Why Homo sapiens Is Inherently Unsustainable and what to do about it

1
Why Homo sapiens Is Inherently Unsustainable
(and what to do about it)

• Faculty Seminar Series
• William E. Rees, PhD
• UBC School of Community and Regional Planning

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SustainabilityDo We Understand the Problem?

• .no amount of ethical axiology, or legal,
  policy, and technological engineering, is going
  to solve problems that are misunderstood
  (Drengson 1989).

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Premise Humans now partially direct their own
evolution

• Human evolution is now as much determined by
  socio-cultural factors as by biological factors.
  However,
• The dividing line between nature and culture
  is not always clear. For example, human social
  behaviour has a biological basis. Moreover
• Both cultural and biologicalmutations are
  subject to natural selection. That is
• Maladaptive cultural traits and cultures can be
  selected out.

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Hypothesis Industrial society is inherently
unsustainable

• Unsustainability is an emergent property of the
  systemic interaction between techno-industrial
  society and the ecosphere.
• The seeds of this ecological and social
  unsustainability spring from the very nature of
  Homo sapiens. That is
• A predisposition for unsustainability is encoded
  in human physiology, social organization and
  behavioural ecology.

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Homo sapiens, heal thyself

• Man will become better only when you make him
  see what he is like.(Chekov, 1860-1904)

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Coming to Know Who We Are

• Like other species, H. sapiens is endowed with
  specific attributes, predispositions, and
  abilities. We have used these to our competitive
  advantage in the evolutionary in ways that were
  conducive to our own sustenance, reproduction and
  survival. With industrial society an historically
  adaptive strategy has become dysfunctional, even
  pathological.
• Unless we confront the idea, however dangerous,
  of our human nature and species being and get
  some understanding of them, we cannot know what
  it is we might be alienated from or what
  emancipation might mean (Harvey 2000).

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The Behavioural Factor Our Capacity for
Self-Delusion

• The human mind evolved to believe in gods
  Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great
  advantage throughout history, when the brain was
  evolving (E. O. Wilson).

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The Benign Side Necessary Cultural Myths

• Myths should be seen not as mistaken views but
  as comprehensive visions that give shape and
  direction to life. So interpreted, myths move
  from being dispensable misunderstandings to
  essential categories that we all take for
  granted (Grant 1998).

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Science as Plastic Myth

• Scientific theories are distinguished from myths
  merely in being criticizable, and in being open
  to modifications in the light of criticism.
  (Sir Karl Popper).

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The Perverse Side Deep Denial in the Service of
Evil

• For us to maintain our way of living, we must
  tell lies to each other, and especially to
  ourselves the lies act as barriers to truth.
  These barriers are necessary because without
  them many deplorable acts would become
  impossibilities (D. Jensen 2000).

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Avoiding Reality

• We have all by out actions or lack of themin
  particular over the last quarter-centuryagreed
  to deny reality.
• If we are unable to identify reality and
  therefore unable to act upon what we see, then we
  are not simply childish but have reduced
  ourselves to figures of funridiculous figures of
  our unconscious (J. Ralston Saul 1995).

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Our (Unsustainable) Contemporary Economic Myth

• Virtually all international agencies and national
  governments share a comprehensive vision of
  global development centered on unlimited economic
  expansion, fuelled by more liberalized trade.
• At the heart of this vision is the belief that
  human welfare can be all but equated with
  ever-expanding material well-being.
• This contemporary myth has been the principal
  force giving shape and direction to political and
  civil life in both high-income and so-called
  developing countries on every continent since the
  late1970s.

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Cartesian Dualism(Todays dominant cultural myth
sees economy and environment as all but
separate systems.)
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The Expansionist Vision(weak sustainability
through techno-substitution)

• If it is very easy to substitute other factors
  for natural resources, then the world can, in
  effect, get along without natural resources, so
  exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe
  (R. Solow 1973).
• Technology exists now to produce in virtually
  inexhaustible quantities just about all the
  products made by nature, and We have in our
  hands now the technology to feed, clothe, and
  supply energy to an ever-growing population for
  the next seven billion years (J. Simon 1995).

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The Blindness of the Self-Deceived

• Like other social value programs, the doctrine
  of the global free market itself does not
  recognize its ideology as ideology, but rather
  conceives of its prescriptions as
  post-ideological recognition of law-like truth
  (original emphasis).
• The truth of the global market order is believed
  to be final and eternal, the end of history.
  Its rule is declared inevitable. Its axioms are
  conceived as iron laws. Societies that dare to
  evade its stern requirements are threatened with
  harsh punishments and shock treatments(McMurt
  ry 1998)

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Flawed Assumptions of General Competitive
EquilibriumToday the general equilibrium model
is a basic part of the professional economists
tool bag, and one that is increasingly used.

• A free-market competitive equilibrium is
  efficient - i.e., demand equals supply in every
  market all resources are fully utilized.
• No individual or firm can be made better off by
  altering the allocation of resources in any way,
  without making someone worse off (Pareto
  optimality). I.e, government intervention in the
  public interest is inefficient. But all this
  depends on
• Diminishing marginal returns in consumption and
  production
• Perfect competition among a hyper-infinite
  continuum of traders, all with perfect knowledge
  of all present and future markets
• An infinite number of future marketsand all
  these additional assumptions are clearly false.

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Too Frail a Vessel in which to Float the New
World Order?

• there appear to be so many violations of the
  conditions under which competitive equilibrium
  exists that it is hard to see why the concept
  survives, except for the vested interests of the
  economics profession and the link between
  prevailing political ideology and the conclusions
  which the theory of general equilibrium
  provides.(Ormorod, P. 1994. The Death of
  Economics)

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The State of Economics in the U.S. (1) (James K.
Galbraith on the year 2000 meeting of the AEA)

• The great issues of economic policy -- inflation
  and unemployment, growth and stabilization, the
  governments budget, inequalities of income and
  wealth -- were missing.
• In short, what was most conspicuously missing
  was any actual discussion of economic ideas.
• (Galbraith, J.K. How the Economists Got it
  Wrong. The American Prospect 11, No.7, Feb. 2000)

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The State of Economics in the U.S. (2)

• So what is modern economics about? It seems to be
  mainly about itself. The AEA meets to celebrate
  the importance of its members, their presence in
  high positions, (etc.)
• But self-absorption and consistent policy error
  are just two of the endemic problems The deeper
  problem is the nearly complete collapse of
  prevailing economic theory so complete, so
  pervasive, that the profession can only deny it
  by refusing to discuss theoretical questions
• (Galbraith, J.K. How the Economists Got it
  Wrong. The American Prospect 11, No.7, Feb. 2000)

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Economism Perverts Sound Economicsand Undermines
Sustainability

• Globally, the marginal (ecological and social)
  costs of growth may already exceed the marginal
  benefits.
• If so, the world is currently promoting
  uneconomic growth - growth that impoverishes.
• In many rich countries today, there is no
  objective or felt improvement in well-being
  associated with rising GDP/incomes per capita.

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Money Doesnt Buy Happiness

• In many rich countries today, there is no
  objective or felt improvement in well-being
  associated with rising GDP/incomes per capita.
• Here we see the strange, seemingly
  contradictory pattern in the United States of
  rising real income and a falling index of
  subjective well-being (people report-ing
  themselves as very happy) (Lane 2000).

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Neo-Liberal EconomicsThe Bain of
Eco-SustainabilityNeoclassical models do not
incorporate any information about actual
ecosystems structure (R. U. Ayres, et al.).

• Neoclassical economics (e.g., the circular flows
  model) lacks any representation of the material,
  energy sources, physical structures, and
  time-dependent processes that are basic to
  ecosystems.
• The implied simple, reversible, mechanistic
  behavior of the economy is inconsistent with the
  connectivity, irreversibility, and positive
  feedback dynamics of complex energy, information,
  and eco-systems, the systems with which the
  economy interacts in the real world
  (P.Christenson 1991).

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Living the Myth The Economy Grows

• Economy triples in size since 1980
• Additional five-fold expansion of GWP anticipated
  by 2050
• The human population has increased by 30 since
  1980 and is growing at 80 million per year
• Three to four billion more people will be added
  by 2050.

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The Ecosphere Implodes

• Half the worlds forests have been logged or
  converted and half the worlds wetlands lost
• Half the land on earth modified for human use
• 70 of major fish-stocks in jeopardy
• Carbon dioxide up by 30 in a century
• Biodiversity loss accelerating, now1000 times the
  background rate. (Twenty-four percent of
  mammals, 30 of fish, 25 of reptiles, 12 of
  birds are at risk of extinction).

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Ecological Holism
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Nested Dissipative Structures

• Both the ecosphere and the economy are
  self-producing, far-from-equilibrium dissipative
  structures. However, the economy is a
  wholly-contained subsystem of the ecosphere.
• The ecosphere evolves and maintains itself by
  dissipating exogenous solar energy.
• The economy grows and maintains itself by
  dissipating the ecosphere. In short,
• The human enterprise is thermodynamically
  positioned to consume the ecosphere from within.

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An Evolutionary DriverThe Maximum Power
Principle

• the struggle for life is a struggle for free
  energy available for work (Bolzman 1905)
• Systems that prevail (i.e., successful systems)
  are systems that evolve to maximize their use of
  the energy and material resources available to
  them (Lotka 1922).

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The Human System Prevails

• Human appropriations from the ecosphere must
  satisfy both their bio-metabolism and their
  expanding industrial metabolism.
• Modern high-income consumers are the entropic
  equivalent of 100-200 pre-agricultural
  hunter-gatherers.

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The human enterprise has expanded relentlessly
because of competitive superiority

• Humans display a uniquely broad and ever-widening
  food niche which extends from nearly pure
  carnivory to obligate herbivory.
• Humans are uniquely adaptive which enables our
  species to exploit virtually all the ecosystems
  and environments on Earth.
• Humans have complex language. Therefore
• Human knowledge and technology are cumulative.

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The human enterprise expands by

• Displacing other species from their niches
  (bison in North America thousands of species in
  Indonesias recent forest fires).
• Eliminating the competition (seals from
  fisheries wolves from ungulates insects from
  crops).
• Depleting both self-producing and non-renewable
  natural capital stocks(other species
  populations forests ground water
  hydrocarbons).

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The expansion of the human enterprise
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necessarily depletes nature
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The Competitive Exclusion Principle

• In accord with maximum power, human
  evolutionary success is associated with
  ever-growing appropriations of energy and
  low-entropy material flows from nature.
• Energy and material appropriated from global
  totals for consumption/dissipation by humans are
  irreversibly unavailable to other consumer
  species. Or
• What we get, they dont.
• 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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The Hidden AgendaDefending the Indefensible

• We have about 50 of the world's wealth, but
  only 6 of its population... In this situation,
  we cannot fail to be the object of envy and
  resentment.  Our real task is to maintain this
  position of disparity without detriment to our
  national security (emphasis added).  To do so, we
  will have to dispense with all sentimentality and
  daydreaming.  We should cease to talk about vague
  and unreal objectives such as human rights, the
  raising of living standards, and democratization.
   The day is not far off when we are going to have
  to deal in straight power concepts.  The less we
  are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better
• (Cold War global strategist and Presidential
  Foreign Policy Advisor, George F. Kennan,
  Presidential Policy Statement 23 TOP SECRET
  1948)

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The Visible Program

• Economist J.W. Smith observes that the terms of
  trade and of the structural adjustment programs
  forced upon Third World countries, are exactly
  opposite to the policies under which the wealthy
  nations developed.
• This tells us that the power brokers of the
  developed countries know exactly what they are
  doing. Their grand strategy is to impose unequal
  trades upon the world so as to lay claim to the
  natural wealth and the labors of the weak
  nations (J.W. Smith.Economic Democracy The
  Political Struggle of the 21st Century, Chap. 10
  2000).

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Who is Financing Whose Development?

• While developed countries claim to be financing
  the developing countries, the poor countries are
  actually financing the rich through low pay for
  equally productive labor, investment in commodity
  production for the wealthy world, and other
  dimensions of unequal trade.
• In the 1960s only three dollars flowed North
  for every dollar flowing South by the late
  1990s, the ratio was seven to one.

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Wealth Distribution Today

• In 1970 the richest 10 of the worlds citizens
  earned 19 times as much as the poorest 10. By
  1997, the ratio had increased to 271.
• In 1997, the wealthiest 1 of the worlds people
  commanded the same income as the poorest 57.
• Just 25 million rich Americans (.4 of the
  worlds people) had a combined income greater
  than that of the poorest 2 billion people (43 of
  the world population).
• (Income ratios reflect purchasing power parity
  data from UNDP 2001)

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Yet the Media Play the Myth

• These protesters have no coherent idea of what
  they are after there is talk of a better shake
  for the worlds poor, yet the demonstrators
  appear to be against the only thing giving the
  worlds poorest nations any hope at all
  continued economic growth, led by import-happy
  Americans whose purchases help put food on the
  table from Bolivia to Bangladesh.
• That is why, young and handsome as these
  protesters so often are, it is important to crush
  themfiguratively of courseif they wont go home
  and find some other means of exorcising their
  great guilt at their own good fortune.(Daniel
  Akst, NY times, 8/5/01)

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The Challenge Is Homo sapiens Really a Rational
Species?

• The rise and fall of cultures has always been
  primarily determined by the tides of human
  passion, not by the ebb and flow of reason.
• only a small fraction of the population is
  consistently capable of applying the most basic
  rules of evidence to emotionally-derived or
  emotionally-loaded information.
• peoples widespread tendency to suspend
  disbelief ensures that those who covet leadership
  and political prestige will act as if unaware of
  the avalanche of data signaling ecospheric
  distress (Morrison, 1999).

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Is there a solution?

• The solution to (un)sustainability lies in
  exercising a quality that, more than any other,
  distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species,
  the capacity for self-awareness and for rational
  thought.
• To survive, humans must consciously override now
  maladaptive genetically-based behavioural
  tendencies (e.g., competitive individualism and
  tribalism) that can lead only to civil strife,
  war and ecological destruction in favour of
  adaptive predispositions (e.g., international
  cooperation) that might ensure mutual survival.
• We must seize control of our destiny. Success in
  this endeavour would herald the next stage in
  human evolution, the dominance of the intellect
  over both genetic predisposition and cultural
  myth.

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Ecological (Maximum) Power Politics

• ...so long as ecological decline is seen as
  temporary, advantaged groups are likely to accept
  policies of relief and redistribution as the
  price of order and the resumption of growth. Once
  it is accepted as a persisting condition,
  however, they will increasingly exert economic
  and political power to regain their absolute and
  relative advantages(Ted Gurr 1985).