Is Our World Sustainable, or are We Consuming our Future: The Demand.
As observed in the previous post, global population is growing exponentially.
It appears we will continue to produce people. In growing numbers. We are, in essence, sustainable as a species.
But what about the resources, the food, the consumables that we need as a global population to sustain us, and the rate of growth in demand for these?
If we take a look at the growth in demand, or the associated and closely allied growth in pressure on the resources we consume as people, the results are quite stark.
In a past blog we took International Monetary Fund figures and known demographic and global financial data of the world for the past 110 years to come up with some very concerning facts & trends.
Using Global Population (GP), World Trade Value (WTV) (Normalized to 1990 $US) and the Consumer Technology Invention & Development for Personal Use (CTID), the numbers come up as follows:
| Year | GP (Billion) | WTV (Trillion) | CTID |
| 1900 | 1.8 | 1.3 | 1,000 |
| 1960 | 3.9 | 5.8 | 4,000 |
| 2010 | 7.0 | 55.0 | 141,000 |
Now, if we take these same figues and calculate the demand, or consumer call (‘M’) on our world’s natural resources by the following formula: M = GP x WTV x I which uses 1900 as a reference value of ‘1’ (the height of the colonial era), we get the following outcomes:
Year Growth in (M)
1900 1
1960 3515% (or 35 times) the growth in resource use/environmental demand on our planet.
2010 2,108,974% (or 21,089 times) the growth in resource use/environmental demand on our planet.
Ultimately, something has to give.
It is readily apparent that our consumption of consumer goods is also growing at an exponential rate. The obvious question that arises is: can this be sustained, and for how long?
It’s equally fashionable, even popular for doomsayers and other global pessimists to announce the end is nigh.
That does not assist the situation very greatly. But what is evident is that we as a global population do need to think carefully, and soon, about how we will resource our future. We cannot continue to rape and pillage as it were, the planet we have, to the detriment of our successors.
Do we need to continue mining resources: absolutely. Do we need to continue harvesting natural food stocks , fish and others, or course we do. Do we need to continue harvesting timber stocks, for instance: absolutely. Without doubt we will continue to require increasing amounts of steel, aluminum to construct our future. Equally without doubt we will need to plant and produce increasing quantities of renewables like timber to construct our future.
And we should get used to the concept that for the foreseeable future we will need to use fossil fuels like coal to power our lives. The majority of alternative renewable energy sources such as wind & solar are clearly going to play a significant role in future global energy supply, but for the immediate future they will remain, as they currently are, too expensive and unviable.
What we cannot do is sit idly by and watch as resource demand skyrockets as it has over the past 110 years and expect that all will be well in another 110 years, or 500 years. Continuing to consume like there is no tomorrow is, to use a huge understatement, short sighted. Tomorrow will come.
We simply must do better at reusing those resources that we do mine/harvest/consume. And now.
As good stewards, custodians of the world we inhabit, holding it in trust for the generations to come, let’s ensure that we do manage it well and hand it on to our successors in good condition, with an ability to sustain them and subsequent generations.
Authors Neil Findlay with Andreas Helwig.
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