Yet amid the gloom and doom, Vital Signs offers more than a few nuggets of hope for those not terminally pessimistic about the planet's prospects.
One of the most promising is the stunning growth in alternative forms of energy. Global wind power capacity jumped 24 per cent in 2005 alone, according to Worldwatch, and has more than tripled since 2000.
Wind energy generation now totals nearly 60,000 megawatts and could reach 271,500 megawatts by 2015, according to one projection. (By comparison, nuclear power now supplies about 369,000 megawatts of electrical power worldwide.)
Solar power is growing even faster. In 2005 alone, global production of photovoltaic cells, which generate electricity from sunlight, grew by 45 per cent. Cumulative production, at 6,090 megawatts, has expanded by an average of 33 per cent a year since 2000.
Biofuel production has also hit a gusher. Ethanol production jumped 19 per cent last year, while production of biodiesel, derived from plant oils, shot up 60 per cent.
Even Mr. Flavin is impressed. "Signs are now growing that the world is on the verge of an energy revolution," he says.
There's also some good news in the transportation sector, despite the addition of 45.6 million new passenger cars, an unhappy record, to the world's fleet of automobiles in 2005.
World bicycle production increased nearly nine per cent, to 101 million units, in 2003, the latest year for which global data are available. Sales of electric bicycles have been especially robust, reaching 10.5 million units last year, a 79-fold increase in the past decade. Almost all were sold in China.
