Module 1 Introduction

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Module 1Introduction

• BCN 1582
• International Sustainable Development

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Basic Info about BCN 1582

• Meets I (International) and S (Social) General
  Education Requirements
• Required for UF BCN students
• Divided into 4 modules
• Instructors Charles Kibert
• Meets Tue (6-7) and Thu (6) in Rinker 110
• Attendance is mandatory
• Class website web.dcp.ufl.edu/ckibert
• UF Classes
• BCN 1582 International Sustainable Development
• Review Syllabus

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Why BCN 1582?

• Humankind is rapidly depleting the Earths
  resources and deteriorating its ecosystems
• The rate of depletion and destruction is
  accelerating
• The economy is predicated on cheap resources and
  cheap disposal of waste
• The value of the planets ecosystems to human
  social systems and its economy are not considered
• Question How do we change course before we
  self-destruct?
• Answer Redesign our economy and change our
  attitudes to account for the critical role the
  environment plays in all aspects of our life.

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What Should You Get Out of this Course?

• Understand the concept of sustainable development
  or sustainability
• Learn about the changes in human activities that
  are forecast in industry, communities, in
  countries around the world
• Learn about the opportunities that sustainability
  presents for the future
• Learn new terminology The Natural Step, ISO
  14000, DFE, deconstruction, carrying capacity

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The Theme

• Natural capital and resources are being rapidly
  destroyed and depleted
• Three lessons
• Factors that increase by a fixed /year have
  fixed doubling times
• The earth is essentially a closed system
• Exponentially increasing mass of humanity can
  cause planetary-scale disruptions
• The human race cannot sustain its growth and
  behavior
• Result Changed patterns or destruction

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Rule of 72

• Small changes can grow exponentially
• To get the Doubling Time (DT), given a specified
  annual growth rate, divide 72 by the annual
  growth rate or change.
• E.g. If the interest on a Certificate of Deposit
  (CD) is 6, the time it takes to double the money
  is 72/6 12 years.
• The growth rate of the earths population is
  1.7. How much time will it take before the earth
  has a population of 12 billion people?

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ANSWER
72/1.7 42.4 years ! (2043) How much time until
there are 24 billion people? Another 42.4 years!
The year 2086. And so on!
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Some Basic Things to Note

• Sustainability means ..to continue at the same
  pace or to last indefinitely.
• The question is with our current rate of resource
  depletion and environmental degradation, is the
  human species sustainable ?
• The basic issues for sustainability are
  population and consumption

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Basic World Views

• Anthropocentric
• Human centered
• Nature exists for mankind
• Substitutability
• Gaia (James Lovelock)
• Earth is a living system
• Natural systems have rights

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Sustainability Development

• What does sustain mean?
• What is development?
• How does development differ from growth?
• Is there such a thing as sustainable growth?

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Sustainable Development

• Some formal definitions
• ... is development that meets the needs of the
  present without compromising the ability of
  future generations to meet their own needs (World
  Commission on Env and Dev, 1987 -- Our Common
  Future, the Brundtland Report)
• ... is non-declining human well-being over time.
• Intergenerational justice
• Total capital stock must be non-declining
• Critical natural capital
• assimilative capacity for industrial waste
• biodiversity
• fertile soil
• Pearce.D et al., The Economics of Sustain. Dev.,
  Annu. Rev. Energy Env. 1994, 19457-74

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The Systems
Natural (N)
Social (S)
Economic (E)
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Systems Character - ProtoSustainable
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Systems Character - Economics Driven
E
S
N
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True Systems Character
N
S
E
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Back to the Basic Problem

• Population and consumption are making life
  unsustainable
• The IPAT formula (from Paul Ehrlich)
  
  ImpactPopulation x
  Affluence x Technology people x
  materials/person x impact/materials

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Consumption Worldwide
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Human Impacts on Natural Systems

• Depletion
• Soil, non-renewable resources
• Destruction
• Biodiversity, renewable resources, waste
  assimilative capacity, ozone layer
• Appropriation
• Net Primary Production (NPP), fresh water
• Modification
• Agriculture, extractive industries, built
  environment
• Pollution and Toxification
• Water, air, land

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Critical Environmental Problems

• Loss of Biodiversity
• Polluted Air and Water
• Destruction of Productive Ecosystems
• Loss of Productive Soil
• Greenhouse Warming
• Ozone Depletion

Summary Loss of Critical Natural Capital
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What is capital?

• Historically, it is money, machinery, buildings
• Other important forms
• Human capital
• Natural capital
• Critical Natural Capital
• Side note all the stuff of the human economy
  is produced by natural systems or extracted from
  the earth.
• Question What does this imply for the future?

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Worth of Ecosystem

• Costanza et al 1997, The value of the worlds
  ecosytem goods and services, Nature,
  387253-260.
• Pollination, Raw Materials Production, Water
  Supply, Waste Recycling Pollution Control,
  Recreation Education, Climate and Atmosphere
  Regulation, Soil Formation and Erosion Control,
  Control of Pests Diseases
• Value of services US16 to US54 trillion
• World GNP US18 trillion
• Ecosystem-to-GNP ratio 1.8

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Services Provided by Natural Systems

• Air quality enhancement
• Soils for food, wood, paper production
• Ambient temperature enhancement
• Dampening flood peaks
• Filtering/recharging groundwater
• Erosion control
• Renewable energy
• Pollination
• Evaportranspiration

• Food and water for wildlife
• Pest control
• Recreation and tourism
• Grazing for domesticated animals
• Noise barriers and separation
• Natural fires
• Carbon, energy, water storage
• Hazard reduction

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Exhaustion of Natural Resources

• Rainforest loss 1 acre per second
• Annual temperate forest loss 4 million hectares
  (Siberia), 1 million hectares (Canada)
• Forests 40 (1,000 years ago) 30 (1900) 20
  (today)
• Loss of 20 of all species by 2030
• Grain production 465 MT (1987) 229 MT (1996)
• Fisheries 22 MT (1950) 100 MT (1987) 90 MT
  (1995)
• Movement of more material than natural forces
• Loss of 24 billion tons of topsoil annually

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Oil Crisis 1974
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Resource Consumption Patterns
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Hubberts Pimple - Oil Consumption
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Correlation CO2 and Temperature
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CO2 Concentration vs. Time
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Contributions to Global Warming
Gas Percent Contribution Carbon
Dioxide 50 Methane 19 CFCs 17 Tropos
pheric Ozone 8 Nitrous Oxide 4
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Measures of Welfare

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
• Gross National Product (GNP)
• Measure all throughput in the economy
• But also count
• Exxon Valdez accident
• Depletion of forests
• Environmental disasters
• Human misery

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Alternative Measures of Welfare

• Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW)
• Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)
• Human Development Index (HDI)

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Human Development Index

• Created by the United Nations Development Program
  (UNDP)
• A composite of three indicators
• Longevity life expectancy
• Knowledge literacy, years of schooling
• Standard of Living purchasing power based on
  GDP/capita

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Genuine Progress Indicator

• Developed by non-profit Redefining Progress
• Starts with real personal consumption, adjusts
  for income distribution
• Subtracts
• Crime Divorce
• Resource depletion
• Environmental Damage
• Income Distribution
• Pollution
• Lifespan of durable goods public infrastructure
• Dependence on foreign assets
• Adds
• Value of household work and parenting
• Value of volunteer work

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A New Economy for a New Century

• At the start of the 21st Century
• Human population is 4x greater than in 1900
• World economy is 17x larger
• CO2 concentrations at highest level in 160,000
  years
• Western economic model is in trouble
• Fossil-fuel based
• Automobile-centered
• Throwaway approach
• Shift to an environmentally sustainable economy
  is needed, as profound a change as the Industrial
  Revolution of the late 18th Century

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Bursts of Change

• First Development of technology sped up 40,000
  years ago tools for hunting, cooking, other
  essential tasks, population of 4,000,000
• Second Fertile Crescent, 10,000 years ago
  transformation of agriculture, sophisticated
  tools and social structures, emergence of towns
  and cities
• Population jumps 27,000,000 in 2,000 BC, 100
  million at start of Christian era, 350 million in
  1000 AD
• Third Industrial Revolution in 18th Century
  Population reaches 1 billion in 1825

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Changes since Start of 20th Century

• Oil
• 1900 a few thousand barrels/day
• 1997 72 million barrels/day
• Metals
• 1900 20 million tons/year
• 1999 1.2 billion tons/year
• Plastic
• 1900 none
• 1999 281 million tons/year
• Paper sixfold increase 1950-1996 (281 million
  tons)

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Mobility, Computers, Communications

• Automobiles
• 1900 a few thousand
• 1999 501 million
• Aircraft
• 1903 Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk
• Today 400 passenger jumbo jets
• Computers
• 1946 first digital computer
• Today 700 Mhz PCs and supercomputers
• Internet
• 376,000 host computers (1990) to 30 million
  (1998)
• Telephones
• 89 million (1960) to 741 million (1996)
• Cell phones 10 million (1990) to 500 million
  (2004)

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The Dark Side

• 29 new diseases in the last 25 years Lyme
  disease, the Ebola virus, HIV, Hanta virus
• Cities with 1 million people
• 1900 16
• 1999 326, 14 megacities with more than 10
  million people
• Wars
• WWI 26 million dead
• WWII 53 million dead

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The Shape of a New Economy

• Some rules
• Fish harvest does not exceed yield of fisheries
• Water extracted from aquifers does not exceed
  recharge rate
• Soil erosion does not exceed new soil formation
• Tree cutting does not exceed tree planting
• Carbon emissions do not exceed capacity of nature
  to fix atmospheric CO2
• Animal and plant species are not destroyed faster
  than they evolve
• Fossil fuel economy replaced with solar economy
• Wind energy (7 of electricity in Denmark)
• Three U.S. states (N. Dakota, S. Dakota, and
  Texas) have enough wind power to supply U.S.
  electricity!

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• Renewable Energy growth rates
• PV 17/year
• Wind 26/year
• Transport
• 1969 23 million cars/yr 25 million bikes/yr
• 1999 37 million cars/yr 105 million bikes/yr
• Materials
• Get rid of throwaway attitudes (1 million
  lbs/yr/American
• Design everything for recycle and reuse Design
  for the Environment (DFE)
• Factor 4 and Factor 10
• Products of Service
• Extended Producer Responsibility
• Changes in taxation policy

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Questions about Technology

• Can technology, which has extended human reach,
  also liberate the environment from human impact?
• Can technology decouple our goods and services
  from demands on planetary resources?
• Can technology do the following to the economy?
• deenergize
• dematerialize
• decarbonize
• Are the net impacts of technology positive or
  negative?

Technology is applied science or engineering.
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When was the Golden Age?

• 1963 US and USSR signed the Limited Test Ban
  Treaty, 400 nuclear explosions in atmosphere
• 1945 much of European forests cut for fuel
• 1920 coal provided 3/4 of world energy, choking
  smog around London and Pittsburgh
• 1870 booming Industrial Revolution, no filters
• 1839 Drake drew first petroleum from
  underground pool in Pennsylvania, tens of
  thousands of sperm whales slaughtered for 3
  million gallons of sperm oil
• 1840s land-hungry farmers decimating forests and
  native grasses in US and Argentina
• 1830s cholera epidemics decimated populations
  that dumped wastes in nearby streams

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• 1700 100,000 mills interrupted the flow of every
  stream in France
• 1600s dense forests in Brazil and Caribbean
  converted to sugar cane production
• 1492 Columbus stimulates reverse reciprocal
  transatlantic invasions of flora and fauna
• 10th century people in cold climates center
  lives around fireplaces with louvered roofs to
  carry out smoke (and heat!)
• 55 B.C. Julius Caesar invades Britain and
  finds less forest than is there today
• Homer to Alexander forest of Eastern
  Mediterranean cleared
• Prehistory hunters decimate wild creatures, 13
  tons of firewood needed for plaster for walls and
  floors of a house

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What are Constructions Impacts?

• Construction is about 8 of U.S. GDP
• 40 of all extracted materials go into the built
  environment
• 90 of all materials ever extracted are in the
  built environment
• Construction waste 1 lb/ ft2 Renovation waste
  70 lb /ft2
• Total construction and demolition (CD) waste
  135 million tons (U.S.) compared to 270 million
  tons Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)
• 30 of all U.S. energy consumed by built
  environment
• 40 of all U.S. energy consumed by transportation

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Conclusions

• Population and consumption are rapidly depleting
  natural resources and destroying ecosystems
• The economy and human activities are
  hyperwasteful and inefficient
• When will the system break?
• How do we change it before it does?