Is Humanity Inherently Unsustainable

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Is Humanity Inherently Unsustainable?

• William E. Rees, PhD, FRSC
• University of British Columbia
• School of Community and Regional Planning
• Building Sustainable Communities
• Kelowna, BC 20-22 November 2007

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Is societal collapse a possibility?(It wouldnt
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, The Sustainability of
  Complex Societies).

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The State of the World

• Global Environmental Outlook, the final wake-up
  call to the international community. (October
  2007) UNEP.
• The human population is now so large that the
  amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds
  what is available at current consumption
  patterns (Achim Steiner , UNEP Exec Director).
• The Age of Consequences (November 2007).
  Washington, Center for Strategic and
  International Studies
• We predict an inevitable scenario in which
  people and nations are threatened by massive food
  and water shortages, devastating natural
  disasters and deadly disease outbreaks (John
  Podesta, contributing author).
• Rich countries could go through a 30-year
  process of kicking people away from the lifeboat
  as the worlds poorest face the worst
  environmental consequences (Leon Fuerth,
  contributing author).

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Premise 1 Techno-Industrial society is
inherently unsustainable

• Unsustainability is an inevitable emergent
  property of the systemic interaction between
  techno-industrial society, as presently
  conceived, and the ecosphere. Both biological and
  cultural factors are involved
• Certain unconscious genetic presets can lead to
  unsustainable behaviour.
• These biological predispositions are currently
  being reinforced prevailing societal beliefs,
  values and assumptions (cultural memes).

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The Nature and Nurture of Depletion

• Base nature
• Unless or until constrained by negative feedback,
  all species populations tend to
• expand to fill all the ecological space
  accessible to them and
• use all available resources (in the case of
  humans, to the limits of contemporary technology)
  (W. E. Rees 2006).
• Reinforced by nurture
• The myth (meme complex) of 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).

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The Biological Driver Maximum Power and
Evolutionary Success

• the struggle for life is a struggle for free
  energy available for work (Boltzmann 1905).
• Systems that prevail (i.e., successful systems)
  are systems that evolve to maximize their use of
  the energy and material resources available to
  them(Lotka 1922).

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Estimated Human Population over the Past Two
Millennia (Cohen 1995)
2007 Population 6.6 billion
The use of fossil fuel beginning in the 19th
Century allowed the explosive growth of the human
enterprise
Continuous growthpopulation and economicis an
anomaly. The growth spurt that recent generations
take to be normal is the single most abnormal
period of human history.
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Degradation and Depletion The Measure of
Humanitys Success

• Although there is considerable variation in
  detail, there is remarkable consistency in the
  history of resource exploitation resources are
  inevitably overexploited, often to the point of
  collapse or extinction.
• (Ludwig, Hilborn and Walters 1993)

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A Fisheries ExampleCanadas Shame
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Premise 2 Virtually all economic activity
degrades and depletes nature

• From a biophysical perspective, every act of
  economic production is mainly a consumptive
  process. Utility (economic goods and services)
  is a small part of the output. The major product
  is degraded energy/matter, an increase in global
  entropy.

Nickel Tailings 32 Edward Burtynsky
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The Ultimate Driver The Second Law of
Thermodynamics

• Any spontaneous change in an isolated system
  reduces its potential and increases its entropy
  (randomness, disorder) the system moves closer
  to equilibrium, a state of zero potential in
  which nothing further can happen.
• The same basic forces of entropic decay apply
  also to open systems including ecosystems and the
  economy.
• Degradation/dissipation (increasing entropy) may
  be the primary process in the universe.

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Status of the Second Law

• Thermodynamicsholds the supreme position
  among the laws of nature If your theory is found
  to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I
  can give you no hope there is nothing for it but
  to collapse in deepest humiliation (Sir Arthur
  Eddington).
• Thermodynamics is the only theory of a general
  nature of which I am convinced that it will never
  be overthrown (Albert Einstein).

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Far-from-Equilibrium Thermodynamics

• Living, self-producing systems develop and grow
  by consuming, degrading and dissipating
  gradients of available energy/matter (exergy).
  That is
• Living systems maintain themselves in a
  far-from-equilibrium state by extracting
  resources from their host ecosystems and by
  dumping their wastes (entropy) back into their
  hosts. They are dissipative structures.

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Economic Activity Transforms Nature

• Think of natural forests, grasslands, marine
  estuaries, and coral reefs and of arable soils,
  aquifers, mineral deposits, petroleum, and coal.
  These are all either highly-structured
  self-producing ecosystems or rich accumulations
  of energy/matter with high use potential (low
  entropy).
• Now contemplate forest clear-cuts, eroding
  farmlands, depleted fisheries, marine dead
  zones, anthropogenic greenhouse gases, acid
  rain, poisonous mine tailings and toxic synthetic
  compounds. These all represent diminished
  ecosystems or degraded forms of energy and matter
  with little use potential (high entropy).
• The main thing connecting these two states of
  nature is (excess) human economic activity.

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Compare Natural and Human Ecosystems Degrading
the Planet

• Human-less ecosystems
• Develop by degrading and dissipating solar exergy
  (increases entropy of the universe)
• Anabolism exceeds catabolism
• Production dominates
• Characterized by accumulation

• Human-dominated ecosystems
• Grow by degrading and dissipating resource
  gradients including the supportive ecosystems
  (increases entropy of ecosphere)
• Catabolism exceedsanabolism
• Consumption dominates
• Characterized by depletion of host ecosystems
  themselves

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Dissipated Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide
Accumulating in the Atmosphere
2004
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Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide A 30 Anthropogenic
Increase in a Century
Levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and
methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at
any time in the past 650,000 years.
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N. Hemisphere Temp. Reconstruction
(blue)Instrumental Measurements (red)
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Recent Observations

• The Arctics floating sea ice is headed toward
  summer disintegration as early as 2013, a century
  ahead of the International Panel on Climate
  Change (IPCC) projections.
• The rapid loss of Arctic sea ice will speed up
  the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet and
  a rise in sea levels by even as much as 5 metres
  by the turn of this century is possible.
• The Antarctic ice shelf also reacts far more
  sensitively to warming temperatures than
  previously believed.

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Unprecedented Losses ofSea Ice In 2007
Such massive ecological changes in the
circumpolar Arctic threaten wildlifewe may see
the extirpation of polar bears from much of the
Northand herald the permanent loss of the Inuit
way of life. Diabetes and related health risks
are clearly associated with replacement of
country food with store-bought junk food in
Northerners diets.
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IPCC Projections Way Off! (but in the wrong
direction)
Meltdown A hundred years ahead of schedule?
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Climate Change Summary(IPCC 2006 Consensus plus
data from Oct and Nov 2007)

• Atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane and other
  greenhouse gases are at the highest levels in at
  least 650,000 years. Mean global temperature is
  within one C of the highest in one million
  years.
• Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are now growing
  more rapidly than business-as-usual, the most
  pessimistic of the IPCC scenarios. (Increases are
  35 higher than expected since 2000.)
• It is now very unlikely ( 10) that the world
  can avoid a potentially catastrophic mean global
  temperature increase of 2 C. The increase may
  be as high as 4.5C.
• This could be enhanced by a further 1.5C as a
  result of unaccounted positive feedbacks.
• Some warming has been offset by cooling from
  other anthropogenic factors (suspended aerosols).
  (Without this effect, mean global temperatures
  would be even higher.)

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Climate Change Where Were Headed

• 2015 is the last year in which the world can
  afford a net rise in greenhouse gas emissions,
  after which very sharp reductions are required
  (IPCC Chairman, Sept 2007).
• Sea level rise threatens areas inhabited by 5 of
  the worlds population (400,000,000 people)
  including London, Shanghai, New York, Tokyo, Hong
  Kong, Cairo (Stern report, 2006).
• Up to two billion people worldwide will face
  water shortages and up to 30 per cent of plant
  and animal species would be put at risk of
  extinction if the average rise in temperature
  stabilises at 1.5C to 2.5C (IPCC, Sept 2007).

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Status Global Society us in overshoot, reducing
future carrying capacity
Overshoot represents an ecological deficit, the
difference between human demand and biophysical
capacity
One Planet Living
When a population grows beyond carrying capacity,
it degrades its supportive ecosystems and
undermines its future. Think climate change,
ozone depletion, sea level rise, deforestation,
fish stock collapses, desertification, etc.
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Change that Doesnt Change Anything

• Regrettably, most approaches to sustainability
  todayhybrid cars, green buildings, smart growth,
  the new urbanism, green consumerism,
  recyclingcontinue to assume that sustainability
  resides in technology, particularly greater
  material and economic efficiency.
• Problem when Earth is in overshoot and absolute
  reductions are required, growing more efficiently
  merely makes society more efficiently
  unsustainable.

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This is a ship overloaded with inefficiently
produced goods
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This is a ship overloaded with efficiently
produced goods
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Human Nature of Socio-Behavioural Change (or Not)

• During most of our evolution, human groups
  experienced no significant short-term
  macro-environmental changes.
• Individuals and societies that developed a
  sustainable way of life would be rewarded by
  maintaining it. Significant departures from
  established practices would risk failure. In
  short
• For most of human evolutionary history,
  behavioural conservatism has had a selective
  advantage.

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The Neuro-Cognitive MechanismA fundamental
finding of cognitive science is that

• During individual development, cultural and
  sensory experiences shape the human brains
  synaptic circuitry in the image of those
  experiences.
• Subsequently people seek out compatible
  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). In other words
• People think in terms of frames and metaphors,
  conceptual structures. The frames are the
  synapses in our brains, physically present in the
  form of neural circuitry. And when the facts
  dont fit the frames, the frames are kept and the
  facts ignored (George Lakoff, 2004).

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Problem The policy process lags behind global
change

• Today, both the biophysical and cultural
  environments are changing rapidly. But
• Society and the policy process are stuck in
  virtually impenetrable cognitive shells of habit,
  shared illusion and denial.
• Humanitys innate behavioural conservatism has
  become maladaptive.

Policy Process 21 William E. Rees
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Established cognitive frames enable us to deny
reality

• We have all by our actions or lack of themin
  particular over the last quarter-centuryagreed
  to deny reality.
• If we are unable to identify reality and
  therefore unable to act, then we are not simply
  childish but have reduced ourselves to figures of
  funridiculous figures of our unconscious (J.
  Ralston Saul 1995).
• To achieve sustainability requires that we act on
  reality. This in turn demands that the global
  community organize deliberately and consciously
  to over-ride both humanitys innate expansionist
  tendencies and our culturally-ingrained
  behavioural inertia.

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The Other Inconvenient Truth?

• 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 planets ecological means.
  (BCSD 1993 Getting Eco-Efficient)
• For sustainability with equity Canadians should
  be taking steps to reduce our ecological
  footprints by at least 80 to our equitable
  Earth-share (1.8 gha) (Rees 2006).

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• The Bad News

• The Good News

• We have the technology today to enable a 75-80
  reduction in energy and (some) material
  consumption while actually improving quality of
  life.

• 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 myth. Society remains in
  eco-paralysis.

The ecologically necessary is politically
infeasible but the politically feasible is
ecologically irrelevant.
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A Lesson from Collapse How Societies Choose to
Fail or Succeed (J. Diamond 2005)

• Any society contains a built-in blueprint for
  failure if elites insulate themselves from the
  ecological and social consequences of
  irresponsible decisions. This is the pattern
  among governing elites throughout history.
• The US Canada? is now a country in which elites
  increasingly cocoon themselves in gated
  communities guarded by private security patrols
  and filled with people who drink bottled water,
  depend on private pensions, and send their
  children to private schools (Moyers 2006).