Global Population, Growth &

Sustainable Development

William E. Rees, PhD, FRSCUBC/SCARP

Achieving Sustainability: A decent life for allVIU ElderCollege, Nanaimo (14 October 2017)

The Human Nature of “Reality” Humans ‘socially construct’ what they take to be reality—

i.e., we make it up as we go along!

Religious doctrines, tribal myths, academic paradigms, political ideologies and scientific theories are all social constructs.

Social constructs are powerful. People ‘act out’ of their constructed beliefs as if they were true (consider suicide bombers).

Not all social constructs are valid—some are ‘truer’ than others (consider climate science vs. climate change denial).

The scientific method is the only formal way of constructing reality that explicitly tests its beliefs and assumptions (hypotheses) against the real world.

Many belief- and faith-based social constructs are little more than potentially dangerous shared illusions.

Let’s start with a two-part increasingly global shared illusion

Economic: Technology and increased

efficiency (‘factor productivity’) are enabling

the human enterprise to ‘decouple’ from nature.

Political: There is no conflict between the

growth of the human economy and protection of

‘the environment.

Major implication? Material economic

growth can continue indefinitely.

Cast from this mold: The UN SDGs

1: No Poverty

2: Zero Hunger

3: Good Health and Well-being

4: Quality Education

5: Gender Equality

6: Clean Water and Sanitation

7: Affordable and Clean Energy

8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

9: Resilient Industry, Infrastructure and Innovation

10: Reduce Inequality

11: Sustainable Human Settlements

12: Responsible Production and Consumption

13: Urgent Climate Action

14: Use Marine Ecosystems Sustainably

15: Use Terrestrial Ecosystems Sustainably

16: Promote Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

17: Revitalize the Partnership for Sustainable Development

On 19 July 2014, the UN’s Open Working Group

on Sustainable Development Goals suggested 17

SDGs with 169 targets covering a broad range of

issues (Adopted Sept 2015):

Jeffrey Sachs in The Age of

Sustainable Development (2015)

“The first major economic lesson of recent history is that the first pillar of sustainable development—prosperity achieved through economic growth—is achievable on a large scale, and is indeed being achieved across large parts of the planet” (pp. 26-27).

The big but:

“We must ensure that economic growth... does not undermine Earth’s life-support systems... Unless we combine economic growth with economic inclusion and environmental sustainability, the economic gains are likely to be short-lived as they will be followed by social instability and a rising frequency of environmental catastrophes” (p. 27).

The Fly in the Sustainable Development Ointment

The growth of the human enterprise has already

undermined many of Earth’s life-support systems and

this reality can only worsen for the foreseeable future:

we expect two billion more people by 2050.

While progress is being made in alleviating extreme

poverty, there are more impoverished people* on Earth

today—about 3.5 billion—than the entire human

population in 1967, just 50 years ago

Then there’s inequality—just the eight richest

billionaires control the same wealth as the poorest half

of humanity and the rich-poor income gap is widening.

* Poverty = living on less than $3.50/day

Unsustainability: Root cause #1H. sapiens is potentially unsustainable by nature (genetic drivers)

Unless or until constrained by

‘negative feedback’, H. sapiens, like

all other species, will:

expand to fill all accessible habitat

use all available resources (and in the case

of humans “availability” is constantly being

redefined by technology) (Rees 2006).

A Fisheries Example:Canada’s Shame(We watched it happening for several decades!)

We come by it honestly: “Tool-wielding monkeys

push local shellfish to edge of extinction”New Scientist 19 Sept 2017

Unsustainability: Root cause #2

H. sapiens is unsustainable by nurture

(socially-constructed cultural drivers)

The increasingly global myth of progress and continuous growth: “We have in our hands now… the technology to feed,

clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing

population for the next seven billion years…” (J. Simon 1995).

The emergence of a socially-constructed new ‘age of unreason’: E.g., politics increasingly influenced by neoliberal

ideology, religious fundamentalism, climate-change

denial, anti-intellectualism and other forms of

‘magical thinking’ (think ‘Donald Trump’).

Aggregate result: The anomalous, unsustainable oil-based expansion of the human enterprise

The heavy use of fossil fuel beginning in the 19th Century and the expansion of markets allowed the explosive growth of the human enterprise.

Continuous growth—population and economic—is an anomaly. The growth spurt that recent

generations take to be normal is the single most abnormal period of human history.

Oct 2017 population:~ 7.6 billion

A four-fold

expansion

(from 1.5 to

6.0 billion)

in the 20th

century

alone.

Our bloated and expanding ecological footprint

A population’s ‘ecological footprint’ is the area of land/water ecosystems required, on a continuous basis, to produce the resources the population consumes, and to assimilate its carbon wastes, wherever on Earth the relevant land/water may be located.

Everyone on Earth is competing with everyone else, and other species, for the world’s limited (and shrinking) bio-capacity!

ffads

65% OVERSHOOT!

Global biocapacity :

12.2 billion hectares

(1.7 ha/capita)

Humanity is already

in dangerous overshoot

Economic growth is

being ‘financed’, in part

by the liquidation of

nature and the

impairment of global

life support systems

(e.g., climate). We are

literally consuming and

dissipating the

ecosphere from within.

Human eco-footprint (2012):

20.1 billion hectares

(2.8 ha/capita)

Driving Climate Change: A 44% increase

in CO2 over pre-industrial levels

Pre-industrial

level = 280 ppm

It gets worse when we add other GHGs

You don’t need to be a climate scientist to see a temp trend

September 2017 was the

hottest September ever

recorded in the four

decades of satellite data

analyzed by the

University of Alabama at

Huntsville (UAH). “…of

the 20 warmest monthly

global average

temperatures in the

satellite record, only

September 2017 was not

during an El Niño,”

We have entered the Anthropocene, a

world dominated by H. sapiens

From almost nothing a few millennia ago, humans and their domestic animals have grown to comprise almost 99% of the terrestrial mammalian biomass on Earth.

Contrary to conventional political wisdom, growth of the human enterprise necessarilydiminishes nature. (After all, it’s a finite planet!! )

Wild nature, all wildlife combined, is now clinging to the margins of existence.

Forget T. rex. We humans are the most viciously voracious carnivore andherbivore ever to walk the earth!

Humans

<1%

Wild

Mammals

99%

Terrestrial Mammal Biomass 10,000 Years Ago

Humans

32%

Wild Mammals

1.5%

Cattle

45%

Other

Livestock

22%

Terrestrial Mammal Biomass 2015

The next phase—as the earth shrinks, the wealthy competitively displace the poor (Remember those eight billionaires?

Jeffrey Sachs

principal

conditions for

sustainability

have both been

violated. Are we

condemned to

increasing rates

of “social

instability” and

“environmental

catastrophe”?

‘Olduvai Theory’: The short life-expectancy of fossil-fueled industrial society

Source: Richard Duncan

This vision resembles the ‘plague’ cycle of any species introduced to a new, resource-rich habitat

Here we see the rise and fall of reindeer Populations on the Pribilof Islands.

In this case, the depleted ‘fuel’ was lichens.

The Really “Inconvenient Truth”?On a finite planet, material economic growth inevitably undermines “Earth’s life-support systems” thereby violating Jeffrey Sach’s core ecological condition for sustainability.

Contrary to convention:

“Industrialized world reductions in material consumption, energy use, and environmental degradation of over 90% will be required by 2040 to meet the needs of a growing world population fairly within the planet’s ecological means.” (BCSD 1993; ‘Getting Eco-Efficient’)

For sustainability with equity North Americans should be taking steps to reduce our ecological footprints by about 75% to our equitable Earth-share (1.7 gha)(Rees 2006).

Contrast this with the SDG goals of sustained material economic growth and projections of at least an 80% increase in GWP/capita for by 9-10 billion people by 2050!

The Good News The Bad News

We have the technology

today to enable a 75%-

80% reduction in energy

and (some) material

consumption while

actually improving quality

of life.

“The ecologically necessary is politically infeasible but the politically possible may be ecologically irrelevant.”

Yet we do not act.

Privileged elites with the

greatest stake in the status

quo control the policy

levers. Ordinary people

hold to the expansionist or

rapture myths, so society

remains in eco-paralysis.

How to account for deep denial?

During individual development, sensory experiences and cultural norms (constructed ‘realities’) literally shape the human brain’s synaptic circuitry in patterns that reflect and embed those experiences.

Subsequently, individuals seek out compatible people and experiences and, “when faced with information that does not agree with their [preformed] internal structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret or forget that information”(Wexler, 2006).

It gets worse: The extreme right has socially

engineered the citizenry to ignore biophysical reality

This is the ‘post-truth’ era: A new ‘age of unreason’, science denial and magical thinking

Pssst! Welcome to

the 21st Century

‘Endarkenment’!

But business-as-usual puts us on course for collapse

Source: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency

It wouldn’t be the first time!

“...what is perhaps

most intriguing in the

evolution of human

societies is the

regularity with which

the pattern of

increasing complexity

is interrupted by

collapse…”(Joseph Tainter 1995).