Global Change, EcoApartheid and Population Health

1
Global Change, Eco-Apartheid and Population
Health

• William E. Rees, PhDUniversity of BC
• GLOBAL CHANGE AND HEALTH WHO ARE THE
  VULNERABLE?
• Ottawa, Ontario
• 5 November 2007

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Context An Anomalous Period of Geometric Growth

• Population has quadrupled to 6.3 billion
• Energy use is up 16-fold
• Industrial production has grown 40-fold
• Water use has increased 9 times
• Fish catches higher by a factor of 35

• Carbon Dioxide emissions are 17 times higher
• Sulphur emissions have increased 13-fold
• Other air pollutants are up by a factor of 5
• Accelerating tropical deforestation and
  desertification

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Estimated Human Population over the Past Two
Millennia (Cohen 1995)
2007 Population 6.6 billion
Continuous growthpopulation and economicis an
anomaly. The growth spurt that recent generations
take to be normal is the single most abnormal
period of human history.
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Symptom Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Up 30 in
the past century

• Pre-industrial concentration of GHGs 280 ppm
• Present concentration 430 ppm (a 54 increase)

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N. Hemisphere Temp. Reconstruction
(blue)Instrumental Measurements (red)
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Climate Change Summary(IPCC 2006 Consensus)

• Atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane and other
  greenhouse gases are at the highest levels in at
  least 650,000 years.
• It is very likely that greenhouse gas forcing has
  been the dominant cause of the observed global
  warming over the past 50 years.
• Global average temperatures this century will
  rise by between 2C (the target allowable
  increase) and 4.5C.
• The increase could be enhanced a further 1.5C
  as a result of positive feedbacks.
• Some warming has been offset by cooling from
  other anthropogenic factors (suspended aerosols).
  (Without this effect, mean global temperatures
  would be even higher.)

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Recent Conclusions (Oct 2007)

• The Arctics floating sea ice is headed toward
  summer disintegration as early as 2013, a century
  ahead of the International Panel on Climate
  Change (IPCC) projections.
• The rapid loss of Arctic sea ice will speed up
  the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet and
  a rise in sea levels by even as much as 5 metres
  by the turn of this century is possible.
• The Antarctic ice shelf also reacts far more
  sensitively to warming temperatures than
  previously believed.

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Unprecedented Losses ofSea Ice In 2007
Such massive ecological changes in the
circumpolar Arctic threaten wildlifewe may see
the extirpation of polar bears from much of the
Northand herald the permanent loss of the Inuit
way of life. Diabetes and related health risks
are clearly associated with replacement of
country food with store-bought junk food in
Northerners diets.
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Have we passed a tipping point?
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IPCC Projections Way Off
Meltdown A hundred years ahead of schedule?
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Multi-Layered Auto-Catalysis?(Potential for
runaway positive feedback)
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Recent Findings (Oct 2007), Part 2

• Temperatures are now within 1C of the maximum
  temperature of the past million years.
• It is now very unlikely ( 10) that the world
  can avoid a potentially catastrophic mean global
  temperature increase of 2 C
• Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are now growing
  more rapidly than "business-as-usual", the most
  pessimistic of the IPCC scenarios. (Increases are
  35 higher than expected since 2000.)
• Long-term climate sensitivity may be double the
  IPCC standard (of 3C for a doubling of
  atmospheric CO2)

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Probable Impacts of a 3-4 Celsius Degree Increase
in MGT (Stern Report)

• Major declines in crop yields over entire
  regions.
• Sea level rise threatening London, Shanghai, New
  York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Cairo and areas inhabited
  by 5 of the worlds population (350,000,000
  people).
• Collapse of the Amazon rainforest.
• Collapse of the Gulf Stream (European cooling)
  and irreversible climate feedbacks, e.g., methane
  release.
• Loss of up to 40 of the worlds species.
• Loss of the worlds major glaciers shifting
  precipitation spreading deserts here, major flood
  risks there (or both).
• Major health epidemics particularly among the
  poor and the displaced.

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The Economic Driver Our Ecological Footprints

• The ecological footprint of a specified
  population is the area of land and water
  ecosystems required to produce the resources that
  the population consumes, and to assimilate the
  wastes that the population produces,wherever on
  Earth the relevant land/water may be located.

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Eco-Footprints Vary with Income

• The average per capita ecological footprints of
  residents of high-income countries range between
  four and ten hectares (10 to 25 acres).
• The residents of the poorest countries survive on
  less than half a hectare.

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Eco-Footprint (Gha/Capita)
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All countries that run eco-deficits are
dependent on surplus biocapacity (exergy)
imported from low density countries (like Canada)
and the global commons.
Gha/Cap
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Symptom Biodiversity Loss(The Competitive
Exclusion Principle)

• Growing the human enterprise necessarily degrades
  ecosystems and displaces other species from their
  habitats (biodiversity loss).
• The current rate of species extinction is
  approximately 1000 times the pre-industrial rate.
• With increasing resource scarcity, global change,
  and the morals of the new world order, the rich
  will also increasingly exclude the poor.

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Competitive Exclusion The expansion of the human
enterprise
Human Ecological Footprint1961-2003
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necessarily displaces non-humans (Vulnerable
ecosystems collapse before the human onslaught.)
Living Planet Index1970-2003
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20 of population
75 of world income
1.5 of world income
20 of population
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Social Justice and the Income Gap

• Income ratio between worlds richest and poorest
  countries in 1820 three to one. In 1998 19 to
  one.
• The richest 500 people in the world enjoy a
  combined income greater than that of the poorest
  416 million.
• The three richest people in the world had assets
  that exceeded the combined gross domestic product
  of the 48 least developed countries.
• Income disparity is increasing both between and
  within countries, including Canada.

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Symptom Eco-apartheid - Competitively Excluding
the Poor

• Eco-Apartheid is the effective segregation of
  people along environmental gradients
• With increasing resource scarcity, global change,
  and the competitive ethic of the world economic
  order, the gradient is steepening.
• Eco-apartheid is a contemporary realityThe rich
  live in the worlds healthiest, most productive
  habitats. Impoverished people and racial
  minorities are often segregated in urban slums
  and degraded landscapes characterized by toxic
  waste, polluted air and water and contaminated
  food with obvious public health implications.

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Sunrise in Suzhou What is Canadas contribution
to eco-degradation and damage to population
health in China?
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A Lesson from Collapse How Societies Choose to
Fail or Succeed (J. Diamond 2005)

• Any society contains a built-in blueprint for
  failure if elites insulate themselves from the
  ecological and social consequences of
  irresponsible decisions. (This is the pattern
  among governing elites throughout history.)
• By extracting wealth from ordinary people,
  distant countries and the global commons, they
  remain well fed while everyone else suffers the
  effects of general decline.
• The US Canada? is now a country in which elites
  increasingly cocoon themselves in gated
  communities guarded by private security patrols
  and filled with people who drink bottled water,
  depend on private pensions, and send their
  children to private schools (Moyers 2006).

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With Knowledge Comes Responsibility

• At the limits of biophysical carrying capacity,
  routine acts of non-essential consumption can
  result in violent harm to the poor and racial
  minorities.
• Wealthy consumers who are ignorant of the distant
  systemic consequences of their material habits
  might be excused. However,...
• Once we raise to collective consciousness the
  link between consumption, pollution and
  eco-violence, society has an obligation to view
  such violence for what it is.
• Not acting to reduce or prevent eco-injustice
  converts erstwhile blameless consumer choices
  into acts of positive aggression.

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Knowledge Where Were Likely Headed

• 2015 is the last year in which the world can
  afford a net rise in greenhouse gas emissions,
  after which very sharp reductions are required
  (IPCC Chairman, Sept 2007)
• 5 or more of the worlds people (350,000,000) are
  likely to be displaced from their settlements by
  sea-level rise. (Stern report, 2006).
• Up to two billion people worldwide will face
  water shortages and up to 30 per cent of plant
  and animal species would be put at risk of
  extinction if the average rise in temperature
  stabilises at 1.5C to 2.5C (IPCC, Sept 2007)

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Solution What the Science Says

• Industrialized world reductions in material
  consumption, energy use, and environmental
  degradation of over 90 will be required by 2040
  to meet the needs of a growing world population
  fairly within the planets ecological means.
  (BCSD 1993 Getting Eco-Efficient)
• To avoid a mean global temperature increase above
  2 C degrees, the world must reduce carbon
  emissions by 90 by 2050. (Tyndall Centre for
  Climate Change Research 2006)
• For sustainability with equity, North Americans
  should be taking steps to reduce their ecological
  footprints by 80 to their equitable Earth-share
  (1.8 gha).

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The Other Inconvenient Truth Eco-Footprints are
Correlated With Lifestyle
12 April 2007
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Losing weight need not be painful

• In many rich countries neither objective nor felt
  well-being are still associated with rising
  GDP/income per capita.
• On the contrary, here we see US data showing
  the strange, seemingly contradictory pattern
  of rising real income and a falling index of
  subjective well-being (Lane 2000).

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What do we Gain from GDP Growth in Rich
Countries?
(Siegel 2006)
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Wasted Wealth Diminishing Returns from Health
Care Expenditures
(Siegel 2006)
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Essential Criteria for Sustainability

• Biophysical A society is sustainable only if it
  does not
• consume resources faster than nature produces.
• produce wastes faster than nature assimilates.
• Social A lifestyle is sustainable only if it
  could be extended to the entire human family
  without degrading the ecosphere and overloading
  global life-support systems.
• Question Can the already wealthy be persuaded to
  live on smaller footprints so the poor may live
  at all?

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• The Bad News

• The Good News

• We have the technology today to enable a 75-80
  reduction in energy and (some) material
  consumption while actually improving quality of
  life.

• Yet we do not act. Privileged elites with the
  greatest stake in the status quo control the
  policy levers. Ordinary people hold to the
  expansionist myth. North American society remains
  in eco-paralysis.

The ecologically necessary is politically
infeasible but the politically feasible is
ecologically irrelevant.