From Limits to Growth to the Growth of Limits: responsibilities of highly and less developed countries as constraints on growth intensifys
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GRF One Health Summit 2012, Davos: Presentation by Bron Raymond TAYLOR, University of Florida (USA) & Rachel Carson Center (Munich), United States of America
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From Limits to Growth to the Growth of Limits: responsibilities of highly and less developed countries as constraints on growth intensifys
- 1. From the Limits to Growth to the Growth of Limits Bron Taylor The University of Florida & the Rachel Carson Center, Munich www.brontaylor.com
- 2. The Limits to Growth Both an ecological principle, and a 1972 report to the Club of Rome by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis l. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens
- 5. C arrying C apacity . . . the supportable population of a species, given the calories, habitat, water and other available necessities in an ecosystem.
- 6. From Donella Meadows, Beyond the Limits Overshooting the “Carrying Capacity” of Earth?
- 7. Limits to Growth ~ on technology: 1) Technological innovation can prolong population and industrial growth but it does not overturn the limits to it. 2) Technological successes have led to a culture focused on “fighting against limits rather than learning to live with them.”
- 9. Limits to Growth ~ the means to equilibrium and ‘the good, sustainable, world’ Pursue a stable/steady state economic/social system: 1) Universal access effective birth control. 2) The average desired family size is two children. 3) Average industrial output per capita at about the 1975 level.
- 10. Key ethical hope . . . “ We believe, that the evolution of a society that favors innovation and technological development, a society based on equality and justice, is far more likely to evolve in a state of global equilibrium than it is in the state of growth we are experiencing today.”
- 12. Estimating peak oil production Source 2006-2007 Bakhtiari 2007-2009 Simmons After 2007 Skrebowski Before 2009 Deffeyes Before 2010 Goodstein Around 2010 Campbell After 2010 World Energy Council 2010-2020 Laherrere 2016 EIA (Nominal) After 2020 CERA 2025 or later Shell Oil
- 13. Evaluating The Limits to Growth “ A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 years of Reality, “Graham Turner in Global Environmental Change 18 (2008): 397-411.
- 16. (1) resource and cultural/political constraints; (2) the responsibilities of both affluent and poor countries; (3) how to hybridize the insights and overcome the shortsightedness and misperceptions found in diverse cultures (whether ‘Western’ or in the ‘global south’), and (4) creating responses across many scales and actors that are feasible given natural resource, and cultural/political realities.
- 18. C umulative E ffects . . . The deterioration of ecosystems and the biosphere is the result of many choices and practices, most of which by themselves are of little consequence. It is the cumulative effects of many decisions that leads to dramatic transformations.
- 19. HUMAN APPROPRIATION OF NET PRIMARY (PHOTOSYNTHETIC) PRODUCTION (HANPP) Best evidence: HANAPP 33 & 34% globally ( “Co-option for the human species that represents roughly 0.5% of the total heterotroph* biomass on Earth.”) By region: South America 6% Africa 12% North America 23% East Asia 63% Western Europe 72% South Central Asia 80% * non-plant; animals, fungi, bacteria; as opposed to plants
- 20. (1) resource and cultural/political constraints; (2) responsibilities of both affluent and poor countries; (3) hybridize the insights and overcome the shortsightedness and misperceptions found in diverse cultures (whether ‘Western’ or in the ‘global south’), and (4) Create responses across many scales and actors that are feasible given resource and political/cultural constraints. * Root understandings and policies in a clear understanding of population dynamics and carrying capacity.
- 21. From the Limits to Growth to the Growth of Limits Bron Taylor The University of Florida & the Rachel Carson Center, Munich www.brontaylor.com
Editor's Notes
- I wish to thank the organizers of this conference and the series it is a part of it for their visionary work promoting a holistic approach to the global health challenge. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to share some reflections on dimensions that may not be fully integrated in contemporary efforts toward a holistic health paradigm. Such efforts, in my view, must nest human health concerns within that of the environmental systems we belong to and depend upon.
- Limits to Growth concluded If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.
- 1) The study purported to document these negative trends – increasing human numbers, declining per capita food production, and dramatic increases in the consumption of nonrenewable natural resources. Moreover, it asserted, these negative trends are increasing in a pattern that mathematicians call exponential growth. A quantity exhibits exponential growth when it increases by a constant percentage of the whole in a constant time period. Especially since 1940, population growth and resource depletion has been exponential. 2) The behavior mode of the system is that of overshoot and collapse. In this run the collapse occurs because of nonrenewable resource depletion. (Limits 2 Growth) 3) This could be avoided if people work rapidly toward an equilibrium between resources, consumption, and human numbers. 4) Humans have the needed “ingenuity and social flexibility” . . . 5) but few see the trends, limits, and need for change.
- . . . A flip slogan to capture the idea might be, “it’s the calories stupid!” Related terms with which we need to be familiar include [next slide: “population ecology’]
- This chart is from Donella Meadows & J Randers, Beyond the limits: confronting global collapse and envisioning a sustainable future (1992). Take this as a hypothesis that needs to be evaluated if we ’re to think intelligently about environmental ethics. Are we in an era of limits? If we do not decrease human numbers, or per-capita consumption, or both, will there be a widespread collapse of human economic and social systems, precipitating a great deal of human suffering as their numbers decline rapidly? And where we turn shortly, how are current trends affecting non-human organisms, and what will be their fate, according to differing scenarios?
- technological innovation can prolong population and industrial growth does not overturn the limits to it. As the authors put it, “the application of technology to apparent problems of resource depletion or pollution or food shortage has no impact on the essential problem, which is exponential growth in a finite and complex system. Our attempts to use even the most optimistic estimates of the benefits of technology in the model did not prevent the ultimate decline of population and industry, and in fact did not in any case postpone the collapse beyond the year 2100.” 2) Technological successes have led to a culture focused on “fighting against limits rather than learning to live with them.” But, while there is “ disagreement with the statement that population and capital growth must stop soon”, the authors asserted, “. . . virtually no one will argue that material growth on this planet can go on forever.”
- Limits to Growth ~ on the ‘end’ value ~ create a world that is 1. sustainable without sudden and uncontrollable collapse; and 2. capable of satisfying the basic material requirements of all of its people
- What is needed, then, is for all societies to pursue a stable/steady state economic/social system: 1) Universal access effective birth control. 2) The average desired family size is two children. 3) Average industrial output per capita at about the 1975 level. I.e, promote ‘global equilibrium’ in which “population and capital are essentially stable, with the forces tending to increase or decrease them in a carefully controlled balance. … The capital plant and the population are constant in size. The birth rate equals the death rate and the capital investment rate equals the depreciation rate. . . . 3. The levels of capital and population and the ratio of the two are set in accordance with the values of the society. They may be deliberately revised and slowly adjusted as the advance of technology creates new options.
- Key ethical hope: “ We believe, that the evolution of a society that favors innovation and technological development, a society based on equality and justice, is far more likely to evolve in a state of global equilibrium than it is in the state of growth we are experiencing today.”
- . . . Just search for “Peak Oil” or click the URL in your course schedule, week 1.
- . . . The Geologist M. King Hubbert predicted accurately in the mid 1950s that US oil production would peak in the 1960s or 1970s. He was right. Now the estimates of peak oil are evaluating the global trends in this direction.
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- Turner, Graham M. "A Comparision of the Limits to Growth with 30 Years of Reality." Global Environmental Change 18 (2008): 397-411. The ‘‘standard run’’ [see the green cable] represents a business-as-usual situation where parameters reflecting physical, economic, and social relationships were maintained in the World3 model at values consistent with the period 1900–1970. The LtG ‘‘standard run’’ scenario (and nearly all other scenarios) shows continuing growth in the economic system throughout the 20th century and into the early decades of the 21st. However, the simulations suggest signs of increasing environmental pressure at the start of the 21 st century (e.g., resources diminishing, pollution increasing exponentially, growth slowing in food, services, and material wealth per capita). The simulation of this scenario results in ‘‘overshoot and collapse’’ of the global system about mid-way through the 21st century due to a combination of diminishing resources and increasing ecological damage due to pollution. (400) The ‘‘comprehensive technology’’ [see the red cable] approach attempts to solve sustainability issues with a broad range of purely technological solutions. This scenario incorporates levels of resources that are effectively unlimited, 75% of materials are recycled, pollution generation is reduced to 25% of its 1970 value, agricultural land yields are doubled, and birth control is available world-wide. These efforts delay the collapse of the global system to the latter part of the 21st century, when the growth in economic activity has outstripped the gains in efficiency and pollution control. , 401 For the ‘‘stabilized world’’ [blue cable] scenario, both technological solutions and deliberate social policies are implemented to achieve equilibrium states for key factors including population, material wealth, food, and services per capita. Examples of actions implemented in the World3 model include: perfect birth control and desired family size of two children; preference for consumption of services and health facilities and less toward material goods; pollution control technology; maintenance of agricultural land through diversion of capital from industrial use; and increased lifetime of industrial capital. , 401 The purple color indicates observed data; which really blows my mind, to be honest, at how accurate the initial models have proven to be. Remember, these predictions were devised from the some of the earliest computer models of environmental systems. NB, also: The LtG authors explicitly emphasized uncertainty about the timing and extent of any ‘‘overshoot and collapse’’ of the global system. Nevertheless, substantial sensitivity analysis (Meadows et al., 1974) showed that the general behaviour (if not the detail) of overshoot and collapse persists even when large changes to numerous parameters are made (such as the relationship of health and the environmental impacts with increasing pollution). , 401
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- . . . A flip slogan to capture the idea might be, “it’s the calories stupid!” Related terms with which we need to be familiar include [next slide: “population ecology’]
- . . . Such cumulative effects have generally been negative but they can also be positive. William Odum in (1982) succinctly described environmental degradation from cumulative effects as “the tyranny of small decisions.” In the USA, The Council on Environmental Quality ’s (CEQ) regulations for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), defined cumulative effects as “ the impact on the environment which results from the incremental impact of the action when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions regardless of what agency (Federal or non-federal) or person undertakes such other actions.” (40 CFR ~ 1508.7).
- Another way to analyze consumption is by broad regions. ENDED FIRST WEEK OF LECTURE (2 HRS + 1 HOURS) HERE JAN 09. [sprint 2011, took 4 hours to get here (two, two hour lectures]
- . . . A flip slogan to capture the idea might be, “it’s the calories stupid!” Related terms with which we need to be familiar include [next slide: “population ecology’]
- I wish to thank the organizers of this conference and the series it is a part of it for their visionary work promoting a holistic approach to the global health challenge. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to share some reflections on dimensions that may not be fully integrated in contemporary efforts toward a holistic health paradigm. Such efforts, in my view, must nest human health concerns within that of the environmental systems we belong to and depend upon.