The Great Disruption (35 page)

We definitely need art, and music, and disciplined, nonviolent, but very real anger. Mostly, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we've got. It's not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we're going to have to raise our voices.

McKibben is right. This is a time we need to be clear, loud, and focused in our message. What big oil and coal companies are doing is just plain wrong, and it must be stopped, urgently. The right strategy model for this is Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid. He was a leader who never once backed way from the rightness of his cause or compromised his goal, but still approached those who opposed him with humanity. This was all the more remarkable remembering that
his
enemies kept him in jail for twenty-seven years and murdered his friends and colleagues. Yet he still worked hard to reach them as human beings. We must advance our cause with determination and strength, but also with the highest integrity.

Most important, we must get on with the job. With all of us in charge, we live in the ultimate global democracy and we vote every minute of every day. We all know what we need to do. Shop less, live more. Raise chickens, and children who think. Build more community, make our lives more connected. Make good companies grow stronger, make bad companies go broke. Elect good political leaders, throw out bad ones. Roll out technologies that work and phase out those that don't.

Most of all, we need to stop waiting for someone else to fix it. There is no one else. We are the system; we have to change. Companies will respond when consumers and investors change their demands. Politicians will drive change when we make them do so.

It won't happen by itself; it will happen because people like us become part of a global movement where we all come together, in a distributed way, in small ways and big ways, to drive a change in thinking, a change in behavior, and a change in our world. Now that we're all connected, if we all act together, we'll change the system.

Will we succeed? Yes, if we decide to.

We must remember to do so, recognizing the threat but living with a lightness of heart and in the opportunity—the exciting, uplifting, civilization-shaping opportunity to make a difference greater than anyone since that ape worked out she could crack open the nut if she used the rock as a tool.

So let's do it. It is time.

Acknowledgments

When a lifetime of activity and a whole movement's history frames one's thinking, the first thing to say is that there are few original ideas in this book. It is more an amalgamation of fifty years of the concepts, ideas, and research of others. So I enthusiastically acknowledge the millions of people engaged on these issues over many decades, and I thank you all for your passion and commitment and for your love of humanity and the planet's extraordinary life force.

In this regard I particularly note Greenpeace, both as its own phenomena and as the home for thousands of courageous campaigners and their groundbreaking activism over four decades. You opened my eyes to limitless possibility as well as making me a global citizen.

I also acknowledge those who in more recent times have called the end of economic growth and have worked so hard to define how we might transition to a new approach. People such as Herman Daly and Tim Jackson, and organizations such as the New Economics Foundation, CASSE, and many others. You were right all along and your time has come.

On a personal level, there are many individuals who have steered me on my course but only a few will be named here. Jim Dixon for haranguing me over many decades on the importance of science. Peter Garrett for expressing faith and providing practical support to a young activist and for decades of friendship since. To all my friends on the Cambridge Programme, including Jonathon Porritt, Polly Courtice, Peter Willis, and others for having the courage to let a provocative, non-academic into the hallowed halls and allowing me to test and hone my thinking with such a powerful audience. To all my colleagues at Ecos and Easy Being Green, far too many to name but you know who you are and what a powerful contribution you all made to the thinking throughout this book.

To Joakim Bergman for endless encouragement and belief, through Greenpeace and life over twenty years, including a firm hand when needed. It is such rocks of friendship and support that define a life well lived. In the same vein, I thank Murray Hogarth and Rick Humphries for sharing life and debating the issues for hours—there are few ideas here that haven't been tested over beer and rugby, perhaps a uniquely Australian process of applying intellectual rigor! Go the gut.

For teaching an activist about business through providing opportunities and wise counsel, but also for your personal commitment to these issues: Jac Nasser, Bruce Blythe, Chad Holiday, Paul Tebo, Ellen Kullman, Mike Hawker, Sam Mostyn, John Pollaers, John Doumani, and countless others. And to Julie Birtles for much personal counsel and many reviews of the original “Great Disruption” letter in 2008. Your strength and passion for transformational change is a wonderful gift.

Sometimes small acts by one lead to major consequences for another. Tom Friedman, a friend and intellectual sparring partner since our walk up the mountain at Davos in 1995, wrote about the Great Disruption in his New York Times column in March 2009. That column triggered the invitation for me to write this book. So without your involvement, Tom, I doubt this book would exist. Thank you for the way you use your extraordinary leverage and brilliant writing to tirelessly push the United States and the world to act on climate, and for making the geopolitical and economic case for doing so.

Inspired by Tom's column, my editor, Peter Ginna, and my agent, Pilar Queen, both approached me. I thank you both for all your efforts to make this project happen. Peter, your confidence in my ideas and your courage to take them to the mainstream, along with your professional guidance, have been crucial and greatly appreciated.

Another who deserves special acknowledgment is Professor Jorgen Randers. I thought I had been focused on these issues for a long time until I met Jorgen—who started writing
The Limits to Growth
before I started high school. Never losing good humor or the curiosity for new ideas—and never displaying what would be understandable bitterness at being right but ignored for forty years—says a lot for your character and humanity. Your time has finally come and
The Limits to Growth
will now be recognized for its accuracy and its profound historical significance.

To Paul Ferris and Michelle Grosvenor for reviewing countless drafts and for probing and researching to provide rigor and a critical eye to my ideas and opinions. Being challenged by fearless but caring critics made this book much stronger.

Finally and most of all, to my wife and soul mate Michelle and to my life's most important outcome, my children—Callan, Asher, Jasper, Oscar, and Grace. Michelle, you know you have always been half my story; loving, pushing, propping up, and slapping down as needed. Mostly for always being there. To my little ones, some of whom are now bigger than me and all of whom soon will be. This is really for you, in every way. You will live with the consequences of our actions longer than I, and your children longer than you. I know you will do your best for them, as I have done for you. I hope and believe it will all turn out well.

Notes

CHAPTER 1: AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HURRICANE

  
1
. There is, of course, subjective judgment in defining quality of life, heavily influenced by one's own relative situation. Median world income in 2007 was $1,700. While this would seem very low to many, it is over twice the generally accepted definition of poverty at $2 per day and well above the definition of extreme poverty at $1.25 per day. So around half the world's people, or over three billion of us, live above this $1,700 per year level—more than double the defined poverty level. Another way of considering it is that as of 2009, half of the world's population was defined as “middle class” for the first time—that is, they had roughly one third of their income left for discretionary spending after basic food and shelter. I therefore choose one billion, the top third of those defined as middle class, as an estimate of the number whose lives are reasonably “comfortable” with respect to basic needs, in global terms.

CHAPTER 2: THE SCREAM—WE ARE THEIR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN

  
1
. “Scream Crash Boom” is available in full on my Web site, www.paulgilding.com.

  
2
. Henry David Thoreau,
Walking
(Rockville, Maryland: Arc Manor, 2007). and
Journal
(August 30, 1856). Available online at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau/.

  
3
. Peter Matthiessen, “Environmentalist Rachel Carson,”
Time
, March 29, 1999.

  
4
. William Darby, “Silence, Miss Carson!”
Chemical and Engineering News
40 (October 1, 1962): 60–62.

  
5
. Michael Smith, “ ‘Silence, Miss Carson!': Science, Gender, and the Reception of
Silent Spring
,”
Feminist Studies
27, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 733.

  
6
. See http://www1.umn.edu/ships/pesticides/library/monsanto1962.pdf.

  
7
. Priscilla Coit Murphy,
What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of
Silent Spring (2005), 24–25 (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).

  
8
. “The Cities: The Price of Optimism,”
Time
, August 1, 1969.

  
9
.
Newsweek
editorial, March 13, 1972.

10
. Graham Turner,
A Comparison of the “Limits to Growth” with 30 Years of Reality,
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, 2008 (Canberra, Australia: CSIRO, 2005). Available online at http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf.

11
. Ingrid Eckerman,
The Bhopal Saga—Causes and Consequences of the World's Largest Industrial Disaster
(India: Universities Press, 2005).

12
. I first heard of this phrase in 1999 when used by John Passacantando, then of Ozone Action and later of Greenpeace.

13
. Naomi Klein,
No Logo
(New York: Picador, 2002), 343.

CHAPTER 3: A VERY BIG PROBLEM

  
1
. Principle 15, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, 1992. Available online at http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm.

  
2
. Article 2, Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992. Available online at http://unfcc.int.

  
3
. Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway,
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010).

  
4
. Greenpeace International,
Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine
, 2010; see http://www.greenpeace.org/kochindustries for the full report.

  
5
. Naomi Oreskes, “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,”
Science
306, no. 5702 (December 2004): 1686, doi:10.1126/science.1103618.

  
6
. William R. L. Anderegg et al., “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
21 (June 2010), doi:10.1073/pnas.1003187107.

  
7
. These reports include those by the U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, an independent international panel set up by the University of East Anglia, and the Independent Climate Change Email Review. All concluded that the e-mails did not undermine the findings of climate science or the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists involved. The reports are available at http://www.cce-review.org; http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/SAP.

  
8
. The full reports and summaries are available online at http://www.millenniumassessment.org.

  
9
. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/17/saving-fish-stocks-cost-jobs.

10
. World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization,
The Sunken Billions: The Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform,
2008. Available at http://worldbank.com.

11
. Joshua Bishop (ed.),
TEEB—The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Report for Business,
Appendix 2.1, available at www.teebweb.org.

12
. International Energy Agency,
World Energy Outlook 2009.
Available at http://www.iea.org.

13
. The papers can be found on their Web site, www.stockholmresilience.org. See Johan Rockström et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,”
Nature
461 (September 24, 2009): 472–475.

14
. Walter K. Dodds et al., “Eutrophication of U.S. Freshwaters: Analysis of Potential Economic Damages,”
Environmental Science & Technology
43, no. 1 (2009): 12–19.

15
. Robert Costanza et al., “The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital,”
Nature
387 (May 15, 1997): 253.

16
. See www.footprintnetwork.org.

17
. WWF and Global Footprint Network,
Living Planet Report 2008
, and the National Footprint Accounts 2009 data tables, available at www.footprintnetwork.org.

CHAPTER 4: BEYOND THE LIMITS—THE GREAT DISRUPTION

  
1
. See the UN Population Division Web site for world population projections, at esa.un.org/unpp.

  
2
. Australian Treasury and Department of Climate Change and Water,
Australia's Low Pollution Future: The Economics of Climate Change Mitigation,
2008. Available at http://www.treasury.gov.au/lowpollutionfuture/.

  
3
. Dominic Wilson and Anna Stupnytska, “The N-11: More Than an Acronym,” Goldman Sachs, Global Economics Paper No. 153, 2007. Available at http://www.goldmansachs.com.

  
4
. John Hawksworth, “The World in 2050: How Big Will the Major Emerging Market Economies Get and How Can the OECD Compete?” PwC, 2006. Available at http://www.pwc.com. PwC's figures are based on purchasing power parity (PPP), where amounts are adjusted to take account of how many goods or services one unit of currency buys. For example, $1 at market exchange rates buys a lot more in China than it does in the United States and slightly less in Scandinavia than it does in the United States. PPP is a useful measure for our purposes, since it has been closely linked with consumption and thus ecosystem demands. This accounts for much of the difference between PwC's estimates and the others I have referenced, all of which were based on nominal US$.

  
5
. Stefan Giljum and Christine Polzin, “Resource Efficiency for Sustainable Growth: Global Trends and European Policy Scenarios, background paper for the UN Industrial Development Organization's
International Conference on Green Industry in Asia
(September 2009), available at http://oxford.academia.edu/ChristinePolzin/Papers/.

  
6
. Tim Jackson,
Prosperity Without Growth?
(U.K. Sustainable Development Commission, 2009), 48.

  
7
. WWF and the Global Footprint Network,
Living Planet Report 2008.

  
8
. Paul R. Ehrlich and John P. Holdren, “Impact of Population Growth,”
Science
171, no. 3977 (1971): 1212–1217.

  
9
. Gurdev S. Khush, “Green Revolution: Preparing for the 21st Century,”
Genome
42, no. 4 (1999): 646–655.

10
. National Academy of Sciences,
Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment
, Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, Climate Research Board, 1979. Available at http://www.nap.edu.

11
. David Archer, “Fate of Fossil Fuel CO
2
in Geologic Time,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
110 (2005), doi:10.1029/2004JC002625.

12
. Tim Jackson,
Prosperity Without Growth?: The Transition to a Sustainable Economy
, U.K. Sustainable Development Commission, 2009. Available from their Web site at www.sd-commission.org.uk.

CHAPTER 5: ADDICTED TO GROWTH

  
1
. John Stuart Mill,
Principles of Political Economy
, book IV, chapter 6 (1848). Available online at http://www.econlib.org.

  
2
. See, for example, Tim Jackson,
Prosperity Without Growth?: The Transition to a Sustainable Economy
, U.K. Sustainable Development Commission, 2009. Available from their Web site at www.sd-commission.org.uk.

  
3
. Unnamed caller on ABC Radio 702, Sydney, Australia.

CHAPTER 6: GLOBAL FORESHOCK—THE YEAR THAT GROWTH STOPPED

  
1
. National Snow and Ice Data Center, http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html.

  
2
. James A. Screen and Ian Simmonds, “The Central Role of Diminishing Sea Ice in Recent Arctic Temperature Amplification,”
Nature
464 (April 29, 2010): 1334–1337, doi:10.1038/nature09051.

  
3
. See http://bio-fuel-watch.blogspot.com/2010/04/large-scale-soy-farming-in-brazil.html; also see http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=biofuels-bad-for-people-and-climate.

  
4
. Lorenzo Cotula et al., “Land Grab or Development Opportunity?: Agricultural Investment and International Land Deals in Africa,” FAO, IIED, and IFAD, 2009. Available at http://www.fao.org/docrep/011/ak241e/ak241e00.htm.

  
5
. Shepared Daniel with Anuradha Mitta, “The Great Land Grab: Rush for World's Farmland Threatens Food Security of the Poor,” Oakland Institute, 2009. Available online at http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/LandGrab_final_web.pdf.

  
6
. Joachim von Braun and Ruth Meinzen-Dick, “ ‘Land Grabbing' by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries: Risks and Opportunities,” IFPRI Policy Brief 13, 2009. Available at http://www.ifpri.org/publication/land-grabbing-foreign-investors-developing-countries.

  
7
. Horand Knaup and Juliane von Mittelstaedt, “The New Colonialism: Foreign Investors Snap Up African Farmland,”
Spiegel Online International
, August 30, 2009.

CHAPTER 8: ARE WE FINISHED?

  
1
. H. Damon Matthews and Andrew J. Weaver, “Committed climate warming,”
Nature Geoscience
3 (2010): 142–143.

  
2
. This is actually a myth, but the concept is well understood in popular culture.

  
3
. The report was obtained by the
Observer
newspaper and reported on in that paper on February 22, 2004.

  
4
. Anthony Storr,
Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1990).

CHAPTER 9: WHEN THE DAM OF DENIAL BREAKS

  
1
. John A. Romley et al.,
The Impact of Air Quality on Hospital Spending
, RAND Health, 2010. Available at http://www.rand.org/pubs.

CHAPTER 10: THE ONE-DEGREE WAR

  
1
. Paul Gilding and Jorgen Randers, “The One Degree War Plan,”
Journal of Global Responsibility,
vol. 1, issue 1 (2010): 170-188. Available online at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1860356.

  
2
. H. Damon Matthews and Andrew J. Weaver, “Committed Climate Warming,”
Nature Geoscience
3 (2010): 142–143.

  
3
. Steven J. Davis, Ken Caldeira, and H. Damon Matthews, “Future CO
2
Emissions and Climate Change from Existing Energy Infrastructure,”
Science
vol 328, no. 5997 (September 2010): 1330–1333.

  
4
. Economic History Association Web site, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tassava.WWII.

  
5
. Robert G. Ferguson, “One Thousand Planes a Day: Ford, Grumman, General Motors and the Arsenal of Democracy,”
History and Technology
21 (2005): 149.

  
6
. World Resources Institute, Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, available online at http://cait.wri.org/cait.php?page=yearly (accessed May 11, 2009). These percentages are based on 2005 emissions, excluding Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry.

  
7
. We ran our assumed emission scenario (along with an IPCC “business as usual” scenario) through the C-ROADS model with the kind help of Lori Siegel. See T. Fiddaman, L. Siegel, E. Sawin, A. Jones, J. Sterman,
2009: C-ROADS Simulator Reference Guide
, Ventana Systems, Sustainability Institute, and MIT Sloan School of Management, www.climateinteractive.org.

  
8
. McKinsey & Co.,
Pathways to a Low-Carbon Economy
(2009), shows how for every year of delay, the peak atmospheric concentration of CO
2
e could be expected to be 5 ppm higher for the same level of action. Available online at http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/. Stern also argues the economic value case for “strong and early action” in Nicholas Stern,
Executive Summary, Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change
, 2006. Available online at http://www.sternreview.org.uk/.