Abstract
The USA and China have the world’s largest GDP and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as having a significant proportion of the world’s total population. These form part of the triumvirate of influencing factors which potentially detrimentally impact upon sustainability. How the triumvirate factors have impacted upon the sustainability of the USA and China has not been adequately determined quantitatively or holistically. Understanding this can strongly indicate how significant levels of population, economic growth, and greenhouse gas emissions impacts and influences the indicated levels, nature, and dynamics of sustainability occurring. Therefore, to contribute towards developing understanding of the issues outlined, the Sustainability Dynamics Framework is applied to conduct a sustainability dynamic assessment for the USA and China 1995–2018. The results indicate both countries are consistently unsustainable due to significant levels of triumvirate-based factors, with differing dynamic trends, characteristics, and potential outcomes. The current static nature of the USA’s environment-human system provides the opportunity for a managed co-evolutionary strategy. China’s dynamic trends indicate a significant increasingly stressed environment-human system, which is at risk of a potential systemic crisis or collapse unless stringent corrective measures are implemented. In order for both countries to return to sustainability, there needs to be population mitigation to return them to optimum levels, and the use of contractionary policies and rapid decarbonation of their economies and societies. Unless this occurs, then their continued reticence to undertaking the urgent and necessary measures required not only risking their own future, but the world as well.
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Data availability
The ND-GAIN and World Bank datasets used to apply the SDF in the paper are available at https://gain.nd.edu/ and https://databank.worldbank.org/ respectively. The Excel datasets used to determine the SDF values and results are available upon request from the author.
Notes
Gaffney and Steffen (2017, p. 55) states that at the highest level of abstraction, the current rate of change in the Earth System (dE/dt) is as follows and can referred to as ‘The Anthropocene Equation: \(\frac{dE}{dt}=\underset{A,G,I\to 0}{f(H)}\) (9). ‘H’ as a sub-system of the Earth System (E), and primary driving force of the rate of change, can be represented as: \(H=f\left(P,C,T\right)\) (10) and \(T=f(En,K,Pe)\) (11).
Glossary: E Earth System, A astronomical forcing, G geophysical forcing, I internal dynamics of the earth system, H human activity, P population, C consumption (by definition production), T Technosphere, En energy system, K knowledge, Pe political economy.
Note: Population (P) defined as the global ‘'consumers’–the upper and middle classes as defined by income on a national basis (Gaffney & Steffen, 2017, p. 57).
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Phillips, J. A rapid sustainability dynamic assessment of the USA and China 1995–2018. Environ Monit Assess 194, 490 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10141-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10141-5