The Chaos Point Part 3

THE CHAOS POINT

THE WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS

ERVIN LASZLO

PIATKUS BOOKS               2006

PART III

 

PART ONE: THE TIDES OF TRANSFORMATION

 

Chapter 3: The Drivers of Chaos

• The choice we presently face is between devolution toward crisis and breakdown, and evolution toward a new world. We will enter one or the other path, for the world as it is today is not sustainable. Let us look now at the factors that drive us toward this crucial crossroads.

 

The economic unsustainabilities

The first driver: The unsustainability of the current distribution of wealth in the world

• Economic growth continues in the world, but it is both precarious and unfair. Its benefits regard fewer people and marginalize ever more. Hundreds of millions live at a higher material standard of living, but thousands of millions are pressed into abject poverty, living in shanty towns and urban ghettos in the shadows of ostentatious affluence.
• The richest 20% earn 90 times the income of the poorest 20%, consume 11 times as much energy, eat 11 times as much meat, have 49 times the number of telephones, and own 145 times the number of cars.
• The net worth of 500 billionaires equals the net worth of half the world population. This is not only unjust and indefensible – it is highly explosive.
• The absolute deprivation of over one billion people and the relative poverty of two-thirds of the world’s population is an arbitrary condition; one cannot ascribe the blame for it to a finite planet. If access to the Earth’s physical and biological resources were evenly distributed, all people in the world could live at a decent material standard.
• If food supplies were equitably shared, every person would receive about a hundred calories more than required to replace the 1,800 to 3,000 calories he or she expends each day (a healthy diet calls for an intake of about 2,600 calories).
• But people in the rich countries of North America, Western Europe, and Japan obtain not 100%, but 140% of their 2,600 caloric requirement, whereas people in the poorest countries, such as Madagascar, Guyana, and Laos, are limited to 70%.
• Americans spend only 10% of their income on food, and still buy so much that they throw away 15% of it. Haitians, some 600 miles to the south, as well as three-fourths of all Africans, spend more than half their income on food and we are undernourished.
• Surveys by the UN Development Programme and the Food and Agricultural Organization indicate that 87 countries today neither produce sufficient food to sustain their population nor have the money to import the missing amount from elsewhere.
• The world’s pattern of energy consumption is just as disparate. With 4.1% of the world population, the United States alone consumes 25% of the world’s energy production, much of it wasted.
• The average American burns five tons of fossil fuel per year – in contrast with the 0.8 tons of the average Chinese and the 2.9 tons of the average German.

 

The second driver: The unsustainability of affluent consumption

• Even if global economic growth were to continue beyond the next few years, (which as we shall see, is questionable), it would be highly concentrated, accruing mainly to rich countries, rich corporations, and persons in positions of power.
• Even on a global growth-scenario, by the middle of the 21^st century some 90% of the world’s people would live in the poor countries, and the great majority of them would be themselves poor.
• If today’s highly unequal distribution of wealth is not rectified, it is difficult to see how they could satisfy even their most basic needs.
• As Gandhi said, although the world has enough for all people’s need, it does not have enough to cater to even one person’s greed.
• In the rich countries of the world, greed is still dominant. In the name of the free market, many people use not only what they need, but all they can get.
• Greed is evident in the way people eat. The average Englishman each month consumes six bags of chips, six chocolate bars, six bags of candy, three sandwiches, two pies, two burgers, a donut, and a kebab while sitting behind the wheel.
• On an annual basis, Americans worried about obesity, spend 30 times more trying to slim down than the UN’s entire budget for famine relief.
• Affluent people consume such quantities of red meat that the world’s entire grain harvest would not be enough to feed all the cattle that would be needed if the poorer people of the world were to adopt a similar diet.
• The 1.1 billion people who, according to World Bank estimates, live at or below the absolute poverty line (defined as the equivalent of one dollar a day or less) destroy the environment on which they depend.
• Poverty makes for the overworking of productive lands, the contamination of rivers and lakes, and the lowering of water tables. This creates a vicious cycle.
• Poverty encourages high birthrates, because children help subsistence families garner the resources needed for survival. Population growth creates more poverty, and more poor people destroy more of the environment.
• One out of every three people now lives in a city, and by the year 2025 two out of every three are expected to do so. By that year, there will be more than 500 cities with populations of over one million, and 30 megacities exceeding eight million. Such cities are intrinsically unsustainable.
• Well-to-do people overuse the planet’s resources, and poor people misuse them. Of the 6.5 billion people on the planet, the two billion “developed” consume and waste more than their share, while the 2.5 billion “underdeveloped” misuse what little is left to them.
• Suppose that the two billion “developed” decided to live in a more responsible way. Simpler lifestyles and more responsible choices would free a significant portion of the planet’s resources for consumption by all the people who inhabit it.
• It takes the yield of 190 square meters of land and no less than 105,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of grain-fed feedlot beef. But to produce one kiologram of soybeans takes only 16 square meters of land and 9,000 liters of water.
• The same amount of land that produces one kilogram of beef could produce nearly 12 kilograms of soybeans or 8.6 kilograms of corn. And the farmers would save 96,000 liters of water by choosing soybeans and 92,500 liters by planting corn.
• Given the rapid erosion of many agricultural lands and the coming water squeeze, this difference may be crucial.

 

The fallacies of overconsumption: The cases of eating, smoking, and driving

• World meat consumption has increased more than fivefold in the last 50 years, but the meat they get is not the safe meat of 1950. It may contain progesterone, testerone, avoparcin, and clenbuterol – chemicals farmers pump into cattle to fatten them up and keep them healthy.
• Anabolic steroids, growth hormones, and beta-agonists turn fat into muscle; antibiotics stimulate growth and protect sedentary animals against diseases they would not get if they were kept in more natural conditions.
• The grain fed to cattle is subtracted from that available for human consumption. If cows returned equivalent nutrition in the form of meat, their feed would not be wasted. But the calorific energy provided by beef is only one-seventh of the energy of the feed.
• This means that in the process of converting grain into beef, cows “waste” six-sevenths of the nutritional value of their feed.
• The proportion is somewhat more favourable in poultry, but the average chicken still uses for itself two-thirds of the nutritional value of the feed it consumes.
• The rational and moral solution is to phase out the mass production of cattle and poultry – not by massive slaughter but by breeding fewer animals and breeding them healthier.
• The nutritive needs of the entire human population could be satisfied by eating more vegetables and grain and less meat, using first and foremost the produce of one’s own country, region, and environment.
• Grain-and plant-based food self-reliance provides a healthier diet, and it allows the world’s economically exploitable agricultural lands to be worked to satisfy the needs of the whole human family.
• What goes for meat eating also goes for smoking. It is not generally known that growing tobacco for export robs millions of poor people of fertile land on which they could grow cereals and vegetables.
• Tobacco, together with other cash crops such as coffee and tea, commands a considerable portion of the world’s fertile land, yet such produce does not respond to a real necessity.
• A better pattern of land use would permit feeding eight or even ten billion people without conquering new land and engaging in risky experiments with genetically manipulated crop varieties.
• But with today’s consumption patterns, the world’s agricultural lands can barely feed the 6.5 billion people living today.
• It takes only one acre of productive land to provide the average Indian’s agriculture-related needs, but satisfying the needs of a typical American takes fully 12 acres.
• Making 12 acres of productive land available to provide food for 6.5 billion people would require two more planets the size of Earth.
• According to a World Bank estimate, by the year 2010 the population of motor vehicles will swell to one billion. Unless there is a rapid shift to new fuel technologies, doubling the current motor vehicle pool will double the level of smog precursors and greenhouse gases.

 

The third driver of unsustainability: The unsustainability of current developments in the global financial system

•  Despite problems and periodic shocks and crises, economic growth, measured in monetary terms, continues. Future prospects appear bright. In 2004, the International Monetary Fund had forecast economic growth to continue at 4.3% in the coming years.
• The current patterns of growth – concentrated in the U.S., China, and a few other Asian countries – are not sustainable. They seriously unbalance the international financial system.
• In simplest terms, the U.S. consumes too much and exports too little, while China and other Asian countries consume too little and export too much.
• The current account deficit of the U.S. is now, at the time of writing, $760 billion, more than 6% of its gross national product.
• At the same time the reserves accumulated by Asian banks rose from $509 billion ten years ago to $2,300 billion at the end of 2004.
• Central banks with large foreign exchange reserves remain captives of U.S. fiscal policy. They recognize that refusing further accumulation – let alone reducing their dollar holdings – would push the dollar down, causing large losses on their reserves.
• But how long will the world finance U.S. overspending? The financial imbalance is growing, and it is only a question of time before it will reach a point where it will have to be corrected.
• The IMF’s 2005 Economic Outlook noted that it is no longer a question whether the world economy will adjust, only how it will adjust. If measures required for a gradual adjustment are delayed, the adjustment will be “abrupt.” It will be a part, or perhaps the trigger, of the Chaos Point faced by the world economy.

 

Social unsustainabilities

The fourth driver: The unsustainability of established social structures