Behaviour change – reducing emissions by changing how we live our lives – should be part of every government and think tank’s sustainable scenario, explains Schalk Cloete. That’s because impressive advances in energy efficiency and clean energy won’t be enough to contain the emissions of a world continuing with the essential task of lifting billions of people out of poverty. But this should not be seen as a problem, says Cloete, because behaviour change is good news for us as individuals, aside from the emissions reductions. However, it does need a change of mindset, focusing on health and happiness rather than material consumption. That will, of course, lead to a reshaping of infrastructure to create emissions-friendly housing and cities, and working habits like telecommuting. He uses the metric “Life Efficiency” to make calculations and assumptions that show emissions can be reduced by a factor of five. The difficult infrastructure gains account for half of that, the softer mindset changes account for the rest. Cloete emphasises that the onus for behaviour change is on the rich world: the top 10% are responsible for half of global emissions, and already have the necessary material comforts the rest of the world rightly seeks.
Introduction
The world faces a grand challenge over the first half of the 21st century: Grant all global citizens a fair shot at a decent life while staying within the ecological carrying capacity of planet Earth. Our response to this challenge will echo through society for centuries to come.
Any successful strategy must simultaneously achieve a rapid increase in living standards and a rapid reduction in emissions. From an energy perspective, we have two sets of tools available for this purpose: energy efficiency and clean energy. Although they are very powerful, it is unrealistic to expect these sustainable development tools to reduce the emissions of rapidly growing developing nations at the required rate.
This article deploys some elementary maths to uncover a third toolset, called life efficiency. As we shall see, this solution can make a tremendous contribution to the grand 21st century sustainability challenge. The world is slowly starting to understand its potential, but there is a great need for further acceleration. I hope this article can make some contribution in this respect.
The 21st Century Sustainability Challenge
Historical data shows that eradicating poverty and protecting the environment are conflicting goals. It is easy to understand why — decent living standards require a certain level of material consumption, and all the materials we consume come from our environment.
To illustrate, the graph below shows our steady progress in reducing extreme poverty.
Image from Our World in Data.
But this progress has come at the cost of a sizeable ecological overshoot. Currently, we need about 1.7 planets for a sustainable global economy.
Image from the Global Footprint Network.
And we still have a very long way to go. Case in point: the first graph above shows that almost 5 billion people still live on less than $10/day ($3,650/year).
Have you ever tried living on $10/day? Neither have I. My minimalistic, eco-conscious lifestyle costs me almost triple that amount. This number, about $10,000/year, looks like a good “decent living standard” target. But sadly, it is achieved by only 1 in every 6 world citizens today.
Between us and a world free from this grave social injustice stands a wall of ecological challenges of our own making, with climate change front-and-center. The science is clear: we need to sharply reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to avoid severe and irreversible damage. Unfortunately, current policies and pledges fall far short of this goal.
Image from Climate Action Tracker.
These graphs show that massive change is needed. We must shatter historical trends to accelerate poverty alleviation while dramatically shrinking our ecological footprints. How can we accomplish this seemingly impossible task?
The Kaya Identity
In 1997, a Japanese energy economist proposed the following identity as a simple framework for contemplating this question.
Naturally, our global emissions depend on how many people our planet needs to sustain. But the Kaya identity shows us three other ratios that influence emissions:
- How much goods and services the average person produces and consumes (GDP/person)
- The energy required to produce those goods and services (Energy/GDP)
- The emissions intensity of all that energy (Emissions/Energy)
At the moment, the first ratio in this list is the key indicator of social progress. The more goods and services the average world citizen can produce and consume, the better.
Hence, GDP/person must always increase, while the global population also continues expanding. Thus, if we want to reduce our environmental impact, we need some serious reductions in the second and third ratios.
We can shrink the second ratio by using energy more efficiently. More efficient cars, better home insulation, and a preference for buying services rather than material goods all help.
Reducing the third ratio requires the development and deployment of cleaner energy sources such as renewable energy, nuclear, and CO2 capture from hydrocarbon fuels.
But this equation leaves out an essential additional lever we have at our disposal. It is about time this lever gets the recognition it deserves.
Life Efficiency
As mentioned above, GDP growth remains the central priority for national and global socio-economic development. But the fact is that we do not want more goods and services. What we want is all the happiness and longevity we think those goods and services can give us.
So, how can we measure our achievement of happiness and longevity? Arguably the best metric out there is “happy life years“ — the product of a subjective wellbeing score and life expectancy.
Incorporating happy life years (HLY) into the Kaya identity looks like this:
This equation is almost the same as the original Kaya identity, aside from splitting the first ratio (GDP/Person) discussed above into two parts:
- The number of happy life years enjoyed by the average person (HLY/Person)
- The goods and services required for building a long and happy life (GDP/HLY)
This simple modification allows us to isolate the ratio we must keep increasing at any cost: HLY/Person.
It also identifies an invaluable additional lever we can pull to reduce our environmental impact: GDP/HLY. To make it easier to conceptualise and give it a more positive spin, we will work with the inverse of this ratio.
I like to call this ratio (HLY/GDP) “Life Efficiency” — our ability to extract health and happiness from all our effort and environmental impact.
Global implications of Higher Life Efficiency
The untapped potential of life efficiency is tremendous. As shown below, life efficiency can be improved by more than 400% from the baseline of the United States. The figure also shows some simple measures for increasing life expectancy and wellbeing while decreasing spending, several of which are mutually reinforcing.
Happy life years = Life expectancy x Wellbeing. Life efficiency = Happy life years / Spending. Data sources (2016): Life expectancy and wellbeing from the Happy Planet Index database. Spending per day compiled from the real disposable income per capita (over 14 years old), adjusted for the whole population (including those below 14) and the savings rate.
The optimal life expectancy given in the figure above is a bit of a guesstimate, based on ample proof that populations with healthy lifestyles produce many centenarians. Optimal wellbeing and spending estimates come from my own experience.
Interestingly, life efficiency can offer even greater environmental benefits than the 5x boost shown above. For example, a healthy plant-dominated diet of whole foods costs about the same as an unhealthy animal-dominated diet of processed food, but it has a much smaller ecological impact.
In addition, life efficiency has two other characteristics that make it the perfect tool for rapidly building a sustainable and equitable society.
Rapid deployment
Increasing life efficiency requires little more than a mindset shift. In contrast, energy efficiency and green energy require lots of capital-intensive technology to be developed, scaled up, and deployed.
When life efficiency goes viral in our interconnected society, the benefits will be vast and immediate. With movements such as the post-growth economy, downshifting, voluntary simplicity, and FIRE already gaining traction, this tipping point appears to be getting closer.
Yes, the 5x gain shown above is not a reasonable target. To give just one example, a car-free lifestyle is simply impractical for many people. But even a lowly 2x improvement will still have a massive positive impact.
The remaining 2–3x gain will take more time as eco- and people-centered urban development grows, telecommuting becomes the new normal, the health and wellness movement gathers further momentum, younger workers increasingly demand purpose over paychecks, and green peer pressure continues to mount.
Reduced inequality
If today’s total global income could be equally distributed, we would already be over the $20/day mark — two-thirds of the way to the goal of “decent living standards for all.” But sadly, two-thirds of the world population remains below (mostly well below) $10/day, illustrating the vast inequality in our society.
Currently, the top 10% are responsible for about half the world’s emissions. And, as little as us rich folks would like to admit it, the best way to get into the top 10% is to win the lottery of birth (i.e., pure luck).
Improved life efficiency can dramatically reduce the consumption of this lucky group, freeing up more planetary resources for the development of the remaining 90%. This will help to address the terribly unfair impact of climate change on poorer nations and leave a much larger portion of our aggregate productive capacity for building a sustainable and equitable society.
Another critical factor is what high earners with high life efficiencies choose to do with their substantial excess income. Luckily, my experience shows that investing in your own initiatives to do good for the world is much more satisfying than typical consumer spending. As more wealthy individuals shake off their consumerist blinders and experience this for themselves, large changes will take place in the economy.
From a macroeconomic point of view, an increase in life efficiency among middle-class and wealthy individuals will increasingly direct the economy to build a better world instead of manufacturing excessive consumer goods and wasteful status symbols. This shift will help people displace the fleeting highs of superfluous consumption with lasting life satisfaction from meaningful work, delivering a very welcome redistribution of spending power around the world.
A sustainable life is a good life
After a decade of experimenting with the idea of life efficiency, I know one thing for sure: Sustainable living is no sacrifice. It is a direct pathway to a happy, healthy, wealthy, and productive life.
A sustainable ecological footprint has given me 11 consecutive years without a hint of illness, the financial freedom needed to retire at age 34, and the personal liberty and purpose required to happily work twice as much as the norm.
Massive global gains in life efficiency are 100% possible, intensely desirable, and already gaining significant traction around the world. Until recently, the idea of life efficiency would have been passively ignored or actively dismissed in our consumerist society. But times are changing. People are waking up and looking for happiness and meaning beyond their primitive drive to consume.
Life efficiency may be an idea whose time has come. And the coming of age of this idea may well make a major contribution to humanity’s successful navigation of the 21st century.
***
Schalk Cloete is a Research Scientist at Sintef
Although in agreement with much of the article I think most people aren’t ready to embrace life efficiency and sustainability. The drastic changes experienced during lock down were trumpeted as the opportunity to make life style changes for the good of the planet but we seem to be returning to pre lock down living as quickly as the virus allows
I certainly agree that this transition will take time. The world runs on consumerism, and it will be tough to uproot this indoctrination. However, the positive experiences of those who have built highly efficient lives will become increasingly appealing as environmental pressures continue to mount. As life efficiency becomes cooler and conspicuous consumption starts drawing more scrutiny, we could eventually reach a tipping point. I have no idea how soon this dynamic can play out, but I will try my best to pull the timeline forward 🙂
The author overestimates the “life efficiency” aspect in my view and should appreciate the “energy efficiency through lifestyle change” aspects more.
A. One example he gives is a “car-free lifestyle”. That certainly allows for savings on expenses for a car, and the corresponding part of GDP will not be used on expenses for a car. But if the respective person wants to reach his destinations (or substitute destinations more amenable without a car), travel substitutes will be required that usually include bicycles, trains and occasional taxis. For a similar level of comfort, the standard of an ordinary commuter train may not be sufficient (e.g. sleeper compartments in night trains require more space), porters may be required to support baggage transport and the like. If the car-free lifestyle includes shopping closer to home, that will require smaller shops that lack some of the economies of scale of large shops at integrated shopping areas, usually more staff per customer, adding to costs. Such effects limit or partially offset the reduction in expenses from forfeiting a car. Thus, the reduction in “GDP required” to perform the respective activities at a similar level of comfort as with a car is not as large as the savings on a car. That is, indeed, one of the reasons many people decide to own a car in spite of its expenses.
The reduction in energy and material resource requirement for the car-free lifestyle (e.g., the train uses less energy for the same distance travelled) is expected to be much larger proportionally. However, this put together, the changed lifestyle will lead to a reduction of the ratio Energy/GDP primarily (!).
B. Such a change in lifestyle can certainly be brought about to large extent by changes in the relative prices of (consumer) goods, which would be the result of taxation on resources and pollution. Many differences between much of the US and Europe, with a historically large difference of fuel process between them due to fuel taxes, are testimony of the large effect of such price differences on aspects that include the large-scale suburbanisation and resulting difficulties to live without a car in the US.
Furthermore, in a theoretically ideal market economy setup without externalities, the consumer will direct his expenses, and thus the use of the part of GDP that makes up his or her income, such that it produces the best outcome in wellbeing, leading to a pareto-optimum overall. Using external influence or force to make the consumer deviate from that outcome would – apart from the inconvenience about that restriction in freedom of choice – put him in a worse position of wellbeing.
C. In the real world, externalities of course play an important role. Roadside parking is often scarce at the prices asked for (often zero), so that one additional car leads to adverse effects for other car-owners. Road capacity is limited and delays occur already below capacity, so each car-driver produces externalities to other cars that have to wait in the line for the traffic sign or at a bottleneck. Externalities to other people through noise, pollution, accident risks are significant. What is often forgotten is the positive externality of people coming together, adding to a density of commercial and other infrastructure at close distance, whereas such closeness is prevented by car use due to space requirements and externalities.
Here also politics come into play. While there is a proven demand for car-free neighbourhoods (in the sense of no-one having a car and no cars driving in the area, some exceptions for utility cars or people with special needs notwithstanding), political majorities have acted to prevent such kind of developments. Developers are, at least in the German and probably European context, prohibited to design such neighbourhoods (one notable exception is in Köln Nippes around “Am Alten Stellwerk”, which is however so small that it hardly can claim the title “neighbourhood”, without basic amenities like a school and regular grocery shop, https://www.google.de/maps/@50.9628019,6.9462501,155a,35y,320.19h,41.51t/data=!3m1!1e3 ). Further regulation include obligations to build car parking and additional building rights for car parking that could not be used for housing instead.
In the US, regulations like minimum plot size and separation of commerce and living work against car-free lifestyle. These regulations are often motivated by the local spread of infrastructure costs for amenities like schools by local property taxes. The intention is to attract and retain a wealthy population in order to obtain a combination of relatively low property tax rates and good public amenities. As non-car-owning households have a lower income on average (at least for the same neighbourhoods or at a similar level of density), whereas to make car use indispensable leads to a certain threshold on the social ladder for inhabitants, planning for car-owners is to some extent correlated to social level. Or put differently, municipalities fear that car-free areas would attract poor people that cannot afford a car, which in turn would erase their tax base.
Shop-owners that provide free parking for car-users at the expense of walk-in clients from the neighbourhood (apparently taken for granted as customers), that cross-subsidize the parking and thus other clients with their purchases, also form part of the externality story of car use.
Today, the choice to live car-free will reduce the choice of places to live, where to look for a hotel to make holidays etc.. If the objective is to reach certain activities (e.g. shing or going to a theatre) within acceptable time, often the locational choice amenable for car-free individual travel choice will be more expensive, i.e. requiring higher income. This is even more pronounced if the objective is to keep clear of adverse influences from cars of other people, as suitability for car-free motion often comes with high density of buildings, and this with higher density of cars. To drive the comparison to the extreme, a penthouse in Manhattan is a suitable way to live car-free and fend off some the disadvantages of density, but it is costlier that the combined costs for two cars and an individual home in the suburbs with a similar open space. This is, however a price issue and not a cost issue (thus less relevant on a price-adjusted GDP basis).
The obvious solution would of course be to end regulatory restrictions that prevent a better availability of places suitable for car-free lifestyle, the active development of such areas through political action, the transition of existing neighbourhoods to car-free conditions, where demand and the preferences of inhabitants warrant it, often in areas that were originally designed before the advent of mass motorization. That would create value and in economic terms, as qualitative advantages of living areas are usually not fully captured in the price level aspect of GDP, will lead to a better relation between GDP and quality of life. More ample alternatives would limit price increases of rental space and property at the scarce living places (primarily in the inner parts and centres of big cities) that currently allow for amenable car-free living.
Stop externalities and make city and traffic planners attend to people’s wishes. But we do not need a new economic theory to make such changes.
Hi Joa, thank you very much for taking the time to write this interesting commentary.
Regarding point A, I agree that a car-free lifestyle will be challenging for many people, given it’s dependency on the surrounding environment. For example, I live in Norway, where my car-free lifestyle is easy and rewarding because cycling is safe, distances to grocery shops are small, and public transport is well developed. Where I grew up in South Africa, however, it’s the exact opposite, which is very sad because South Africans can do with the large savings from a car-free lifestyle.
I don’t know the economies of scale of large shopping malls as opposed to smaller supermarkets in neighbourhoods. But I’m quite sure the full lifecycle savings offered by such supermarkets will still be large. Regarding car-travel substitutes, the one I’m most interested in is telecommuting, which has virtually no cost. When you add the health benefits (avoidance of GDP spent on healthcare) of cycling (or e-cycling) or walking/scooting between public transport modes, these options also become highly appealing.
It will certainly be interesting to see some full lifecycle studies on some of these options to learn more.
About point B, I agree that inclusion of externalities will help consumers live more efficient lives. Aside from the obvious environmental externalities, I would love to see the large health impacts of various products offered by the vast “instant pleasure industry” accurately reflected in the sales price.
Yes, economic theories mostly work by treating “humans” as idealized “econs” acting rationally in their own best interest. In reality, though, humans make a great many highly irrational consumer choices, influenced by the advertising industry and their primitive drive toward instant pleasure, harming their long-term health and happiness and the society that supports their lifestyle. A big benefit of designing an efficient life is a sharp reduction in these irrational self- and society-destructive tendencies.
On to point C. I was not aware of the regulatory barriers to car-free neighborhoods, but I really hope that these will be removed soon. Luckily, one does not necessarily need a dedicated car-free neighborhood to live a car-free life, but you are right that it strongly reduces available options. The good news is that virtual mobility, e-bikes, and rapid growth in e-commerce will continue to expand the regions where car-free living is possible.
I’m hoping that a car-free life eventually becomes something of a status symbol. For example, about half of the well-paid researchers in my group choose to commute to the office via bicycle, probably because the health benefits, savings, and green credentials are worth it. Beautiful car-free neighborhoods designed for highly productive people (many of whom can telecommute) can be highly attractive from a taxpayer point of view.
Thanks again for this extensive analysis. I’d certainly be interested to hear more of your thoughts on this!
I’m all in favor of focusing on “life efficiency” (HLY/GDP) as a way to improve / sustain life on our small blue marble. Rather than focusing on straight GDP as a measure of a nation’s success, it encourages what might be called a “Marie Kondo” approach for reorganizing and “decluttering” our economies. “Does this activity bring us joy / contribute to our essential well-being? If not, how can we dispense with it?” Similar to voluntary simplicity, but not the same. It’s about activities and how we use our time, not about possessions.
I’m less sanguine than Schalk about prospects for major gains in life efficiency coming about naturally as a result of current technology and social trends. The biggest gains in life efficiency will come about through reduction in the huge inefficiencies with which we’ve saddled ourselves. I question whether we have a sufficient understanding of the sources of inefficiency to motivate and underpin the kind of social and political changes that will be needed.
By we, I don’t mean all of us in a literal sense. I mean “the body politic” in an abstract sense. I know there are many individuals who understand the sources of life inefficiencies quite well. But their understanding hasn’t gotten through to the body politic. It doesn’t have much influence on the narratives through which societies govern themselves.
Examples of the lack of general understanding show up in the ways we still speak about consumerism, jobs, and inequality. We speak of “consumerism” as if it were a choice we had made at some point because we liked having “stuff”. The implication is that we would un-make the choice if we could only recognize the negative consequences. That’s unfortunately not so.
The roots of that view of choice go back to the age of enlightenment with its naive faith in human rationality. Those are the same roots that gave rise to the model of “homo economicus”, the rationally self-interested consumer at the heart of classical economic theory. Behavioral psychologists and sociologists now generally recognize that rationality plays a very limited role in how we behave or what we choose to believe. We make choices for emotional reasons and then rationalize. We choose what to believe based more on perceptions of what others in our tribe believe than anything else. We did not choose consumerism out of rational self-interest. We were sold on it through the concerted efforts of those who stood to profit.
Schalk concludes:
Perhaps. I would dearly wish it to be so. I’ll grant that Schalk is closer to today’s youth and more in touch with current trends than I am. However, I can’t but recall the conviction from my own youth that “the times, they are a-changin”. The age of Aquarius, “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding” was supposed to be just around the corner. It never arrived, never came close. The hippie movement was a children’s crusade, fought against mercenary professionals. We didn’t understand what we were up against. And for the most part, we still don’t.
Hi, Roger. Thought-provoking comment as usual!
Yes, the “this time is different” claim has been proven false many times in the past. But I remain optimistic that this time really can be different. The three most prominent reasons behind this belief are:
1) The world now has 2.5 billion people above the “decent living standards” threshold. These people have the free choice to build efficient lives, and their consumption and investment choices have the power to completely reshape politics and industry.
2) Our global environmental and social justice issues are slowly becoming common knowledge, especially within younger generations. In combination with a clear desire for purpose among young adults, this has the potential to remap the consumer landscape.
3) Digital technology has changed the paradigm. On the one hand, it has connected us all, allowing trends to grow virally through the entire privileged world. On the other hand, it has given us many options to do things virtually instead of physically, with huge potential for direct and indirect improvements in life efficiency.
I’m also buoyed by my belief that life efficiency is unequivocally good. All the technological solutions we usually speak about have their drawbacks. If life efficiency ever takes off, its only drawback will be a temporary shakeup in the consumer economy. After the market has absorbed this shock (simplified by the large productive surplusses afforded by life efficiency) and reallocated labor and capital appropriately, we’ll be ready to enter a true sustainable development Rennaissance.
I can realistically see us reaching such a tipping point in the next three decades. And, since I see no long-term drawbacks, I feel comfortable advocating for this ideal. This feels nice next to my usual articles pointing out all the challenges with our other sustainable development pathways 🙂
I have estimated the World (of 10Billion) in 2050 will requir a150TW Solar PV system needing an Investment of $200 Trillion for ALL ITS ENERGY NEEDS.
This System would Generate 200,000TWhrs/yr…. enough to Power all Industries, Vehicles, Commercial, Residential and Other Loads.
The Land required for these Panels would be about 1Million km2 ONLY.
Using AgriVoltaics (AV) this can easily be accomodated on the 15Million km2 of Agricultural Land around the Globe and will revitalize the Rural Countryside again… ALL OVER THE WORLD…. as it provides Electricity and additional Income to Farmers that these AV Structures provide…..
So in spite of the “sky is falling” panic being caused because of Growth of Population, Consumption, Pollution etc… this 150TW System will be able to meet the Worlds Energy Demands easily…. with lots and lots and lots of “elbow room” for additional needs… AND ELIMINATE POLLUTION CAUSED BY THE INDUSTRIAL AGE FOR THE LAST 200 YEARS.
However…. “Reducing Consumption WITHOUT Discomfort” is, I believe too, a very Worthwhile and Valuable Virtue and MUST be pursued to Limit Demand. Remember…. Every KWhr Reduction in Demand results in a KWhr Reduction in Supply too…
I say… Consume but Waste Not…
…. and remember 8 Million fall Victim to Pollution Annually around the Globe; and there are 275 Million DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years) of Suffering caused by Polution…
…. SO…. THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE… EVERY 5 SECOND DELAY RESULTS IN ANOTHER PERSON FALLING VICTIM TO POLLUTION…. SOMEWHERE…. PLUS THE DALY SUFFERING OF MILLIONS TOO IS PROLONGED….
Yes…. “I have many Miles to go…before I can Sleep”…
Ajay, I think your estimate of 150 TW of solar PV capacity for a world population of 10 billion is optimistic — assuming a developed world living standard for all. I think the value would be closer to 500 TW, if solar PV were to be our only energy resource. I won’t quibble about the number, however. I suspect 150 TW would be adequate, if the world embraced the kind of efficient lifestyle choices that Schalk is writing about.
That’s all beside the point, as I see it. The question is not, How many humans could the world support, and how much energy would it require? The question is, What population level would be compatible with the type of world that we wish to live in and to pass on to future generations?
The world has long been heavily overpopulated in terms of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our not-so-distant ancestors. We probably surpassed what “the bounty of nature” could provide for back in the 17th century, if not earlier. By the end of the 19th century, we had surpassed what could be supported without fossil fuels and industrial fertilizers. Around the middle of the 20th century, we were beginning to overshoot what could be supported with existing strains of agricultural crops. It took the “green revolution” of selectively bred super-productive strains of wheat, corn, and rice to rescue us from global famine. And all the while, wildlife habitat was being destroyed, ocean fisheries were over-harvested, and the biosphere as a whole was losing diversity.
Life is full of tradeoffs. I grew on tales of Old West, with cowboys and cattle drives, and riding the open range and camping under the stars. There were also tales of somewhat earlier times, when the Native American tribes of the Great Plains hunted the vast herds of bison across the sweep of the Tall Grass Prairie. The tales were romanticized. I’m sure the life I knew as a child of 20th century America was far more comfortable than what I would have experienced a century earlier. But it doesn’t matter. The point is that the lifestyles I dreamed about were no longer an option. They had been foreclosed by the various developments that made a vastly larger population possible.
I don’t doubt that there are technical developments that would make it possible to support a world of 10 billion or even 20 billion or more humans. But is that the future we want? What’s better about a world stripped of wilderness, with no room for the wild species with whom we once shared the planet? Perhaps it’s somehow our moral responsibility to do whatever we can to accommodate an ever-expanding world population, until finally we hit a limit we can’t work around and everything falls apart? I don’t think so, but perhaps others do.
Suggesting that a limit on human population would make for a better world begs an obvious question: how? Science fiction visions of a future in which couples must apply to a government bureau for a license to have a baby are universally abhorred. Some favor the “natural” alternative of withholding aid to the poor, and letting famine and disease do their dirty work. There’s also the more direct solution of war. There are individuals who believe war is inevitable, and are working hard to make sure that they’ll be among the survivors.
Those views are unfortunate. The fact is that there’s a well known and quite benign solution to the “population problem”. The “demographic transition” sets in once children cease to be assets for impoverished rural families. In an urban environment, when educated women and couples have options beyond scratching out an existence with the help of their young children, they choose to have fewer. When the decision to raise children involves cost, sacrifice, and responsibilities, birthrates plunge. They fall below replacement level. Countries that have passed the transition now face the threat of inverted population pyramids. There may not be enough young people to support an expanding senior population.
What does all this have to do with curtailing carbon emissions and making more efficient lifestyle choices? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. Economic uplift and relative security are prerequisite for any demographic transition. Corruption and an outlook on life that puts personal gain above respect for others and the welfare of the community are the principle obstacles to economic uplift. They’re also the principle obstacles to transitioning to a clean and sustainable energy economy.
The environmental impact of 15 million km2 of solar PV done most cheaply would be horrendous. It wouldn’t have to be; you’re right that AgriVoltaics could probably accommodate it. No need to bulldoze hundreds of millions of acres of wildlife habitat to install row upon row of PV panels. Unfortunately, it’s cheaper to take the latter approach. We’re in the iron grip of a “cheapest wins” economic system that doesn’t price in environmental impacts.
We need to reform our economic system. We need to shift its values away from consumerism and bottom line profit. We need to exorcise the ghosts of Ayn Rand and Gordon Gekko. We need to deprecate financial success as a measure of status, and elevate contribution to community welfare and spiritual well-being. As a society, we need to relearn respect for “all creatures great and small” and become siblings and caretakers. If we can’t do that, I don’t see how we’ll be able to surmount the challenges that we’ve created for ourselves.