Consumerism and the climate crisis threaten a fair future for humanity, report says
All of humanity could share a prosperous, fair future, but the space for development is rapidly shrinking under pressure from a wealthy minority of ultra-consumers. a groundbreaking study has shown.
Increasing environmental degradation and climate instability have pushed Earth beyond a set of safe planetary boundaries, the Earth Commission authors say, but it is still possible to create a “safe and just space” that allows everyone to flourish.
This utopian outcome would depend on a radical transformation of global politics, economics and society to ensure a fairer distribution of resources, a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, and the widespread adoption of low-carbon, sustainable technologies and lifestyles.
That would likely mean setting limits on excessive consumption and using taxes to tackle inequality and generate revenue for investment in technology and infrastructure.
The scale of the change required will alarm many governments, one of the lead authors acknowledged. “It’s not going to be welcomed right away. To some extent it’s scary, but it shows that there’s still room for people and other species,” said Joyeeta Gupta, a former co-chair of the Earth Commission and a professor of environment and development in the global south at the University of Amsterdam.
The paper is a 62-page “thought experiment” by an international team of 65 natural and social scientists that attempts to map out how the Earth’s 7.9 billion people can stay within safe planetary boundaries while having access to the necessary amounts of food, water, energy, shelter and transportation. It then predicts how this might change by 2050, when the population is expected to reach 9.7 billion.
Published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health on Wednesday, the paper first establishes a fairness floor of basic daily living standards – defined as 2,500 calories of food, 100 liters of water and 0.7 kWh of electricity, along with a living space of 15 square meters and annual transportation of 4,500 km (2,800 miles). They then calculated how much space there was between this and a safety ceiling – defined by planetary boundaries – that estimates how much humanity can push the climate, ecosystems, nutrients, and phosphorus and water resources without destabilizing Earth’s systems.
The results showed that under current highly unequal, fossil-fuel-intensive social and environmental conditions, it is now impossible for all people to live healthy lives within this “safe and just corridor.” That’s underscored by previous studies showing that seven of the eight planetary boundaries have already been crossed.
The poor are disproportionately affected. The paper identifies locations around the world where populations are most vulnerable to climate change harm, biodiversity loss, pollution and water shortages. These include India, where around 1 billion people live on degraded land; Indonesia, where 194 million people are exposed to unsafe levels of nitrogen; and Brazil, where 79 million people are exposed to unsafe and unjust levels of air pollution. In China, India and Pakistan, more than 200 million people are also exposed to dangerously high wet-bulb temperatures, with global climate warming of between 1C and 2C above pre-industrial levels.
This could have been avoided. The study says that a safe and just space is still theoretically possible today by reducing resource use by the top 15% of emitters and rapidly adopting renewable energy and other sustainable technologies.
The longer changes are postponed, the greater the challenge in the years ahead, particularly with regard to the climate. “If significant changes are not made now, there will be no safe and just space left by 2050. This means that even if everyone on the planet had access to only the resources needed for a basic standard of living in 2050, the Earth will still be outside the climate boundary,” the report warns.
“The ceiling is so low and the floor is so high that you can’t even crawl through that space,” said Johan Rockström, co-chair of the Earth Commission and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He said the “shocking” result should be used as a stimulus for urgent recovery measures.
Greater equality is a key component of the report’s proposed solutions. “By limiting what is possible for some, possibilities are opened up for others,” the report says. The report notes that individuals in economic systems that prioritize public health, equality, and democracy tend to have lower levels of consumption. By limiting demand, the report estimates that emissions could be reduced by 40-80% and that a largely positive effort would be made for human well-being.
Attention is paid to how these goals can be achieved, through measures such as progressive and enforceable taxes, gradual commodity prices, spatial planning, green technologies and subsidies for sustainable products.
The article emphasizes that the best chance for short-term change lies at the city and corporate level, which tend to be more agile than national governments and less dependent on vested corporate interests. But in the longer term, they cite the UN Secretary-General’s calls for a global solidarity pact and reform of the UN into a more effective regulatory body for earth governance that would quantify minimum rights to access resources and develop safe and equitable guidelines.
The authors said that the current global situation of rising inequality and increasing nationalist politics may not seem conducive to achieving the just and safe plan they set out, but governments can change and so can public opinion – especially at a time of increasing climate stress.
“That’s why this science is important to remind everyone that you have to take justice seriously, because otherwise it will backfire in terms of social instability, migration and conflict. If you are a patriot who wants to reduce migration flows, then you better take global justice seriously,” Rockström said. “Justice is an integral part of security – and security is an integral part of justice.”