State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?

we will be better served by thinking rigorously about biophysical boundaries, how to keep within them, and how—under these unforgiving realities—we can best ensure that all human beings have fair and equitable access to nourishing food, energy, and other prerequisites of a decent life.

with a vested interest in maintaining consumerism or Earth’s ecosystems decline and bring down the consumer culture for the vast majority of humanity in a much crueler way.

Just as there is an outer boundary of resource use, an “environmental ceiling” beyond which lies unacceptable environmental degradation, so too there is an inner boundary of resource use, a “social foundation” below which lies unacceptable human deprivation.

the current system steadily transfers resources to the financial sector.

well-managed aquaculture are a few solutions

Inflow of phosphorus to the oceans has been suggested as a key driver behind global-scale ocean anoxic events

total resource and energy demand in most of the world’s industrial countries has increased in absolute terms over the past 40 years despite efficiency gains of 50 percent in materials and 30 percent in energy use.21

benefit corporations, which requires them to work toward having an overall positive effect on society and the environment.

At the macroeconomic level, rational policymakers should be trying to maximize total sustainable delivered well-being, which (other things being equal—which they often are not) would mean maximizing the EROI of a sustainable energy system for the economy. The effort to use price signals to find and promote that outcome requires that the relative mo

Broadly, there are three other possibilities.7