THE LIMITS TO GROWTH ANALYSIS

Summary.

Our society's most fundamental mistake is our commitment to affluent-industrial-consumer lifestyles and to an economy that must have constant and limitless growth in output, on a planet whose limited resources make these impossible goals.

Our way of life is grossly unsustainable. Our levels of production and consumption are far too high. We can only achieve them because we few in rich countries are grabbing most of the resources produced and therefore depriving most of the world's people of a fair share. Because we consume so much we are rapidly using up resources and causing huge ecological damage. It would be impossible for all the world's people to rise to our per capita levels of consumption.

Although present lelvels of production, consumption, resource use and environmental impact are unsustainable we are obsessed with economic growth, i.e., with increasing production and consumption, as much as possible and without limit!

If this limits to growth analysis is valid we must work for eventual transition to ways of life and to an economy that will enable all to have a high quality of life on far lower levels of resource consumption. Such ways are available, and attractive, and easily developed if enough of us want to adopt them. (See The Sustainable Alternative Society.)

Following are some of the main facts and arguments that support limits to growth position.

To this we must now add the absurdly impossible implicaltions of our commitment to economic growth and increasing "living standards." If we in rich countries have 3% p. a. economic growth, by 2070 our "living standards" will be 8 times as high as they are now. If all the people likely to live on earth then were to have risen to the living standards we would have in 2070, total world economic output would be 60 times as great as it is today!!

The present levels of production and consumption are quite unsustainable yet we are blindly obsessed with increasing them towards multiples that are absurdly impossible. There is therefore an extremely powerful case for the limits to growth position. We cannot endorse a society that is about affluent lifestyles that are quite unsustainable and can never be shared by all people, or a society that is about economic growth.

Figure 1 shows that the rich countries with about one-fifth of the world's population are consuming around four-fifths of the world's resource production. The rich world average per capita consumption is about 17 times that of the poorest half of the world's people.

Figure 2 shows that all the energy indicated in Table 1 would not last long if we tried to rise to the level of energyproduction required to supply 10 billion people with current rich world per capita use.

Third World people are often criticised for having such large families when they are too poor to provide for them. However, the economic conditions of poverty make it important for poor people to have large families. When there are no age pensions people will have no one to look after them in their old age if they do not have surviving childlren. Infant death rates are high so it is necessary to have many children in order to be sure some reach adulthood. These are powerful economic incentives to have large families and they will only be removed by satisfactory development which enables pensions and safe water supplies in villages etc.

Many believe the world is presently far beyond a sustainable population. A sustsainable population with a reasonable living standard might be only .5 - 2 billion people. Indices of the biological productivity of the planet seem to be falling. We now feed only 1 billion people well, but might soon have to provide for 8+ billion.

Overpopulation is therefore a very serious problem, but there is a much more serious problem; overconsumption on the part of the rich countries. The world's problems are due much more to overconsumption than to overpopulation.

This equation shows that affluence is the biggest concern. The Australian energy use per capita is 120 times the average in Bangladesh. We should be more worried about people trying to rise to the "living standrds" rich countries have than about population increase, even though the population problem is very serious.

The IPAT qequation supports the claim that the richest countries are also grossly overpopulated, including Australia. We can support our 19 million only by damaging our ecosystems to produce the agricultural exports that pay for importation of all the goods we consume. Our agricultural exports, e.g., wool and beef, damage fragile arid lands. Our biggest export commodity is coal which is a major source of greenhouse gas. If we lived without doing these things we could support far fewer people at our present "living standard".

The basic concern in the limits analysis is how long would crucial resources last, especially if all people aspire to rich world "living standards"?

Economists often give the misleading impression that resource availability depends mainly on the price we are prepared to pay. Their assumptiuon is that if a resource becomes more scarce its price will rise and it will then be economic to process poorer grade deposits. There is a tendency for this to happen, but the important limits are set by geochemistry, i.e. by the quantities and grades of ore and fuels in the earth.

There are a few geochemically abundant minerals (iron, aluminium, titanium, magnesium and silicon). However it is quite unlikely that all the world's people could consume the per capita quantities of these items that people in rich countries do, due mainly to the energy costs of producing them. To produce the annual American per capita steel consumption already takes as much energy as is used by the poorest half of the world's people for all their purposes.

It is sometimes argued that resources can't be becoming scarce because their prices have fallen throughout the Twentieth century. Firstly there is reason to believe that this trend has now begun to reverse. (Hall and Hall, 1984.) More importantly, price trends are poor indicators of real scarcity. For example the price trend of tropical timber tells us nothing about the fact that it is being rapidly depleted and will be largely unattainable in a few decades. The price of oil has fallen markedly since the early 1970s but it is likely that oil will be available in only very small quantities in a few decades.(See Petroleum below.) The important factors determining scarcity are the quantities and grades of resources that remain in the ground. These are difficult to assess but estimates exist. ( See below, Table 2.)

The term "reserves" refers to quantities of minerals that have been discovered. New discoveries are adding to reserves all the time and in the future technical advance could make it economic to mine deposits that are so poor that at present they are not included in the reserve figures. In many cases reserve figures have actually increased over time even though use rates have increased. Hence reserve figures are not very useful in the discussion of long term scarcity. Much more important are estimates of the quantities of orSe in mineral deposits, or of "potentially recoverable resources". This term refers to the quantities of recoverable minerals geologists estimate exist in the ground in potentially recoverable forms, including all future discoveries that are likely to be made.

Estimates of these quantities have become available since the early 1970's. (Erickson, 1980.) These can not be taken as very precise but they do provide a useful reference point for thinking about how sustainable our resource-expensive way of life might be.

Only a very small proportion of any mineral existing in the earth's crust has been concentrated into ore deposits, between .001% and .01%, and the rest exists in common rock, mostly in silicates. (Skinner, 1987.) To extract a metal from its richest occurrence in common rock would take 10 to 100 times as much energy as to extract if from the poorest ore deposit. To extract a unit of copper from the richest common rocks would require about 1000 times as much energy per kg as is required to process ores used today. In other words we will run into such a huge energy cost barrier that it is most unlikely that we will ever process very poor ores or common rock for minerals (especially as energy is probably the most urgent resource problem we face.)

We should therefore regard as potentially recoverable only those quantities that have been formed into ore deposits. Table 2 sets out estimates fromn Erickson which geologists have made of these quantities for a number of items stating the amount within the top 4.6 km depth of the earth's crust. (Ore deposits tend to be within a few kilometres of the surface, because many have have been formed by weathering, sedimentation etc.)

There are a number of reasons why we are not likely to retrieve more than a very small proportion of the material that exists in all ore deposits. These are
-- a) we are not likely to find a high proportion of ore deposits (almost half of them are under the oceans),
-- b) some of those we find will be in locations which make mining difficult or impossible, such as under cities or under Antarctic ice,
-- c) many of the deposits found will have ores of too low a grade to process economically (most deposits are of low grade ore).
-- d) some deposits found and containing high grade ore will have too little material in them to justify the construction of a mine at that site (most deposits are small).

If plausible probabilities for these factors are assumed the proportion of ore material we are likely to retrieve could be only 2%. However Table 2 assumes we will retrieve 10%.

Table 2.

Many trends in our society are increasing at exponential growth rates, i.e., like compound interest. Figure 3 represents curves for 0%, 1%, 3%, 5% and 7% p.a. exponential growth.

The formula for working out the period in which the annual level of the item in question will double, given a certain growth rate is

Even quite low rates of growth can lead fairly quickly to huge levels of output, use or pollution etc. and huge annual increases. If an economy grows at 5% p.a. for 14 years total output p.a. would then be twice as great as the start, and after 28 years 4 times as great, and after 42 years 8 times as great... and after 70 years 32 times as great. Such rates of economic growth must quickly lead to catastrophic breakdown in our global resource, ecological or social systems. Yet our economy must have at least 3% growth in output to be "healthy".

If a resource is being used at an exponentially increasing rate its lifetime will be drastically reduced compared with how long it would last if used at a constant rate. For example if used at the present annual rate world aluminium resources would last 273,000 years. But if their use increases at 1% p.a. these resources will only last 500 years. At a 5% p.a. rate of increase in use they will only last 110 years. Estimated world coal resources will probably last 200 years at present use rates, but if coal were to be the main energy source for all people attempting to live as Australians live now, remaining resources would be exhausted in about 20 years.

As Table1 indicates, if 10 billion people used minerals at present rich world per capita rates, potentially recoverable resoures of 1/3 of the basic 36 items would have been completely exhausted in about 35 years.

Figure 1(earlier) shows the very unequal distribution of world energy consumption. Table 1summarised common estimates for potentially recoverable energy resources. (Coal is the main uncertainty; there could be 15 trillion tonnes in the ground but most will be too difficult to extract, being in thin and broken seams. The figure used in Table 1is twice the quantity thatsome geologists think is recoverable.) If all these are added together and we ask how long would they last if 8+ billion people each used energy at the present rich world per capita rate, the answer is only 45 years.

Clearly, even if we doubled or trelbled the assumed potentially recoverable energy resources it would not be posible to keep up rich world "living standards" for all people for more than a few decades.

The most urgent limits problems are set by petroleum. Our society is highly dependent on liquid fuels. There have been at least 61 estimates of recoveable petroleum resources and there is considerable agreement on a figure under 2000 billion barrels. (Campbell 1997 argues for a figure under 1800 billion barrels.) Since 1995 a number of petroleum geologists have contributed to the following set of alarming claims about world petroleum supply. (Campbell, 1997, Ivanhoe, 1995, Duncan and Youngquist, Laherrere 1995,, Fleay, 1995.)

If these things happen the world is in for enormous problems within the next three decades. The rapid end of the age of oil is likely to trigger dramatic social change and turmoil, possibly enabling the transition to The Simpler Way, but more likely resulting in breakdown and chaos. (See www.dieoff.org)

Until recently people have divided reserves by current use and concluded that oil will last at least 40 years, giving plenty of time to develop alternatives. However this is misleading, mainly because oil use is increasing at 2% p.a., and secondly because the supply will not increase until there is none left. As extracting it becomes more difficult supply will peak and start to decline long before resources are exhausted .

The US Geological Survey has recently put forward a much higher estimate of 3000 billion barrels. (USGS, 2000.) However this is not a prediction about the amount that will be recovered, it is an estimate of the amount of resources that could be discovered by 2030. Even if this amount is found it would only delay the peak by 10 years. Ctitics of the USGS say that discovery plus reserve growth are running well below the level needed to achieve the USGS figure.

The type of reactor in use today, "burns" uranium and would use up all resources in a few years if there were many more reactors. A nuclear era would therefore have to be based on breeder reactors or fusion reactors.

Fusion is the nuclear reaction that takes place in the sun and in an H bomb. Light elements are fused together, whereas in the reactors currently in use heavy metals are split apart. Fusion reactors would be much safer and would generate much less radioactive waste than the present reactors.

The most likely of the two possible reactions requires lithium which is so scarce that fusion would yield only about as much energy as remains in fossil fuels. The more difficult and unlikely of the two processes possible would have an inexhaustible fuel supply in the form of seawater.

It is far from clear whether fusion reactors can ever be made to work economically. Even if they are, fusion power is very likely to be extremely expensive because the machines will be complicated and will involve large quantities of costly materials. At best they are not likely to be available in significant numbers for many decades.

The breeder is a reactor fuelled by plutonium (or thorium) but which also converts some of the material placed around its core into plutonium. This can then be used to fuel other reactors. The breeder can derive about 70 times as much energy from a given quantity of uranium as can the reactors in use now. Only a few experimental breeders are in operation around the world. They might derive as much energy from the available uranium resources as would be contained in 7000 billion tonnes of coal (i.e., around 7 times the probably recoverable amount of coal).

There are a number of reasons for much greater concern about the safety of breeder reactors than about the reactor type in use today, and for doubting whether they could make a significant contribution even if they were sufficiently safe. The core of the breeder contains about 4 tonnes of plutonium, about 400 times the amount in the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Plutonium is possibly the most poisonous substance known. If evenly distributed,10 kg would be sufficient to kill all people on earth. The Plutonium in a breeder could explode like an atomic bomb. The reactor is cooled by tonnes of liquid sodium, which explodes on contact with air or water. Breeders are more difficult and expensive than ordinary reactors. It is most unlikely that all the world's people could afford electricity from breeders. If there were 200,000 breeders, about 1 million tonnes of Plutonium would have to be frequently moved between reactors and reprocessing plants.

Plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons so an extensive breeder program would bring the constant fear that terrorists will be a ble to get access to it.

It is obvious therefore why many people say that we should not develop the breeder reactor.

Coal fired elelcltricity generation also releases radioacivity (e.g., in coal mining and in ash); in fact it has been estimated that normal (accident free) nuclear generation releases less radiation than coal fired generation. The main problem however is that accidents in operation and in waste storage can have catastrophic consequences from the nuclear option. Substances released can remain radiocactive for a very long time; in diminishing degree but small effects summed over very long periods could reach large totals.)

The question therefore is, what are likely to be the total health costs over the next, say one million years, from generating each unit of energy in nuclear plants, given the accidents, routine releases, terrorists, etc that will happen over that period? We have little idea what the answer could be, and it is probable that no sound estimate can be made. It seems reasonable to conclude that nuclear energy should not be developed if we can't answer this question even very approximately.

Note that all the benefits of nuclear energy would go to people who use the energy, while the potentially huge cost of living with radioactivity or the risk of release of radioactivity will fall on many future generations. This would seem to be clearly a morally unacceptable situation.

The most serious drawback with nuclear energy could be what to do with the long-lasting radioactive wastes. There is no agreement among scientists as to whether satisfactory procedures can be developed for storing wastes for hundreds of thousands of years. How confident can we be that a site that seems stable and free of water now will remain so for the next 1 million years, especially in view of the possibility of earthquakes and the changes to hydrology that the greenhouse effect might bring? If one site failed it could contaminate the whole planet for thousands of years. Will technically sophisticated people be around to deal with the problem?

Geologists can often identify sites that have had no geological activity for a very long time and are free of water. But that is no guarantee that there will not be activity or water movement at a particular site within the next million years.

A large scale nuclear era would quickly use up the best waste storage sites. Countries with good sites left would not be keen to take wastes from other countries. Poor countries with less than ideal sites will be tempted to offer to store wastes from rich countries as a way of earning income.

Old reactors are an important form of waste. Each reactor will function for only about 30 years, perhaps 25. If 250,000 were in operation, 8,300 would have to be sealed up or dismantled and buried every year, almost one every hour..

Nuclear energy only produces ellctricity (and waste heat) which makes up only about 20% of our energy use in a rich country. Therefore it could not save industrial society, e.g., it cannot run cars, tractors and aircraft. (Re the hydrogen solution, see below on renewable energy.)

We must eventually move from fossil fuels to the use of renewable energy, but it is not likely that we can all live in our present energy affluent ways on those energy sources. It is most likely that the cost would be far too high and/or the deliverable quantity would be too low. There are large energy losses in converting renewable energy into electricity and then into a storable form, such as hydrogen, in transporting the energy where it is needed, and then converting it back to electricity. The biggest problems are to do with producing liquid fuel. (For a 45 p discussion see Renewable Energy; What are the Limits?

The following passages indicate the magnitude of the problem for solar electricity.

Difficulties and costs in solar electricity.

Let us assume

Sydney is to be supplied in winter by electricity from photovolltaic cells located in the inland of Australia.
Solar energy collected in winter 4.25 Watts per square metre per day.
Solar energy converted to electricity at 13% efficiency (typical figure for cells in the field today.)
Electricity converted to hydrogen for storage of the energy, at 70% efficiency.
Assume 15% of stored energy lost in transmission of the energy from inland to Sydney.
Conversion of hydrogen delivered to Sydney back to electricity, via fuel cells that are 40% efficient

Overall energy efficiency of the system is .13x.7x.85x.4 = .029 i.e., about 3 %

Therefore one square metre of collector would deliver .03x4.252.kWh per day in winter, i.e., .127 kilowatt-hours.
Therefore a plant capable of delivering the electricity that a large coal or nuclear electricity generating plant delivers, i.e., 1000mW, (i.e.,1000x 1 million x24 watt-hours per day) would have to have an area of 190 million square metres.
(Note that electricity delivered when the sun is shining might not have to be transformed into hydrogen but might be delivered via high voltage lines. There would be losses but less than via hydrogen.)

Dollar costs.

Present cost of photovoltaic panels is ,approximately $5 per watt (wholesale). The other costs, e.g., including supports, wiring, installation ("balance of system" costs) are about $5 per watt. A panel delivers about 70 watts and is about .5 square metre. Thus present plant cost is approximately 140Wx$10 = $1400 per square metre.
Thus cost of 190 million square metres of PV collection area = $226 billion.
However the cost of a 1000MW coal or nuclear power station plus fuel for 20 years would be about $2.8 billion.

Thus the solar plant would cost about 100 times as much as a coal fired plant.

What difference might technical advance make?

Assume cell efficiency rises to 20%, and fuel cell efficiency rises to 60%, then overall system efficiency rises from 3% to 7%, i.e., multiplies by 2.1. Thus total cost of plant would fall to $115 billion.

Additional factors that would raise the above costs greatly.

- Operations and maintenance costs.
- Hydrogen generation plant, pumping stations, and especially storage capacity for very large volume.
- Plant capacity factor; down-time for repairs etc.
- The cost of the plant to convert the stored hydrogen to electricity, probably comparable to the cost of a coal-fired 1000MW plant.
- The energy cost of constructing the very large collection area, possibly equal to one-quarter of the energy the plant would produce in its lifetime (when balance of system cost is added to module cost), meaning that to deliver 1000MW for 20 years net, plant capable of generating 1,330 MW must be built.
- These plants would not be built until other sources of energy were not available. Thus the cost of the energy to build them would be the cost of the energy these plants would supply, i.e., far more expensive than energy today. The above estimates are based on the (false) assumption that the large amount of energy needed to build the plant would only cost as much as energy costs today.

These additional cost factors would probably multiply the above total cost figure many times.

Wind energy is especially promising in some locations but has problems similar to solar, especially the fact that even in the most favourable locations at some point in time all mills will be idle. This probab ly limits this source to providing only about one-quarter of the electricity needed, even in high wind areas. (Grubb and Meyer, 1993.)

The second crucial energy form for industrial society is liquid fuel. There is too little available plant material to provide liquid fuel for the world's present car fleet. If 8-9 billion people were to have cars at the American per capita rate, perhaps 8times as much fuel would be needed.

From the foregoing discussion it would seem to be very unlikely that renewable energy sources could sustain the sort of industrial-consumer society we have in rich countries at present, especially in view of the difficulties concerning electricity and liquid fuels.

Remember that if all the people expected to live on earth late next century were to live as we in rich countries do now at least 8 times as much energy as is presently produced every year would be needed. If all were to have the living standards we would have given economic growth, the multiple would be much higher still. (See below.)

Note that this is not an argument against renewable energy sources. We must live on them solely before long so it is important to make them as effective as possible. The argument has been that their development cannot support affluenc and growth.

An extremely important factor that has been largely overlooked is the amount of energy it will take to produce a unit of energy. For a new oilfield the figure is quite low, but as the field ages more energy has to be used to pump the remaining oil out. In addition increasing amounts of energy must be used in exploring for scarcer deposits.

Note that the situation cannot be altered by increasing the amount of money we are prepared to pay for oil. Even if we were willing to pay $1000 per barrel we could not get more oil, because we would have to use one barrel to produce one barrel. Thus the conventional economics of supply, demand and market forces are at best irrelevant here and at worst misleading. The real scarcity situation is a matter of resources in the ground and the energy cost of getting them out, not dollars and demand.

Taking energy costs into account makes a significant difference to many issues. For instance the economics of nuclear or solar energy become more problematic when we deduct from a plant's lifetime generating capacity all the energy that had to go into constructing it, operating it, dismantling it and dealing with nuclear wastes etc.

Many economists, green groups and governments proceed as if we do not have to face up to radical change in lifestyles or the economy because there is considerable scope for energy conservation and recycling, enabling us to provide the same benefits while using fewer energy and other resources.

At first sight this view can seem plausible. Because we have had access to large quantities of cheap energy we have adopted extremely energy extravagant habits. Considerable progress is now being made in the development of ways of doing things using much less energy than before. However if output is to continue to increase without limit, any plausible reductions in resource demand or environment impact are very likely to be quickly overwhelmed

Water: There are aqlready serious water shortages in about 80 countries. Access to water will probably be the major source of conflict in the world in coming years. About 480 million people are fed by food produced from water pumped from undergrouund. The water tables are falling fast and the petrol to run the pumps might not be available soon. In Åustralia overuse of water has led to serious problems, e.g., salinity in the Murray.

Food/land. If all people will soon have on earth had an American diet, which takes about .5 ha of cropland alone, we would need 4.5b ha, but there are only 1.4 b ha in use, and that figure is likely to decline

Timber: If all 8-9 b were to use timber at the US rate we would need 4 times the worlds forest area.

Fish: Nearly all fisheries are obeing overfished and the oceans are being polluted. World fish catch islikely to go down from here on.

Environmental renewal: Possibly most important of all are the biological limits to growth. We could not achieve our present levels of production and consumption without causing unsustainable damage to many of the basic ecosystems of the planet. Massive damage is being done to forests, the atmosphere, soils, oceans, grasslands, coral reefs, and biodiversity, essentially because we are taking so many resources from nature and dumping so many wastes back all the time. These ecosystems maintain the conditions, such as a stable temperature, that are crucial for all life on earth. It will not be possible to eliminate these impacts by attempting to produce as much as we do now but in "more sustainable ways"; the magnitudes are far too great. The sheer volume of production and consumption must be drastically reduced. (For the detail see T. Trainer, Saving the Environment; What It Will Take, Sydney, University of N.S.W. Press, 1998, and on this website The Environment Problem; The Limits to Growth Perspective.) .

Some people assume that the economy can continue to grow in the service and information sectors, without increasing use of materials and energy. However services already make up about 75% of our economic activity. Services are quite resource intensive; Common (1995) estimates that they account for 27% of Australia's energy use. Several, such as transport, tourism and construction, involve high energy use. Several others sush as retailing, insurance and advertising, deal with material goods. All require lighting, offices, electricity etc. It is not plausible that the overall volume of economic activity could multiply many times involving mostly services, without large increases in energy use. In addition there are many resource intensive activities that will not be reduced by increase in the service sector, including defence and the large household sector of the economy.

Certainly materials and energy use per unit of GDP in rich countries is falling, but this is misleading. It seems to be due to a) shift to higher quality fuels such as electicity and gas (more value can be derived from a unit of energy in the form of oil than in the form of coal, because coal use involves higher costs for transport etc.), b) manufactured goods increasingly coming from the Third World, as distinct from being produced in rich countries and having their energy costs recorded there. Trade figures seem to show that this is what is happening. Aadrianse (1997) concludes that materials used per capita in rich countries is still increasing.

A good measure of materials consumption is the volume of garbage we throw out, and in rich countries this is increasing fast. The claim that dematerialisation is occurring therefore seems to be invalid. It is likely that considerable dematerialisation is possible, but the scope for it and the limits to what it might achieve are not at all clear at present. In any case no realistic dematerialisation would enable a sufficient reduction to permite the economy to grow continually at say 3% pa while our use of materials and energy falls. (For a detailed discussion see The Dematerialisation Myth)

Most people are "technical fix optimists" assumings that technical advance will make it unnecessary for us to change to simpler lifestyles and very different systems and a zero-growth economy. The belief is that better technology will enable higher "living standards" to be continued with reduced resource use and environmental impact, especially as a result of better recycling, improved energy efficiency, stronger lelgislation on pollution and waste, and more public education.

Some people (notably Weisacker and Lovins, 1997, Factor Four, and Hawken and Lovins, 2000, Natural Capital,) argue that we could produce things in general with only 1/4 or perhaps 1/10 of the resources and energy now needed. Such claims are open to serious criticism, but even if correct they would represent far less reduction than would be necessary to enable all people to have present rich world living standards, as is made clear in the following section.

If we have a 3% p.a. increase in output, by 2060 we will be producing 8 times as much every year. (For 4% growth the multiple is 16.)

If by 2070 all the world's people had risen to the living standards we would have then,
the total world economic output would be more than 60 times what it is today!
Yet the present level is unsustainable. (For a 4% p.a. growth rate the multiple is 120.

In the 1980s Australia had a 3.2% p.a. growth rate, which was not sufficient to prevent virtually all our problems becoming worse; most economists and politicians would want a 4% growth rate. In the late 1990s Australia's growth rate was almost 5% p.a., yet unemployment remained well above 7%.

In other words it is absurdly impossible for all to rise to the living standards we aspire to.

"Those who believe exponential growth is possible in a finite world are either mad or economists."

Professor Max-Neef, quoted in Sydney Morning Herald, Jan.31, 1994, p. 5.

The basic conclusions the limits to growth perspective leads to regarding resources are as follows.

The basic reason why we have an environment problem is simply because there is far too much producing and consuming going on. (For the detailed argument see Trainer, 1998, or on this seb site, The Environment Problem.)

Our way of life involves consumption of huge amounts of materials. More than 20 tonnes of new materials are used by each American every year. To provide these materials between 50 and 80 tonnes of materials have to be processed. To produce one tonne of materials can involve moving or using up 15 tonnes of water, earth or air. (This is the "Rucksack" concept. For gold the multiple is 350,000 to 1!). All this must be taken from nature and most of it is immediately dumped back as waste and pollution.

Most people have no idea of how far beyond sustainable levels we are, and how big the reductions will have to be. Most "greenies" fail to recognise that the environment can't be saved without fundamental and massive social change, to a very different and zero-growth eonomy and to cooperatve and frugal lifestyles.

The Worldwatch Institute's annual figures (Brown, 1998, etc.) seem to show that we are reaching plateaus in many indices of biological and agricultural productivity, including world grain production, cropland area, irrigated land, experimental farm yields, and fertiliser use. World fish catch seems to be going down. A decade ago they said that "The biological productivity of the planet is declining now." (Brown, 1990, p. 7.) Yet we are feeding only 1 billion people well, and will probably soon have to feed 8-9 billion.

One of the most serious environmental problems is the extinction of plants and animal species. This is due to the destruction of habitats. Now remember the footprint concept mentioned above; if all people living on earth today were to have rich world "living standards" humans would have to use more than three times all the productive land on the planet. Our resource intensive lifestyles, which require so much land, are the basic cause of the loss of habitats and the extinction of species. Yet all people are trying to rise to rich world levels of consumption, and we are trying to increase ours.

Recent "footprint analysis" shows that it takes more than 7 ha of productive land to provide one person in an Australian city with their energy, food, water and settlement area. If 8-9 billion people were to live like this we would need about 10 times all the productive land on the planet.

Most current discussions of the environment problem, especially references to "ecologically sustainable development", completely fail to recognise that it is absurd to talk about solving the environment problem while we continue to produce and consume at present rates, let alone continue to be committed to constant and limitless growth in output. It is most implausible that technical advance will enable us to solve tghe environmental problem while we continue to pursue affluence and growth.We can only hope to solve the environment problem when we begin living in ways that involve only a fraction of our present per capita production and consumption.

The facts and estimates given above regarding potentially recoverable resources make it clear that the Third World can never develop to be like the rich countries; there are far too few resources for that.

If the expected 9 billion people were all to have Australia's present per capita resource consumption world resource production would have to be 8 to 10 times as great as it is today. All the probably-recoverable fossil fuels would only last about 18 years at that rate.

Again this means that the very few who live in rich countries can have their high "living standards" only because the global economy is so very unjust; i.e. because we are getting far more than our fair share of the available resources.

Conventional Third World development is increasingly being recognised as having failed to solve the most urgent problems of most of the world's people. In fact a 1996 UN report states that one-third of the world's people are getting poorer. This is due to the normal and inevitable way a market or capitalist economy works. (For the detailed explanation see Trainer 1995, or on this web site Third World Development.)

The normal functioning of the market economy enables the rich to take most of the world's wealth and to establish highly inappropriate development in the Third World; i.e., development of only those industries that gear Third World productive capacity to the demand of the rich. Conventional development can be regarded asa form of plunder. (Chussudowsky, 1997, Goldsmith, 1997, Trainer, 1989.)

Again we cannot have a sustainable and just world order unless we in rich countries move to ways of life in which we live without consuming anywhere near as much as we do now. As Gandhi said long ago, "The rich must live more simply so that the poor may simply live."

If all nations go on trying to increase their wealth, production, consumption and "living standards" without limit in a world of limited resources, then we must expect increasing conflict. Our affluent lifestyles require us to be heavily armed and aggressive, in order to guard the empires from which we draw far more than our fair share of world resources. We cannot expect to achieve a peaceful world until we achieve a just world, and we cannot do that until rich countries change to much less extravagant living standards.

There is now considerable evidence from research on "Genuine Progress Indicators" that even in rich countries the quality of life experienced is falling. One estimate indicates a 40% fall in the US since 1970. (Daly and Cobb, 1989.) Reported measures of life satisfaction in the US have not increased since 1957, despite a doubling in "living standards". Above the poverty line increasing incomes and wealth does not increase happiness or the experienced quality of life. (Eckersley, 1997.) Thus making growth our top social goal is obviously not improving real living standards for most people.

In addition, just about all our social problems are getting worse and it is difficult to point to any indicator which does not suggest accelerating social breakdown. Consider drug abuse, homelessness, inequality, domestic violence, family breakdown, stress, depression, anxiety and suicide.

There is no possibility of solving these limits to growth problem in an economy that is driven by market forces, profit motivation and growth. The supreme goal in this economy is to produce and sell as much as possible, and to increase the volume every year, without end. If growth in output slows to 3% p.a.there are problems.

In this economy those who own capital are always trying to make more money by increasing investments and sales. Workers have a strong interest in seeing the number of jobs increase all the time. The market system gives those with capital the freedom to invest in and produce and sell what will maximise their profits and therefore prevents society from deciding collectively and rationally what it would be best for all people and the environment to produce or develop. Such an economy will inevitably fail to apply existing productive capacity to doing what is most important.

A sane, just and ecologically sustainable economy cannot be a growth economy and would have to involve only a minute fraction of the production and resource use that goes on in the present economy. It would therefore have to be a very different economy in which we could make sure that all people consume only the relatively small volume of goods that they need for a high quality of life, that wasteful production such as advertising and sports cars was not carried out, and that very simple lifestyles and ways were the norm. A satisfactory economy would have a large non-cash sector in which people helped each other, gave things to each other, produced many things in their households and backyards, and contributed to the community via working bees. It would involve mostly small and highly self sufficient local economies where most of the things we need are produced from local land, labour and resources.

There might be a significant place in a satisfactory economy for private enterprise in the form of small firms and cooperatives, and for markets which adjust supply and demand for some items and enable innovation where necessary. However these arrangements would have to be subject to careful regulation by the society as a whole via open, local and participatory procedures, not huge, distant, authoritarian government bureaucracies.

In other worlds a capitalist economy is not only incapable of solving the limits to growth problem, it is the basic cause of the problem. (However the alternative we want is very definitely not big-state centralised socialism.)

If the limits to growth analysis of our global situation is valid we have no choice but to try to move to a society in which:-

In the last decade or so a Global Eco-village Movement has developed in which many small communities around the world have started to experiment with the building of the required new settlements. A great deal depends on whether this movement can grow fast enough. (See The transition.)

(For a detailed discussion see , The Sustainable Alternative Society; The Simpler Way.)

There are good reasons for thinking that we will not succeed in making the transition to a sustainable society. We probably have only two decades in which to do the necessary groundwork, given that a serious petroleum problem is likely to have hit us by then. There is no possibility of making the transition unless there is a vast increase in public awareness of the limits to growth analysis, of the fact that we are on a totally unsustainable path, and of the existence of a satisfactory alternative way. The task for us here and now is thus an educational one. There are two things we must do. The first is simply to try to explain these themes wherever and whenever we can. The second is to contribute to the Global Alternqative Society Movement, helping to build alternatives here and now, so that in 20 years time we will have many very impressive examples of sustainable communities functioning, showing that there is a sane alternative way.

(See How we can contribute.)

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Trainer; F. E. (T.), (1995c), "Can renewable energy save industrial society?", Energy Policy, 23, 12, 1009-1026.

Trainer, F. E., (T.), (1998), Saving the Environment; What It Will Take, Sydney, University of N.S.W. Press.

Trainer, F. E. (T.), (1999), "The limits to growth case now", The Environmentalist, 19, 19, 4, Dec. 325 -336.

Weizacker, E. Von and A. Lovins, (1997), Factor Four, St Leonards, Allen and Unwin.

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