1 Global and Business Perspectives of Sustainability Deanna Matthews / Lecture 4

About Me  Deanna Matthews  Research Associate with Green Design Institute  Duke BSE, CMU MS and PhD

Administrative Issues  HW 1 Graded. Returned Wednesday  Office hours –same times  HW 2 Given Out, Due Wednesday 3

Recap of Last Time  US-focused: manifest destiny as our right to resources and ownership  Emerson,Thoreau environment as escape  Tragedy of the Commons: everyone maximizes their own utility, at the expense of society  IPAT (Impact as a function of humanity) 4

Recap: Time to Depletion  = Quantity available in reserves / rate of use  (need this for the Club of Rome updated index in a few slides) 5

Today’s Lecture  Transition from qualitative/background information to quantitative/technical  Various organizations have studied the state of the world with respect to environment and sustainability  Focus on data - needed, where to find it, how to use it 6

Club of Rome  Commissioned in early 1970s “Limits to Growth”  Fundamental issue was social institutions had not recognized relevance of finite earth resources – aka growth not sustainable  Have they yet? Examples? 7

Club of Rome (2)  Point wasn’t predicting, but really looking at effects of exponential growth  “A major purpose in constructing the world model has been to determine which, if any, of these behavior modes will be most characteristic of the world system as it reaches the limits to growth.” Lecture 1:8

9

Updated for Recent Data  Source: Stephen Brown (Dallas Fed)  Lecture 1:10

Lecture 1:11

 An area of concern is the many developing countries in the middle of that list that were nowhere in 1972 report  What else do you see? 12

Natural resource use post CoR  Switch to excel

Concept From Club of Rome: Exponential reserve index  If rate of resource use is increasing, the amount of reserves cannot be calculated by simply taking the current known reserves and dividing by the current yearly usage (it misses the growth effect) Lecture 1:14

Depletion Examples  Chromium  Available reserves 1977  775 million metric tons (M MT)  Current mining rate  1.85 M MT/year

Time to Depletion  Constant use  = Quantity available in reserves / rate of use

Time to Depletion  Constant use  = Quantity available in reserves / rate of use  ~419 years of chromium available

Time to Depletion  Constant growth of use  Factor in increased use by 2.6% annually  1.85 M MT this year  1.90 M MT next year  1.95 M MT the next year…

Time to Depletion  In general, the formula for calculating the amount of time left for a resource with constant consumption growth is :  where:  y = years left  g = (2.6% annual cons. growth)  R = reserve  C = consumption (annually)

Time to Depletion  In general, the formula for calculating the amount of time left for a resource with constant consumption growth is :  where:  y = years left  g = (2.6% annual cons. growth)  R = reserve  C = consumption (annually)  ~95 years of chromium left

Results  Static index from initial equation  Exponential from slide above  5x comes assuming our reserve #s too low Source: Wikipedia, “exponential reserves index”21

Club of Rome report  IS JUST A MODEL  Any of you could build it. This is what grad school research is all about. 22

Club of Rome report  focused on five key elements that contribute to these world-wide problems and ultimately limit human development:  (1) population growth,  (2) industrial production,  (3) food production,  (4) use of nonrenewable resources, and  (5) discharges of pollution. 23

Group exercise  Split into groups, each group assigned a key element.  What info (DATA) you would need/want to know to make informed decisions?  e.g., Food (calorie demand or yields or both?)  What info/data relates to one of the other key elements? 24

Brundtland Commission  Not sure what to say here  Recommendations? Lecture 1:25

Brundtland Commission  Lesson learned  Be the head of a important group with a long, uninteresting name and write two sentences of important stuff and your name lives on.

BCSD  Similar thoughts but from the business perspective  “in a unique position to take a major role”  “used to making big decisions given great uncertainty”  “businesses that work on understanding these changes before they become widespread will gain competitive advantage.  Have they? Which industries? Lecture 1:27

Fundamental Quandary of Leaders 28  Leaders with all the power have little motivation to change the status quo  Political  Business  “establish a new vision and collective ethic based on equality of opportunity for all countries of the present world and between this generation and the next.”

Eco-efficiency  Adding value with minimum resource use (and maintaining quality) 29

WBCSD today  Switch to safari

Where does this history lead us?  Three decades of smart people writing recommendations  Still asking “paper versus plastic”

Fun with Data  U.S. Census (and other national censuses), Statistical Abstract  Energy Information Association  U.S. Geological Survey  U.S. Department of Agriculture

World mapper  Resources 1900 and 2000  Forests.. Lecture 1:33

Summary  End of the history lesson  This is an engineering class -  Use engineering tools to solve problems and model scenarios  This is a policy class -  Using tool and scenario results to suggest plans for action  Wednesday - How many people in the world…?  Today, tomorrow, 10 years, 100 years…