Introduction

Humanity is faced with a formidable and awe-inspiring multidimensional global challenge. This challenge is so daunting that it has spawned a variety of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) dedicated to facing the challenge. Faculty for a Future (https://facultyforafuture.org/; Video 10.1) is one of these NGOs that believes that academics have a responsibility to future life and believe that the current working culture and structures are not set up to prepare society for an era of colliding environmental and social issues. The challenge as described by Faculty for a Future is summed up as follows:

Humanity is facing multiple interconnected environmental and social crises, owing to industrial society’s unsustainable relationship with the Earth’s life support systems.

This is already causing complex, wide-ranging, and devastating harm that, while felt worst and first by those who have contributed least, is increasingly being felt globally.

That our journey to a safer future requires structural change is not a fringe view. The United Nations is clear that planetary health and human well-being require systemic transitions across all sectors, as well as greater attention to equity, justice, and the integration of indigenous and local knowledge.

As trusted educators, communicators, and policy-influencers, academia has unique potential—and responsibility—to guide students and society through this transition to a better future.

This book has been written in the spirit of the above statement. Climate change has risen to top billing as the dominant environmental threat. Climate change is a major challenge that interacts with other challenges and points to the problems of industrial society’s unsustainable relationship with the natural world. Dealing with climate change effectively will undoubtedly require a holistic response that also addresses other challenges we face including the demographic challenge. Most people are not comfortable with the idea of Zero Population Growth despite the fact that it is ultimately necessary to achieve true sustainability. The 2021 COP26 summit held in Glasgow, Scotland was about saving humankind and allowing future generations of humans to have real opportunities for rich, creative, and meaningful lives as opposed to nasty, brutish, and short ones.

How can we envision this future and cocreate it? This chapter explores the ideas of several people and institutions who have developed viable solutions. Unfortunately, the vision of most economists, who have historically dominated the policy domain, has let us to pursue an unrealizable goal: Perpetual growth fueled by technological fundamentalism. Economists have not seen the problem appropriately in the past and are not likely to in the future. What they continue to miss is that without population stabilization and eventually degrowth, all other approaches to climate change and other social and environmental problems will not work. Economists do not recognize this because they are blinded by a pre-analytic belief in perpetual growth of the economy, which is driven by perpetual growth of the population. Baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” We would be incredibly naive to think that in the 22nd century, we will be living comfortably in a world of 12 billion people and flying around in electric cars. Economists have consistently failed to appreciate the value of nature and the nature of value, and their worldview of perpetual growth has got us into this mess. Economists are not the ones to seek for sustainable solutions to our environmental challenges. As Einstein said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We must know where we are going if we hope to get there and population stabilization is an essential element of that future.

Guiding Questions

Why have so many NGOs manifested as a result of the social, political, and environmental challenges we face and what do Faculty for a Future hope to accomplish?

What does the Guttmacher Institute suggest it would cost to provide family planning services to those women of the world who want it but do not have access to it?

What is Lester Brown’s Plan B 4.0 and what would it cost to implement?

What are the objectives of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEALL weall.org )?

Explain Herman Daly and CASSE’s idea of a “Steady State Economy” and speculate as to how consistent a “Steady State Economy” is with a “Wellbeing Economy.”

What systemic transition is the Half-Earth Project hoping to accomplish?

Learning Objectives

• Explain why population stabilization is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sustainability.
• Describe several proposals for systemic transformation of economic and ecological systems.
• Explain why economists are unlikely to provide good solutions to our challenges.

Key Terms and Definitions

Steady state economy, Plan B 4.0, Wellbeing Economy, Zero Population Growth, Unmet need for contraception, Half-Earth Project, The Great Transition Initiative, Scenario Development

10.1 Population Stabilization

Any realistic vision of a just, sustainable, and desirable future that involves a complex human civilization on this planet will have less than 8 billion people on it. In his book, A Planet of 3 Billion, Dr. Christopher Tucker argues that we can, and must, shrink the global population from nearing 9 billion to a more manageable 3 billion. By doing so, we could repay our debt to the planet, a burden it no longer can bear (Tucker, 2019). Shrinking the global population can be accomplished by bringing the global fertility rate to below 2.0 for several generations. Currently, the world adds almost 80 million people per year and every additional person increases carbon emissions in addition to increased consumption of many other resources. The least costly and most effective policy to control future CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and thereby climate change is to curb global population growth by simply providing contraceptive care to all women in the world who want it but do not currently have access (Wheeler & Hammer, 2010).

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the world has roughly 218 million women with an unmet need for modern contraception. Roughly half the pregnancies in lower- and middle-income countries are unintended (111 million). It would cost only $8 billion annually to provide a package of care to meet all women’s needs for modern contraception, pregnancy-related and newborn care, as well as treatment for the major curable sexually transmitted infections. In a cost comparison, that is less than the $10 billion Americans will spend this year on Halloween costumes, candy, and lawn decorations, which is roughly 3 times the entire annual budget for the United States National Park Service ($3.5 billion).

Reducing the number of people being born also increases the effectiveness of other climate change investments. This is not true of the solutions typically championed by economists. Most economists got climate change wrong. They said mitigation would be too expensive. Actually, the many infrastructure hardening efforts, such as building sea walls to mitigate hurricane damage rather than restoring coastal wetlands, are too expensive. They are like “castles in the sand,” expensive and wasted opportunities relative to far more efficient investments in ecosystem preservation and population stabilization.

Addressing current emissions is important; however, the best long-term investment in climate change mitigation and achieving sustainable development goals is providing family planning and contraception to those women of the world who simply want it but cannot get it (Starbird et al., 2016). This “less is more” conversation needs to gain prominence now. Scientists, policymakers, and the media need to understand that the future we desire necessitates a stable population. Only when we rightfully know where we are going, can we end up with a just, sustainable, and desirable future for humankind.

10.2 Holistic Transition Plans for a Just, Sustainable, and Desirable Future

Population stabilization is a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving a just, sustainable, and desirable future. Bringing about fertility decline requires three preconditions (Coale, 1973): (1) desire for reduced fertility, (2) effective techniques of Fertility Control, and (3) availability and access to fertility control technology. As the United Nations and Faculty for a Future suggest facing our multifaceted global challenges must be accompanied by “systemic transitions across all sectors.” It is likely that in order to get on the path to a sustainable and desirable future, we will have similar preconditions: (1) We will have to want to achieve a just, sustainable, and desirable future, (2) we will have to have an effective technology and plan to do so, and (3) that plan and technology must be available to all of us. The plans and the technology exist. What we are lacking is the collective will or desire to execute the plans. Providing education about some of the plans helps develop the will for change and sustain a hope that human civilization will embark upon plans to achieve sustainable development. The following sections briefly describe proposals for bringing about the systemic transitions in the economic sector, the ecological sector, and the social justice sector that need to take place. Lester Brown’s Plan B 4.0 provides a rough but practical budget for bringing about most of these changes and the United Nations Global Sustainable Development Report echoes the need for all of the above.

10.2.1 Herman Daly’s Steady State Economy

This book on the topic of “Population Geography” contains a great deal of information on economics and the history of economic activity for several reasons: (1) The patterns of population are intimately related to the patterns of economic systems, urbanization, and resource use, (2) questions of ecological sustainability are fundamentally a function of population size and per capita economic consumption, and (3) achievement of a just, sustainable, and desirable future requires systemic transition of our economic sector in addition to population stabilization. Brian Czech, president of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE), provides this definition of steady state economics:

The phrase “steady state economy” originated from ecological economics, most notably the work of Herman Daly, but its roots are in classical economics, most notably the “stationary state” as touted by John Stuart Mill. The steady state economy is often discussed in the context of economic growth and the impacts of economic growth on ecological integrity, environmental protection, and economic sustainability. Therefore, use of the phrase “steady state economy” requires a clear definition of economic growth.

10.2.2 E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth Project

In addition to a systemic transition of our economic system, we need a systemic transition of our ecological system to a system in which humans stop overexploiting the natural world. Half-Earth is a plan developed by the late E.O. Wilson who during his lifetime was generally recognized as one of the leading scientists in the world. Half-Earth is a call to protect half of the land and sea in order to maintain and manage sufficient habitat to protect the majority of the world’s rapidly declining biodiversity. Our mapping ability has been profoundly improved via Geographic Information Systems, GPS, and satellite imagery and now allows us to comprehensively map the location and distribution of the species of our planet at high enough spatial resolution to drive decision-making about where we have the best opportunity to protect the most species. This is the work of the Half-Earth Project (https://www.half-earthproject.org/discover-half-earth/; Figure 10.1). Why one-half? The key factor in the survival of species is the amount of suitable habitat for them to exist in. The theory of island biogeography has demonstrated that a change in the area of a habitat results in a change in the sustainable number of species by approximately the fourth root. As reserves of habitat increase in size, the diversity of life surviving within them also increases. As reserves shrink, the diversity within them declines to a mathematically predictable degree. This takes place quite rapidly, often immediately, and, for a large fraction, permanently. When 90% of habitat is expropriated by human activities (Agriculture, Urbanization, and other forms of land degradation), the number of species that can continue to survive sustainably drops by roughly 50%. This is the reality for many of the most biodiverse hotspots around the world. These hotspots are so vulnerable that if 10% of the remaining natural habitat were removed, it is a fait de accompli that most or all of the surviving resident species will soon disappear. However, if we act soon and we protect half the global surface, the fraction of species protected will be 85% or more. The Half-Earth Project supports systemic change by arguing that half of the earth’s marine and terrestrial habitats must be protected and they participate in the solution by engaging in the complex geospatial challenge of identifying which half is the most optimal to save.

10.2.3 The Wellbeing Economy Alliance

Another systemic transition required to achieve a just, sustainable, and desirable world is in the domain of social justice. One major obstacle to bringing about change in our economic system is the concern from many in the less developed world and in many indigenous communities that the means by which we achieve environmental sustainability will impose greater hardship on the poor and indigenous than is warranted relative to their contribution to our past failures to do so. As Faculty for a Future states so clearly:

This is already causing complex, wide-ranging, and devastating harm that, while felt worst and first by those who have contributed least, is increasingly being felt globally.

The poor and indigenous peoples of the world have contributed very minimal proportions of the greenhouse gases driving climate change, yet they are the ones who will feel the negative consequences the most. This is a matter of social justice. There are many other social justice questions to address including the idea of behaving in a fair and equitable way to future generations. The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEALL; www.weall.org) is a collaboration of changemakers working to transform the economic system in a way that bends it toward both social justice and ecological sustainability. WEALL’s vision is to foster a transformation of the world’s economies to create shared well-being for people and the planet by 2040. WEALL’s theory of change as expressed on their website is as follows:

WEAll aims to build a world where everyone has enough to live in comfort, safety, and happiness. Where all people feel secure in their basic comforts and can use their creative energies to support the flourishing of all life on this plant. Where we thrive in a restored, safe, and vibrant natural environment because we have learned to give back as much as we are given. A world where we have a voice over our collective destiny and find belonging, meaning and purpose through genuine connection to the people and planet that sustain us.

WEAll believes that such a world is not only possible but already underway. Some governments, societies and collectives have already shifted paradigms, recognizing that they have confused means and ends for too long, and that it is our level of wellbeing, not our level of wealth, that should be the ultimate metric for societal success.

A Wellbeing Economy directly addresses the underlying problems of the existing system. It is focused on meeting fundamental needs and, by getting things right the first time, avoids the huge expenditures we are currently incurring trying and failing to fix the massive environmental and social harms our current system is causing. It is still a mixed-economy system (with strong state, private and third sector actors), but one operating to a very different set of goals, values, and incentives. Furthermore, not only are different policies needed, but policymaking needs to be done differently, with high citizen involvement during the entire public policy cycle–from agenda setting to decision-making, to monitoring and evaluation.

There is no one blueprint for a Wellbeing Economy; the shape, institutions, and activities that get us there will look different, both across countries and between different communities within countries. There are other names for economic systems which espouse different versions of the Wellbeing Economy’s needs, such as a doughnut economy and regenerative economy. They may use different approaches and different languages, but all share a common goal and are, often, already key members and allies of WEAll. Moreover, the high-level goals of a Wellbeing Economy are the same across these models: wellbeing for all, on a healthy planet.

However, it is not enough to describe the WHAT of a Wellbeing Economy, the critical question is HOW? Examination of successful system changes shows that, in addition to good research, great communications, effective campaigning, lobbying, and pioneering practical exemplars, four other strategies are critical:

Leverage major crises

Create new power bases

Promote new compelling and positive narratives

Support these with a coherent and accessible knowledge and evidence base

These strategies underpinned the two major economic shifts in the 20th century to Keynesianism and then to neoliberalism. They are the foundation of WEAll’s strategy and why we have deliberately structured our activities around power bases, knowledge, and narratives. Solid power bases are the central element and the backbone of economic system change, while narratives and knowledge are the nutrients that feed the ecosystem with strategic vision, tools and understanding, and persuasive capacity to affect large-scale change.

We are aware that the work of advocating for and creating a Wellbeing Economy is already underway in several places around the world and at different layers of the system, and our primary role is to catalyse this movement, creating impact larger than the sum of its parts. WEAll supports new and existing power bases by offering resources, spaces, and connections to potentialize their work; clarifying the concept of a Wellbeing Economy; expanding public understanding of what the economy is and can be, as well as their role in systems change; illustrating the flaws with contemporary economic thinking; and providing a range of evidence and stories of possible actions that can successfully lead us toward a Wellbeing Economy.

Our initial focus had been to support economic paradigm shifts in high-income countries that are the chief architects of our current economic system and who hold a large share of the responsibility for the multiple crises we face. However, we are now shifting to work worldwide and believe that many lower-income countries are well placed to pilot innovation and provide the inspiration, lessons and hope that are so sorely needed.

WEALL supports telling new stories or narratives about the purpose of the economy. Three core beliefs that WEALL hopes to ingrain into our collective awareness are the following: (1) Humans are a part of nature and thus depend on it, (2) the economy’s purpose is to support life, and (3) the measure of an economy’s success is the creation of well-being for all (Video 10.4). The ideas of WEALL are being adopted in several countries including Scotland, New Zealand, and Iceland. Perhaps not surprisingly, all of these countries are led by women. There is growing evidence that countries led by women have a better track record with respect to survival rates from COVID-19 (Coscieme et al., 2020). WEALL is promoting a new idea of value that is profoundly different from the mercantilists who saw value inhered in gold, and different than the physiocrats who saw value inhered in land. WEALL boldly suggests that value is manifested in equitably distributed human and planetary well-being.

10.2.4 Lester Brown’s Plan B 4.0

There is a t-shirt with the phrase: “There is no Planet B,” which may have motivated Lester Brown to write a book titled Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Brown, 2009). This book, and a great deal of other useful information, is still available for free download from the Earth Policy Institute (http://www.earth-policy.org/), which closed its doors in 2015. Brown’s book went through several versions including Plan B 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0. The sense of urgency grew as the version numbers increased. The book documented much of what has already been documented in this book including the following: Increasing levels of hunger, soaring food prices, geopolitics of food scarcity, looming stresses (peak oil, water shortages, climate change), failing states, and tipping points. Plan B 4.0 is a solutions-oriented program with explicit accounting estimates of costs per program. Plan B has four main goals: (1) Stabilizing the population, (2) eradicating poverty, (3) restoring the Earth’s natural support systems, and (4) stabilizing the climate. Here are some costs associated with each of these goals:

Stabilizing Population and Eradicating Poverty (Total Annual Cost $77 Billion in 2009)

Universal primary education

Eradication of adult illiteracy

School lunch programs for 44 poorest countries

Assistance to preschool children and pregnant women in 44 poorest countries

Reproductive health care and family planning services

Restoring the Earth (Total Annual Cost $110 Billion in 2009)

Protecting and restoring forests

Conserving and rebuilding soils

Protecting biodiversity

Restoring Fisheries

Stabilizing water tables

Planting trees to sequester carbon

This represents a total annual cost in 2009 of $187 billion. To put this in context, this is only one eighth of the annual amount of money the world spends on the military. Brown’s goals for climate stabilization have already been exceeded. The components of the plan are still laudable today: Raise energy efficiency and restructure transportation, replace fossil fuels with renewables, end net deforestation and plant trees to sequester carbon. The energy efficiencies would come from improved building insulation, improved lighting efficiency, improved appliance efficiency, improved industrial efficiency, and the restructuring of our transportation systems (Figure 10.1). The book ends with the challenge “Will we stay with business as usual and preside over an economy that continues to destroy its natural support systems until it destroys itself? Or Will we adopt Plan B and be the generation that changes direction, moving the world onto a path of sustained progress?” Lester Brown, WEALL, CASSE, and the Half-Earth Project all have essentially the same goal. So far, they have failed to convince enough people to drive the political change necessary to act. The plans and the technology are ready and waiting for the collective will to act.

[figure number=Figure 10.1 caption=Plan B Energy Scheme filename=Fig_10.1.jpg]

10.2.5 The Great Transition

The Great Transition Initiative (GTI) consists of an online forum designed for the sharing of ideas about achieving a desirable future. The purpose of the GTI is to explore the critical concepts, strategies, and visions for a transition to a future which manifests as enriched lives, human solidarity, and a resilient biosphere. GTI is a vehicle for promoting the interaction of scholarly and public discourse to raise awareness that focuses on seeing possibilities that may manifest from converging social, economic, and environmental crises. GTI fosters a broad network of thinkers and doers and aims to contribute to a new praxis for global transformation. Paul Raskin, cofounder of the Great Transition Initiative, describes the challenge and vision of GTI (Video 10.6)

Another contribution of the Great Transition Initiative is the idea of presenting “scenarios” or “stories of possible futures” as a mechanism for communicating to both the public and policymakers. Gilberto Gallopín and Paul Raskin established the Global Scenario Group (GSG) to elucidate the requirements for a transition to sustainability. The GSG was established under the umbrella of Tellus Institute and the Stockholm Environment Institute and was supported by several foundations and United Nations agencies. The GSG summarized its insights in the book Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead (Raskin et al., 2002). This book set a broad historical, conceptual, and strategic framework for contemplating the global future. These ideas of “scenarios” have become a standard practice for many scientists and policymakers trying to understand options and trade-offs with respect to developing plans and policies to achieve a just, equitable, and desirable future (Video 10.7).

10.2.6 The United Nations Global Sustainable Development Report

There is a growing consensus of opinion that human civilization is facing an existential crisis and that avoiding that crisis will require a systemic transformation of our social, political, and economic systems particularly with respect to how we impact the very ecological systems that support our civilization. The ideas of CASSE, Herman Daly, Lester Brown, The GTI, WEALL, The Half-Earth Project, and myriad others are now the consensus of the United Nations as manifested in the Sustainable Development Goals described in Chapter 9 and described in the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR; Video 10.8). This uniformity of vision within the academic and policy domain is growing but is by no means representative of a significant fraction of the public. More work still needs to be done to educate, motivate, and mobilize the people of the world to demand the systemic change needed to achieve a just, desirable, and sustainable future.

The U.N. also produced the Global Environmental Outlook. The seventh iteration is now underway. The GEO-7 is the flagship report of UNEP (comparable to the IPCC reports on climate change). The report focuses on providing a solutions-oriented perspective with respect to what is being referred to as the triple planetary crisis. The triple planetary crisis, also referred to as the “polycrisis,” is climate change, loss of biodiversity, and pollution. The polycrisis represents massive multidimensional market failures that demand systemic change to our financial, energy, food, material, and environmental systems. The GEO-7 advises on the nature of the systemic changes we need to make as they pertain to achieving a just, sustainable, and desirable future. It is increasingly recognized that the financial system likely holds many of the primary levers of control for bringing about the desired transformations of the energy, material, food, and environmental systems.

10.3 Will Technology Save the Day?

Chapter 7 described “The Great Acceleration” that has taken place since WWII, which is characterized by many rapid changes including unprecedented population increase, massive food production increase, accelerated biodiversity loss, and climate change to name a few. Technology was undoubtedly a fundamental driver of these changes. Technology is a double-edged sword that can improve food security, provide weather warnings, and result in radioactive nightmare scenarios. The Techno-Optimists of Silicon Valley argued that Facebook and other social media platforms would improve democracy and that humans could, should, and will colonize Mars (O’Mara, 2019). The Luddites of the 19th century were not technooptimists and destroyed the machines they believed would make their lives worse and impoverish them. Noted physicist, Stephen Hawking warned “If the robots don’t get us, climate change will.” The question remains, will technology have a positive or negative impact on our collective efforts to achieve a just, sustainable, and desirable future?

10.3.1 Positive Impacts of Technology

There is little doubt that solar panels, wind turbines, and geothermal energy will be vital to charting a path to a sustainable future. These are clear examples of technology that will help us. Electric vehicles as opposed to vehicles powered by fossil fuel-consuming internal combustion engines are also welcome technology with respect to sustainability. Technologies such as mobile phone networks benefit us because they substantially reduce the material and energy needed to establish communication networks, particularly in developing countries. How these communication networks are used points to some of the uncertain impacts of technology.

10.3.2 Uncertain Impacts of Technology

The internet, telecommunications, and smart phones have enabled the rapid and expansive dissemination of information, disinformation, and misinformation. If our current civilization succeeds, it will likely benefit from these interacting technologies and if human civilization fails, these technologies may very well contribute to our demise. These double-edged sword qualities can also be attributed to many other technological innovations including genetically modified organisms, the use and misuse of plastics, and the increasing use of robots.

10.3.3 Negative Impacts of Technology

The governments of the world invest massive amounts of money into military research and development. Fortunately, the fraction of global GDP expended on the military has dropped from roughly 6% in 1960 to less than 3% today. Sadly, investments in the technology of warfare do not serve the ends of sustainability. The 2022 war between Russia and Ukraine is a disappointing testament to this fundamental failure of human civilization. As stated in that classic 1960s poster: “War is not healthy for children andother living things” (Figure 10.2). Nuclear power is a controversial topic as to its costs and benefits; however, investments in nuclear weapons are a sad sign of how the current state of the human condition prevents us from investing our scarce resources.

[figure number=Figure 10.2 caption=Classic Poster From the 1960s filename=Fig_10.2.jpg]

10.3.4 Interactions and Consequences—WBGTs, Climate Change, and Population Growth

Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) is a composite index that factors in temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation to assess the heat stress in the environment. It provides a more comprehensive understanding of the thermal conditions affecting the human body, especially in outdoor settings. The increasing frequency of high WBGT values is a disturbing consequence of global climate change (Williams et al, 2024). As the planet experiences rising temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions, extreme heat events become more prevalent, intensifying the impact on WBGT. Elevated WBGTs pose a significant threat to human health, particularly for individuals engaged in outdoor activities, such as athletes, laborers, and military personnel. Prolonged exposure to high WBGT levels can lead to heat-related illnesses, ranging from heat exhaustion to organ failure and fatal heatstroke.

The escalating frequency of extreme WBGT conditions raises profound concerns about the potential for massive mortality events. Vulnerable populations, including the elderly, those with preexisting health conditions, and individuals with limited access to cooling facilities, are at an increased risk. The combination of physiological strain and environmental stress can overwhelm the body’s ability to regulate temperature, leading to severe health consequences. Moreover, the socioeconomic implications of widespread heat-related illnesses can strain health care systems and disrupt productivity, creating a multiplying impact on overall public health.

Mitigating the threat of increasing WBGTs requires a holistic approach that involves not only global efforts to address climate change but also localized strategies to protect vulnerable communities. This may include implementing heat action plans, improving urban planning to reduce heat islands, and raising awareness about the dangers of extreme heat. By recognizing the intricate relationship between WBGTs, climate change, and human health, societies can work toward developing adaptive measures to minimize the risks posed by rising temperatures and their potential for massive mortality events.

Climate change is increasing the degree and frequency of life-threatening WBGT events in many parts of the world (Tuholske et al., 2021). Population growth is used in climate models of the IPCC. The standard population models are derived from the “Shared Socio-Economic Pathway” models (SSPs). SSPs are associated with different “Representative Concentration Pathways” (RPCs) where an RCP4.5 assumes greenhouse gas emissions resulting in an additional 4.5 W/m² at the earth’s surface. Research conducted by Chris Funk and his team at the Climate Hazards Group at the University of California at Santa Barbara (Funk et al., 2024) suggests the following concerning possibilities associated with interactions between climate change, population growth, and extreme heat exposure to WBGTs that threaten life: (1) Population growth, alone, is producing, and will produce, a massive explosion in extreme heat exposure; (2) SSP245- and SSP585-based perturbations suggest that warming will also produce explosive growth in human exposure to extreme heat (Figure 10.3); (3) These influences will combine leading to a 24 fold increase in exposure by 2050; and (4) The spatial patterns of this extreme heat are important.

At the beginning of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel, The Ministry for the Future, there is a dramatic event involving a high wet bulb temperature incident in India (Robinson, 2020). In the novel, a heatwave hits India, and the wet bulb temperature exceeds the critical level, resulting in a devastating loss of life. This event kills 20 million people in a 2-week heat wave. The event serves as a wake-up call to the world about the severity of climate change impacts and the urgent need for action.

Following this catastrophe, the novel explores various geoengineering solutions as humanity grapples with the consequences of global warming. In the novel, the Indian Government rapidly engaged in a project that used their Airforce to spread a delicate sheen of sulfur dioxide particulates into the stratosphere west of the Indian subcontinent to reflect sunlight into space. The Indian Government began the implementation of this geoengineering project immediately following the devastating heatwave that happened in the summer of 2025. The project provided a natural blanketing effect to lower global temperatures by a degree for 1 or 2 years. Geoengineering involves deliberate interventions in the Earth’s climate system to mitigate or counteract the effects of climate change. In The Ministry for the Future, these interventions include technologies such as solar radiation management, carbon capture and storage, and other techno fundamentalist methods aimed at stabilizing the climate and preventing further catastrophic events.

The novel delves into the complex ethical, political, and environmental implications of geoengineering as a means to address climate change and its impacts on a global scale. The Minister for the Future becomes a key player in navigating and implementing these solutions, reflecting the urgency and challenges associated with managing a sustainable future in the face of a rapidly changing climate. It is an interesting question to ask Will we ever have a “Ministry for the Future” and what authority will they have at what temporal and geographic scale? A more important question to ask is “Should we engage in Geo-engineering at all?” Many would argue that this is the apex of hubris and will more likely have devastating unintended consequences than solve our problems related to the polycrisis.

[figure number=Figure 10.3 caption=Population Growth drives future heat exposure events. Projected increase in Annual Heat Exposure Events in 2050 based on SSP245 and SSP585. Note that Population Growth accounts for More increases than Warming alone. This is a classic example of an Interaction between two Simultaneously changing phenomena) filename=Fig_10.3.jpg]

10.3.5 Technology and Geoengineering

The real and significant threat of climate change has spurred many scientists to engage in geoengineering research. Many of these scientists have been criticized for these efforts. Geoengineering is the intentional large-scale intervention in the earth’s natural systems to counteract climate change. Many proposals have been suggested in this area including fertilizing the oceans with iron to increase phytoplankton growth as a carbon sink (Emerson, 2019), changing how much of the sun’s radiation hits the earth by scattering chemicals into the upper atmosphere (Irvine et al., 2019), and even deploying a raft of “plastic space bubbles” to the L1 Lagrangian Point between the sun and the earth (a point where gravity from the sun and earth cancel each other out; Hawkins, 2022). Hopefully, we will not have to resort to the frightening uncertainties related to geoengineering (Video 10.9).

Summary/Key Takeaways

It is becoming undeniable that human civilization is facing a profound crisis that has many dimensions. The dimensions of this crisis are demographic, social, political, economic, environmental, and ecological. Addressing this crisis will require systemic transitions in our social, economic, ecological, and financial systems. It is likely that the financial systems hold the levers of control to influence changes to the other systems. These challenges are not insoluble. We reviewed a small subset of many deep thinkers at a variety of academic, governmental, and industrial institutions that have developed plans for bringing about the systemic changes that need to take place. Technology has contributed to these problems and will be essential to solving these problems. A key feature of the solution pathway is changing our economic system to one that serves human and planetary well-being rather than perpetual growth. The key missing piece for meeting this challenge is a collective will to action. This book, in the spirit of “Faculty for a Future” hopes to inspire you to participate in becoming part of the growing collective will for action and change.

Comprehensive Questions

• How does the idea of a well-being economy differ from the economy of neoliberalism?
• What is the goal of the Half-Earth Project and why is it being proposed?
• Break out the costs and programs presented in Lester Brown’s Plan B 4.0.
• What evidence is there to suggest that countries led by women might have better outcomes with respect to social justice and public health?
• How are the scenarios of the Great Transition Initiative useful?
• What does the Global Sustainable Development Report say?

References

Brown, L. R. (2009). Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to save civilization. Earth Policy Institute.

Coale, A. J. (1973). The demographic transition reconsidered. In International population conference (Vol. 1, pp. 53–72). International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

Coscieme, L., Fioramonti, L., Mortensen, L. F., Pickett, K. E., Kubiszewski, I., Lovins, H., Mcglade, J., Ragnarsdóttir, K. V., Roberts, D., Costanza, R., De Vogli, R., & Wilkinson, R. (2020). Women in power: Female leadership and public health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.13.20152397

Czech, B. (2006). Steady state economy. http://editors.eol.org/eoearth/wiki/Steady_state_economy

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