Growing, growing, gone: Chesapeake Bay and the myths of endless growth

Background/Question/Methods

Forty years experience in chronicling the health of Chesapeake Bay.

Results/Conclusions

Chesapeake Bay was relatively healthy through the first half of the 20th century, as population grew to eight million people in its watershed. As population doubled, major estaurine ecosystems crashed--expanding dead zones and loss of seagrasses. Watershed states actively pursue both a restoration of bay health and growth that will triple population compared to the last time the bay was healthy. It is virtually taboo to ask whether there is a fundamental contradiction in this

I will talk from my forty years experience as a bay journalist and author about the need to rethink population growth and economic growth if we are to achieve sustainability.