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size and growth, are treated as undifferentiated and global in discussions about other phenomena that are indeed global. Climate change, one of the most important challenges for sustainability, is fundamentally global; its trajectory is dependent on the intersection of population and models of economic growth, production and consumption, and it will demand global responses. Understanding this intersection is therefore essential for creating pathways to sustainable development.
B.
The drivers and threats of climate change 767. The current development paradigm is predicated on a social and economic model that favours production, accumulation and the consumption of goods and services in ever-greater amounts. 521 Increasing consumption is vital to improving well-being for the poor, yet at high income levels the benefits of further consumption result in no discernable impact on well-being. 522 While global population growth is slowing, levels of production and consumption have increased, and are expected to accelerate as long as natural resources can sustain them. Global GDP increased by a factor of 73 between 1820 and 2008, while world population increased only seven times. 523 Average consumption per capita almost tripled between 1960 and 2006. 524 Such economic gains have helped to bring relief from stark poverty to hundreds of millions of people, with particularly notable gains made in the last two decades. The number of people living on less than $1.25 per day fell from over 2 billion in 1990 to under 1.4 billion in 2008 while global population was increasing by almost 1.5 billion, underscoring both significant progress and the enormous number of people left behind. 525 768. Economic progress has taken place at the expense of the environment. The risks of ignoring our planet’s global environmental limits in pursuit of ever-rising production and consumption levels are growing exponentially. It is estimated that anthropogenic activities have already or will soon surpass ecological thresholds with respect to critical Earth systems and natural cycles. Most urgent are biodiversity, the
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522
523
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T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York, Macmillan, 1899; 1915 edition available online); N. Georgescu-Roegen, “The entropy law and the economic problem”, in Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology and Ethics, H. E. Daly and K. N. Townsend, eds. (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993), pp. 75-88; N. Georgescu-Roegen, “Energy analysis and economic valuation”, Southern Economic Journal, vol. 45, No. 4 (1979), pp. 1023-1058; H. E. Daly, Steady-State Economics, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C., Island Press, 1991); N. Stern, Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (United Kingdom, H. M. Treasury, 2006); T. Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth? The Transition to a Sustainable Economy (Sustainable Development Commission, 2009); Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures — From Consumerism to Sustainability (New York, Norton and Company, 2010); E. Assadourian, “The rise and fall of consumer cultures”, in State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures — From Consumerism to Sustainability, Worldwatch Institute (New York, Norton and Company, 2010). E. Diener and M. E. P. Seligman, “Beyond money: toward an economy of well-being”, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5(1): vol. 5, No. 1 (2004), pp. 1-31. A. Maddison, University of Groningen, “Statistics on world population, GDP and per capita GDP, 1-2008 AD”, 2010; available from www.ggdc.net/maddison/oriindex.htm; and World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision (see footnote 336 above). Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures — From Consumerism to Sustainability. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.12.I.4).
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