Flourishing Within Limits to Growth

Following nature's way

Sven Erik Jørgensen, Brian D. Fath, Søren Nors Nielsen, Federico M. Pulselli, Daniel A. Fiscus, Simone Bastianoni

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138842526
• eBook ISBN: 9781317551997
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sustainability in Business
• Index: Business

Decades of research and discussion have shown that the human population growth and our increased consumption of natural resources cannot continue – there are limits to growth. This volume demonstrates how we might modify and revise our economic systems using nature as a model.

The book describes how nature uses three growth forms: biomass, information, and networks, resulting in improved overall ecosystem functioning and co-development. As biomass growth is limited by available resources, nature uses the two other growth forms to achieve higher resource use efficiency. Through a universal application of the three 'R's: reduce, reuse, and recycle, nature thus shows us a way forward towards better solutions. However, our current approach, dominated by short-term economic thinking, inhibits full utilization of the three 'R's and other successful approaches from nature.

Building on ecological principles, the authors present a global model and futures scenario analyses which show that implementation of the proposed changes will lead to a win-win situation. In other words, we can learn from nature how to develop a society that can flourish within the limits to growth with better conditions for prosperity and well-being.

1

Introduction

Natural principles of chemistry, mechanics and biology are not merely limits. They’re invitations to work along with them.

—Jane Jacobs, The Nature of Economies, 2000, p. 12

1.1 Uncontrolled growth

The worst economic crisis since the 1930s started in 2008, and the industrialized countries have hardly recovered by 2014. The crisis was blamed on a combination of lax Wall Street oversight, short-term profit taking (essentially gambling), risky loans, a naïve belief in continuously increasing real estate prices (and policies to encourage this bubble), and an irresponsible use of state money in some Southern European countries, to name the major culprits. Yet, rarely in the mainstream media did one read about the problem in terms of a fundamentally flawed economic structure or a real debate to use the crash to implement new, economic approaches. One notable exception was Thomas Friedman, reporter and author, who wrote in 2009 in the New York Times that the crisis may show something very fundamental being more than just a temporary recession in the normal business cycle. The crisis, in his opinion, revealed that the basic economic growth model used as a compass for our decisions during the last 60 years has failed and the next warning may be a major collapse. He was not the first to propose this vision, but it is one that needs much further attention, as we explore in this book. This is in contrast to most economists and politicians who claim that the crisis is provisional and momentary, not structural. In this mainstream worldview, the medicine politicians in industrialized countries prescribed to recover the ailing economy was growth, more growth, and “back to normal growth,” whatever that means. Not one world leader questioned the neoliberal, growth-oriented economy or proposed an alternative socioeconomic structure to avoid new crises or to meet the challenges of the future such as unemployment/underemployment, diminishing financial capital, human misery and alienation, loss of community and sense of place, resource shortages, climate change, and the general deterioration of nature and thereby the services that it provides to human societies. An apt description is given in the book Enough is Enough by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill (2013) (see Note 1). It is no secret that the dominant economic philosophy of modernity is more – more people and more production, more money and more consumption. Employers try to earn more income, business managers try to report more revenue on the balance sheet, and politicians try to ensure that the economy can provide steadily more goods and more services.

Physical growth cannot continue indefinitely because the Earth has only finite resources. Nature sets limits to growth. Natural laws that inexorably must be obeyed tell us that unlimited growth is impossible. Even the most conservative politician or economist has to admit that, but no structural changes to the economy or society are pursued and implemented. There were hopes in 2012 due to the Rio+20 Conference (United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil on June 20–22, 2012) and the COP 18 (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 18th meeting of the Conference of the Parties held in Doha, Qatar, November 26 to December 7, 2012), but all hopes were crushed when the results of these global events were presented. Nations are more occupied with the ongoing financial crisis than with finding solutions to the far greater, long-term problems that we are facing in the coming decades: how do we stop our depredation of nature, which is the very basis for our life on Earth? Most discouraging is the lack of understanding regarding how the economic crises and environmental degradation are linked. The very solutions to the global environmental crisis will in fact set the course to a more sustainable economic system, such that one problem cannot be addressed in isolation. Rather than heed the advice of scientists and seek an approach that addresses environment, society, and economy as a complex, integrated whole, we focus on putting the economic machinery back the way that it was, knowing full well that similar crises will arise in the future. Thousands of pages have been written about the irrational, uncontrolled, and unintelligent misuse of our global resources, but any changes have been at the margins, tinkering with rates and efficiencies, not fundamentally addressing the systemic needs. Most economists and politicians are deaf or blind to the signals about them as well as the loud shouts for changes. A Nobel Symposium on Global Sustainability in Stockholm in May 2011 warned against the global predicament that we are facing, but politicians are not listening to natural scientists but rather let orthodox economists dominate the decision making. There seems to be a sound barrier between the world of economists and politicians on the one side and long-term reality and natural scientists on the other side. How do we break through the sound barrier?

Confronting crises and resource limitations is nothing new. In 1972, the Club of Rome published the well-known book The Limits to Growth, in which they used several global model scenarios to demonstrate that population growth and the growth of our consumption of natural resources, both renewable and nonrenewable, cannot continue without precipitating a collapse – there are limits to growth. Business as usual in 1972 regarding the growth rates of human population, of the withdrawal of renewable and nonrenewable resources, and of pollution emissions would inevitably lead to a collapse. But the global population and politicians have not followed the prudent advice of the Club of Rome because the controlling factors of society are obviously tethered to a short-term perspective, not wise long-term planning. One reason for inaction was the scenarios were painted as too dire and unwelcoming, not motivational and attractive enough to steer the global population toward them. The idea of limits was derided as pessimistic and not relevant to our modern conditions – yes, maybe Malthus had to worry about natural resources when the population was directly dependent on land for a living, but today’s economy is service-based, and economists insisted that perfect substitutability could solve any resource constraints. Therefore, little action was taken.

The world has experience with systems that on the surface appear completely different, notably socialism in the former Soviet Union and communism in China; however, both were governed and dominated by a growth paradigm. The Soviet Union failed for some of the same reasons that caused the global crisis in 2008: human selfishness, misuse of resources, and shortsightedness. We have to acknowledge, in Mahatma Gandhi’s words, that “there is enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.” Is being selfish, shortsighted, and therefore unfortunately also foolishly self-destructive embedded in our genes? Or are we like teenagers that never listen to parents’ advice but instead only learn firsthand through their own experience? However, if we need a collapse before we perceive what we need to do, then it would be too late.

Perhaps being self-destructive is a characteristic of any technologically advanced society. Since the 1960s, we have built a chain of radio-telescopes that have been listening to radio signals that might emanate from other civilizations. Drake (Note 2) has calculated that if a technologically advanced society has a lifetime of 1,000 years, we should find 25 other societies in our galaxy with at least our level of technology. Of course, if a civilization’s lifetime is more than 1,000 years, the probability is correspondingly higher – for instance, if the lifetime is 10,000 years, we should find 250 other technologically advanced societies on planets in our galaxy. We have now been listening to radio signals for about 50 years with no contact with other civilizations. It would be unfortunate to conclude that intelligent life is inevitably self-destructive, or expressed differently: intelligent life is self-destructive before it becomes sufficiently intelligent to understand how to cooperate meaningfully with each other and with nature. Maybe our species has the wrong name and should not be called Homo sapiens but Homo not-yet-sapiens. Drake’s equation can, of course, be criticized for being too optimistic (Note 2), and other calculations indicate that there are maybe only two other technologically advanced planets if the lifetime for an advanced civilization is 10,000 years.

Similarly, China and the other emerging economies have not learned from the mistakes of North America, Europe, and Japan: that it pays better to integrate environmental considerations into all projects from the very beginning. This was the clear experience learned from the mistakes in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s by the industrialized countries. China wanted, however, economic growth as fast as possible during the last 20 years, but now the Chinese leaders acknowledge that the fast growth has generated many environmental problems that China must solve. Air quality is so poor in many major cities that people are opting to wear masks, and the overall livability of these areas is being questioned. Solutions to the problems are much more expensive now than if they were integrated step-by-step during all phases of the projects.

The Limits to Growth and other books have clearly defined the problems and made the consequences of not shifting direction very apparent. The messages they promote, however, have not changed the direction of global development very much – maybe slightly if we use our very positive “glasses,” but very far from sufficiently. We are still directed toward a collapse. The present economic crisis is just a symptom of the disease: the idea of continuous, resource-based economic growth as the primary organizing factor for society. Another approach should be used as a compass for our development.

With this book, we would like to present a possible alternative pathway to avoid the threatening collapse based on changing the economy from an end goal in decision making to a means toward realizing sustainable communities. Primarily, this requires a reorientation from growth to development – from a quantitative concept to a qualitative one and from short-term to long-term considerations. We will be careful and mindful here to refer to quantitative change only as growth and qualitative change as development. When global annual car production increases, this is a quantitative growth, while the increasing efficiency of the produced vehicle motors constitutes development, for example. We will furthermore emphasize the need for systems thinking and holistic approaches and solutions. The economy provides roles in which individuals can productively contribute to the overall society. It is a fundamental and necessary aspect of our societies, but it should serve us as a useful tool. We should not be beholden to the economy but rather be its boss. The preconditions for a sustainable economy are clear: 1) it is a subsystem of the global ecology, 2) it has to reach for optima not maxima, and 3) it must be based on real physical-chemical-biological transactions, not on virtual or speculative exchanges. Homo sapiens are shortsighted but also ambitious to solve problems. How can we improve our quality of life, alleviate poverty, and provide meaningful employment to everyone willing? If one idea is not working, then we are open-minded to try to find another approach that is better. Humans strive for betterment and attempt to find solutions to urgent problems. We need to have goals and see the horizon. Therefore, development should not be stopped, but we can direct it from quantitative growth to qualitative development, which can continue in the face of physical limits. This shift is even a must, as constraints will render the present quantitative growth imperative unattainable and unsustainable. The constraints are clearly defined in the laws of nature. We know that, but how can we change the economy and the growth paradigm toward sustainable development? We could learn from nature, which has been constantly developing and sustaining for a period of almost four billion years. Catastrophes have massively destroyed nature from time to time, but nature recovers and finds new ways to develop under changing conditions. Which properties of nature have ensured this steady, sustainable, and persisting development? How has nature been able to utilize qualitative development when quantitative growth is no longer possible due to limits? We could imitate how nature has been able to bypass the problems of continuous growth. This book proposes to learn from nature how to change the direction of human development to solve the gigantic problems that we are facing. This entails not only the economic crisis, because it is just a symptom caused by our irrational and unintelligent economic system, but also the real and very serious problem that we are destroying the conditions for sustaining our life on Earth.

1.2 Different types of quantitative growth

Growth can occur more or less rapidly, which implies that we approach the limits to growth at different rates. Four types of growth are important for our understanding of the global problems that we are facing. The four types will be used several times in Chapters 2–9. Therefore, they are defined and presented here in the Introduction:

1)Zero growth occurs when the focal variable is constant. The state is not zero or dead but not increasing or decreasing because there is a balance between inputs and outputs. The rate of change, as given by the first derivative of the state variable, is zero. For instance, it would be ideal if we could stop carbon dioxide growth in the atmosphere. This would level the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration and stabilize the climate. Under conditions for this to occur, our emissions to the atmosphere must be balanced by sequestration out of the atmosphere. Figure 1.1 illustrates no growth.

FIGURE 1.1 Illustration of a variable or factor without growth and a factor (variable) growing linearly.

2)Linear growth means that the considered variable is increasing (growing) with the same amount per unit of time. The growth (increase per unit of time) is therefore constant. The population of many towns has increased linearly over a certain phase of time. Figure 1.1 illustrates linear growth.

3)Exponential growth occurs when the growth of the variable increases at the same rate per unit of time. This type of growth corresponds to the growth of capital in an interest-bearing account as it compounds according to the interest and the interest on the interest, and so on. This is called first-order growth because the growth rate is directly proportional to the amount. Therefore, the acceleration (= increase in growth rate) is constant. A state variable with exponential growth experiences a constant doubling time – to go from two to four, from four to eight, or from eight to 16 and so on requires the same time. It is relentless and rewarding early, becoming instable and insidious late. If one of your ancestors would have deposited one cent in a bank with an annual interest rate of 5 percent 1,000 years ago, then today you would inherit 1,000 times all the capital in the world. Of course, this is impossible, meaning that exponential growth does not continue unabated. Our consumption of fossil fuel has increased exponentially, on average about 2.33 p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Limits to growth
• 3 How nature flourishes within limits
• 4 How to adopt nature’s properties in our society
• 5 Working with a global model
• 6 To think like an ecosystem is key to win–win outcomes for humans and environment
• 7 Ecological footprint
• 8 Sustainability
• 9 Can we overcome the obstacles?
• Appendix
• Notes
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Index of the Most Important Topics and Concepts