To quibble with this kind of system [capitalism]
about its values, to frighten it with visions about the consequences of growth,
is to quarrel with its very metabolism.
(Murray Bookchin,
Toward an Ecological Society, 1980)
Commerce
and industry appear to have taken environmental issues to heart. Many
environmental organizations are either oriented to big business, such as the
Natural Step or Forum for the Future, or formed by big business, such as the
World Sustainable Business Forum. Organizations such as the World Wildlife
Fund, Sierra Club and Rainforest Alliance increasingly orient themselves
towards the industry. Environmental considerations are regarded as profitable;
examples of saving energy, saving materials or saving water are repeated again
and again to show how human beings, and the industry, without any sacrifice can
have a smaller environmental footprint. The signs about saving water, detergent
and energy are in hotel rooms all over the world. Eco-efficiency, including
Factor 4 or perhaps Factor 10, is talked about. The United Nations launched a new initiative in 2009,
when the financial crisis surfaced and climate change still was on everybody’s
lips, the ‘Green Economy’. The
message in all this is quite consistent, and has its origin in the report of
the Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future (United Nations 1987), which was the starting point for
the widespread usage of the term ‘sustainable development’ in 1987. ‘What is
needed now is a new era of economic growth—growth that is forceful and at the
same time socially and environmentally sustainable, writes Gro Harlem
Brundtland in the foreword to the report (United Nations 1987: xii). One learns
that it is possible to combine economic growth with social and environmental
development; not only that, the message is actually that more economic growth is needed to deal with these challenges, and
that a free market is best situated to deal with the issues. But as we will see
this is an illusion, a delusion or just wishful thinking.
Those
who argue that the market economy can deal with the environment and resource
use in a good way are very fond of terms such as ‘eco-efficiency’ and
‘de-coupling’. They
refer to inverted u-curves or Kuznets
curves that are supposed to show that, at a certain stage, increased growth
will reduce environmental problems instead of increasing them. It is shown that
energy per GDP unit goes down in high-income countries or that use of other raw
materials per GDP unit is less. In the period 1975–1993, the total material
need per GDP unit decreased in Germany,
Japan, the Netherlands and the United States (WRI 1997).
Deforestation is often rampant in countries in early stages of their growth,
but tends to go down with increased income and finally reverses in high-income
countries; no nation where annual per capita GDP exceeded US$ 4600 had a
negative rate of forest volume (Kauppi et
al. 2006).
Meanwhile, the
average American will, during his or her lifetime, consume some 450 tons of
construction materials, 18 tons of paper, 23 tons of wood, 16 tons of metals
and 32 tons of chemicals. Consumption of raw materials in the United States increased 17-fold whereas
population trebled between 1900 and 1990 (Carley and Spapens 1998). The global
GDP grew from US$ 19 trillion (constant 1995 dollars) in 1980 to US$ 35
trillion in 2002, a growth of 83%. The materials use, meanwhile, increased from
40 billion tons to 55 billion tons, a growth of 36%. Expressed as kilogramme
per dollar it means a reduction from 2.09 to 1.55 kilogrammes per dollar, but
still the total use increased substantially (Giljum and Hinterberger 2004). The
first long-term global study says:
Humanity currently uses almost 60 billion tons (Gt)
of materials per year. In particular, the period after WWII was characterized
by rapid physical growth, driven by both population and economic growth. Within
this period, there was a shift from the dominance of renewable biomass towards
mineral materials. Materials use increased at a slower pace than the global
economy, but faster than world population. As a consequence, material intensity
(i.e. the amount of materials required per unit of GDP) declined, while
materials use per capita doubled from 4.6 to 10.3 t/cap/yr. (Krausmann et al. 2009: 2697)
Source: Krausmann et
al. (2009).
Between
1900 and 2005, the only periods of absolute de-materialization coincided with
economic recessions and the two world wars (see Figure 15.1). Across the whole
period, materials use grew much faster than the population but slower than the
GDP. Use per person thus doubled in the period whereas use per GDP unit
decreased to only 40% of what it was earlier. Biomass, which is among other
sources for human nutrition, seems to be linked primarily to population growth,
whereas the use of non-renewables is much closer linked to economic growth
(Krausmann et al. 2009). And the
other way round as well, the energy expert Robert Hirsch (2008) estimates that
a decrease of oil supply by 1% percent will shrink the GDP also by 1%.
Emissions and
resource use in some rapidly developing countries, such as China, are to a
large extent the result of export to high-income countries. Most high-income
countries are net importers of emissions and pollution that take place in the
exporting countries (see earlier discussion about greenhouse gas emissions) and
they also ‘use’ a lot of resources in exporting countries. In sync with
increased consumption, transports are increasing, and for them there seems to
rather be the opposite of de-coupling. Between 1990 and 1999, the growth of
transport within the European Union was higher than the growth of GDP (SCB
2003). Global maritime transports are also increasing at a pace quicker than
the GDP. The International Maritime Organization predicts that, in the absence
of correcting policies, emissions from ships may grow by 150%–250% between 2007
and 2050. Aviation is also growing exponentially. Technological improvements
have not at all sufficed to compensate for the emissions from the growing
transport sector. New aircraft are 70% more fuel-efficient than those designed
40 years ago. A further 20% gain by 2015 over 1997 levels seems attainable, and
perhaps a 40%–50% gain by 2050. However, such improvements are insufficient to
keep emissions and resource use at reasonable levels in view of aviation’s
rapid expansion (UNEP 2008, 2011).
There are
certainly areas where industries have been able to grow and total emissions and
resource use have decreased. The paper and pulp industry in Sweden has, in
25 years, gone from a big waster of resources to an almost closed system. Use
of water, sulphur dioxide emissions and emissions of organochlorides have all
been reduced by more than 90% (Eklund 2000). But these are exceptions.
Materials use seems to flatten out in more mature economies; their economic
growth is also moderate. For humanity at large it is now more interesting to
see what happens in the growth economies of today. A middle-income country like
Mexico
shows a very strong correlation between materials use and GDP, even if GDP
grows at a slightly quicker pace (Gonzalez-Martinez and Schandl 2007).
(extract from my book Garden Earth, forthcoming)
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