• (Published as “If we want energy for all, we need to stop wasting it”)

A 2018 study found global energy demand by 2050 could be 40 per cent lower than now if all known energy efficiencies were implemented

Dr. Trevor Hancock

12 September 2023

699 words

The fifth great turnaround proposed by the Earth For All (E4A) initiative of the Club of Rome is a complete restructuring of our energy system. But it’s more than that, since energy is so bound up in all we do. Energy has powered our civilization ever since we first learned to use fire to warm us, cook and scare off predators.

As we moved through the ages of wood, coal, oil, gas and nuclear we accumulated more and more ‘energy servants’. Today, by one estimate, every American has at their command the equivalent of roughly 150 servants working 24/7 every day of the year, and that does not seem to include the energy used outside America making all the stuff that is acquired.

So transforming our energy system also means transforming our way of life, our societies and our economies. In their chapter on The Energy Turnaround, E4A’s authors discuss among other things “a shift to more conscious production, and to consuming less”, as well as the need for a circular economy and manufacturing practices to both recycle materials and use less materials in products.

At the heart of their proposed strategy lies greater energy and resource efficiency.  As is the case with food, as I noted last week, we waste a lot of energy. Earth For All cites a 2018 study in Nature Energy by Arnulf Grubler and colleagues that found global energy demand by 2050 could be 40 percent lower than now if all known energy efficiencies were implemented, in spite of population increases and rising affluence.

Greater efficiencies stem from improving our buildings and changing our transportation systems, E4A stresses. Improved insulation is “a better solution than adding air conditioning or heaters”, daylighting buildings is better than using lights, refurbishing is better than demolishing buildings. We also need to redesign our cities for walkability and livability, aiming for denser development, public transportation and “smaller vehicles, and fewer vehicles on the roads.”

Those vehicles should be electric, as should pretty much everything else. Indeed “electrify (almost) everything” is their second proposed solution: “we should substitute carbon molecules with electrons wherever something needs energy.”

They address a number of myths put forward mainly by the fossil fuel industry and their allies: No, energy transitions are not slow, and we are midway through this transition, at the point where renewable energy is as cheap as fossil fuels, or cheaper, in many places. No, many sectors are not hard to electrify, the technologies to do so exist. No, it is not difficult to change people’s behavior, and no, clean energy is not intermittent and unreliable, if proper planning is done.

In fact, “the solutions are market-ready”, although we do need to ensure that the new minerals mining that is needed does not exploit poor nations or vulnerable people, and does not create land degradation and pollution. Part of that mitigation, of course, is that greater efficiency reduces demand and its accompanying harms.

Earth For All’s third proposed solution is an exponential growth in new renewables. Wind and solar, they point out, doubled from 5 percent of all global electricity production in 2016 to 10 percent in 2021. At that rate, they note, these technologies could supply half of all electricity in the early 2030s, especially as costs decline about 20-25 percent for each doubling of installed capacity.

Another energy source to consider is ultradeep geothermal energy, which has caught the attention of Thomas Homer-Dixon and his colleagues at the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. This involves creating heat-exchange reservoirs in hot, dry rock more than 5 kilometres below Earth’s surface. These geothermal power plants, they write, “could be built nearly anywhere on Earth and provide an essentially limitless supply of net-zero power.” By pioneering this approach, they suggest, Canada could become a deep geothermal superpower.

Not only will these changes help us avoid the worst of climate change, they will also result in cleaner air and better health, especially in low and middle-income countries, who will need both techological and financial support to make these changes. But as the countries with the highest carbon footprints, high-income countries such as Canada need to lead the way towards energy for all.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

(Published as “We need to change the way we farm — and eat”)

A more plant-based, low-meat diet has many health and ecological benefits, including requiring less land per person, so it can be farmed more sustainably.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

4 September 2023

701 words

The first three of the five ‘great turnarounds’ in the Club of Rome’s ‘Earth for All’ report are concerned with addressing different aspects of inequality. But the final two, to which I now turn, are concerned with two of the most fundamental determinants of our health; food and – next week – energy.

The Earth For All report notes: “The way we farm, transport and consume food affects more planetary boundaries than anything else.” They go on to list these impacts, which include climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss – including widespread depletion of fish stocks, massive use of freshwater, and pollution from fertilisers, pesticides and animal wastes.

Those ecological changes cut both ways, with the effects of climate change – high temperatures, droughts and floods – threatening agriculture in many parts of the world. The risk of ‘breadbasket failures’ are real and growing.

Indeed, the lead author of a recent article in Nature Communication, titled “Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections” told AFP that the study should be a “a wake-up call in terms of our uncertainties.”

But climate and other ecological changes are not the only factors threatening the stability and resilience of what is, in fact, a rather fragile global food system. The system depends upon a relatively small number of countries and staple products, many grown as monocultures with little genetic variety, while an unhealthy and environmentally harmful Western diet is pushed by narrow commercial interests.

As we have seen in Ukraine, a relatively small local war can affect food availability and prices around the world, especially in many vulnerable low-income countries, potentially triggering social unrest and mass migration, and threatening democracy. 

“We face a triple challenge in agriculture”, the Earth For All report concludes: “Produce more healthy food, without destroying the planet, while building resilient production systems that are able to withstand rising shocks.” And the report goes on to suggest three solutions.

The first is to revolutionize the way we farm. Given that we already use half of all land for agriculture and other purposes, this starts with not expanding the conversion of forests and other natural lands to agriculture. In fact we need to grow more food on less land, while restoring natural systems.

Farmlands must become carbon sinks, not carbon emitters, they must enhance not erode biodiversity and they must restore the health of the soil. This is an approach known as regenerative agriculture. It must be complemented by advanced technologies for managing agriculture efficiently, including ‘vertical farming’ in cities.

The second solution is to change our diets. The Western diet, marketed around the world, is bad for health and for the planet. A more plant-based, low-meat diet – such as the new Canada Food Guide proposes – has many health and ecological benefits. In particular it requires less land per person, which reduces the pressure on land, allowing it to be farmed more sustainably. 

Finally, we need to eliminate food loss and waste, which can also reduce the pressure on land. The FAO estimates that globally about one third of food is lost or wasted. In high-income countries we over-consume and portion size is too large, fueling obesity, and we discard too much edible food because it is blemished. In low-income countries, better storage, refrigeration and transportation is needed to reduce losses.

Here on Vancouver Island, most of our food is imported, and we have only enough food land to supply about 10 percent of our needs, according to Professor Rick Kool at Royal Roads University, although that could be more with a low-meat diet. The good news is that increasing the uptake of regenerative practices is one of the objectives of BC’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food, while the Sundown Centre in North Saanich provides a hub for regenerative agricultural practices in the region.

In addition, The City of Victoria is a founding partner in the ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign, a national program to reduce food waste in Canada. The City is also home to the Zero Waste Emporium, Vancouver Island’s first Zero Waste grocery store. But the big challenge is changing our diets and changing our over-consumption practices; we still have a long way to go!

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

We are far from gender equality globally, and still have some way to go in Canada

Dr. Trevor Hancock

29 August 2023

701 words

Last week I discussed the need for a reduction in inequality within nations as the second of five ‘great turnarounds’ proposed in the Earth For All report. The third turnaround needed to ensure a socially just transformation is the empowerment of women and the achievement of gender equity.

The report’s authors stress the need for improvement in “women’s access to education, economic opportunities and dignified jobs, and all life’s chances that these bring.” The education and empowerment of women and their involvement in the economy, they note, is strongly linked to reduced fertility rates and a reduction in population size.

This point was emphasized by Per Espen Stoknes, Earth For All project lead and director of the Centre for Sustainability at the Norwegian Business School. It is the main factor behind their prediction that the population would peak at 8.6 billion in 2050 (we just passed 8 billion) before declining to 7 billion in 2100.

Gender equality is the fifth of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed upon by all the nations of the world, including Canada, in 2015. There are six outcome targets under this Goal, including ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls; ending violence and exploitation of women and girls; eliminating harmful practices such as child early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and ensuring access to universal reproductive rights and health.

The latest report on Goal 5 from UN Women, the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, was in 2022. It found “the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030”. Indeed, at the current rate of change, the report noted, “it may take another 286 years to remove discriminatory laws and close prevailing gaps in legal protections for women and girls.”

The report highlights the importance of educating girls and young women, noting it is “integral to virtually every aspect of development, including economic growth and prosperity.” These benefits, decades of research has shown, include “faster poverty reduction, better maternal health, lower child mortality, greater HIV prevention and reduced violence against women.”

A fact sheet in the report highlights that violence against women and girls remains commonplace. Shockingly, globally, one woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, while globally, one in eight women and girlsaged 15-49 was subjected to sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner in the previous year.

Clearly there is a long way to go in achieving gender equality in many parts of the world, as highlighted by recent events in Afghanistan, in which women are denied education and employment, or in Iran, where there are many restrictions on women; similar restrictions are seen in many other parts of the world,

Here in Canada, not only is gender equality a fundamental human right, the Government of Canada states, it is “a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.” As part of its commitment, in 2019, the government established a Ministry of Women and Gender Equality.

Canada’s aims, according to the federal government, are to eliminate gender-based violence and harassment, support gender equality in leadership roles and at all levels of decision-making and ensure that Canadians, and those who live here, share responsibilities within households and families.

The Government of Canada introduced the Gender Results Framework in 2018 to provide data on gender equality within 6 main areas: education and skills development; economic participation and prosperity; leadership and democratic participation; gender-based violence and access to justice; poverty reduction, health and well-being; and gender equality around the world.

Regrettably, however, while there is lots of data in extensive tables, it is not user-friendly and I could not find a useful summary or compilation on their website, nor could I find an annual report. However, the Canadian Women’s Foundation notes that women working full-time and part-time make 89 cents for every dollar men make, that women, especially single mothers are more likely to live in low-income households than men, and that one in ten women are concerned about the possibility of violence in the home.

Clearly, we are far from gender equality globally, and still have some way to go in Canada.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

There are moral, social and economic arguments in favour of reducing inequality.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

22 August 2023

699 words

The second great turnaround proposed by the Club of Rome’s 21^st Century Transformational Economics Commission in their “Earth For All” report is to reduce inequality within nations. As I noted last week, there are moral, social and economic arguments in favour of reducing inequality. As the report bluntly states, “extreme inequality is a destructive force in society”, while “countries where citizens are economically more equal function better.” 

The Commission notes the problems resulting from inequality include skewed political power, over-consumption among the rich and the appropriation of ‘the commons’ through privatization – not just land, but data and knowledge too. To this we might add that high levels of inequality lead to a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness, and the potential for heightened social conflict.

Inequality has been increasing around the world in recent decades, as it has in Canada. The World Inequality Report 2022 (WIR) stated: “Income and wealth inequalities have been on the rise nearly everywhere since the1980s following a series of deregulation and liberalization programs”. But, the report added, different countries displayed different degrees of rising inequality, indicating that “inequality is not inevitable, it is a political choice.”  

Earth4All proposes three main levers to address inequality within nations: “more progressive taxation on both income and wealth for individuals and corporations; strengthening labor rights and trade unions’ negotiating power”; and innovations such as a universal basic income that can both share prosperity and provide security.

What would this mean in Canada? First, we forget we were less unequal in Canada before the advent of neoliberal ideology and economics. The WIR points out that “inequality in Canada . . . was maintained at low levels from the 1950s to the 1980s”, but that “income inequality in Canada has been rising significantly over the past 40 years”. This was attributed to a combination of financialization (an increase in size and importance of the financial sector), deregulation and lower taxes since the 1980s.

Specifically, in 1980, the top 10 percent of income earners took almost 35 percent of national income, while the bottom half of the population took almost 20 percent. Today, the WIR notes, the top 10 percent take just over 40 percent of national income, while the bottom half take only 15.6 percent. This makes Canada more unequal than the EU, but less unequal than the USA.

Wealth inequality in Canada is even more dramatic, and has remained relatively unchanged since the mid-1990s: The top 10 percent own over 57 percent of wealth (and the top 1 percent own 25 percent), while the bottom half own less than 6 percent of wealth.

Second, we also forget the workforce was more unionized forty years ago. A 2022 Statistics Canada report notes that unionization among full time employees dropped by almost a quarter, from 40 percent in 1981 to 30 percent by 2022, and remained low, at 23 percent, among part-time employees

We also forget the reason for unions and the benefits they bring. They were and remain a way for workers – which is most of us – to resist the power of large corporations, for whom cheap labour and low or non-existent benefits and pensions and poor working conditions are all good ways to save money and increase profits.

It has been one of the triumphs of corporate power to persuade today’s gig workers that they are better off with low paid, part-time and temporary work with few or no benefits. But the impacts in terms of low income, poverty and stress, among other costs to people and society, are significant. Moreover, a 2021 study from the Economic Policy Institute in the USA found that the 17 states with the highest rates of unionization “have more equitable economic structures, social structures, and democracies”.

As to the third strategy, readers may recall that I argued recently that we would need to tax robots and AI so as to redistribute the wealth they create, providing the basis for a universal basic income. The Earth4All report also proposes a Citizen’s Fund to share the dividends created through (environmentally responsible) exploitation of a nation’s shared natural wealth. Ideas such as these need to be discussed if we are to reduce inequality in Canada and globally.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Humans must move from a society focused on “me” to one focused on “we”

Dr. Trevor Hancock

15 August 2023

700 words

In the past few weeks I have been stressing the need for a rapid transformation of our society if we are to ensure people around the world can have good lives within planetary boundaries.  A recent article in a (British) Royal Society journal by Professor Timothy Lenton, a leading Earth system scientist and Director of the Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter and Marten Scheffer at Wageningen University, makes the same point.

They suggest there are two main ways in which “the industrialized modern growth regime” is a threat to itself, which means, of course, a threat to our societies and to ourselves. First, “the growing consumption of non-essential goods, services and associated resources is causing climate change, loss of nature and disruption of humanity’s life-support system”; second, they state, “appropriation of resources by the richest is exacerbating inequality between nations and within some of the richest nations, producing geopolitical tension, social unrest and conflict (despite average wealth increasing).”

After looking at the process by which “human systems . . . come to dominate and transform the world”, they conclude that “to escape a bleak Anthropocene will require abruptly shifting from existing unsustainable ‘vicious cycles’ to alternative, sustainable ‘virtuous cycles’”. But they add that this will require “a revolutionary cultural shift from maximizing growth to maximizing persistence”, or as the Science Council of Canada put it almost fifty years ago, from a consumer to a conserver society.

It will also require another key shift in core values, in order to address the threat of growing inequality noted above: From a society focused on ‘me’ to one focused on ‘we’, from the hyper-individualism of neo-liberalism to a concern for our neighbours and, as Indigenous people put it, for ‘all our relations’.

Earth For All, a 2022 report to the Club of Rome from its 21^st Century Transformational Economics Commission, is focused on exactly this necessity. The key point of the report is inherent in its title; this is not Earth for a few, nor just for some, not even for many, but for ALL. It stems from a deeply humane concern to include everyone, to ensure everyone in the world has their basic needs met and that they enjoy good health, a sense of wellbeing and a decent quality of life.

The argument here is not for absolute equality, but for equity. In my field of population health, inequity – its opposite – is understood as unfair and unacceptable inequality. In other words, we recognize that in health, as in the rest of life, there will always be differences, inequalities. What matters is whether those differences are considered fair or just. Many would argue that the current level of inequality between rich and poor is neither fair nor just, and thus is unacceptable.

For those who have problems dealing with the strong moral argument to reduce inequality and achieve equity, I advance a strong social benefit. As the Earth For All report notes: “Countries that are more equal perform better in all areas of human wellbeing and achievement than countries with divisive levels of income inequality.” And since there are large economic costs both in lost productivity and lost contribution to society and in added cost to deal with health, social and other problems, this constitutes a strong economic argument for greater equity.

The Earth For All report proposed five ‘great turnarounds’ or transformations to create a sustainable society, the first three of which are focused on inequality: Ending poverty globally, addressing gross inequality within nations and empowering women. The fourth great turnaround involves redesigning our food systems to make them healthy for both people and the planet, while the final great turnaround is focused on transforming our energy systems.

Underlying these five transformations is a sixth; a shift from “Winner takes all” capitalism to what the report calls “Earth4All economies”. Such economies are based on “securing a people’s wellbeing by securing their shared commons”, by which is meant the ecological determinants of our shared health – land, water, air, food, a clean and safe environment, biodiversity, a stable climate and so on.

I addressed the first turnaround, ending poverty globally, in December. Next week I will start to look at the remaining turnarounds.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Capitalism is itself a giant income redistribution scheme, transferring money from the poor to the rich.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

8 August 2023

700 words

Last week I looked at the 1977 Science Council of Canada report ‘Canada as a Conserver Society’. The report recommended “Canadians as individuals, and their governments, institutions, and industries, begin the transition from a consumer society preoccupied with resource exploitation to a conserver society engaged in more constructive endeavours.”

As opposed to a consumer society, stated the report, a conserver society “promotes economy of design of all systems, i.e., ‘doing more with less’; favours re-use or recycling and, wherever possible, reduction at source; questions the ever-growing per capita demand for consumer goods, artificially encouraged by modern marketing techniques, and recognizes that a diversity of solutions in many systems, such as energy and transportation, might in effect increase their overall economy, stability, and resiliency.”

Regrettably, we did not make that transition and have lost the opportunity for the gradual transition that was called for. Fifty years later, the hole we have dug for ourselves is now much deeper, and thus the transition must be faster and the rate of change steeper; we now need not just a gradual transition but a rapid transformation, and one that addresses not only the ecological realities we face, but the social realities too.

Chief among the latter, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated in February, is that “Extreme wealth and extreme poverty rage on. The gulf between the haves and have nots is cleaving societies, countries and our wider world.”

So I was glad to see that in calling for the transition, the authors of the Science Council report added: “Ideally, Canada could provide the leadership necessary to work toward more equitable distribution of the benefits of natural resources to all mankind.” It is that more equitable distribution I begin to address this week.

Now any time I raise the issue of a more equitable distribution of wealth and income it leads to accusations this is socialism or communism and that, as one recent letter writer to this paper put it, “’climate justice’ sounds too much like a giant income redistribution scheme”. But what this view fails to recognise is that capitalism is itself a giant income redistribution scheme, transferring money from the poor to the rich.

In a November 2019 column I noted that Bruce Boghosian, a professor of mathematics at Tufts University, reported in an article in Scientific American that “far from wealth trickling down to the poor, the natural inclination of wealth is to flow upward, so that the ‘natural’ wealth distribution in a free-market economy is one of complete oligarchy” – a situation in which one person owns everything. Importantly, he adds, “it is only redistribution that sets limits on inequality.”

So to be clear, when I talk about redistribution, it is because we need to set limits on inequality in the context of a finite planet where excessive resource consumption and pollution by the wealthy makes it impossible for the poor to meet their basic human needs.

That is what I meant when I wrote last week that neoliberalism is inhumane, which the Oxford Dictionaries define as “without compassion for misery or suffering; cruel.” Neoliberalism puts money before the wellbeing of people, communities and nature, even though the latter underpins the wellbeing and indeed the very survival of people. In viewing these as ‘externalities’, it denies people their humanity and their right to exist.

The great transformation to a conserver or sustainable society that we must undertake must be socially just not only for the present global population, but for future generations and for other species, so that all can thrive on this one small planet that is our only home.

Last Fall, I began exploring the proposals for a just transformation in the Club of Rome’s Earth For All framework. The authors note in their opening chapter that “the long-term potential of humanity depends upon civilization . . . undergoing five extraordinary turnarounds within the coming decades.” The first three of those turnarounds are focused on inequality: Ending poverty globally, addressing gross inequality within nations and empowering women.

I addressed the first of these in my December 4^th column, but did not complete my review of the remaining turnarounds. Next week, I will pick up where I left off.   

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the              University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

The agenda for such a transformation has been known for at least half a century, but in spite of the evidence, we have not done so

Dr. Trevor Hancock

1 August 2023

700 words

In my last two columns I suggested we urgently need a rapid transformation of the major systems that make up society and underpin today’s dominant culture. Not only will this transformation protect the Earth systems we depend upon for our wellbeing, indeed our very survival, it will actually lead to improved wellbeing and quality of life.

Those systems include not only the obvious issues of energy use, consumption of materials, production of wastes and pollutants, food production, housing and urban development, protection and restoration of nature and so on, but the economic, legal and political systems and the social norms and cultural values that underpin society.

It is both encouraging and disturbing that the agenda for such a transformation has been known for at least half a century. Encouraging because we know what we need to do; disturbing because in spite of the evidence, we have not done so.

More than half a century ago, the Club of Rome warned of the limits to growth in its report of that name. Following up on these ideas, the Science Council of Canada’s Committee on the Implications of a Conserver Society produced ‘Canada as a Conserver Society’ in 1977. Their report mapped out “the transition from a consumer society preoccupied with resource exploitation to a conserver society engaged in more constructive endeavours.”

While the report focused on resource uncertainties and the need for new technologies and made recommendations in the areas of transportation, shelter and community, renewable energy sources and materials conservation, the authors recognised the needed changes were more profound.

As the Chairperson noted in her letter of transmittal to the Chair of the Science Council, while science and technology are important, “finally, however, the choice comes down to a matter of social preferences, and its implementation often waits on political will.”

That Chairperson was Professor Ursula Franklin, a distinguished physicist and humanitarian at the University of Toronto. It is worth repeating at length here some of what she had to say in her letter, beginning with this: “The need to come to terms with resource scarcity, environmental pollution and the associated social questions is . . . recognized throughout the world, often much more keenly than in our country.”

She went on to write: “It is now understood that in many fields the continuing expansion of current practices will not be possible in the future”, adding that “to suggest that moving toward a Conserver Society means regression, or moving ‘back to the woods’, is totally misguided.”

But unfortunately, she noted, “the awareness and the willingness which I sense at the grassroots seem to find at best a reluctant political expression. It may be that this apparent inertia is due to the lingering of the old illusion that Canadians, as a small population possessing immense natural resources, have only to sit back and let the world take its course, to enjoy perpetual prosperity.” Sadly, that view is still around 50 years later, as the recent article by Gwyn Morgan so clearly illustrated.

Dr. Franklin concluded: “I can only hope that this study will help to destroy that mirage and free Canadians for action. Not only are we not as rich as we have grown to think, but our complacency and indecision could cause us to miss participating in the most stimulating and rewarding global tasks of the next decade. Not to respond now could mean losing control over the design of our future. As I hand over this Report, I can only pray that its insights will be used and that it may become, in the hands of many Canadians, a tool for the good of all.”

Well, it didn’t happen. Dr. Franklin and the Committee were right, but the political will was missing, as the political and corporate elite were still wedded to growth and economic expansion. Within a few years, the environmentally destructive and inhumane ideology of neo-liberalism, ushered in by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, had become mainstream orthodoxy, bringing us to the current polycrisis.

50 years ago we missed the opportunity then to begin the transition from a consumer to a conserver society. Now the need for a major transformation is urgent; we cannot miss it again.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the              University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

(Published as “A polycrisis is greater than the sum of its parts”)

It’s not just a set of isolated crises happening at the same time, but a set of interacting crises that are “producing far greater harm together than the sum of harms they’d produce in isolation”

Dr. Trevor Hancock

25 July 2023

700 words

Last week I suggested that we need to listen to the so-called ‘doomsayers’ – those who study global change and have been raising concerns for decades about the unsustainable path on which we are embarked. Regrettably, and perhaps disastrously, they – we – have been largely ignored, in favour of a ‘business as usual’ approach.

So we now find ourselves in what some – including the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University – are calling a polycrisis. (In the interest of transparency, I am a member of the Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board). Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, drew attention to this emerging phenomenon in his speech to the UN General Assembly in February, outlining the UN’s priorities for 2023.

“We have started 2023 staring down the barrel of a confluence of challenges unlike any other in our lifetimes”, he said, and went on to list the challenges: “Wars grind on. The climate crisis burns on. Extreme wealth and extreme poverty rage on. The gulf between the haves and have nots is cleaving societies, countries and our wider world. Epic geopolitical divisions are undermining global solidarity and trust.” 

His list does not even include the Covid-19 pandemic, from which the world was slowly emerging, nor does it list biodiversity loss and pollution, the other two components  – along with climate change – of what the UN Environment Programme calls “a triple crisis”.

The Cascade Institute has an even longer list that make up the polycrisis which it is studying. In addition to those listed by Guterres, they include financial system instability, ideological extremism, pernicious social impacts of digitalization, cyber attacks, mounting social and political unrest, large-scale forced migrations and an escalating danger of nuclear war.

The Institute is one of a number of centres around the world that are studying the polycrisis; others include the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. In a February article in the Globe and Mail, Institute Director Thomas Homer-Dixon and two of his colleagues discussed the concept of a polycrisis.

While some dismiss the idea as simply meaning “there’s lots of bad stuff happening simultaneously and one thing can affect another”, as one critic of the idea put it, a polycrisis is more than that. Its not just a set of isolated crises happening at the same time,  wrote Homer-Dixon and his colleagues, but a set of interacting crises that are “producing far greater harm together than the sum of harms they’d produce in isolation”; in short, a polycrisis is greater than the sum of its parts.

Today’s crises they wrote, “simultaneously span natural, political, economic and technological systems, because they’re driven by a multiplicity of underlying ‘systemic risks’.” Moreover, those crises “are not only worse than they were one or two decades ago, they’re also getting worse faster”, and often happening at the same time. So what should we do in the face of a global polycrisis? If, as Naomi Klein wrote in 2014, climate change“changes everything”, surely that is even more true of a polycrisis?.

A simple yet profound way to think about systems is provided by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in its slogan: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets .“ Our system seems to be perfectly designed to disrupt the Earth systems that are our life support systems, while at the same time creating massive inequality and poverty and all the other elements of the polycrisis.

So if we want to change the results, we have to change the systems that underlie the polycrisis and lead to those results. And that is the second main focus of the Cascade Institute’s work; given the possibilities of rapid transformation inherent in complex systems, can we identify ways to trigger what the Institute calls ‘virtuous cascades’ of positive change? Just as we can hit tipping points that take us into deep trouble, we should be able to find tipping points that take us in the right direction.

Almost 50 years ago we missed that opportunity, as I will discuss next week. We can’t afford to fail again as we work to change everything.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

(Published as “We need to start listening to the ‘doomsayers’”)

The real doomsayers are those who, if we follow what they say, will lead us to our doom, not those issuing prudent warnings of real danger

Dr. Trevor Hancock

17 July 2023

699 words

I ended last week’s column with the admonition from Johan Rockstrom and his colleagues that “Nothing less than a just global transformation . . . is required to ensure human well-being” and Thomas Homer Dixon’s observation, with reference just to climate change, that “our responses . . . must be far more radical than we’re currently envisioning. Incrementalism is now a waste of time and resources.”

Both Rockstrom – Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – and Homer Dixon – founder of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University – have been studying the issue of global change for many years and are respected leaders in this field. They and many other leading researchers are growing increasingly concerned that we are approaching, if not already at, multiple tipping points for the climate, biodiversity loss and other key Earth systems. I take their warnings very seriously, as should we all.

People like  Rockstrom and Homer Dixon – and me for that matter – are often labelled ‘doomsayers’, as if that were some sort of negative characteristic. But stop and think for a moment. If someone can see the possibility that speeding through the North Atlantic in the dark means there is a risk the Titanic will hit an iceberg, and recommends a more southerly route and  slower speed, are they a doomsayer, or a prudent and prescient foreteller?

In fact, the real doomsayers are those who, if we follow what they say, will lead us to our doom. We had a splendid example of this just a couple of weeks ago, when Gwyn Morgan popped up on these pages yet again to condemn action to restrict fossil fuels, and to urge that Canada do nothing. Of course, his judgement is suspect – biased and self-interested as it is – because he spent his career building up the fossil fuel industry in Canada and now seems keen to protect his legacy.

But if we follow his advice, and the mix of half-truths, distortions and mis-direction of much of the fossil fuel industry, Canada and the rest of the world will continue to blow through its carbon budget. This will take us further down the path towards a planet with 2 – 2.7 ⁰C of global heating. As it is, we are seeing what a mere 1.2 ⁰C of global heating can do, with climatologists expressing astonishment and concern at the rapidity and scale of temperature changes and their impacts.

Indeed, just a couple of weeks ago UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated “climate change is out of control.” And as I noted last week, Rockstrom and his colleagues reported that we have already passed the safe and just boundary for seven of the eight Earth systems that they were looking at.

So we cannot continue to follow the advice of those who want us to bury our heads in the sand, ignoring our challenges and hoping they will go away, or that somehow technology will save us and allow ‘business as usual’ to carry on. It seems to me that the prudent thing governments need to do is to take seriously the work of these and other Earth system researchers and begin to take the radical steps towards a just global transformation that is needed.

That is particularly the case because, far from being doom-laden, the radical transformation that is called for will not only protect the Earth systems we depend upon for our wellbeing, indeed our very survival, but will actually lead to improved wellbeing and quality of life. It is not a path of sacrifice, but one of enhancement.

That transformation begins by recognising that we only have one planet, that it is the only home of 8 billion people, a myriad of other species and – as far as we currently know – the only life in the galaxy, perhaps in the universe. So we have to learn to live within the physical and ecological constraints of our one planet, and do say in a way that is socially just for the present global population, for future generations and for other species. 

So in the coming weeks, I will explore what such a just transformation looks like and what it will mean.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Dr. Trevor Hancock

10 July 2023

701 words

Last week I noted  the concept of planetary boundaries has been around for over a decade. A 2009 publication by Johan Rockstrom and his colleagues at the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified a number of key Earth systems fundamental to natural processes and human wellbeing, and “thresholds which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change” were identified.

Now Rockstrom – currently at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – has led another team in re-working the planetary boundaries by adding a justice component. In doing so, they are identifying not just a safe operating space for humanity, but a safe and just operating space, one that will minimize “exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change.”

To do so, they looked at eight different earth system domains that are important for human wellbeing: Climate; two measures of the biosphere (the area of largely intact natural ecosystems and the functional integrity of all ecosystems); two measures of water (surface flows and ground water levels); flows of two key nutrients – nitrogen and phosphorus; and atmospheric aerosols (air pollution).

Each of these systems, they noted, “have impacts on policy-relevant timescales; are threatened by human activities; and could affect Earth system stability and future development globally.” For each, they then assessed whether “adhering to the safe ESBs [Earth system boundaries] could protect people from significant harm”, knowing that any such harm “will lead to greater impacts when vulnerable populations are exposed.”

They assessed the ESBs using three justice criteria: Intragenerational justice, which is about justice in today’s world “between countries, communities and individuals”; Intergenerational justice, which is concerned with the “relationships and obligations between generations”; and Interspecies justice, “which aims to protect humans, other species and ecosystems. The latter in particular “could be achieved by maintaining Earth system stability within safe ESBs.”

Their conclusions are sobering: “Seven of the eight globally quantified ESBs have been crossed and at least two local ESBs in much of the world have been crossed, putting human livelihoods for current and future generations at risk” – the one that was not exceeded globally was atmospheric aerosols, which is a regional rather than a global measure. (An accompanying map shows the greatest levels of exceedance are found in a band from Indonesia and Indo-China across India and the Middle East and up into central and eastern Europe.)

The climate ESB is worth further consideration, especially considering that climate, along with biosphere integrity, is considered a core planetary boundary, according to a 2015 updated article on planetary boundaries by the Stockholm Resilience Centre team. This is because “large changes in the climate or in biosphere integrity would likely, on their own, push the Earth system out of the Holocene state” – the relatively stable state experienced by humans in the past 12,000 years.

Referring to what Timothy Lenton’s team found (see last week’s column on the unjust impact of climate change), Rockstrom and his colleagues pointed out that at 1.5 °C warming – the optimistic target established in the Paris Accord – “more than 200 million people, disproportionately those already vulnerable, poor and marginalized . . . could be exposed to unprecedented mean annual temperatures”. In addition, they noted, “more than 500 million could be exposed to long-term sea-level rise.”

This they consider to be unjust, so they recommend the safe and just boundary for climate change be set at or below 1 °C. However, they acknowledge, since we are already at 1.2 °C of warming, and on track for further warming, “this boundary may not be achievable in the foreseeable future”, adding that “adaptations and compensations to reduce sensitivity to harm and vulnerability will be necessary.”

So where does this leave us? Rockstrom and his colleagues are clear: “Nothing less than a just global transformation . . . is required to ensure human well-being. Such transformations must be systemic across energy, food, urban and other sectors, addressing the economic, technological, political and other drivers of Earth system change, and ensure access for the poor through reductions and reallocation of resource use.”

As Thomas Homer Dixon wrote with reference just to climate change, “our responses . . . must be far more radical than we’re currently envisioning. Incrementalism is now a waste of time and resources.”

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy