Excerpt from New Normal, Radical Shift
Chapter 2: A multi-polar world – and a finite one
Much of the environmental debate in recent years has been expended on attempting to prove or disprove various theories around the global warming effect of CO2 emissions. This is an important debate, but it is far from being the only environmental concern, and may not even prove to be the most important. The terms of reference for the debate are revealing: the onus is put on anti-‐carbon emission campaigners to prove that CO2 emissions are leading to dangerous climate change. The tacit assumption is that it is reasonable to revert to 20th-‐Century style petro-‐fuelled economic growth if the case cannot be made, even as the emerging economies become industrialised and world population grows. The climate sceptics sometimes make valid points, but they are straining at gnats while swallowing camels. The purpose of this section is to address the broader scenario: to set out in the boldest terms possible some of the environmental pressures that are building, and to point out that everyone has to confront these and amend policies accordingly: not just political leaders, but business leaders, educationalists, trade unionists, agriculturalists, government departments and so on. Our business models – the accountancy methods we use, company reporting procedures and assumptions around governance – are essentially unchanged since the pioneering English and Dutch companies of the 17th Century. They are desperately in need of updating from this late-‐Mediaeval period. Their weaknesses were evident, for example, in the corporate collapses of the past decade, as we discussed in Chapter 1. They only concern themselves with financial accounting and ownership of inanimate resources. They date from a period prior to heavy industry, in which the naval powers of Europe seized control of much of the world’s territory through force. Access to such cheap natural resources helped to fuel the industrialisation of northern and western Europe, and subsequently North America and Japan. Subsequent wars for independence represented the natural desire for the peoples of Asia, Africa and South America to regain control over their land and resources, though often weak governance and corruption meant that only the elite in those regions benefited. Throughout all these struggles, however, it was taken for granted that the supply of natural resources: land, water, fuels, metals, timber, fisheries and so on, were to all intents and purposes infinite for meeting human needs. That assumption no longer holds. Water The United Nations has stated that as many as 2.7 billion people could face severe water shortages by 2025 if current consumption levels continue and as the world population © Neela Bettridge and Philip Whiteley 2011 New Normal, Radical Shift
rises from six billion to a possible nine billion by 2050. As a National Geographic feature on the subject observed: ‘The amount of fresh water on Earth is not increasing. Nearly 97 percent of the planet's water is salt water in seas and oceans. Close to 2 percent of Earth's water is frozen in polar ice sheets and glaciers, and a fraction of one percent is available for drinking, irrigation, and industrial use.’i Arable land and food supplies Available agricultural land is scarcely sufficient even to meet the current needs of the population, while the global population could rise by as much as 50% in the next half-‐ century. It is unlikely that the amount of arable land can be significantly increased in that time. Higher agriculture demand may require higher levels of irrigation and energy, yet food production is already demanding of resources, requiring several times more externally provided energy than the energy content of the food itself.ii The food riots in recent years may be just a taste of more serious political upheaval to come. Millions of people have been affected, and have protested, in countries such as Bolivia, Peru, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines. In one example in 2008, around 20,000 textile workers in Bangladesh protested after the price of rice in the country had doubled in the previous year, threatening serious hunger for workers earning a monthly salary of around $25. One-‐off events, such as the drought in Russia and the Ukraine in 2010, can exacerbate matters. Arguably, speculation in food prices also contributes to volatility and unmanageable price risesiii. Food price inflation was a factor behind the North African uprisings that began in early 2011, indicating the potential for pressure on arable land to lead to major political upheaval. Energy In 1973 during an outbreak of fighting in the Arab-‐Israeli war, the oil price soared, creating high inflation and economic recession in much of the industrialised world. Similar problems erupted just a few years later during the Iranian revolution of 1979. These episodes exposed the vulnerability of major economies to the price of a single commodity, and ought to have prompted major investment in alternative energy sources. The technology existed. Recent initiatives on, for example, wave and tidal power for electricity generation, do not rely on new inventions – the engineering capability existed back in the 1970s. It is a mystifying and historic failure of political leadership, especially in the west, that the opportunity was not seized to develop clean energy sources, as well as radical improvements to insulation and building design. The geo-‐political benefits would have been immense: reduced imports; reduced revenues to state sponsors of terrorism such as Libya; cleaner environments for citizens and wildlife; lower risk of damage to tourism and fishing industries from spills; lower business and © Neela Bettridge and Philip Whiteley 2011 New Normal, Radical Shift
domestic energy bills, in turn reducing social security costs that have added so much to fiscal deficits in recent years. What should have been done 30 years ago, however, can be done now … Israel, for example, aims to be carbon-‐free by 2020. The Timna Renewable Energy Park in the Negev Desert, announced in 2009, will generate up to 200MW of power, from solar, wind, and production of biogas from municipal waste. This builds on the country’s established hi-‐tech research and business clusters. The Eilat-‐Eilot Renewable Energy Authority plans to turn the southern desert into a ‘Silicon Valley’ of clean energy, encouraging innovation to improve the amount of power that can be generated from renewable sourcesiv. i
Water Pressure, Fen Montaigne, from National Geographic republished online. Accessed March 2011 http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/water-‐pressure/#page=1 ii ‘Food Security: Crops for People, not Cars’, Kullander S, Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment, Volume 39, Number 3, 249-‐256, DOI: 10.1007/s13280-‐010-‐0032-‐5 iii Amid mounting food crisis, governments fear revolution of the hungry, Bill van Auken, Global Research, April 30, 2008. wsws.org iv The 2010 Eilat-‐Eilot Renewable Energy Conference looks to Carbon-‐Free Future, i-‐Planet Energy Industry News, 6 November 2009 http://iplanetenergynews.com/index.php/2009/11/06/the-‐2010-‐eilat-‐eilot-‐ renewable-‐energy-‐conference-‐looks-‐to-‐carbon-‐free-‐energy/
© Neela Bettridge and Philip Whiteley 2011 New Normal, Radical Shift