Sustainable Civilization

Kenneth A. Loparo, Klaas Van Egmond

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781137382696
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137382702
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

In order to be sustainable, a civilization must maintain the balance between 'mind' and 'matter' and between the egocentric 'I' and 'the others'. This book investigates how new institutional arrangements in politics, economy and finance can resolve the current crisis of social values by restoring this delicate balance between opposing forces.

1

Western Civilization in Crisis

Once again, Western civilization has been unable to sustain a long period of social, cultural and economic development. The multifaceted growth that took place in large parts of the world following World War II, over the last 60 years or so, has come to an end. The fall of the Berlin Wall, 20 years ago, led to great euphoria. The liberal capitalist democracy of the West had prevailed over communism, global problems would be solved permanently; thus the ‘end of history’ was thought to have been reached. The recurring derailments of the past, from then on, would be prevented by democracy and common sense through early intervention. Extreme opinions of minority groups would be manageable inside the democratic process, and a crisis such as that of the 1930s would be unimaginable as economic science would progress to the point where the economic system could be continually adjusted and stabilized.

However, all this has not come to pass. The world, once again, has entered a deep, and apparently fundamental, crisis in ecological, financial, economic and social areas. Large nature areas are being lost on a global scale, natural resources are being depleted and the climate is irrefutably changing. Economic growth in the West is stagnating, also because the global financial system has long since ceased to serve as the tool of development for the material economy, and has become a goal in itself. Differences between the rich and the poor are increasing, globally. After a period of improvement, the number of people suffering from poverty and hunger has increased again, currently up to around one billion, equalling 15 per cent of the global population. In addition, religious and cultural differences are becoming more distinct again, especially between Islam and the traditionally Christian West.

1.1 Economic growth and social progress

The current crisis situation was preceded by a long period of material and cultural development. Despite the occurrence of disasters and ever-longer wars, prosperity, human health and political stability in the West have increased, substantially, since the industrial revolution. Globalization was first set in motion by international shipping, but this development did not fully take off until the technical, scientific breakthroughs of the second half of the eighteenth century. The invention of the steam engine around 1780 meant that production processes and transport options could be expanded on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, new types of agricultural crops enabled the population to grow. This new combination of technology and labour input caused a rapid increase in prosperity. Figure 1.1 shows the accelerated development in both population size and average income per capita. Clearly noticeable is the increasing speed at which this development accelerated over time; income levels are shown to have risen faster and faster as they increased.

The large industrial areas initially suffered local problems related to the pollution of water and especially air. These problems, ultimately, were managed in the second half of the previous century – once again through the implementation of technology. Industrial developments and increases in prosperity and food production occurred simultaneously. This raised the question of whether the world would be able to produce sufficient amounts of food to feed such a continuously growing population. In 1798, political economist Malthus published a study in which he foresaw the process of an ever more rapidly increasing population. At that time, biologist Liebig added the insight that increases in food production would be restricted to the amount of nitrogen in the soil, which would in turn slow down the increase in population and ultimately lead to a maximum population size of around three billion people. Foreseeable developments, therefore, would result in an inevitable and great famine. Pessimist Malthus, so far, has been proven wrong. Optimists who assumed that a technical solution ‘was bound to be found’ were proven right, in this respect. Because, in 1913, German scientists Haber and Bosch discovered a process to bind the nitrogen in air and subsequently add this to the soil in the form of fertilizer. This meant that the amount of nitrogen in the soil was no longer limited, as nitrogen in air is present in abundance (close to 80 per cent). Therefore, food production could be increased more than linearly and thus was able to keep up with the ever-faster growing population. Although this enormous mobilization of nitrogen then led to problems of eutrophication (over-fertilization of both soil and water), it has also kept the great famine predicted by Malthus at bay – for the time being.

Figure 1.1 Increasing wealth and environmental pressures: intensification of nutrient cycles of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N), due to increases in population, production and consumption (gross domestic product (GDP)/capita)

Figure 1.1 shows the coherent development of wealth and subsequent environmental pressures, as indicated by the N-fertilizer input (food production) and CO₂ (as C) – emissions (energy production).

This accelerated development was continued after World War II. Since that time, because of improvements in income, education and life expectancy, quality of life in nearly all regions of the world has increased. East and Southeast Asia (China and India), particularly, are experiencing such accelerated growth. But the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe also show a trend of increase, following an initial setback in the 1990s.

1.2 The ecological crisis

Many environmental problems, such as water and air pollution, have been solved on a local scale by means of new technologies; a number of larger and persistent problems, however, have remained. These problems, including climate change, resource scarcity and biodiversity loss, are linked to the major challenges of producing energy and food for a population that is growing and becoming ever wealthier.

Climate change

Meanwhile, environmental problems have globalized completely. Following the depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, due to halocarbon refrigerants and propellants escaping into the atmosphere, the climate is now changing on a global scale. These changes are likely to be caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide (CO₂), from human activity.¹ As shown in Figure 1.1, CO₂ emissions have increased exponentially since the emergence of the steam engine and the corresponding large-scale use of fossil fuels.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, global temperature has risen by 0.8 °C. The likelihood of this temperature rise being the result of increasing CO₂ emission levels is high (over 90 per cent). In order to keep the risk of extreme weather conditions, sea level rise and a reduced food supply at an acceptable level, total average temperature rise should not exceed 2 °C, globally. This maximum of 2 °C could be achieved with a reasonable degree of certainty by halving global CO₂ emissions, by 2050 (compared with 1990 levels). For the Western world, this would equal an 80 per cent reduction in today’s amount of emissions. However, as economic development is expected to continue in the intervening years, the necessary reduction probably should be much larger than 80 per cent.

Resource scarcity

In addition to the large risks related to major changes in climate, the increasing scarcity of easily extracted oil and gas is another reason for reducing the use of fossil fuels. The energy supply is not only under threat from the consequences of CO₂ emissions at the ‘back end’ of the production process, but also from those at the ‘front end’, where fossil fuel availability is the issue. Although the earth contains a supply of coal to last us another few hundred years, easily extractable oil reserves are expected to be depleted within a few decades. Oil production was thought to reach its peak around 2010, after which time it would steadily decrease. To compensate for this decline alone, by 2030, an additional 45 million barrels should be extracted per day, which equals 50 per cent of the current world consumption and four times the production in Saudi Arabia.

This expectation is supported by the fact that less and less of such oil fields are being discovered, despite increased search efforts for new fields. From the perspective of continuous and substantial increases in the use of oil, any newly discovered oil fields are rapidly regarded as relatively small. For example, a recently discovered large oil field in the Atlantic Ocean ‘only’ contains one to two times the amount of oil consumed globally, each year.

An alternative to easily extracted oil is the oil in so-called tar sands. Here, however, extraction is rather inefficient and, when practised on a large scale, would have a destructive effect on the landscape. Other options would be to produce liquid fuels, such as petroleum from coal. The main alternative for oil and gas that is currently still extracted using conventional methods is shale gas. The extraction process for shale gas involves hydraulic fracturing – extracting the natural gas that is stored within underground layers of rock by breaking the rock under physical pressure and using chemicals to release it. This method of gas extraction, however, has very negative consequences for the environment, both below ground and at the surface, where numerous wellbores must be drilled. In addition, it requires large quantities of clean water which, once used, become heavily polluted and have to be drained away again. Shale gas extraction is a new and, from the perspective of environmental stress, escalating step in the use of the earth’s natural resources.

In all cases, the price of the produced fossil fuel is expected to rise further. After the price increased in 2008 to up to USD 140 per barrel, the recent financial crisis has caused the price to come down to around USD 70. Following a future economic recovery, the price is expected to return to its previous high level and to continue to increase to up to USD 200 per barrel. Given the great energy dependence, the consequences of reduced oil production under increasing consumption levels will be far-reaching. Competition over the remaining reserves is likely to further increase the already existing number of global conflicts. In light of both climate and energy problems, work on the development of non-fossil, sustainable energy sources should be awarded the highest possible urgency.

In addition to oil and gas, other natural resources are gradually becoming scarcer as well.² Recent studies have indicated that the earth’s phosphate reserves, an essential component in artificial fertilizers, will be depleted in 50–100 years. The price of phosphate currently has risen from USD 300 to USD 400 per tonne, and is expected to rise further up to USD 800 per tonne. Fertilizer prices, in general, are also on the rise, which leads to the obvious question of whether global food production will be able to keep up with the inevitable future population growth of at least 40 per cent. As many of the marginal lands are already in use, the required increase in food production will largely have to be achieved by intensification of the production on current agricultural land, which in turn will lead to an increase in the demand for fertilizer.

Food supply

The need for fertilizer, energy and land for the production of food has increased even further by the growing consumption of meat. Between 1970 and 2000, the demand for meat products increased by 40 per cent per head of the population, while the demand for vegetable products ‘only’ increased by 10 per cent. For the coming decades, this trend is expected to continue for both rich and poorer countries. The production of animal protein (beef) requires around ten times more land than that of vegetable protein. Aside from the extensive land use by grazing cattle, the production of feed also requires a great deal of land. For example, in Brazil, the land areas used for growing soy for feed increased tenfold between 1970 and 2005. Most of that is shipped to China, where meat consumption is approaching the high levels of the United States. Meat production largely contributes to the mobilization of nutrients such as phosphate and nitrogen. These nutrients end up in animal feed (such as soy) all over the world, mostly through land fertilization. In areas of intensive livestock farming, these nutrients are released in highly concentrated doses in the form of manure. This is a problem that exists in a large number of regions. Groundwater and surface waters, thus, receive an over-supply of these nutrients, which leads to their eutrophication. This, in turn, affects the quality of local drinking water as well as the ecosystem, the latter thus losing some of its original vegetation.

If the demand for meat increases in line with population growth, all available highly productive land will be occupied as early as around 2040, including current tropical forests and grasslands, with far-reaching consequences for the remaining biodiversity. In order to limit the damage, food yields per hectare would need to be increased substantially (by around 40 per cent).

Hunger and poverty

The issues of poverty and hunger are closely related. Nearly one billion (10⁹) people are suffering from hunger, mostly in Africa and Asia, and every year over six million people die because of it. The objective of one of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, to halve the number of people suffering from hunger around the world by 2015 (compared to 1990), will not be achieved in Africa or the Middle East. Furthermore, food supplies are also threatened by climate change and the corresponding reduction in the availability of water. In addition, there is a substantial risk of large-scale biomass cultivation used for energy production, such as sugar cane for the production of ethanol, competing with the production of food and feed. An example of this could be seen in Mexico a few years ago, where the price of tortillas doubled because of the competition for corn crops grown for either food or energy production. A third threat to the production of food is the increasing price of fertilizer. Food prices in the coming period up to 2015 are expected to increase by 20–60 per cent above the relatively low price level of the year 2000. Meanwhile, around 2.5 billion people are still expected to live on less than two dollars a day – one billion of whom have even less than one dollar to spend (Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), 2007)³ According to the Millennium Development Goals of the UN, this last statistic should be halved by 2015. This objective is expected to be achieved for most regions, except for sub-Saharan Africa, where, also for 2015, around 40 per cent of the population is expected to have no more to spend per day than that single dollar. In addition to that, due to the global financial and economic crisis, projections have to be adjusted even further downward. Differences between the poor and the rich, in most regions, will continue to increase – that is to say, although the poor will in effect become slightly less poor, the rich will continue to become much richer, relatively speaking. For the poor, this means a decline in purchasing power for food, natural resources and energy, with the exception of those living in Asia, particularly in China. Prosperity levels, therefore, are very unevenly distributed over the world; 80 per cent of global prosperity (with regard to income) is enjoyed by 20 per cent of the global population – the other 80 per cent of people therefore are left to share the remaining 20 per cent of prosperity.

The free market pursued over the last years indeed has made a substantial contribution to the enormous economic growth of the past century, but not to the development of Africa and certain southern parts of Asia. Among the many different visions on the advantages and disadvantages of the free global market, the vision of Joseph Stiglitz,⁴ former senior vice-president of the World Bank, probably is closest to reality. Stiglitz states that experience, particularly in the Western world, has shown that emerging economies do better when not immediately exposed to the strong forces of the free market – not until they have reached a certain stage of development. Only then should they be planted ‘out in the open’, where the forces of nature (and the market) reign free.

1.3 Economy versus ecology

On balance, this course of events has significantly improved human development in large parts of the world.⁵ Figure 1.2 presents the so-called Human Development Index (HDI), which is indicative of levels of prosperity, human health and education. The HDI may be regarded as a measure for the process of modernization. Between 1970 and 2003, the HDI improved in almost all regions of the world; lower (darker) values have been replaced with higher (lighter) ones. Over the last 30 years, average global income per capita rose from USD 4,000 to nearly USD 7,000 in the year 2000. In certain parts of Asia, incomes even increased by a factor of two to five.

Modernization and p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• To the Reader
• 1. Western Civilization in Crisis
• 2. Human Value Orientations: Worldviews
• 3. The Laboratory of History
• 4. The West and the East
• 5. The Message of Culture and Religion
• 6. Sustainable Civilization
• 7. Agenda for a Sustainable Civilization
• 8. Sustainable Economy
• 9. Sustainable Finance
• 10. There Is an Alternative
• Notes
• Index