Running on fumes
Also from the Wuppertal Institute, Stefan Bringezu is an expert in material flows and waste management. Bringezu says that one of the EU's main long-term (over 25 years) resource strategy objectives is to decouple GDP from resource use, and in turn to decouple resource use from environmental impacts. He states that raw consumption numbers are significantly lower than numbers reflecting the actual extraction of resources related to consumption. For example, per capita European consumption is 20 tonnes per year, while per capita resource extraction for what is consumed amounts to 50 tonnes per year. Total resource extraction could actually grow by a factor of four by 2050, Bringezu cautions, underlining his concern that extraction is leading to "continuous and irreversible changing of the Earth's surface."
Brigezu also argues that biomass and agrofuels are not ideal alternatives. "Growing global demand cannot be counteracted by merely shifting from minerals to biomass without reducing levels of consumption," he says. Some factors to consider, according to Bringezu, are: switching land use from food crop production to fuel crop production (even in countries where large swathes of the population lack enough to eat); loss of species diversity (due largely to monoculture farming); and actually increasing greenhouse gases (due to clearing of forests, savannahs, etc.). The Wuppertal scientist points out that the amount of grain needed to produce 60 litres of fuel could feed one individual for an entire year.
Ashok Koshla is founder and president of New Delhi-based Development Alternatives, an enterprise that has moved beyond rhetoric and is actually producing materials for sustainable living. Koshla, appalled by the world's economic disparities, points out that roughly 60 percent of the world's people "lead pretty miserable lives." He adds that 1.3 billion people are without clean drinking water, and that this figure is likely an underestimate. He juxtaposes this sad fact with the claim that, on average, 20 tonnes of earth is removed to produce a 20-ounce gold ring.
Acknowledging that there are "limits to growth," Koshla stresses that social justice, livelihoods, basic needs and environmental safety are all of equal importance in any sustainable development strategy. He posits three fundamental choices facing humanity. The first is business-as-usual/copycat approach, which involves no real change of approach and has disastrous consequences but is nonetheless favoured by global corporations and is a generally "easy sell." A second option is the factoring/piggyback approach, which involves improving the efficiency of certain products by, say, a factor of four, and is the wealth-growing strategy of choice for individual nations. While this approach is a significant improvement over the former, it still falls well short of the third and optimum alternative — the systemic change/leapfrog approach, which if successful can actually reverse man's impact on an already overburdened planet.
Koshla believes that by correctly harnessing the potential of animals, plants, fungi, algae and bacteria, man has the potential to increase product and resource effectiveness by even up to a factor of 50. The evidence now appears overwhelming that everyone on the planet must aspire to meeting such goals.
