According to WWF International Director-General James Leape,
“The world is currently struggling with the consequences of over-valuing its financial assets, but a more fundamental crisis looms ahead -- an ecological credit crunch caused by under-valuing the environmental assets that are the basis of all life and prosperity.”
But is there something even more fundamental than our "environmental" assets? Are environmental assets really the basis of "all life and prosperity"? Chris Clugston would argue not. He is the architect of "Societal Overextension Analysis" (SOA), which he describes as an analytical construction built upon the foundation of Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) developed by Dr. William Rees and Mathias Wackernagel. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46892
Certainly, without the more than $33 trillion of biodiversity "services" that Mother Nature provides us free of charge, we would not survive as a species. No economic system, capitalist or socialist, industrial or agrarian, could endure without them either. Sound fiscal management, social justice, gender and racial equality and human rights, are trivial pursuits if biodiversity collapses. But we live in an industrial society, and such a society depends upon the affordable extraction of a rapidly dwindling inventory of non-renewable resources (NNRs). Even if the transition to green technologies proves practicable and politically possible, that transition still assumes their availability, and presently, such technologies, upon closer scrutiny, promise to generate only a fraction of our current energy requirements. Rigorous conservation would not close the gap.
So any tool, like Ecological Footprint Analysis, that does not take this into account , fails as an adequate measurement of overshoot. This does not mean that it should be discarded. We need an index of bio-capacity. But we also need an index of our reserves of non-renewable resources, and an understanding of what demands our present resource utilization behaviour will make upon them. It is not just about diminishing oil reserves, but of all non-renewables, all metals and minerals that underpin our industrial economy. It must be remembered that we are constrained not by the total stock of all non-renewable resources economically available, but by the scarcest resource critical to our economy that will be the first to be exhausted. (Liebig's Law). We are only as strong as our weakest link. It will take only a small stone to bring this industrial goliath down.
The collapse of the financial system, which seems more imminent than any other crisis, may in fact prove a blessing in disguise. It may inhibit growth in the same way that the global recession has, only much more so. But the industrial economy, while on its knees, will still be alive for a comeback. The pace of resource exhaustion may be lessened, but the process of exhaustion and expansion will still be in place. We will still be headed toward the cliff, even if we get there a little later. At some point, the competition for scarce resources will get more desperate, and biodiversity will be the first casualty. Biological, chemical or nuclear war, global or localized, may quite possibly follow. We are in deep trouble, but peril comes in many guises and attacks from too many angles to comprehend with any vision impairment.
We cannot afford to examine our crisis with one eye. We need binocular vision. We need both Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) and Societal Overextension Analysis (SOA). Bound together they would provide a panoramic view of sustainability.
It is as if two colour-blind men, Dr. William Rees and Chris Clugston, are attempting to draw a portrait of a room. One sees only greens and blues, while the other sees only reds and yellows. We need both descriptions. Only from this holistic perspective can we get a better handle on our predicament. We have to have an accurate measure of our carrying capacity. What are the trade-offs? How many people consuming at what level will allow our species to survive? The answer will not depend solely on the "bio-productive" areas needed to sustain a given lifestyle for a given number of people or assimilate their waste, but on the first brick wall of a non-renewable resource shortage that we will hit.
It is not a question of whether, but a question of when and how catastrophe will occur. Denial is not a sustainable form of optimism. Growthist cornucopians, green pollyannas and technology fantasists have no place in the discussion. If John Smith was a reckless captain, our Titanic will sink just as surely if Tony Robbins or Dr.Tomorrow is at the helm. We are going down, so lets just make sure that we don't add any more passengers along the way---especially the rich ones with big appetites. And lets find a captain with binoculars---preferably not someone under company orders to plough full-steam ahead or a soft green bastard child of Buck Rogers and Mary Poppins.
Tim Murray
2010-04-04
For an understanding of EFA, study the Living Planet Report of 2008 http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report
For a better understanding of SOA, go to: http://www.wakeupamerika.com/papers-and-essays.html
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