Our way of life in rich countries like Australia involves consumption of huge volumes of resources, and consequently it involves dumping vast amounts of wastes into the environment. To provide a US lifestyle to one person about 80 tonnes of materials have to be processed every year, much of it mining waste. Energy equal to 7 tonnes of oil has to be used. For each kilo of food eaten some 10 kg of soil are lost. At least 4.5 ha of productive land are needed just to provide one person living in a rich world city with their food, water, living space and energy. If all the world's people were to live as we do, productive land equal to 3.5 times all the world's productive land would be needed, and world population is very likely going to almost double before it stabilises around 9-10 billion.

In other words the way we live is not just somewhat unsustainable; it is far beyond a sustainable level of resource use and environmental impact. If all the people we are to have on earth soon were to have the Australian average per capita energy use then world energy production would have to be 9 - 10 times what it is today. Yet the top priority in our society is to increase production, consumption, living standards and the GDP, all the time and without limit.
We cannot reduce these demands for resources from nature and the dumping of wastes into nature unless we change to a very different society, one in which all can live well on very low material living standards.

THE PROBLEMS.

Consider the way the main problems connect directly with our affluent living standards.

THE ATMOSPHERE.

A number of the gases we are putting into the atmosphere have the effect of trapping energy that comes to the earth as sunlight but which would otherwise be radiated back into space. The main contributor is carbon dioxide, accounting for about half the greenhouse effect. Humans generate about 24 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) in rich countries.

The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has increased by about 25% since humans began to use fossil fuels in large quantities 150 years ago. The concentration is now around 350 ppm and increasing by about 1.5% p.a. The effects can't be predicted with confidence but this increase could result in a 1-2 degree rise in average global temperature by 2030. The expected rise at the poles is much greater. If the greenhouse effect continues into the 22nd century then polar ice would begin to melt eventually bring about a sea rise of perhaps a hundred metres. Even a half metre rise would cause huge problems for the many people who live on low lying islands and in coastal regions.

Probably the most undesirable effects will be hotter and drier climates in many Third World regions such as the African Sahel, where millions of people even now have difficulty growing enough food, and more frequent occurrence of extreme climatic events such as storms, floods, droughts and cyclones. These can devastate food production.

It is possible that positive feedback effects from several sources could suddenly produce a catastrophic runaway greenhouse effect. For example,

- As the warming dries out the Arctic tundra it begins to rot, releasing greenhouse gases.

- As the tropical rainforest is destroyed we lose the cloud their moisture generates. That cloud presently reflects much solar energy back into space, cooling the earth.

- As the warming reduces the formation of polar ice each year less salt is separated to fall to the bottom causing the huge currents that take carbon-rich water down.

- As these currents diminish less nutrients are brought up to feed the plankton which take in much carbon.

- As the oceans warm and become more polluted coral reefs dissolve, ceasing to take carbon from the atmosphere and releasing their carbon to the ocean.

It seems that the global atmospheric system can flip from one state to another fairly quickly. Some ice ages have come and gone relatively suddenly. The worry is that human activity could tip the system into a new state, for example, bringing on a new ice age. Nature moves 100 times as much carbon into and out of the atmosphere as humans do, so we might trigger or lever huge shifts and runaway effects in nature's processes.

It doesn't take long to realise that there is no realistic chance of solving the greenhouse problem by planting trees to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Firstly we'd have to plant something like the area of Australia, and secondly this would only take carbon from the atmosphere while the trees were growing.

Similarly, increasing the use of nuclear energy in order to cut coal use would not make much difference. Burning coal to produce electricity contributes only a small fraction of the carbon input, carbon constitutes only about half of the greenhouse problem, and to build all the reactors needed would require a great deal of energy and would therefore help to make the greenhouse problem worse for possibly 50 years.

If the CO2 content of the atmosphere continues to increase at the present rate then late next century it will probably have risen to around 8 times the present level.

World energy consumption is growing at about 2% p.a. Remember that the Third World is far below rich world energy use levels and wants to catch up. In fact half the world's people average only 1/17 the rich world average per capita use. If all the people likely on earth late next century were to rise to the present per capita use levels in rich countries world energy use would be about 8 times its present amount.

The atmospheric scientists have been telling us for years that if we are to stop the level of carbon in the atmosphere from rising any higher, we must cut carbon inputs by 60-80%. If we were to cut them by 60% and share the quantity of energy between all the people we would have on earth by 2060 you and I would have to get by on only 1/18 of the energy we use now. Most people have no idea of the magnitude of the overshoot and therefore the magnitude of the reductions in resource use and in consumption that will have to be made if the problems are to be solved.

The greenhouse problem provides strong support for the "limits to growth" argument. There is no plausible way of solving the problem without accepting drastic reduction in per capita levels of production and consumption and thus shifting to The Simpler Way, including a zero-growth economy. (The assumption that changing to renewable energy can solve the problem is not plausible; See on this website the Renewable Energy section in The Limits to Growth.)

In the mid 1980s it was realised that the ozone in the atmosphere is being depleted. There is only a very small quantity of this gas. If all the molecules of ozone were brought together at normal pressure they would make up a layer around the earth less than 3 mm thick. Yet ozone performs the extremely important function of blocking out much of the ultraviolet light that comes from the sun and is harmful to life. Life on earth was only able to emerge from the seas on to the land after plants had released enough oxygen to create an ozone shield.

In the late 1980s scientists observed a large hole forming each year in the ozone over the antarctic. More recently another hole has appeared over the Arctic. By the early 1990's there had been about a 3-5% reduction in the amount of ozone in the whole atmosphere. The main destructive gases, CFC's, remain active in the atmosphere for 100 years.

The ozone problem illustrates the most important aspect of the general environment problem, i.e., the damage being done to the life support systems of the planet. Increased ultraviolet light coming to earth will have undesirable effects on various biological systems, including the productivity of broad leaf plants (and therefore agriculture) and the micro-organisms in the sea which account for a considerable proportion of the world's oxygen and which take much carbon from the atmosphere. Processes such as these are crucial in maintaining the conditions necessary for the health of the entire planet, and the most worrying aspect of the environment problem is that in many ways human activity is degrading these systems and processes that make life on earth possible.

In the heavily industrialised areas of North America and Europe the rainfall has become acidic due to the amount of nitrogen and sulphur entering the atmosphere especially from cars and power stations. As a result forests and lakes are dying. This is one more factor reducing the productivity of agriculture and more importantly degrading the life support systems of the planet. There will be strong pressure to increase use of fossil fuels and fertilisers in coming decades, increasing the release of acid to the atmosphere.

SOIL DAMAGE

All life on earth depends on the earth's fragile "life jacket" made up by the thin layer of topsoil (average depth only 30 cm) from which all living things derive their sustenance. We are treating this vital resource in a way that cannot continue for many more decades. Our agriculture is one of the most unsustainable aspects of our society. Consider the main damaging effects.

- Erosion takes 24 billion tonnes of soil from the world's farms every year (and there are more than 80 million additional people to feed every year). Our agriculture involves ploughing and this leaves the ground open to erosion by wind and rain.

- Large areas of good farm land are continually being turned into urban settlements. In America perhaps half million ha p.a. are lost this way.

- Large scale use of pesticides reduces soil fertility.

- Much land is being lost to the spread of deserts, at a global rate of 6 million ha p.a. Another 20 million ha became unprofitable to farm each year.

- Rainfall is increasingly acidic.

- Soil nutrients are not returned to the soil. We throw away all our food wastes, and animal and human wastes. These should all be returned to the soil. Modern agriculture is therefore well-described as "soil mining".

- Soils are becoming more acidic due to use of artificial fertilisers.

- The Greenhouse and ozone problems will have undesirable effects on agriculture in coming years.

- Another important reason why our agriculture is unsustainable is that it depends on large quantities of energy, especially oil. In addition to all the energy used in tractor fuel, fertilisers, irrigation and pesticides there are huge transport and packaging energy costs. We will not be able to farm as we do now when much less oil is available in a few decades time. We could not do it now if world oil output were shared equally among all the world's people. We in rich countries can use so much in our agriculture only because we take most of the world's oil production.

These trends cannot continue for many more decades. We are destroying our capacity to meet our agricultural needs. Remember that there will probably be twice as many people to feed late next century and it is likely that there will then be much less land than there is now.

To solve these problems we must move to a very different form of agriculture in which we mostly depend on small farms and gardens, tree crops, "edible landscapes' throughout cities, local self-sufficiency in food (hence little transport), recycling of nutrients and thus negligible use of ploughing, artificial fertilisers or pesticides.

Large quantities of wastes are dumped into the world's oceans every year, including the run-off of excess fertiliser from farmland, and 2 million tonnes of oil which affects photosynthesis and the amount of sunlight reflected from the planet.

Around 16-20 million hectares of rainforest are being lost each year and most of the remaining forest might have been destroyed by early in the 21st century. In addition about 4 million ha of other forest types are being lost every year. This destruction not only reduces the rate at which carbon is taken out of the atmosphere, but the rotting of cleared vegetation and exposed soil humus is also putting carbon into the atmosphere, possibly equal to 40% of the input from fossil fuel burning.

The loss of the rainforest could also reduce the planet's cloud cover and therefore greatly increase its temperature.

THE LOSS OF SPECIES

The expansion of human activity is destroying habitats and causing the extinction of plant and animal species at an accelerating rate. This is probably the most serious of all ecological problems. There are probably 10 to 30 million species in existence, mostly undiscovered as yet. In the 300 years to 1970 humans probably caused the extinction of about 300 species. Some biologists estimate that we are now losing 17,500 species every year, about 2 every hour. In the next 20 years one million plant and animal species could be made extinct. At this rate, in the next 50 years half of all species could be lost.

We have entered a period of rapid extinction unlike any since 60 million years ago when the dinosaurs suddenly died out. The result will be the weakening of the life-support systems of the planet, because it is the diversity and complexity of life forms which maintains these systems, for example recycling nutrients and maintaining the atmosphere.

We are also losing many varieties of food plants because it suits corporations to sell mostly the few types which maximise their profits. Because the seeds they sell are "hybrids" the resulting plants will not yield a seed that produces a good crop, meaning that farmers can't save their own seed and have to buy more seed from the big seed companies every year. The seeds sold are the types that thrive only when given many energy-intensive inputs such as fertiliser and water.

Because of this trend, within one generation large numbers of plant varieties that used to be kept in existence by farmers saving their own seed are being lost as farmers all around the world are now mostly buying the same few varieties from the seed corporations.

THE DIMINISHING BIOLOGICAL PRODUCTIVITY OF THE EARTH.

In the last decade evidence has increased that the productivity of the earth's biological systems has begun to decline, despite the ever-increasing effort humans are making to raise production. Many agricultural production indices which have been increasing in recent decades now seem to be slowing, stable or falling. Consider the following indicators noted by the Worldwatch Institute.

- World cropland area increased to the early 1980s but little increase is likely from here on.

- World grain land area has decreased since 1970.

- The growth rate for forests is declining.

- Annual increases in world grain production have been falling over the last three decades, despite increased fertiliser use.

- The rate of increase in world irrigated land area is tapering.

- The productivity of land did not rise much in the second half of the 1980s, despite increased inputs.

- World fish catch is very likely to decline in the near future. The number of fishing vessels doubled in the 1980s but the catch didn't increase.

These tapering curves are quite disturbing. The environmental impacts largely responsible for the declining productivity are accelerating. We are only feeding 1 billion people well, but we will soon have 11 billion, and our capacity to produce food is likely to diminish from here on.

EFFECTS ON HUMAN HEALTH

This increase in the contamination of our environment is probably a major factor responsible for the increasing incidence of cancers. Some people argue that we are experiencing an epidemic. (Epstein, 1987, p. 91.) Between 1940 and 1975 the American incidence increased 40%. About 80% of cancers are thought to be due to pollutants in our environment.

We have little idea how the many new chemicals we are exposed to could be interacting within us to cause illnesses, but the more we saturate our environment with new chemicals the more likely such effects are.

THE ENVIRONMENT PROBLEM IN THE THIRD WORLD

To some extent these increasingly serious environmental problems are due to population increase in the Third World and to corrupt and inefficient governments. But the main causes are the unjust way the global economy functions and the inappropriate approach to development the rich countries have promoted. (See Third World Development .) These have encouraged poor countries to sell off their forests to purchase goods from rich countries. They have led poor countries into debt and thus obliged them to sell even more logs and coffee to pay their debts. They have led to the use of much land for export cropping and have therefore forced many poor people to clear forests and to overgraze poor lands in order to grow food for themselves. In other words poverty is a major cause of environmental damage in the Third World.

Above all, the "limits to growth" analysis shows that the Third World must be persuaded not to strive for the rich world's industrialised, urbanised and affluent ways. That would require 10 times as much energy and resource consumption as now occurs in the world every year.

WE ARE DESTROYING THE LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS OF THE PLANET

GAIA

Consider some of the processes.

- Over the past 3,500 million years the earth's temperature has kept fairly stable at a level favourable to life. But in that time the sun's energy output has risen by 30%, meaning that the earth should now be far too hot for life. The earth appears to have adjusted in ways which have kept its temperature stable. For instance the plants take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere and thereby reduce the earth's greenhouse effect and thus its temperature.

- Hydrogen is very light. Why hasn't most of it drifted from the earth into space, as has happened on Venus, making life impossible? Living things take in hydrogen and make it available to each other, e.g., in food. Life processes therefore trap much hydrogen on earth.

- Animals can't live without oxygen in the atmosphere. Without life on earth there would be little oxygen in the atmosphere; it would be all locked up in rocks as it once was.

Observations like these led James Lovelock to suggest that we could think of the planet as being regulated by Gaia (the name the Greeks gave to the Earth Mother goddess). There is debate about how best to regard Gaia, but it is evident that many remarkable natural feedback mechanisms do function to restore and maintain the conditions necessary for life. (This does not mean that these mechanisms could cope with whatever damage humans inflict on them.) The important point is that we should feel very grateful to Gaia. We are totally dependent on her for the conditions we need. She has a huge team constantly working to provide the oxygen and nitrogen we need, the rain, the temperature and the fertile soils. We should be very concerned not to harm Gaia and we should be very thankful for all the crucial things she does for us.

It is important to recognise that

(Technology refers for example to the difference between heating a house using coal or heating it using solar energy.)

By far the most important factor in this equation is Affluence. World population is only likely to double, but the average rich world income is more than 60 times that of the poorest half of the world's people. If all 11 billion people expected were to rise to the levels of affluence rich countries will have in 2070 if their economies grow at 3% p. a. total world economic output would be 110 times what it is tody. Thus population is a serious problem and the world is probably already far beyond a sustainable population -- but population is nowhere near as important as overconsumption. We can't reduce environmental impact or resource use significantly unless we greatly reduce the level of consumption typical of rich countries today.


WHAT ABOUT TECHNICAL ADVANCE IN POLLUTION REDUCTION?

Many people just assume that all we need to do to solve the environmental and resource problems is have tighter pollution control, buy products that are recyclable, and design more energy efficient products, etc. This is what advocates of "Environmentally Sustainable Development" usually believe. They do not see that we need to change our lifestyles or the economy. The "limits to growth" argument is that there is no chance of solving the major global problems we face unless we go much further and drastically reduce the amount of producing and consuming going on, because the problems are essentially due to the very high levels of resource use and waste involved in our way of life.

Even if we achieve large reductions in the pollution generation rate, but remain committed to economic growth then in a short time we will be polluting as much as we were or using as much energy as we were before the cuts.

If at a point in time we were to cut the rate of pollution per unit of output by 30%, but our economy continued to grow at 3% p.a. then in only 14 years the annual amount of pollution generated would be back up at the pre-cut level, and in another 23 it would be twice as great. Obviously any plausible reduction in environmental impact will soon be overwhelmed if we insist on growth in output.

Remember that if the Third World is to develop to our levels of affluence that will mean burning 10 times as much fuel as at present, every year -- pollution control would have to achieve miracles to keep the consequences to anywhere near the present (intolerable) levels. If all the expected9 billion people wxere to rise by 1970 to the

Affluent-industrial-consumer society can't be saved by Factor 4 or Factor 10 reductions in the amount of resource use and environmental impact per unit of output, while commitment to growth remains. Such reductions will soon be overwhelmed if we continue to pursue growth in output.

There is much reference on the part of economists and governments to the concept of "environmentally sustainable development". However, this is in general only an attempt to take some steps to reduce the environmental impact of economic activity, but there is never any question of reducing the volume of production and sales, or of eliminating grossly unnecessary or wasteful or luxurious production. "Ecologically Sustainable Development" is only about looking for ways of continuing to produce, but in ways that will have reduce environmental impact. The crucial point is that the volume of production and consumption currently taking place is far beyond levels that can be kept up, extended to all the world's people, or remedied by technical advance. The inescapable conclusion from the limits to growth analysis of our situation is that there must be drastic reduction in the volume of economic activity taking place in the world at present. This is the last thing that economists, corporations, and governments want to year, so they opt to pretend that it is sufficient to look for less environmentally damaging ways of continuing to produce and sell as much as possible.

THE NEAR FUTURE?

Most of the destruction of the environment has taken place since 1950; i.e., in the short period of rapid economic growth. The rate of impact on the ecosystems of the planet will probably increase greatly in coming decades.

It is therefore virtually certain that the present quite disturbing levels of environmental impact will become several times as great in coming decades.

It is essential to realise that it is our economic system that is mainly responsible for the destructive effects we are having on our environment. The biggest contribution to saving ecosystems would come with the elimination of our enormous volume of unnecessary production, resource use and the associated ecological disruption, but our economic system will not allow us to reduce production to levels that are merely sufficient for a reasonable lifestyle. Unless production and consumption increase the economy is in trouble, even though developed countries now produce far more than is necessary.

Remember what the commitment to economic growth means. If we have only 3% p.a. growth then in 70 years our economy will involve 8 times as much producing and consuming every year as it does now. If we have 5% growth then in the 2060s we will have 32 times as much output every year.

The basic "limits to growth" point is that the commitment to affluence and growth is the essential cause of the environmental problem. The environment is being destroyed essentially because we are over-producing and over-consuming, yet we are determined to increase output and consumption as fast as we can, without limit! There is no possibility of solving the problem until we move to an economic system that will allow us to do only that modest amount of producing and consuming that will be sufficient for satisfactory material living standards.

Conventional economists and politicians cannot face up to the fact that in the long term growth is totally incompatible with ecological sustainability. In ecological systems there can be growth of various elements for a time, followed by decline, but the long term situation is one of stability. We will never achieve a sustainable world order until our lifestyles and economic systems accommodate to this fundamental principle.

Are you dark green or only light green? Unfortunately most concern about the environment at present is only devoted to saving areas or species threatened by growth and affluence society, or to working for less polluting ways or for recycling schemes or more energy efficient transport, etc., without any thought of changing from a society that is obsessed with growth and affluence. Such "light green" efforts are important and admirable but many people concerned about the environment fail to see that there is no chance of solving the environment problem unless we change to a radical conserver society involving very different lifestyles, patterns of settlement, levels of consumption and economic arrangements. (For an outline of the sustainable alternative society see on this website The Alternative Sustainable Society; The Simpler Way.

Epstein, S., (1987), "Losing the war against cancer", Ecologist, 17, 2.

Trainer, F. E. (T.), (1995), The Conserver Society; Alternatives For Sustainability, London, Zed Books.

Trainer, F. E. (T.), (1998), Saving The Environment; What It Will Take, Sydney, University of NSW Press gives a more detailed statement of the above argument.

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