Environmental, Social and Economic Challenges to Sustainability

1
Environmental, Social and Economic Challenges to
Sustainability

• OR
• The Litany of Problems
• Their solutions as desired ends

2
Announcements

• Grading
• Submitting PS 2

3
The Issues

• Human capital
• Population growth
• Natural capital
• Resource use
• Waste emissions
• Social capital and distribution
• Built and financial capital
• Well being

4
Exponential Growth
5
Exponential growth human populations
6
Exponential growth moderated
7
Exponential growth resource use
Past 100 years population increase 4X
resource consumption 36X
8
Exponential Growth of Any Kind is Unsustainable

• Lessons from Curitiba?
• Lessons from Kerala?

9
Fossil Fuels
10
The Hubbert curve-discovery
11
The Hubbert curve-production
12
Waste Emissions
13
Lessons from Kerala and Curitiba?
14
Renewable resources
15
Renewables

• Source
• Depletion of raw materials
• Water, Soil
• Services
• Loss of ecosystem functions
• Climate stability, ozone layer
• Sink
• Loss of waste absorption capacity

16
Renewable resources
17
Renewables
18
Ecological footprint
19
Lessons?
20
The Myth of Upward Mobility?

• Is Horatio Algier Dead?
• 1930s-40s The great compression
• 1973-2000, CBO data Average real income of
  bottom 90 fell by 7, income of top .01 rose by
  599
• Business Week 2003 Waking Up from the American
  Dream Meritocracy and Equal Opportunity Are
  Fading Fasteconomy slowly stratifying along
  class lines
• University of Chicago economics professor and
  Nobel laureate James J. Heckman "the big finding
  in recent years is that the notion of America
  being a highly mobile society isn't as true as it
  used to be."
• Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economists the
  number of people who stayed stuck in the same
  income bracket -- be it at the bottom or at the
  top -- over the course of a decade actually
  increased in the 1990s.

21
Can we grow our way out of poverty?

• Real GNP doubles every generation
• Poverty declined through most of US history,
  until 1970s

22
How much growth would it take?
23
Income vs. Capital

• How much can we consume this year, and still have
  just as much to consume next year?
• Are we consuming income or capital?
• Strong vs. weak sustainability does the
  accumulation of some capitals compensate for the
  loss of others?

24
Savings rate and capital accumulation personal
25
Savings rate and capital accumulation national
26
(No Transcript)
27
Federal deficit
28
(No Transcript)
29
If were using up the Earths resources, arent
we obligated to be happy at the very least?
30
Is This Generation Better Off than the Last?

• Subjective Happiness
• ISEW

31
ISEW
32
Conclusion