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The Growth Fetish and the Death of Environmentalism IES Burntwood Lecture

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The Growth Fetish and the Death of Environmentalism IES Burntwood Lecture

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    1. The Growth Fetish and the Death of Environmentalism IES Burntwood Lecture Jonathon Porritt | 13th December 2010

    5.

    6. Our situation today is far more challenging because in addition to shrinking forests and eroding soils, we must deal with falling water tables, more frequent crop-withering heat waves, collapsing fisheries, expanding deserts, deteriorating rangelands, dying coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising seas, more-powerful storms, disappearing species, and, soon, shrinking oil supplies. Although these ecologically destructive trends have been evident for some time, and some have been reversed at the national level, not one has been reversed at the global level. The bottom line is that the world is in what ecologists call an “overshoot-and-collapse” mode. Demand has exceeded the sustainable yield of natural systems at the local level countless times in the past. Now, for the first time, it is doing so at the global level. Forests are shrinking for the world as a whole. Fishery collapses are widespread. Grasslands are deteriorating on every continent. Water tables are falling in many countries. Carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions exceed CO 2 fixation everywhere. In 2002, a team of scientists led by Mathis Wackernagel, who now heads the Global Footprint Network, concluded that humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. Their study, published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, estimated that global demands in 1999 exceeded that capacity by 20 percent. The gap, growing by 1 percent or so a year, is now much wider. We are meeting current demands by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for decline and collapse. 2 In a rather ingenious approach to calculating the human physical presence on the planet, Paul MacCready, the founder and Chairman of AeroVironment and designer of the first solar-powered aircraft, has calculated the weight of all vertebrates on the land and in the air. He notes that when agriculture began, humans, their livestock, and pets together accounted for less than 0.1 percent of the total. Today, he estimates, this group accounts for 98 percent of the earth’s total vertebrate biomass, leaving only 2 percent for the wild portion, the latter including all the deer, wildebeests, elephants, great cats, birds, small mammals, and so forth. Our situation today is far more challenging because in addition to shrinking forests and eroding soils, we must deal with falling water tables, more frequent crop-withering heat waves, collapsing fisheries, expanding deserts, deteriorating rangelands, dying coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising seas, more-powerful storms, disappearing species, and, soon, shrinking oil supplies. Although these ecologically destructive trends have been evident for some time, and some have been reversed at the national level, not one has been reversed at the global level. The bottom line is that the world is in what ecologists call an “overshoot-and-collapse” mode. Demand has exceeded the sustainable yield of natural systems at the local level countless times in the past. Now, for the first time, it is doing so at the global level. Forests are shrinking for the world as a whole. Fishery collapses are widespread. Grasslands are deteriorating on every continent. Water tables are falling in many countries. Carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions exceed CO 2 fixation everywhere. In 2002, a team of scientists led by Mathis Wackernagel, who now heads the Global Footprint Network, concluded that humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. Their study, published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, estimated that global demands in 1999 exceeded that capacity by 20 percent. The gap, growing by 1 percent or so a year, is now much wider. We are meeting current demands by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for decline and collapse. 2 In a rather ingenious approach to calculating the human physical presence on the planet, Paul MacCready, the founder and Chairman of AeroVironment and designer of the first solar-powered aircraft, has calculated the weight of all vertebrates on the land and in the air. He notes that when agriculture began, humans, their livestock, and pets together accounted for less than 0.1 percent of the total. Today, he estimates, this group accounts for 98 percent of the earth’s total vertebrate biomass, leaving only 2 percent for the wild portion, the latter including all the deer, wildebeests, elephants, great cats, birds, small mammals, and so forth.

    8. “So what’s the difference between 8.25 billion people and 9 billion people?” 750 million people x 4 tonnes = 3 billion tonnes pa

    9. Decoupling Cost internalization Fiscal Reform Innovation Marketization ------------------------------------------------- Regulation Behaviour Change/”Nudging” Wellbeing/Happiness The Sustainable Economy Toolkit

    10. The Dilemma of Growth

    11. The Reality of Cost Internalization

    12. People who’ve got it, want more of it THE HEDONIC TREADMILL

    14. Decoupling Cost internalization Fiscal Reform Innovation Marketization ------------------------------------------------- Regulation Behaviour Change/”Nudging” Wellbeing/Happiness The Sustainable Economy Toolkit

    15. “Our research shows that sustainability is a mother lode of organisational and technological innovations that yield both bottom-line and top-line returns. We find that smart companies now treat sustainability as innovation’s new frontier”.

    16. We’ve heard Chris say that 450ppm (CO2e) is now looking impossible (unless remediation arrives) James Hansen (NASA) states that we have to return to 350ppm (CO2) if "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed". Kevin Andersen at the Tyndall Centre has argued that, to stabilize at 450ppm (CO2, not CO2e) we’ll need reductions of 9% per annum in the period from 2012-2032 (and to stabilise at 550ppm, we’ll need reductions of 6% per annum) Yet since 2000, CO2e emissions have been growing at 2.8% a year. And only precedent for reductions greater than 1% a year have been “economic recessions or upheaval.” (Stern) (With the collapse of the Soviet Union leading to reductions there of some 5% per annum) So what does that mean for you – and us? (I don’t want today to be about us telling you to do more. I want us all to face up collectively to the scale of the challenge.) We’ve heard Chris say that 450ppm (CO2e) is now looking impossible (unless remediation arrives) James Hansen (NASA) states that we have to return to 350ppm (CO2) if "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed". Kevin Andersen at the Tyndall Centre has argued that, to stabilize at 450ppm (CO2, not CO2e) we’ll need reductions of 9% per annum in the period from 2012-2032 (and to stabilise at 550ppm, we’ll need reductions of 6% per annum) Yet since 2000, CO2e emissions have been growing at 2.8% a year. And only precedent for reductions greater than 1% a year have been “economic recessions or upheaval.” (Stern) (With the collapse of the Soviet Union leading to reductions there of some 5% per annum) So what does that mean for you – and us? (I don’t want today to be about us telling you to do more. I want us all to face up collectively to the scale of the challenge.)

    18. 21st Century “Sputnik Moment” “We face a choice today. Are we going to continue America’s innovation leadership, or are we going to fall behind?” (Steve Chu)

    19. Decoupling Cost internalization Fiscal Reform Innovation Marketization ------------------------------------------------- Regulation Behaviour Change/”Nudging” Wellbeing/Happiness The Sustainable Economy Toolkit

    22. DENALISM

    23. George Lakoff “We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise facts go in and then they come right back out. They are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts, or they simply mystify us. Why would anyone say or believe that?”.

    24. “God created the Earth, and he will take it out when he wants to. That’s all you need to know about climate change.” (Fred Upton, Republican Congressman from Michigan) Chairman of House Committee on Energy and Commerce

    26. Advertising Spend c.$500 billion A Year

    27. So, is Leuning right in his cartoon, should we drop our heads and feel really depressed by all these changes around us, which are, in the main of our own making.So, is Leuning right in his cartoon, should we drop our heads and feel really depressed by all these changes around us, which are, in the main of our own making.

    28. The Growth Fetish Underpinned by: Population Growth The Hedonic Treadmill Denialism Incumbency Corruption Seduction Inertia and The Illusion of Limitlessness

    31. The Systematic Betrayal of Young People

    32. “Our current Model of Progress, based on year-on-year increases in consumption-driven economic growth indefinitely into the future is ABSOLUTELY NON-VIABLE”.

    33. And it’s not getting exactly cheaperAnd it’s not getting exactly cheaper

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