science of the management of scarcity, of efficient allocation of limited resources. The proposed system will be designed to operate in harmony with the biosphere, so that natural resource limits will not impose global constraints on human activity. There will be no scarcity and no poverty. Economics may be used to accomplish efficient allocation of renewable resources, but not to allocate nonrenewable resources. To this extent, the economic system may be characterized as steady-state economics in the tradition of Georgescu-Roegen, Daly, Kohr and Schumacher.)

Welfare: Guaranteed employment, basic income. No poverty.

Health care: Free basic health-care.

Education: Universal; mandatory eight years; free merit-based beyond eight years.

Judicial: English common law. No prisons. If violate laws, then reeducate. If reeducation is not successful, must live outside the city.

Rights: All human beings are full citizens of the unitary state. Basically, human rights are the same as specified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but with symmetry so that the cost to society of providing the benefit of the right is reasonable. All people have a right to travel anywhere on the planet. No right to own land or fixed property (land, buildings). No right to own other human beings (slaves) or living creatures. No factory farming. No battery production.

Ethics: Consequential and symmetric, à la Taleb.

Energy: All industrial energy is from nuclear power plants or renewable biomass. No fossil fuels. No solar (solar electric, hydro, wind, tides).

Defense / security: Confidential.

2. Earth Has Too Many People!

Earth has too many people! What does this mean? Out of context, this statement is merely an opinion, a value judgment, an unjustified assertion. What I mean by this statement is that the large number of people and high level of industrial production on Planet Earth are causing substantial changes to the biosphere in which humankind evolved, which changes threaten its long-term existence and happiness. This article will summarize why I hold this opinion, and will describe alternatives for lessening the threat.

Recent centuries have seen massive growth in the size of the human population and the amount of industrial production. The level of population and industrial activity has caused substantial changes to occur in Earth’s physical environment and biosphere, leading to pollution, global warming, habitat loss, species extinction, loss of ecological diversity, and loss of esthetic appeal. A massive number of people live in dire poverty, misery and hopelessness. Their leaders live in luxury, and are generally indifferent to the condition of the masses of people, to the ecological state of the planet, and to the threat of human extinction. So far, civilization has been an effective system for producing great wealth for a few and poverty for many, for growing the human population, and for advancing science and technology. At the same time, it has brought about increase in overcrowding, disease, hunger, conflict and misery; caused massive destruction to the biosphere, including global warming; and caused a mass species extinction, which may include the human species itself.

The current situation is unstable and unsustainable, and it is difficult to see why the current system of global civilization will not soon come to an end. What system of global civilization replaces it remains to be seen, but its nature can be affected by human action. This article describes means by which humankind can bring about a global civilization that promotes long-term survival of humanity in an ecologically rich biosphere similar to the one in which it evolved.

I have written on this topic since 1994. These writings have included books, articles and brief notes. They have been posted on the Foundation website, http://www.foundationwebsite.org, since 1999. The books and many of the articles were long, appropriate for reading on a desktop or laptop microcomputer display, or in hard copy, but not for easy reading on a mobile device such as a cell phone or e-reader. This article will summarize some of my views, very briefly, in a document of size and format that can be read on a mobile device. It omits detailed explanations, graphs, tables, and mathematical formulas. It is not intended as a comprehensive summary of past work, but simply a statement of major points, discussion of key concepts, updated assessment of the situation today, and identification of alternative ways if achieving a long-term-survivable human population in an ecologically rich biosphere.

This article summarizes points, such as observations, conclusions and hypotheses, but it does not present detailed arguments. It may present some basic rationales or principal reasons, but no detail. Many of the assertions made here have much reasoning behind them. Examples are Rare Earth (335 pages), Guns, Germs, and Steel (528 pages), Food, Energy, and Society (363 pages), Overshoot and Collapse (298 pages) and The Collapse of Complex Societies (250 pages). For detailed discussion of many of the assertions presented here about the size of a long-term-sustainable human population living in a biosphere similar to the one in which it evolved, see the book Can America Survive? (1999 by Joseph George Caldwell, posted at the Foundation website at http://www.foundationwebsite.org/CanAmericaSurvive.htm , not the 2010 book of the same title by John Hagee) and the other sources cited in the References.

Except for my book, Can America Survive? (CAS), the references cited at the end of the article are not sources for the global population proposals described in CAS and in this article. They are sources for factual information relevant to the discussion and for descriptions of methodologies that are useful for assessing the merits of these proposals. The primary source for the proposals presented in this article is CAS.

The nature of exponential population growth has been understood and discussed since the publication of Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Much has been written about the destructive effects of human population growth on the biosphere since the 1960s. Despite much awareness, consideration, analysis and discussion of the problem, no effective measures have been taken in the last fifty years to solve it. In 1970 the world population was 3.7 billion; this year, 2021, it is 7.8 billion. In the past fifty years the environment has been ravaged, global warming is upon us, and the number of people in desperate poverty has increased by four billion. Human society is in the process of destroying its own nest – the biosphere in which it evolved and on which its welfare and very existence depend. Humankind has the knowledge and ability to rectify the problem, but chooses not to do so. This situation begs the question of why the situation is becoming disastrously worse, year after year, not better. Much of this article addresses this curious and tragic situation.

CAS presented a basic concept – the minimal-regret population – but it did not explore the concept in detail. This paper identifies a number of alternative implementations of the concept.

Two final notes. First, having considered a wide range of alternative futures for the future of human civilization, I have identified scenarios that correspond to a hellish future in a ruined biosphere, as well as scenarios that paint a tremendously engaging future for mankind. Moreover, I see circumstances and developments that, in my view, suggest that mankind’s future will more likely resemble one of these very appealing scenarios, and cause me to be optimistic about the long-term future of humankind and the biosphere.

Second, this article is a research paper, not a call to action. Many of the scenarios that I describe involve social engineering and warfare. While I identify a number of scenarios, some of which are appealing for humankind and some of which are not, I am not promoting actions to bring about any of them. To do so might invite charges of insurrection or terrorism. I am a researcher, not a warrior. While I am a proponent of lower global human population, and while I hope that the current environmental crisis is resolved without further destruction of the biosphere, I am not an activist. My goal is to identify a variety of alternatives for the future of mankind and the biosphere, and explore their characteristics, so that the planet’s leaders may make informed choices for the future. This paper diagnoses the present environmental situation and identifies a number of ways that it may be changed, for better or worse.

To date, there has been a lot of hand wringing about the long-term future of mankind and the biosphere, with no effective actions taken. The time for effective action is nigh, and some entities will soon be making the hard choices that investigators such as Garret Hardin and Jared Diamond have talked about, to determine this future. The discussion presented in this paper is intended to identify and clarify the essential features of alternative futures, and to describe a methodology for identifying a preferred alternative, so that better decisions can be made by those in charge to accomplish desired, and, it is hoped, desirable, change.

This article makes liberal use of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, as a source for facts, definitions, and summary information on many topics. For each use of Wikipedia or other Internet source, the title of the article is given, and in some cases the Internet website address is specified. I hereby express my deep appreciation for Wikipedia for its very valuable service. If you find this article to be of value, please consider making a donation to Wikipedia!

This article is designed for primary use on computers, e-readers and smart cellphones. To make effective use of those devices, it includes many hypertext hyperlink references. Unfortunately, the hyperlink references are of little value to someone reading a hard-copy version of the article – the information is not immediately available. To address this issue, I have included some summary material, extracted from the hyperlink source, along with each hyperlink reference. This approach has the drawback, however, of substantially increasing the size of the article. To address this problem, I have moved many of the hyperlink references and associated references to appendices, which comprise about half of the article.

3. The Current Situation

Human-Caused Atmospheric, Oceanic and Land Changes

Mankind’s large numbers and industrial activity have caused macroscopic changes to the planet. These include increases in carbon dioxide, methane and other gases in the atmosphere; global warming; acid rain; glacier melting; ocean pollution; mercury-poisoned lakes; loss of wetlands; poisoning of topsoil with pesticides, insecticides and herbicides; loss of topsoil; soil compaction; desertification; and destruction of wild rivers by dams.

Human-Caused Biospheric Changes

Changes to the biosphere that have resulted from mankind’s activity include: destruction of rain forests, including the Amazon rainforest (18 percent now destroyed, the soil turned to brick-hard laterite after just a few years of farming); destruction of about one-fourth of the forest covering much of North America; near-total destruction of the North American tallgrass prairie; destruction of natural habitat; collapsed fisheries from industrial-scale fishing; increase in wildfires; topsoil loss; loss of species diversity; species extinction (the sixth mass species extinction, this one human-caused). Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey estimated that about 30,000 species are being wiped out each year. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates.

The lifetime of species is often long, on the order of one to ten million years. The rise of new species takes millions of years. What species arise depends on the nature of the environment. The modern human species has existed for about 200,000 years. Human civilization has existed for about 6,000 years. While the focus of this article is the next few years or decades, the planning horizon is millions of years. If the current generation of mankind ruins the biodiversity-rich environment, but the human species does not become extinct, that is the duration to which the current generation will have sentenced all future generations to live on a biodiversity-impoverished planet.

Perhaps the most powerful and succinct summary of humankind’s impact on the biosphere is presented in Kirkpatrick Sale’s book, The Collapse of 2020 (2020). The following paragraph is excerpted from the chapter titled Environmental Collapse: Self Extinction: A new report the following year [i.e., following 2017] attempted to put quantitative figures to what the human imprint has meant for the world’s biomass. Three biologists, two from the Weizmann Institute in Israel and one from the California Institute of Technology, determined that humans, .01 percent of all life on earth, have annihilated 83 per cent of all wild animals, 80 per cent of marine mammals, 50 per cent of all plants, and 15 per cent of all fish. (A subsequent report, in October 2018, calculated also that between 45 and 76 per cent of insects have gone extinct.) Of what’s left, livestock – domestic animals – accounts for 60 per cent and humans for 36 per cent, which leaves only 4 per cent for all wildlife. In other words, we have been so successful at birthing and developing our single bipedal species that we have virtually exterminated all the rest – so far, and we are proceeding to complete that at a pace so fast that it is beyond control.

Human-Caused Changes in the Human Condition

The most apparent change in the human condition resulting from population growth is loss of open space and crowding. In the United States, land having a relatively low density of human beings existed through the 1800s. In 1890, a year after the Oklahoma Land Rush, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the frontier was closed. The 1890 census had shown that a frontier line, a point beyond which the population density was less than two persons per square mile, or a little less than one person per square kilometer, no longer existed. Even that population density is high, compared to the density generally estimated for pre-agricultural man – about eight persons per 100 square kilometers of habitable land, or about one person per 12.5 square kilometers.

Civilization and crowding have brought much misery to the human condition: high levels of poverty, disease, oppression, human bondage and unhappiness (mental illness, depression, despair, hopelessness, suicides, crime, and drugs). Another indicator of the stressed system is the increasing frequency of outbreaks of epidemic disease transmission from wild animals (Black Plague, Spanish Flu, HIV, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Ebola, COVID-19).

Throughout most of the history of civilization, a major hallmark of civilization was slavery. Although modern human beings are no longer slaves in the sense of chattel property, many are prisoners in the global system of civilization, which has stripped them of much of their freedom and high-quality living space and, for billions, most of their opportunities for significant satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness.

Human population has increased tremendously in the past decades, and remains at a high, biodiversity-destructive level.

With its exponential growth, the human species no longer exists in equilibrium with the rest of the biosphere. Unlike other species, it is destroying its nest – its habitat in the biosphere in which it evolved. It has a high breeding rate and is very avaricious. It is intelligent, and very aware of the situation, but indifferent to the biocide that its large numbers and industrial production are causing.

Current environmental efforts have proved feckless in reducing the level of biospheric destruction. A primary reason for the failure of environmental efforts to solve the environmental problem is population growth. For example, if conservation (e.g., recycling) reduces consumption or waste by ten percent, and the population is growing by one percent per year, then in ten years that accomplishment is completely neutralized. Current environmental efforts may be successful in temporarily reducing some pollution levels, in saving a few islands of biodiversity, or in postponing the extinction of a few species, but they accomplish nothing to reduce the level of large human numbers and industrial production, or to restore the damaged biosphere, or even to halt further human-caused biospheric destruction.

The root cause of all of humankind’s severe environmental problems is the large human population. With a low human population, all of these problems can be resolved. With a high human population, none of them can. Earth has too many people!

4. How We Got Here: A Summary of Recent Human Development

In his book, After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination (2006), Kirkpatrick Sale describes the evolution of the human species from a species that existed in harmony as a very small component of the biosphere to the single most dominant species of Planet Earth. Sale’s book describes the evolutionary changes that occurred over the past 70,000 years. This section describes events of the last ten thousand years, since the dawn of the age of agriculture. For additional discussion, see The Social Conquest of Earth (2012) by Edward O. Wilson and Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) by Jared Diamond.

Prior to the advent of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago, it has been estimated that global human population was in the range of 1-10 million people. (The population estimates presented here are from the United States Census Bureau table, Historical Estimates of World Population, posted at Internet website https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html.) With the advent of agriculture and then of civilization, human population gradually increased, to an estimated 170-400 million in year 1 AD, 226 – 240 million in 900, 254-345 million in 1000, 425-540 million in 1500, 629-961 million in 1750, 813-1125 million in 1800, 1128-1402 million in 1850, 1550-1762 million in 1900, 2400-2558 million in 1950, 6.1 billion in 2000 and 7.8 billion today (2021).

Deforestation

The growth of population after 900 was accompanied by massive destruction of forest cover and conversion to farmland for crops and grazing. Here follows an extract from the Wikipedia article, Deforestation, posted at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation.

"From 1100 to 1500 AD, significant deforestation took place in Western Europe as a result of the expanding human population. The large-scale building of wooden sailing ships by European (coastal) naval owners since the 15th century for exploration, colonisation, slave trade, and other trade on the high seas, consumed many forest resources and became responsible for the introduction of numerous bubonic plague outbreaks in the 14th century. Piracy also contributed to the over harvesting of forests, as in Spain. This led to a weakening of the domestic economy after Columbus' discovery of America, as the economy became dependent on colonial activities (plundering, mining, cattle, plantations, trade, etc.).

"The massive use of charcoal on an industrial scale in Early Modern Europe was a new type of consumption of western forests; even in Stuart England, the relatively primitive production of charcoal has already reached an impressive level. Stuart England was so widely deforested that it depended on the Baltic trade for ship timbers, and looked to the untapped forests of New England to supply the need. Each of Nelson's Royal Navy war ships at Trafalgar (1805) required 6,000 mature oaks for its construction.

"Norman F. Cantor's summary of the effects of late medieval deforestation applies equally well to Early Modern Europe:

‘Europeans had lived in the midst of vast forests throughout the earlier medieval centuries. After 1250 they became so skilled at deforestation that by 1500 they were running