In the 1970s, we were startled by the stark predictions of the Club of Rome report “Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al.). We came to understand the implications of exponential growth, and why it could not continue; and why even discovering new deposits of metal ores or crude oil would lengthen the time to exhaustion by only a few years if exponential growth continued. The Forrester-model world system simulations predicted a population crash by 2030 for almost every combination of the 5 or 6 variables used.
Many subsequent modellers criticized the assumptions underlying the Forrester-Meadows simulations, but surely the simple statement that exponential growth must hit a limit still stands. The growth curve must at least plateau out to a lazy-S logistic curve, even if a crash is avoided.
In the 1980s we were treated to the more hopeful, though still concern-arousing Brundtland Report, with its message of “sustainable development”. Unfortunately, the term can mean many things to many people. “Development” still means “growth” to most of us, especially GNP growth. Yet GNP growth and population growth, especially, must hit those limits we were warned about in the previous decade. Mental and spiritual development would pose no problems and should be applauded; but that is not what most people mean or what first comes to mind when the word “development” is used. Development could also mean better health and education and social programs, which would be possible without overall GNP growth if we rearranged our priorities and took the money from military expenditures; this too seems appropriate and praiseworthy. But if we define “development” as GNP growth, then the expression “sustainable development” is a contradiction in terms.
The Brundtland Report makes the point that the developing countries have to get richer, because poverty itself drives people to despoil the environment; e.g. to cut down trees for firewood or cut down whole forests to get more land for growing crops to feed their families. This is a valuable point to make, one that was missing from the Club of Rome reports. However, and this proviso must be underlined, since overall global growth is no longer sustainable, the rich countries will have to DROP in their material living standards so that the poor countries can improve theirs.
To soothe the outrage that inhabitants of rich countries will feel at this statement, let me stress that it is not a zero-sum game: it will not hurt the rich countries anywhere as much as it will benefit the poor countries, for the three reasons outlined below. Even if we think of the Great Equalization as a transfer of wealth in monetary terms from rich to poor countries (which is a bit simplistic), there are the following ameliorating circumstances that make it easier and more acceptable.
(1) Transfer of a fixed amount of wealth would be a much smaller percentage of the big economies of the rich countries than of the small economies of the recipient countries; so the relative gain would far exceed the relative loss.
(2) As Alcock has shown (in the book “1982”, CPRI Press, Oakville, 1978), the plot for countries of average life expectancy against GNP per capita shows a steep slope of increase up to a GNP per cap. value of about 700 ($ US), at which point there is a sharp change to a much gentler slope (though still increasing) for the higher GNP per cap. values. This is not only because there is a natural limit to the human life span, but also because in relative poverty more of the increase in wealth is used for necessities, such as food and basic health care, which really increase life expectancy; while in relatively richer societies, more of the wealth increase is used for luxuries, which have little effect on life expectancy. Some luxury goods may even shorten life, such as tobacco, alcohol, or high dietary sugars and fats.
(3) The quality of life is even less correlated with wealth than quantity of life (as measured by the average life expectancy). Beyond providing the basic necessities, quality of life depends mainly on the higher needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: a sense of belonging, a sense of achievement, and self-actualization. These are personal and inter-personal values not dependent on wealth.
Coming back to the Brundtland Report, we also have to define the word “sustainable” more carefully. At the time of the Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972, Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner, both prominent environmentalists, had a heated argument. Both were using the same equation
E(D) = k(P-P 0 ) + k 2 (W-W 0 ) + k 3 (T-T 0 ),
where E(D) is environmental deterioration, k 1 K 2 and k 3 are proportionality constants, (P-P 0 ) is population excess, (W-W~0~ ) is excess wealth or affluence, and (T-T 0 ) is excess technology. “Excess” means excess over the sustainable values P , W , and T . The argument, which does not matter now, was over whether P was the most important factor (said by Ehrlich, the author of “The Population Bomb”) or W was more important (the rich-poor gap was stressed by Commoner). Dismissing the argument, the equation can still be used, since it still seems plausible.
Assume that “sustainable” means that E(D) = 0. This can be satisfied only if at least one of the bracketed expressions on the right side equals zero; i.e. when either P=P 0 , or W=W 0 , or T=T 0 , or two of these relations hold, or all three. In words that means, very sensibly, that we hold either population, or wealth, or technology, or any two of them, or all three, to sustainable levels. But the whole crux of the problem depends on the definitions of P , W , and T . Let us try a few guesses.
W might be the value of GNP per capita at the point where the slope changes in Alcock’s plot of life expectancy vs. GNP per cap. (See above.) We really have no proof that this is the value of W 0 , but it seems plausible. T 0 might be defined in terms of “appropriate technology” (E.F. Schumacher “Small is Beautiful”), soft energy path (Amory Lovins in a book of that name), use of renewable resources, and “the three Rs” (reduce, reuse, recycle). What is P is not yet clear. It might be the 10 billion that we will have in 2200 when the world population is predicted to stabilize, but actually that may be too high. Perhaps, if we hold W and T at sustainable values (remember, only one needs to be, but we are playing it safe with two), we might be able to get away with P being too high, but not more than 10 billion.
However, Deep Ecology (looking at the world from the perspective of the whole biosphere, not only our species) introduces another consideration. The value of P we should aim at should be such that we minimize crowding too many other species from their habitats, possibly driving them to extinction, as is already happening. What might that value of P 0 be? How many other forms of life do we want to save to what extent? These are very painful trade-offs to consider. Someone recently suggested at a conference that human population should go down to 0.5 billion. That is only 10% of the present size. It need not be done by a 90% die-back, but the birth limitations necessary to achieve it would make China’s drastic population reduction policies seem like child’s play. I stared at the speaker in disbelief, and asked him “If these other species had the ability to compete as successfully as we can, would they do this for us?” “No”, he said without hesitation. “But they can’t make moral decisions and we can. And diversity is a value.”
How far can altruism be stretched? Most people still have trouble widening their concern to all of humanity, i.e. beyond their own nation. A further widening to take in the whole biosphere on some basis of species equality is beyond MY capability, to be quite frank. I would have trouble giving up my grandchildren for a bunch of wild animals in the jungle or on the savanna. And do we go beyond mammals to insects? I cannot do it, I confess. I doubt that many people can. Nature may do it for us if we misbehave, but then at least the foul deed will not be done by our own hand.
The Brundtland Report did not sufficiently define either development, or sustainability, and ignored previous warnings about limits to growth. It is not a sufficient blueprint for Our Common Future. A combination of Meadows and Brundtland might be a better plan.
