RAGHU RAI/MAGNUM

It is a dream world where chemists can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, where bioengineers can put a little bit of a sheep into a wolf--or vice versa--and where the life-styles of the rich and famous are beamed by satellite to every upwardly mobile village on the planet. Thanks to science and technology--not to mention advertising and marketing--more people are consuming a more amazing array of worldly goods than at any time in history.

But beneath the surface all is not well. Like Oscar Wilde's fictional creation Dorian Gray, who stayed forever young while a portrait of him in the attic aged horribly, the modern economy masks a disfigured planet. The engine of consumption has scarred the land and stained the seas, eating away at the foundations of nature and threatening to destroy humanity's only means of survival.

Today's elderly, born at the beginning of this century, started life in a world with about 50% of its ancient forests still standing. Though far from pristine, it was a world of oceans and land masses teeming with all kinds of life; vast expanses of wildlands were sparsely inhabited by aboriginal peoples who knew how to tap the land for medicine and sustenance. Those who will be born after the turn of the millennium will come of age to find that previous generations have squandered and defiled their inheritance, foreclosing some options even as new ones were created.

Our grandchildren may have access to conveniences that further reduce the drudgery of everyday life, but they will also inherit a planet with less than 20% of its original forests intact, with most of the readily available freshwater already spoken for, with most of the wetlands and reef systems destroyed or degraded, and much of the arable land under plough. They will inherit a stressed atmosphere and an unwanted legacy of toxic waste in the soil and water. Missing from the estate will be countless species, most wiped out before even being catalogued by scientists. Gone as well will be troves of aboriginal knowledge that have disappeared as tribal peoples lost their lands or abandoned their traditional ways.

Will the nimble inventiveness of the consumer society revive the exhausted planet? Can the wizards of materialism, as a final piece of alchemy, halt environmental degradation and begin to repair the injuries inflicted on nature? Can a system demonstrably unsustainable in this century evolve into a successor more in harmony with the planet? Or, just as the teetering European order of the 19th century bequeathed this century two world wars, will the inexorable expansion of the consumer society ultimately bring about a cataclysm that defines life in the coming decades?

These questions cannot be ignored. The success of modern material culture has led to a sixfold increase in population in this century alone, along the way making humanity the most consequential presence in the biosphere. According to a study led by Stanford biologist Peter Vitousek, humans use more than half of all accessible surface freshwater and have driven one quarter of the world's species of birds into extinction.

The integration of markets and cultures means that more and more people do the same thing at the same time. Ideas and fashions turbocharged by the global marketplace rework the fabric of nature. Myths about the aphrodisiacal properties of rhinoceros horn and tiger bone have produced such consumer demand that both great mammals are close to extinction in the wild. Something as innocent as a taste for sushi has virtually stripped the North Atlantic of giant bluefin tuna. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, human character is now earth's destiny.