ABSTRACT
Pollution created by the extraction and use of non-renewable resources together with the harvesting of renewable resources adversely affect the maintainability of the global ecosystem. According to recent reports, the 1990s have been the warmest years on record, continuing an extended world-wide warming trend, due at least in part to greenhouse gases. In the Western Pacific, rising ocean temperatures are killing the coral reefs, thereby disrupting the food chain in that part of the world. Climatologists worry that were Alaska’s permafrost start to thaw significant amounts of harmful carbon would be released into the atmosphere. A number of countries have become so concerned with the adverse effects of pollution upon the environment that in 1997 the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to what has become known as the Kyoto Protocol, which sets emissions targets on six major greenhouse gases for the developed nations and institutes a mechanism for trading emission permits. The obvious concern is that failure to control greenhouse gas emissions increases the likelihood that the physical environment will impose significant binding constraints not only upon ecosystem maintainability, but also upon global economic activity.
