Abstract
Focusing on “Future Human Evolution” too often narrows the frame to individual humans only, thus avoiding the context of societies and places where we live, and Planet Earth that is increasingly assaulted by climate change and pollution. If humanity is to have any future whatsoever, evolution is sustainability, taken seriously. This article describes the evolution of sustainability thinking and the many barriers that still persist. “Sustainability” first appeared in a book title in 1976. Since then, attention to sustainability has gathered momentum, with more than five thousand books and five hundred international organizations now calling for sustainable societies, cities, businesses, and economies. Ongoing research for a “Security and Sustainability Guide” to the organizational macro-system finds that, as of June 2015, more than one thousand relevant organizations have been identified, more than half concerned with promoting sustainability. But this burgeoning movement still has a long way to go, and success is problematic: (1) accelerating climate change may offset gains; (2) despite a growing number of alliances, consortia, and networks, there is still considerable fragmentation; (3) major differences among sustainability groups dilute political impact, notably “realos” versus “fundis,” generalists versus specialists, and scientists/academics versus activists/popularizers; (4) the broad and expanding realm of national and global security is not only a barrier to sustainability but also a potential driver, once it is realized that we cannot have security without sustainability—and vice versa; (5) infoglut is a major barrier, and much better information management is needed; (6) we all have much to learn about sustainability, and “third-level scholarship” is needed to integrate numerous second-level integrators. Seven proposals are offered to accelerate efficacy of the evolution = sustainability movement.
Keywords
Introduction: Putting Evolution on the Sustainability Track
The problem with a theme such as “Future Human Evolution” is that it invites a focus only on individual humans, thus avoiding the context of societies and places where we live, and Planet Earth that is increasingly assaulted by climate change and pollution.
Earlier thinking about evolution, some two decades ago, made reference to the wider systems of which we are a part. Walter Truett Anderson wrote that, as we increasingly move into an age of human power over nature—the ultimate political issue—we must make the transition into acts of evolutionary governance, such as restoring the Earth as a global learning project. 1 Ervin Laszlo, author of the Club of Rome’s 1977 report on Goals for Mankind, noted that evolution is the maker of the future, that it can be purposively steered, and that the future of humanity depends on the success of such steering. 2 Duane Elgin warned that Earth’s biosphere is being crippled by humanity, but, through humanity, the Earth is awakening as a conscious global organism, for, to be sustainable, a civilization must maintain the integrity of its physical, social, and spiritual foundations. 3 Eric Chaisson wrote of conscious evolution in the emerging “Life Era”—the rapid development of a global culture that embraces a planetary ethics concerned with what is best for all humankind. 4 And Barbara Marx Hubbard urged a “gentle path to the next phase of evolution”—a Planetary Birth Experience that can occur in our lifetime by awakening a critical mass of inspired individuals. 5
Some two decades later, all of this is beginning to happen: evolutionary governance, purposive steering, awakening Earth, conscious evolution to a planetary ethics, an Encyclical from Pope Francis addressed to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, and a critical mass of inspired individuals. This is not some sudden cosmic consciousness, however, but the practical pursuit of sustainability and sustainable development, largely responding to the megathreat of climate change—a problem not explicitly recognized by the evolutionary thinkers of that time, although there were early warnings. 6
Unfortunately, most of the essays in the first volume on “Future Human Evolution” 7 ignore the emerging sustainability “macro-system” of organizations, and fail to see that it is a necessary step in governing and steering evolution, awakening Earth, conscious evolution in the Life Era, and even, perhaps, a Planetary Birth Experience. Instead, we are treated to exuberant essays on transhumanism supplementing natural selection (José Cordeiro), self-transformation as Conscious Evolution 2.0 (Ted Chu), humans and robots coming of age in the 2020s (Kazuo Mizuta), transformational foresight through the Butterfly Delphi (Frank Catanzaro), post-human evolution where we may be living longer by fifty or two hundred years (Fabienne Goux-Baudiment), great transition stories to a Global Eco-Civilization where humanity is growing up and the Global Brain is waking up (Duane Elgin), purposeful evolution guided by highly evolved capacities of future consciousness (Thomas Lombardo), evolutionary spirituality to foster maturation of our species (Barbara Marx Hubbard), and conscious immortality to change our relations to each other and to nature (Ervin Laszlo). At best, these high-minded concepts may be of some limited help in lifting some horizons, but they overlook the reality of the sustainability revolution that is now unfolding and will be described here.
Two other essays in the “Future Human Evolution” collection deserve special mention. Bill Halal presents the “grim assessment” of the Global Megacrisis that we worked on together several years ago, including the four general scenarios on a single axis that were presented to others in the form of a small “toe-in-the-water” survey. Of the several score respondents, 25 percent chose “Decline to Disaster” in the next few decades as most likely, 35 percent chose “Muddling Down” (essentially two steps forward, three steps back), 28 percent favored “Muddling Up” (three steps forward, two steps back), and 12 percent picked “Rise to Maturity,” or transition to a responsible global order and robust sustainability. Halal goes on in his essay, however, to discuss the rise of global consciousness and “the coming rise to global maturity,” thus favoring the Muddling Up scenario and perhaps even “a coherent global order that could easily develop about 2030–2050, possibly sooner.” 8 Of course, this would be a wonderful development, but, despite the good news about the sustainability movement, I still believe the “Muddling Down” scenario as most likely, and as a necessary precautionary worldview to tame disabling evolutionary exuberance.
Similar to Halal’s extensive discussion of sixteen trends driving the Megacrisis and nine trends that could possibly resolve it (e.g., the technology revolution, consumption reaching a saturation point, energy conservation to reduce CO2), Jerry Glenn summarizes thirty “State of the Future Index” (SOFI) variables in the latest State of the Future report from his Millennium Project (MP). He divides them into three charts: “Where We Are Winning,” “Where We Are Losing,” and “Where There Is Unclear or Little Change,” with the bottom line that “we are winning more than we are losing,” although “where we are losing is very serious.” In sum, Glenn writes, “the global situation for humanity continues to improve in general, but at the expense of the environment.” 9 However, in my recent review of the State of the Future report, 10 I point to a number of major negative trends among the MP’s fifteen Global Challenges that are not included in the SOFI—sufficient to change the overall outlook for the near future from slightly positive to clearly negative—and I suggest five additional global challenges that are neglected (Decent Jobs and Livelihoods, Growing Inequality, Livable Cities, Higher Education, and Humane Criminal Justice).
It is also worth mentioning that, as Appendix B to his essay, José Cordeiro attaches a 2002 Transhumanist Declaration recognizing that “humanity faces serious risks” and that “reduction of existential risks should be pursued as urgent priorities.” All of these responsible cautions are ignored, as Cordeiro, a founding faculty and advisor at the techno-exuberant Singularity University in Silicon Valley, goes on to enthuse about intelligent nanorobots eventually “integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity, full immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses, and vastly enhanced human intelligence.” 11
But first, we must face the multi-faceted challenge of climate change, pollution, and scarce resources as the immediate and urgent next step in evolution. Indeed, if humanity is to have any future whatsoever, evolution is sustainability, taken seriously. The rest of this essay describes the evolution of sustainability thinking, and the many barriers that still prevent “robust sustainability” or the Rise to Maturity scenario, and thus why “Muddling Down” is still the most likely scenario for the decades ahead.
The essay takes the form of ten Propositions, derived from ongoing research on the emerging organization macro-system, mostly nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), that is focused on sustainability and human security. At root, it critiques our outmoded system of knowledge creation/dissemination and, building on a 1937 proposal by H. G. Wells, hints at an effective “World Brain” for a sustainable twenty-first century. 12 In short, without a new paradigm of human-benefit knowledge, 13 we cannot have a new paradigm of human society on Planet Earth, which will be essential for any Future Human Evolution.
1. (HISTORY) Sustainability did not appear in any book or chapter title until 1976. But there is an important prehistory that deserves to be noted.
In 1976, I published a critical guide to the literature of societal directions and alternatives. 14 This was at the height of what I now call the great “futures vogue” of the 1960s and 1970s, which saw a huge number of books, generally dissatisfied but hopeful, explaining the nature of our society, where we were headed, and the society that we should have. I counted eighty-one titles for our present society, for example, “The Unprepared Society” (Donald N. Michael, 1968), “Age of Discontinuity” and “Knowledge Society” (Peter F. Drucker, 1969), “Temporary Society” (Warren Bennis and Philip Slater, 1968), “The State of Siege” (C. P. Snow, 1969), “Throw-Away Society” (Alvin Toffler, 1970), “Spaceship Earth” (Barbara Ward, 1966; Kenneth Boulding, 1966; Buckminster Fuller, 1969), and so on.
I also identified sixty-three evolutionary stage theories, both descriptive and overtly prescriptive, leading to the “Electric Age” (Marshall McLuhan, 1964), “Post-Industrial Society” (Daniel Bell, 1966, 1973), “Ecumenopolis” (Constantinos Doxiadis, 1967), “Consciousness III” (Charles Reich, 1970), “Prefigurative Cultures” (Margaret Mead, 1970), “Super-Industrialism” (Alvin Toffler, 1970), “Technetronic Society” (Zbigniew Brzesinski, 1970), “Scientific-Planetary Civilization” (William Irwin Thompson, 1971), and the “Systems Age” (Russell Ackoff, 1974). Some earlier examples of note are “Manhood of Humanity” (Alfred Korzybski, 1921), the “Spiritual Age” (Sri Aurobindo, 1949), and the “Age of Equilibrium” (Lewis Mumford, 1944).
Most important, I identified 206 clearly prescriptive titles for desired alternative societies, for example, “Planetary Society” (John McHale, 1969), “Global Homeostasis” (Ervin Laszlo, 1974), “Steady-State Society” (Herman Daly, 1971), a “New World Order” (Richard Falk, 1975), “Ecotopia” (Ernest Callenbach, 1975), “Convivial Society” (Ivan Illich, 1973), “Transformational Society” (Jim Dator, 1973), “Humanist Reconstruction” (Bertram Gross, 1971), “Humanistic Capitalism” (Willis Harman, 1974), “Ecological Humanism” (Victor Ferkiss, 1974), and “Socialist Humanism” (Erich Fromm, 1965).
What a fascinating mélange! But virtually none of the authors paid attention to any of the other authors. It was like the motor vehicle bureau, where each car owner is assigned a distinctive license plate! In a wry—some may say cynical—mood, I prefaced the collection with the famous nineteenth-century poem by John Godfrey Saxe on “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” The first of the nine verses read, “It was six men of Indostan/To learning much inclined/Who went to see the Elephant/(Though all of them were blind)/That each by observation/Might satisfy his mind.” You probably know the rest, or can guess what happened as the different men—all men—approached the flank, the tusk, the trunk, the knee, the ear, and the tail. The problem is that, today, we have a herd of shifting elephants—not well understood—and we risk getting trampled.
Amid this cacophony, it is significant that “Sustainability” or “Sustainable Development” were never mentioned per se! However, there were a dozen or so titles calling for ecological balance of some sort. Best known is the Club of Rome’s influential Limits to Growth report calling for “Global Equilibrium” (Donella Meadows et al., 1972). Other contenders included the virtually forgotten second report to the Club of Rome calling for “Organic Growth” (Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, 1974), the well-regarded Blueprint for Survival from The Ecologist magazine advocating a “Stable Society” (Edward Goldsmith et al., 1972), and visions of massive structural transformations to “Ark II” (Dennis Pirages and Paul Ehrlich, 1974), a “Mature Society” in ecological equilibrium (Dennis Gabor, 1972), the “No-Growth Society” (Daedalus Special Issue, Fall 1973), the “Recycle Society” (Glenn Seaborg, 1974), and “Arcadian Life” (Rene Dubos, 1972). Also, twenty years earlier, consider Resources and the American Dream: Including a Theory of the Limit of Growth by Samuel Ordway (1953), who called for a “Balanced Civilization” and rethinking the quality of the Good Life, The Limits of the Earth by Fairfield Osborn (1953), and The Challenge of Man’s Future by Harrison Brown (1954), a durable classic that went into at least fifteen printings, warning of “the fragility of our machine civilization.” Even earlier, Road to Survival by William Vogt (1948), with an introduction by Presidential Advisor Bernard M. Baruch, warned of “a sharp increase in world population” and “a falling carrying capacity over most of the earth.”
The first two books with “sustainability” in the title appeared in 1976: The Sustainable Society: Ethics and Economic Growth by Robert L. Stivers (John Knox Press) and Energy for a Just and Sustainable World by the Working Group on Church and Society (World Council of Churches), followed by The Sustainable Society edited by Dennis Pirages (Praeger, 1977) and Building a Sustainable Society by Lester R. Brown (W. W. Norton, 1981). The concept received a significant boost with publication of Our Common Future by the World Commission on Environment and Development (Oxford University Press, 1987), also known as the Brundtland report.
After that, the “sustainability” concept took off, as I documented in Environmental Issues and Sustainable Futures: A Critical Guide to Recent Books, Reports, and Periodicals, published in 1996. 15 It included many titles that still seem timely, for example, Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out (Lester Milbrath, 1989; on the “new environmental paradigm”), A Strategy for Sustainable Living (IUCN/UNEP/WWF, 1991), The Global Commons: Policy for the Planet (Harlan Cleveland, 1990), Saving Our Planet (Mostafa K. Tolba, 1992), Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future (Donella Meadows et al., 1992; updating their 1972 Limits to Growth report), Earth Politics (Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, 1994; on making sustainable development a reality), Choosing a Sustainable Future (National Commission on the Environment, 1993), and A Sustainable World: Defining and Measuring Sustainable Development (Thaddeus C. Trzyna/IUCN, 1995).
Some still-timely specific topics from more than twenty years ago are Environmental Refugees in a Globally Warmed World (Norman Myers, 1993), Climate Change and World Food Security (Food Policy Special Issue, 1994), Reversing the Decline of the Oceans (Worldwatch Paper 116, 1993), Facing Water Scarcity (Sandra Postel, 1992), How Mass Extinction Can Be Stopped (Colin Tudge, 1992), Sustainable Forestry (Gregory Aplet, 1993), Reducing Toxics (Robert Gottleib, 1995), Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Stability (Norman Myers, 1993), Ecological Economics (Robert Costanza, 1991), The Gaia Atlas of Green Economics (Paul Ekins et al., 1992), Sustainable Livelihoods (David Korten, 1994), and much more. I joined the parade by co-editing a Special Issue of Futures (March 1994) on Visions of Sustainability, with essays by Lester Milbrath, Hazel Henderson, Robert Goodland, Herman Daly, Mary E. Clark, Dennis Pirages, and others. In the Introduction, I noted that Sustainability has “rapidly emerged only in the past five years . . . a profound and necessary multifold transition, now just under way.”
All of this was more than twenty years ago, arguably the age of robust sustainability literature. But, as the world warms, are we closer to sustainability now?
2. (SOCIOLOGY). The Good News is that a major transition toward “sustainability” now is clearly underway.
Historian Jeremy Caradonna of the University of Alberta has recently published a useful history of sustainability thinking and the sustainability movement, 16 going back to roots in early eighteenth-century Germany, and noting that, today, the words “sustainable” and “sustainability” are nearly ubiquitous. He sketches a remarkable chart on page 3, showing an “explosion” of books with “sustainable” or “sustainability” in the title from 1980 to 2012, when there was a cumulative total of some 4,800 books. My GlobalForesightBooks.org website has abstracts of more than 500 titles on sustainability, energy, and climate change published since 2009.
This upward growth line—at an angle of some 75° to 80°—for books on sustainability, is virtually identical to the data from Google’s Ngram Viewer, which charts usage of words and terms in English-language books to 2008, showing “sustainability” sharply increasing since the mid-1980s. The “sustainability” usage is closely correlated with growth lines for “climate change” and “global warming.” In contrast, “future” was quite level between 1970 and 2008, while “futurist” increased from 1962 to 1998 but declined from 1998 to 2008, and “foresight” has declined by >50 percent. This confirms my suspicion that the “futures” movement, which was always more descriptive than prescriptive, has been superseded by a diffuse “sustainability movement” that is clearly action-oriented. Caradonna admits that sustainability is now a buzzword in widespread usage, but nevertheless hopes that “the practices inspired by the concept of sustainability could give rise to the world’s third major socio-economic transformation, after the Agricultural Revolution that took place 10,000 years ago, and the Industrial Revolution.” 17 The recent book by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, The Age of Sustainable Development, calls it “a central concept for our age . . . both a way of understanding the world and a method for solving global problems.” 18
The growth of sustainability books and usage of the “S-word” is paralleled by the growth of largely international organizations with “sustainability” in their title or in their statement of purpose. Along with David Harries, as of June 2015, we have identified more than one thousand organizations concerned in some way with security and/or (especially) sustainability. Among them, a very preliminary analysis of the founding date indicates that more than half of the “Sustainability” organizations were established in the 2000 to 2015 period. Many of the thousand organizations in our online “Security and Sustainability Guide” (S&S Guide), still in the “interim draft” stage, are directly or indirectly calling for transition/transformation to “sustainable society” and “sustainable development,” less often for related concepts of green growth, degrowth, a low-carbon economy, a circular economy, or human security. Unlike the 1970s, there is clearly an emerging consensus around the “S-word” in some form, despite various definitions (see Chart 1).
Major Categories in The Security & Sustainability Guide Subject Index.
The United Nations (UN) is the major driving force in many ways. Some thirty-one agencies, programs, and projects have been identified so far. The UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio 2012, a.k.a. Rio+20) is well-known, as is the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1988), which delivers increasingly certain and bad news about future climate. But also consider the Green Climate Fund (2010), the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) Climate and Clean Air Coalition (2012), United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Education for Sustainable Development (2005), the United Nations University (UNU) Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (2014, merging two existing UNU institutes), the UN Data Revolution Group (2014, to provide data for the UN’s seventeen Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets), UNEP’s International Resource Panel, the UNEP Finance Initiative (two hundred organizations for sustainable finance), the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development (Habitat III, Quito 2016), the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (2012, which co-sponsored the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project and offered two 2014 Massive Open Online Courses [MOOCs] on Planetary Boundaries and the Age of Sustainable Development), and the UN Global Compact (2000, claiming twelve thousand signees to a set of ten principles regarding human rights, labor, anticorruption, and the environment).
Four other sectors deserve special notice.
Using the hopeful metaphor of Naomi Klein’s blockbuster book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, this multi-faceted activity may be like “a rushing river fed by countless streams, gathering collective force to finally reach the sea.” 20 But, contrary to Klein’s oversimplified subtitle, capitalism is Janus-faced, both good and bad. Business and finance may well make an important contribution to sustainability, to counter—at least in part—the rapacious behavior of the world’s fossil fuel and mining industries, as described by Ugo Bardi in a recent report to the Club of Rome. 21
3. (POLICY STUDIES/FUTURES STUDIES). The Bad News is that the sustainability movement has a long way to go—and may never be successful.
I am much more cautious today than I was twenty years ago. Hundreds of NGOs are promoting sustainability directly or indirectly, and boldly calling for transformation and radical change. Many battles are being won, with new technologies developed and worthy ideas implemented. But is the overall “war” being won? One must recognize the potential paradox of “improvement and growing inadequacy,” where sustainability efforts are successful, yet worsening climate change events and/or other developments offset green progress.
Climate change and weird weather continues to worsen, with 2014 as the warmest year ever since record-keeping began in 1880. And there is every reason to expect worsening in the next decades, despite at least forty-seven organizations identified in the S&S Guide devoted to studying climate and what to do about it. A recent report for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute 22 suggests that 4°C of global warming may be the “new normal” by 2100—a level well beyond the 2°C that scientists suggest as the upper tolerable limit. It is quite possible that, despite many apparent successes of the sustainability movement, the earth will reach one or more “tipping points.” Several planetary boundaries have already been passed, according to the Stockholm Resilience Institute. 23 Three of the nine planetary boundaries involve ocean acidification, species extinction (i.e., depletion of many fish stocks), and pollution caused by excessive flows of nitrogen and phosphorus. Despite at least thirty-four organizations devoted to oceans, little progress has been made other than saving whales, and little can be expected in the near future, as jellyfish take over some “dead” marine areas—a form of reverse evolution. Even with highly evolved humans aided by a plethora of new technologies, we may not have a livable planet by 2100. Some highly evolved and wealthy humans may live in techno-bubbles, under the oceans, or in outer space. But most humans, evolved or not, will suffer greatly—or be extinct.
Notably, green parties have yet to gain much influence in any country (except, to some degree, in Germany), and “sustainability,” “environment,” or “climate change” are not among the top political issues being addressed at national levels. Conservative right-wing parties denying or ignoring climate change are in the ascendancy or gaining more support than greens in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, and—until recently—Canada (where the recent provincial election in Alberta suggests a possible national reversal).
Most of the sustainability NGOs appear oblivious to the UN efforts and to each other, except for special purpose alliances, consortia, networks, and partnerships. More than three dozen of these have been identified to date, for example, the Future Earth international research initiative, Sustainable World Coalition, Alliance for Sustainability and Prosperity, New Economy Coalition, Global Call of Climate Action (450 nonprofits), Global Partnership for Oceans (140 organizations), Global Campaign Against Poverty, and Partnership for Change. Are these NGOs, individually and collectively, making a significant difference? Can they become even more effective? Even so, despite improvements in understanding, technologies, and actions, the “war” could be lost. Failure is not assured, or even probable. But it is a serious possibility that must be considered.
To sort out long-term possibilities, and restrain excessive and simplistic enthusiasm, it is useful to consider four generic scenarios for nations and the world, arrayed on a single axis: Catastrophe/Collapse, Muddling Down (two steps forward, three steps back), Muddling Up (three steps forward, two steps back), and Robust Sustainability. 24 What are the possibilities for the 2030 to 2050 period? I view worldwide Catastrophe/Collapse as possible but not probable, say 15 percent, and Robust Sustainability as highly unlikely, say 5 percent to be generous (it would require a widespread positive change in consciousness on many fronts). Rather, the two middle and more subtle scenarios are more likely in my mind, especially Muddling Down (60%) and Muddling Up (20%). A recent report to the Club of Rome by Jurgen Randers, describing the most probable world in 2052, is a good single-scenario starting point to consider these possibilities. 25
The remaining seven “propositions” will explore the barriers to the sustainability movement and possible remedies so as to reduce the chances of Catastrophe/Collapse or slow and spotty collapse (i.e., Muddling Down).
4. (GEOGRAPHY). The best-funded and most radical organizations promoting sustainability are in cosmopolitan cities and countries that are furthest along the path to sustainability.
Preliminary evidence from the S&S Guide—a more precise count will eventually be made—suggests that Northern Europe is the hotbed for sustainability thinking and action: Sweden (Stockholm Resilience Institute, etc.), Norway (Partnership for Change, etc.), Denmark (Sustainia 100, etc.), Netherlands (Amsterdam Global Change Institute, Urgenda Foundation, etc.), and Germany (Potsdam Institute, German Advisory Council on Global Change, etc.). Major cities housing important organizations include Stockholm, Amsterdam, London, Paris, and Geneva.
Within the United States, the vast majority of sustainability organizations are located in Boston, New York, Washington, and, especially, the San Francisco Bay Area. In Canada, Toronto and Vancouver are modest centers for green thought, in contrast to the ultra-conservative Harper regime shamelessly ignoring science, favoring business interests, and extracting oil from Alberta tar sands. In the United States, the new Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, is from coal-dependent Kentucky, and the new head of the Senate Environment Committee, James Inhofe, is from oil- and gas-dependent Oklahoma; he has written a book declaring climate change to be a hoax, yet was reelected in 2014 by 68 percent of his electorate (where 20% of jobs are oil- and gas-related).
Several sustainability organizations each have been identified in Brazil, China, Japan, and India. And one or two organizations have been identified in several dozen other countries, ranging from Bolivia to Sri Lanka. Notably, no sustainability organization has yet to be identified in Russia, which is largely dependent on oil and gas exports. And a few countries are backsliding, notably Australia (which abandoned its carbon tax) and Brazil (where anti-environment ministers of agriculture and science/technology were recently appointed).
5. (POLITICS). There are major divisions among sustainability groups, which discourage any coherence and dilute political efforts.
Jeremy Caradonna concludes his important history of sustainability by discussing ten challenges to be faced. “Multiple perspectives is certainly a positive thing to have,” he says, “but the first and most important challenge of the sustainability movement is to get people on the same page.” 26 This is surely desirable, and creating “a shared vision for the future” should be attempted, but it will be extremely difficult to make much progress. Several major divisions are briefly discussed here:
6. (CLIMATE SCIENCE). The two major drivers of the sustainability movement in recent years have been various UN programs and climate change. Attention to increasingly weird weather drives sustainability thinking and action, but may dominate it in coming decades, especially if Arctic methane eclipses CO2.
The UN established the IPCC in 1988, which has resulted in five highly detailed Assessment Reports so far, each more worried and more confident than the one before it. Climate change has already eclipsed “sustainability” in some instances, as illustrated by Naomi Klein, who makes only three brief references to sustainability in her 560-page book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. As climate change becomes more pronounced, and more people witness and suffer from weird weather events (heat, drought, more frequent and intense storms, floods, wildfires, rising sea levels, and high tides), attention is focused on greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide. But methane may eclipse CO2 in coming decades due to accelerating releases in Siberia and the Arctic, which have been warming faster than sub-Arctic regions. By some accounts, methane is twenty-three times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2, although it does not last as long in the atmosphere. In their report to the Club of Rome on planetary boundaries, Anders Wijkman and Johan Rockstrom devote a brief chapter to changes in the Arctic, seen as “the canary in the coal mine.” Due to the albedo feedback (where the degree of reflection changes from about 85% of incoming radiation bouncing back into space to surfaces that absorb about 85%), “more energy is injected into Earth’s biosphere, reinforcing the energy imbalance on Earth and speeding up change,” 30 such that the entire Arctic “may cross a tipping point” and shift to “an ice-free warm state.” In any event, the authors note that “permafrost is thawing faster than predicted, emitting large volumes of methane.” This is amply reinforced at the website of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (www.ameg.org). Moreover, if the abundant methane clathrates in the ocean begin to melt at a substantial rate due to warming seas, the reign of humans on Earth may well be over. But no scientist knows if or when this will happen; only that it is possible.
7. (SECURITY STUDIES). The broad realm of national and global security is not only a barrier to sustainability but also a potential driver, when the obvious is recognized: that we cannot have security without sustainability, nor sustainability without security.
The two realms of “security” and “sustainability” are slowly beginning to overlap, and some organizations in the S&S Guide consider both, as concerns about food security, energy security, water security, and job security begin to mount. The UN-induced concept of “human security,” which broadens the traditional focus on military and state security, is now represented by a dozen organizations such as the Civil Society Network for Human Security, Cordaid: The Human Security Network, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (now celebrating its fiftieth year and broadening its horizons from traditional nuclear weapon concerns), the Ford Institute for Human Security at the University of Pittsburgh, the Institute for Human Security at Tufts University, and the World Engagement Institute in Chicago (which publishes the International Journal of Sustainable Human Security).
The best illustration of merging security and sustainability concerns is in a recent report by fourteen retired generals and admirals (thirteen Americans and one British admiral), warning that the “accelerating risks” of climate change are a “threat multiplier” making traditional security concerns even more problematic. 31 An earlier link between security and sustainability was made by Michael T. Klare two decades ago. 32
Aside from climate concerns, thinking about security has widened in the past decade, especially due to terrorism and cyber-vulnerability. Cybercrime alone is already costing the global economy more than $400 billion annually. 33 New security thinking should now include the various threats of climate change, and in doing so, should help the cause of sustainability. At the same time, security matters are also a barrier, in that immediate attention must be given to terrorism and to growing threats of cyber war and major hacking events. Also, national security involves huge sums spent on military equipment and personnel, some of it justified and some not. Arguably, some of this spending could be cost-effectively diverted to building sustainable societies and, thus, attending to long-term human security. There is also the growing threat of nuclear weapons, which, if detonated in any great number so as to create a “nuclear winter,” could doom hopes for sustainability. Aging stockpiles—themselves a danger—are being upgraded by all nuclear powers (the United States alone will spend $348 billion in the next decade, and troubled Pakistan plans to triple its nuclear arsenal). Moreover, there are rising threats of the new biology enabling easily produced bioweapons, which if realized could also divert substantial resources and attention.
8. (COMMUNICATION). We are undergoing a massive transformation in communications, with many pros and cons. Infoglut is arguably the most important downside, because it increases fragmentation and thus is a major barrier to seriously pursuing sustainability.
The new information technologies have obviously changed our world, for both better and worse. Information overload has been a concern for many decades, but it has obviously accelerated in the age of the Internet. The S&S Guide could not be compiled without Google/Bing and easily accessed websites for every organization identified. But the many enticements of the Internet and the flood of daily e-mail, not to mention cell phone tweets and the ever-expanding offerings of cable television, are a huge distraction. Not only is there more and more information, but, arguably, a changing ratio between edifying information and entertainment information, as well as a growing overlap. This does not bode well for citizen understanding in a democracy (indeed, many societies—notably the United States—are increasingly plutocratic).
The growing abundance of sustainability books and journals, and the growing number of sustainability organizations (with their own reports, papers, pamphlets, newsletters, and videos) is a welcoming trend. But at the same time, it leads to fragmentation quite similar to that found in the early 1970s, 34 despite a great number of organizations using the “S-word.” Somehow, somewhere, a “portal” to this burgeoning world is needed, bringing all sustainability-related information together in a coherent way, while highlighting the most important ideas, data, and actions. 35 Chart 2 highlights the type of important and mostly “gray” literature produced by sustainability organizations, much of it readily downloaded for free.
9. (POPULATION/TECHNOLOGY). Due to many new biomedical advances that will enhance and extend human lifespans, world population growth may once again become a serious concern.
Thirty-seven Notable Publications from Security and Sustainability Organizations.
Population growth in the United States and the world was a major concern in the 1960s and 1970s, for example, the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future report in early 1972 suggested slowing down the rate of growth. 36 More alarmist was The Limits to Growth report to the Club of Rome in late 1972, which devoted its first two chapters to “The Nature of Exponential Growth” and “The Limits to Exponential Growth.” Special attention was given to “the exponential growth curve of world population,” noting that 1970 world population totaled 3.6 billion, and the doubling time at the current 2.1 percent per year growth rate would be thirty-three years, or 2003. Fortunately, the growth rate has slowed, so that the doubling did not occur until mid-2014, when the total was at 7.24 billion. Further decline in the growth rate is expected, such that the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) mid-2014 projection for 2050 is 9.68 billion. 37
Curiously, Jorgen Randers, one of the original Limits to Growth authors in 1972, forecasts in his recent and ambitious report to the Club of Rome that “global population (will) reach a maximum of some 8.1 billion people in the early 2040s,” with total population then declining by 1 percent/year and reaching 7 billion by 2075. 38 “Exponential growth” proved to be a rather poor forecast in 1972, however, and I think that the Randers forecast of population peaking in the 2040s (based on the UN low projection) and then declining may also be off the mark. In contrast, I have noted a “projection creep” over the past decade in the annual PRB “Data Sheet,” such that, in several years, the projection may well be at an attention-grabbing 10 billion—quite a difference from the 9 billion that is still widely cited by some overly casual observers. 39
Indeed, there is so much uncertainty today that four scenarios are needed: of Sharp Decline (due to war, pandemic, or major environmental catastrophe), Slow Decline (the Randers forecast), Slow Increase (current conventional wisdom), and Sharp Increase (which would bring the population issue front and center again, and drive attention to sustainability matters). The reason to consider slow or perhaps even rapid increase is the growth of biomedical research that may conquer or control some or many major afflictions, and perhaps even halt or reverse the aging process. The possible impact of new technology for better or worse is a subject that demographers will not touch. However, Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center, has recently noted that “we are currently increasing human life by some .2 to .3 years per year. With the genomic and synthetic bio revolutions and the nanotechnologies, some are projecting major increases approaching eventually one year per year.” 40
Just as an early outline of this article was being completed, two magazines both arrived at my home on Valentine’s Day (a day of presumed heightened affection and copulation), each with a cover feature on antiaging: Bloomberg Businessweek focused on Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, which “has begun taking the first steps to position a version of rapamycin as the first true anti-aging drug” (February 16, 2015, p. 46), while Time magazine offered “Dispatches From the Frontiers of Longevity” and a cover photo of a baby that “could live to be 142 years old” (February 23, 2015). If many babies do so, the growth curve of global population boosted by techno-capitalism could shift from convex back to concave (i.e., the “exponential growth” once feared by Club of Rome), and population will again become a prominent concern. Perhaps the greatest antiaging project of all will be Google’s Calico project for “curing death,” 41 lustily announced in 2013.
10. (EDUCATION/LEARNING). We all have much to learn about sustainability and how to advance it. To make serious progress toward this goal, we need a new paradigm of “third-stage scholarship” to integrate the many integrators.
A largely forgotten 1979 Report to the Club of Rome, No Limits to Learning: Bridging the Human Gap, argued that complexity was a “mounting challenge” and that we must face the human gap, or “the distance between growing complexity and our capacity to cope with it.” 42 As was common at that time, the authors also noted “global over-population” as a “major and fundamental problem,” as well as rapid degradation of tropical rain forests, the advance of desertification, and an “accelerating extinction of animal and plant wildlife,” 43 which is still accelerating thirty-five years later! These problems remain, and others have been added, such that the human gap now seems wider than ever. Botkin et al. made a “plea for interdisciplinarity,” a synthesis to overcome disciplinary fragmentation, and “anticipatory and participatory learning” using “holistic approaches.” 44 And similar pleas are still being made. But interdisciplinarity and holistic approaches alone will not help to close the learning gap. Infoglut must be explicitly faced head on with a new paradigm for scholarship.
The path out of the expanding knowledge jungle is suggested by a 1990 Special Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, by Ernest L. Boyer. A “new vision of scholarship” was proposed, identifying four kinds of scholarship: the conventional Scholarship of Discovery, the Scholarship of Teaching, the Scholarship of Integration (making connections across the disciplines, placing the specialties in larger context, bringing new insight to bear on original research), and the Scholarship of Application (responsible application to consequential problems . . . scholarship in service to the nation and the world). Boyer wrote that “At no time in our history has the need been greater for connecting the work of the academy to the social and environmental challenges beyond the campus.” 45 Arguably, this need is even greater today, similar to the growing “human gap” identified in the Club of Rome report.
Unfortunately, Boyer did not make specific proposals for the new paradigm of broadening scholarship to include the scholarship of teaching, integration, and application—what I suggest might be called “Second-Level Scholarship.” I will make seven explicit proposals to illustrate what is needed and to further develop understanding and effectiveness of the emerging sustainability macro-system.
Connect the Reports of the Club of Rome (CoR). There are now some thirty-five of these reports, but I have never seen all of them listed in any report, or even on the CoR website. Every new report should list all previous reports, briefly abstracted, and be encouraged if not mandated to make reference to at least several earlier reports. The failure to connect the reports, many of which still have much to offer, clearly illustrates the fragmented state of conventional scholarship everywhere, which has resulted in so much wasted and duplicated knowledge, even when addressed to multidisciplinary topics. Writers on evolution and many other topics are equally fragmented.
Study the Formation and Operation of the Alliances, Coalitions, Consortia, Networks, and Partnerships that Address Various Aspects of Sustainability. This important development, similar to streams merging into a broader river (or consolidation in the automobile and airline industries), requires critical inquiry as to what works well and what does not, and how to enhance effectiveness of these alliances beyond the mere exchange of logos. Arguably, these alliances and consortia (forty have been identified so far in the S&S Guide) could be the new postindustrial digital era equivalent of labor unions, potentially providing “countervailing power” (a term proposed by John Kenneth Galbraith) for the well-being of “the 99%” nonmega-rich, the poor and middle class, and workers everywhere.
Create a Visible and Accessible Energy Information Portal that Surveys Progress and Prospects for All Energy and Energy-Saving Alternatives. This function may already be largely performed by the IEA in Paris, but new outlier sources of energy such as cold fusion should also be considered, as well as simple new technologies such as the “Solar Puff” rechargeable and portable lamp that could displace unhealthy and widespread kerosene use in developing countries. Unlike IEA reports, this information should be free and easily available in several formats.
Create a New Economics Information Portal that Surveys Progress for All Economics Rethinking. The obsolete economics of the industrial era and the twentieth century is not appropriate for the twenty-first century and sustainable development, where human capital and natural capital are increasingly valued, and traditional estimates of wealth, gross national product (GNP), and human happiness are increasingly questioned. 46 The best recent book, and an outstanding overview, is An Introduction to Ecological Economics (Second Edition) by Robert Costanza, Herman Daly, and five others, with chapters on humanity’s current dilemma, planetary boundaries, the need to reintegrate ecology and economics, human and social capital, measuring welfare (GDP vs. the Genuine Progress Indicator), ecological tax reform, and the need to create an international consortia of universities—a “MetaUniversity”—to facilitate online synthesis courses on real-world problems. 47
Create a “Portable Lecture Series” on Sustainable Development Topics. Most universities do not have the resources nor the intellectual will to address the full range of sustainable development topics. The WUC (and/or Costanza et al.’s MetaUniversity) should create a speaker’s bureau of several dozen scholars worldwide on a dozen or so sustainable evolution topics. Interested universities can arrange a lecture series on, say, any six to twelve topics, inviting listed speakers who are willing and able to participate. This can be good publicity for WUC and evolution-related topics.
Create a Series of Televised “Great Debates” in Every Country, to Explore Pros and Cons of Sustainable Development Topics. Universities are supposed to promote “debate,” but this seldom if ever happens. Rather, silos are widespread, even within departments. The new twenty-first century debate format should encourage evidence-based argument, a search for common ground, and consensus on needed research. Each debater would provide a list of five to ten relevant articles to appear on the Great Debates website, and a list of five to ten books for further reading. This new and much-needed institution could bring Realos and Fundis together, as well as Evolution = Sustainability thinkers, their critics, and others who think they have all the answers!
Create a Portal for All “New Paradigm” Global Agendas, Past and Present. Last but by no means least, an ongoing assessment is needed of various agendas, both for their similarities and differences. The starting point should be the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals with 169 targets, to be adopted by the United Nations in late 2015.
This should be contrasted with past and present reports of the CoR, notably Ervin Laszlo et al., Goals for Mankind (1977 update, 374 pp.), which articulates goals for Global Security, Global Food, Global Energy and Resources, and Global Development. (Note: The “Post-2015” Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs] mention “peace” but do not consider broader Global Security goals). The most recent report to the CoR by David Korten (see footnote 28) outlines elements of a “Living Economy for a Living Earth.” Some important historical overviews to consider should include A Blueprint for Survival by Edward Goldsmith et al. of The Ecologist (1972); Dennis Gabor, The Mature Society (1972); Dennis C. Pirages and Paul Ehrlich, Ark II: Social Response to Environmental Perspectives (1974), calling for the “planned evolution of a new culture”; Lester W. Milbrath, Environmentalists: Vanguard for a New Society (1984), which contrasts the New Environmental Paradigm with the Dominant Social Paradigm; Federico Mayor and Jerome Binde, The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making (2001), which calls for a new social contract, natural contract, cultural contract, and ethical contract; James Martin, The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for Ensuring Our Future (2006), and many more.
What do these seven proposals have in common? All of them are horizontal, explicitly promoting an integration of the integrators—which might be called “third-stage scholarship,” in contrast to the numerous and overgeneralized calls for more multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary problem-oriented scholarship, and Ernest Boyer’s 1990 “new vision of scholarship,” which could be seen as “second-stage scholarship.” And all of these proposals, if realized, can accelerate sustainable development and evolution to maturity.
Conclusion: Avoiding More of the Same
Sustainable development must be broadly considered in time and space, as illustrated by ten propositions from different perspectives:
Historically, sustainability did not appear in any book title until 1976, but there were many similar ideas in the 1970s without the “S-word” and many still deserve consideration. Indeed, one might ask whether there has been much, if any, progress since the 1970s, or just a shift in focus and language.
A major transition to “Sustainability” and coping with climate change is now underway, with more than five thousand books and one thousand organizations calling for security and/or sustainability.
This burgeoning movement still has a long way to go. Many battles are being won, but the overall war may still be lost as the planet heats up and tensions mount.
The leading organizations that promote sustainable development are in cosmopolitan cities and countries furthest along the path to sustainability. Laggard countries and regions are heavily invested in oil and gas, or coping with immediate demands of security.
Major differences among sustainability groups discourage any coherence and dilute political efforts. Divisions between “Realos” versus “Fundis,” generalists versus specialists, and scientists versus activists can potentially be narrowed to some degree.
The UN, formed after World War II to promote security, has been a major driver of sustainability in recent decades, on numerous fronts. Another major driver is climate change, which drives sustainability thinking but may eclipse it, especially if there is widespread Arctic methane release.
The broad realm of national and global security is not only a barrier to sustainability but also a potential driver. We cannot have security without sustainability, nor sustainability without security. The two realms are beginning to overlap, and more integration is needed.
Infoglut is a major barrier to realizing sustainability. Better information management is needed to identify relevant information, highlight that which is most important, and move it out into the public arena. 48
Population growth was a major concern in the early 1970s, but interest has waned; it may well pick up again as new biomedical advances enhance and extend human lifespans, thus raising further concern for sustainability, resources, carrying capacity, and space on Earth for Homo sapiens, the ultimate invasive species!
We all have much to learn about sustainability, especially elite adults. But cross-disciplinary integration is not enough because there is already too much of this “second-level scholarship.” What we now need is “third-level scholarship” that integrates the integrators! Seven explicit proposals are made that can further the sustainability macro-system, as concerns CoR reports, alliances and consortia, energy information, new economics information, a portable lecture series, a televised series of Great Debates, and a portal for all “New Paradigm” agendas.
These ten propositions regarding sustainability could be expanded to include insights from Governance (autocratic/plutocratic/technocratic trends diminishing freedom and democracy), Criminology (especially corruption and Transnational Organized Crime), 49 Law (environmental crime is emerging as a major concern, as well as environmental justice reparations for pollution), International Economics (the persisting threat of another Great Recession—or worse—is quite possible in the years ahead), Technology (many advances that may enhance or inhibit sustainability), Urbanization (obviously underway, serving as a major driving force for sustainability thinking), Capitalism (and whether it can be seriously green and how to get there), Higher Education (most of which is still trivial and inappropriate; serious rethinking is only beginning), Work (how to ensure decent livelihoods for all, as many jobs get automated), and Green Cost-Benefit Analysis (a compelling case can be made for the many co-benefits of climate policy; see Alison Smith, The Climate Bonus). 50
In other words, many more tasty and nutritious ingredients can be added to the sustainability stew, with different recipes and proportions in different times and places to satisfy different cultures. 51 We have much to learn about how to do this. And the sooner the better, as the uncounted costs and waste of our postindustrial era running amok continue to mount. A major theme for future inquiry should be “waste”—not only waste of energy 52 and food but also waste of financial and human resources, and of human-benefit knowledge.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
