Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
carbon emissions as long as equity issues are addressed. Second, there would be a mar-
ket system in place so that the permitted amounts of raw material, or credits for their
consumption, can be traded and sold as commodities. The third characteristic is about
equity: there must be a limit on how rich any individual business or country can become,
and there must be a fair distribution of wealth amongst nation states so that there is no
sharp contrast in wealth between very rich and very poor countries. There is an equity
principle here which implies that the materially poorer countries of the South would in-
crease their resource use in order to eliminate abject poverty, whilst those of us in the
rich North would reduce our own consumption. But overall, the consumption of any
given resource would not be allowed to exceed its scientifically determined ceiling. The
last requirement for steady-state economics is a stable global population.
Daly's outline for a steady-state economics is very similar to another approach, which
avoids the thorny issue of growth because it is designed to be used with the business
world, which finds any critique of growth deeply threatening. The approach, known as
The Natural Step, was developed in Sweden by Karl-Heinrich Rob`ert, a brilliant sur-
geon who decided that a scientific consensus was needed about how to tackle the eco-
logical crisis. Karl-Heinrich and his eminent team agreed upon four 'system conditions'
to which a truly sustainable society would have to adhere. These are:
That nature won't be subject to systematically increasing:
1. Concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust;
2. Concentrations of substances produced by society;
3. Degradation by physical means; and:
4. That human needs are met worldwide.
The first system condition refers to raw, unprocessed materials that are extracted directly
from Gaia, such as metals and fossil fuels, which mustn't be extracted faster than nature
can re-absorb and recycle them. The second system condition is about man-made chem-
icals—DDT, CFCs, artificial fertilisers and so on, which must not be allowed to accu-
mulate in the biosphere faster than they can be broken down and recycled by Gaia into
harmless compounds. The third system condition tells us that we cannot continuously
degrade wild nature without dire consequences, for it is the 'natural capital' on which
our well-being depends. The last system condition recognises that equity is central to
sustainability, and that material wealth needs to be fairly distributed within a given so-
ciety and between the nations of the world. If we were to add an explicit stipulation of
steadystate to this list, which as it stands is only implied, and another equally explicit
stipulation that the human population should not increase, we would then have a fairly
good set of ground rules for living well with Gaia.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search