Consuming Our Way To Extinction, Will We Break Away?

This information below focusses on the ecological footprint and living beyond our means through over-consumption.

http://gen.ecovillage.org/ross/166.html?lang=en

Breakaway – Living Beyond Our Means

By: Ross Jackson, PhD

“Breakaway” is a code word for what has been occupying most of my thoughts over the past several years and is also the working title of the forthcoming book that I hope to have published later this year. The subject matter is the coming global economic/political crisis, broken into two parts—problems and solutions; one part looks back, i.e. what are the major causes of the mess we are in, and one part looks forward, i.e. a proposed strategy—the only viable one that I can imagine—that could lead us out of the morass and towards a more sustainable and just world. This is what I call the “Breakaway Strategy”, a subject to which I will return. On this set of blogs, I will discuss various aspects of my thinking.

What does it really mean when we say that our global civilisation is living beyond its means—living off its natural capital? What are the possible consequences to humankind when we weaken the ecosystem? How will Nature react to this intrusion—this assault on its integrity? The short answer is that we just do not know. Nature’s complexity is orders of magnitude beyond our comprehension. But react it will, and sooner or later it will collapse if we continue on this path. That much is for certain. We are carrying out an unprecedented experiment with our very survival at stake.

Over-consumption

The primary factor driving the assault is unsustainable over-consumption. A useful quantitative measure of the degree of sustainability of a region is the so-called “ecological footprint”. While it is a rough measure, it is the most useful tool we have at this time for the total impact of humankind on the environment. The ecological footprint measures the amount of land that would be required by the population of a region in order to provide the renewable resources consumed and the sinks to absorb waste products. This measure is now widely used. Figures are published regularly by WWF, the global conservation organization, for 150 nations, in their Living Planet Report. The number of hectares per person required in 1961 and 2005 (the most recently available) is shown below for major world regions.

The average footprint per person increased in this 44-year period by 28%. But since population has also been increasing, the total impact has more than doubled. Relative to the constant world bio-capacity, the total footprint increased from approximately 53% to 130%, as shown below. The 2005 level thus corresponds to an overshoot of roughly 30%. The overshoot is undoubtedly larger today and is increasing every year by about 2%.

The available productive land and sea space in 2005 was roughly 2.1 “global hectares” per person for a global population of 6.6 billion, and is, of course, falling as population rises. A global hectare (gha) is one with bio-production averaged out over all regions. The world average actual ecological footprint in 2005 was 2.7 gha per person and is constantly rising as economic growth, urbanization and population increase. The overshoot is probably about 40% in 2011. WWF figures are about three years behind for data collection reasons.

We cannot predict where the ecosystem will collapse first. But If we break down the ecological footprint by component as shown below from the WWF 2008 report, we see that by far the major contributor in 2005, and the fastest growing component, is the “carbon footprint”, or CO2 emissions—now over 50% of the total— as opposed to only about 14% in 1960.

It is therefore not surprising that global warming, which is a direct consequence of rising CO2 emissions, is currently the most visible example of ecosystem breakdown. Examples of drought, floods, hurricanes, glacial melt-offs, shifting rain patterns, etc. due to about one degree Celsius temperature rise are so numerous now that we all have had some personal experience of what is in store. And this is just the beginning.

We are currently consuming each year more than Nature can replenish. If this continues without a reversal, then humanity is on its way towards certain extinction. Yet rather than a debate on how best to deal with this threat to our very survival, the political/economic establishment encourages more consumption, not less, more growth, not less. It is difficult to find a more absurd example of counter-productive human behaviour. And yet that is the reality of the early 21st century.

An analogy would be the case of passengers removing one screw at a time from a jumbo jet. We can predict with certainty that the jumbo jet will crash eventually, but we cannot predict exactly where and when, nor can we predict which critical part will be the immediate cause of the failure. We can also predict with certainty that the ecosystem will terminally fail if the political /economic establishment continues to promote more consumption and more economic growth, but we know far too little about Nature’s complexity to predict precisely where, when and how the critical failure will occur. It could be a consequence of global warming. It could be many other things. It could happen in 50 years. It could happen next month.