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C’mon! Don’t Tell Me the Current Trends Are Sustainable!

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Abstract

We want to start with an optimistic perspective. It will be expanded in Chap. 3 of the book, but readers should remember it’s coming while familiarizing themselves with the not-so-pleasant facts of today’s realities. An optimistic perspective makes it easier to find realistic strategies for alleviating the daunting problems we face.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Arsenault (2014).

  2. 2.

    FAO (2016).

  3. 3.

    Kolbert (2014).

  4. 4.

    Blue Planet Prize Laureates (2012).

  5. 5.

    The Edelman Trust Barometer (2017) says that 53% of the population in 28 countries believe the systems governing them are failing; only 15% deem that the systems are working.

  6. 6.

    Liberti (2013).

  7. 7.

    Stout (2012).

  8. 8.

    Zacharia (2016).

  9. 9.

    Branko Milanovic. 2016. https://milescorak.com/2016/05/18/the-winners-and-losers-of-globalization -branko-milanovics-new-book-on-inequality-answers-two-important-questions/

  10. 10.

    https://www.oxfam.org. 2017-01-16. Just eight men own same wealth as half the world. The title of the study is “An economy for the 99 percent.” Data are based on the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Data book, 2016. See also Jamaldeen (2016).

  11. 11.

    OPHI (2017). See also Dugarova and Gülasan (2017).

  12. 12.

    For more details see Corlett (2016).

  13. 13.

    Greenwood and Scharfstein (2013). Authors say that in 1980, people working in the financial sector made about the same as people in other industries; By 2006 they made 70% more.

  14. 14.

    Bartlett (2013). Stockman (2013).

  15. 15.

    Bertelsmann Stiftung. 2016. (Lead author: Sabine Donner) Politische und soziale Spannungen nehmen weltweit zu. Executive Summary. Transformationsindex der Bertelsmann Stiftung. Gütersloh.

  16. 16.

    Snyder (2017).

  17. 17.

    Quattrociocchi et al. (2016).

  18. 18.

    Fan et al. (2014).

  19. 19.

    Tibi (2012). He sees “Islamism ” as incompatible with democracy , while Islam has deep roots into democratic consultation methods and has been open for a very early Enlightenment in the twelfth Century, chiefly through Ibn Rushd – Latinised as Averroes.

  20. 20.

    E.g. Hsu et al. (2014).

  21. 21.

    Admati and Hellwig (2013).

  22. 22.

    E.g. McLean and Nocera (2010).

  23. 23.

    NCPA (2015).

  24. 24.

    “In 1981 household debt was 48% of GDP , while in 2007 it was 100%. Private sector debt was 123% of GDP in 1981 and 290% by late 2008” (Crotty 2009, p. 576).

  25. 25.

    Crotty (2009), ibid.

  26. 26.

    Turner (2016). “Across advanced economies private-sector debt increased from 50% of national income in 1950 to 170% in 2006”(p. 1).

  27. 27.

    The removal of the separation occurred in 1986 in the UK .

  28. 28.

    Sassen (2009).

  29. 29.

    Lietaer et al. (2012). Quotes from pages 11–12.

  30. 30.

    Scharmer (2009).

  31. 31.

    Rome (2015).

  32. 32.

    Daly (2005); see also Sect. 1.12.

  33. 33.

    Meadows et al. (1972).

  34. 34.

    Turner and Alexander (2014). More sources: see Jackson and Webster (2016), CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

  35. 35.

    Rockström and Klum (2012).

  36. 36.

    Braungart and McDonough (2002), McDonough and Braungart (2013).

  37. 37.

    Tsao et al. (2010).

  38. 38.

    Meadows et al. (1972).

  39. 39.

    Higgs (2014, pp. 51–62; 257–268).

  40. 40.

    Bardi (2014).

  41. 41.

    Higgs (2014, l.c., p. 91–93).

  42. 42.

    Turner (2008–09).

  43. 43.

    Rockström et al. (2009a, b). See also Steffen et al. (2015).

  44. 44.

    World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) (2008). Figures are based on Smil (2011).

  45. 45.

    Steffen et al. (2007).

  46. 46.

    The Guardian . 13 Dec., 2015.

  47. 47.

    Monbiot (2015).

  48. 48.

    Kevin Andersson . 2015. The hidden agenda: how veiled techno-utopias shore up the Paris Agreement. Pre-edited version of his summary of the Paris Agreement published in Nature’s World View (Dec. 2015): http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.19074!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/528437a.pdf

  49. 49.

    Bloomberg New Energy Finance. 2016.12.15. World Energy Hits a Turning Point.

  50. 50.

    Romm (2017).

  51. 51.

    Jeff Masters . 2016. The 360 Degree rainbow Jeff Masters Blog December 2016.

  52. 52.

    Sean Ó hÉigeartaigh (2017).

  53. 53.

    Lübbert et al. (2017).

  54. 54.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment /true-north/2017/mar/27/trump-presidency-opens-door-to-planet-hacking-geoengineer-experiments

  55. 55.

    Economic Collapse, Google, accessed September 2016.

  56. 56.

    Waters et al. (2016).

  57. 57.

    The Guardian , http://www.theguardian.com/environment /2015/sep/01/up-to-90-of-seabirds-have-plastic-in-their-guts-study-finds Associated Press, 1 Sept 2015,

  58. 58.

    Hasselverger (2014).

  59. 59.

    BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2006.

  60. 60.

    Walter and Weitzman (2015).

  61. 61.

    Kolbert (2014).

  62. 62.

    E.O. Wilson 2016. Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life.

  63. 63.

    E.g. van der Sluijs et al. (2015).

  64. 64.

    Elaine Ingham. 2015. The Roots of Your Profits (video).

  65. 65.

    National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2016).

  66. 66.

    Ibid. doi:10.17226/23405

  67. 67.

    Civil Society Working Group on Gene Drives (2016).

  68. 68.

    The alert to this deadly danger came from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and its President, Dr. David Krieger, Member of the Club of Rome. See their homepage https://www.wagingpeace.org/.

  69. 69.

    Widely circulated email by granoff@gsinstitute.org, dated 16 Dec., 2016.

  70. 70.

    UNFPA. 2015. Consequential omissions. How demography shapes development – Lessons from the MDGs for the SDGs. Fig. 8; electronic source: http://www.berlin-institut.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Consequential_Omissions/UNFPA_online.pdf

  71. 71.

    Guttmacher Institute. (authors: Jacqueline E. Darroch, Vanessa Woog, Akinrinola Bankole and Lori S. Ashford) 2016. Adding It Up: Costs and Benefits of Meeting the Contraceptive Needs of Adolescents.

  72. 72.

    See IMF ’s Gender Income Gap Studies, Japan and Mckinsey Gender Gap Income Loss Analysis all done in 2015; see Google for details.

  73. 73.

    Ehrlich and Holdren (1971).

  74. 74.

    United Nations (2011).

  75. 75.

    World Resources Institute Washington, Urban Growth, www.wri.org/wr-98-99/citygrow.htm

  76. 76.

    Martine et al. (2013).

  77. 77.

    Sankhe et al. (2010). See also Brugmann (2009).

  78. 78.

    Girardet (1999).

  79. 79.

    Int. Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), as reported by www.gdrc.org.uem/e-footprints.html

  80. 80.

    Chinese government. 2016. China to promote new type of urbanization. Feb 6, 2016. english.gov.cn

  81. 81.

    Agriculture at the Crossroads. 2009. Washington: Island Press (One global Report, one executive Summary, and five regional reports.)

  82. 82.

    UNEP and International Resource Panel. 2014. Assessing Global Land Use: Balancing Consumption with Sustainable Supply; UNCTAD . 2013. Trade and Environment Review 2013. Wake up before it is too late: Make agriculture truly sustainable now for food security in a changing climate; IFAD. 2013. Smallholders, food security, and the environment .

  83. 83.

    GRAIN and La Via Campesina (2014). Big dams, industrial zones and mining also displace smallholders.

  84. 84.

    Machovina et al. (2015).

  85. 85.

    Weiler and Demuynck (2017).

  86. 86.

    Emphasis ours. Higgs (2014), WTO (2010).

  87. 87.

    Beder (2006).

  88. 88.

    Higgs, op. cit. pp. 249–250. Sources are cited in full in this text.

  89. 89.

    Neslen (2016).

  90. 90.

    Eduardo Galeano . 1973. (Spanish original 1971) Open Veins of Latin America : Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent SKU: mrp9916, Paperback ISBN: 9780853459910.

  91. 91.

    Khor (2017).

  92. 92.

    UN (2009).

  93. 93.

    Patnaik (1999).

  94. 94.

    Full title: Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development A/69/L.85 – Draft outcome document of the United Nations summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda.

  95. 95.

    Transforming our world, l.c. p. 3.

  96. 96.

    80 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992).

  97. 97.

    Chancel and Piketty (2015).

  98. 98.

    The world’s population is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050, a new United Nations report says. And there should be 11.2 billion people on Earth by the end of this century. Source: associated Press, 29 July, 2015.

  99. 99.

    From para 5 in the document referred to in footnote 66.

  100. 100.

    Hoekstra (2013).

  101. 101.

    International Resource Panel and Development Alternatives (Lead author: Ashok Khosla) 2015. Addressing Resource Inter-linkages and Trade-offs in the Sustainable Development Goals . Nairobi.

  102. 102.

    Obersteiner et al. (2016).

  103. 103.

    Lenzen et al. (2012).

  104. 104.

    Sachs et al. (2016).

  105. 105.

    This is also the view of Michael Wadleigh and Birgit van Munster. 2017. Nature perspective, closed mass Homo Sapiens Foundation. hsfound@gmail.com, closedmass@gmail.com

  106. 106.

    Bower and Christensen (1995).

  107. 107.

    Schumpeter (1942).

  108. 108.

    Vickery (2012).

  109. 109.

    Rifkin (2011).

  110. 110.

    Diamandis and Kotler (2012).

  111. 111.

    Diamandis and Kotler (2015).

  112. 112.

    Eggers (2011).

  113. 113.

    Kurzweil (2006).

  114. 114.

    Suhas Kumar (2015).

  115. 115.

    European Union (2014).

  116. 116.

    Williams et al. (2002).

  117. 117.

    Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (2006).

  118. 118.

    Hintemann and Clausen (2016).

  119. 119.

    Climate Group for the Global eSustainability Initiative (2008).

  120. 120.

    Frey and Osborne (2013).

  121. 121.

    World Economic Forum (2016).

  122. 122.

    TIME (2017).

  123. 123.

    Dieter Helm, Chairman of the Natural Capital Committee, The State of Natural Capital: Restoring our Natural Assets, UK . 2014.

  124. 124.

    Georgescu -Roegen (1971).

  125. 125.

    Boulding (1966).

  126. 126.

    Victor (2008); see also Jackson (2009), Maxton and Randers (2016).

  127. 127.

    UNEP’s International Resource Panel has published two major reports on Decoupling : UNEP. 2011. Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth. Lead authors: Marina Fischer-Kowalski and Mark Swilling. Nairobi. UNEP. 2014. Decoupling 2: Technologies, Infrastructures and Policy Options. Lead authors Ernst von Weizsäcker and Jacqueline Aloisi de Larderel. Nairobi.

  128. 128.

    E.g. OECD (2011).

  129. 129.

    Higgs (2014, l.c., p. 34); Maddison (1995); World Bank annual figures, 1961–2015: World Bank. GDP Growth (annual %), http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG

  130. 130.

    Michael Howes . 2017. After 25 years of trying, why aren’t we environmentally sustainable yet? The conversation website (Australia ).

  131. 131.

    UNDESA (2012).

  132. 132.

    Göpel (2016), chiefly pages 20–21.

  133. 133.

    UNEP GEO 5 Report, 2012, p. 447.

  134. 134.

    OECD . 2015. The OECD Innovation Strategy. An Agenda for Policy action (2015 Revision). p. 6.

  135. 135.

    Raskin (2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emmendingen, Germany

    Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker

  2. Stockholm, Sweden

    Anders Wijkman

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  1. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker
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  2. Anders Wijkman
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von Weizsäcker, E.U., Wijkman, A. (2018). C’mon! Don’t Tell Me the Current Trends Are Sustainable!. In: Come On! . Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7419-1_1

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