Most forecasts for the world economy, world energy supply and demand, climate change and the economy and so on assume that economic growth will march on. The Stern report on climate change and the economy said it would “not be unreasonable” to assume the world economy will grow by 2% to 3% annually this century, based on historical growth. So, what does this growth look like?The first graph at the top of the page shows the projection of Gross World Product to 2100 at 2% or 3% annual growth, with 2009 indicated. The second graph shows world ecological footprint: we started using up the biocapacity of the planet faster than it can regenerate by the 1980s. But footprint and GDP (or GWP) correlate very closely: the bigger GDP is, the more energy and material we put through the economy - for food, transportation, the amenities of home and workplace, basically everything we consume. We’re getting more efficient, but not fast enough.
The top graph to the right shows growth in GDP up to 2009 - a sharply rising exponential growth curve. In the past 50 years, growth in GWP has averaged about 4% per year. The last graph shows what this growth has done to the biosphere and how clearly economic growth correlates with exponential increase in human use of natural resources - paper consumption, fish consumption, use of freshwater and soil resources, extinction of species, fertilizer use, and so on (thank you Gus Speth!!).
So, if the economy is going to go from $61 trillion in GWP in 2009 to somewhere between $450 and $1100 trillion in GWP in 2100, what kind of energy and material throughput are we talking about? What kind of ecological footprint, if we are already overconsuming the Earth by 20%? For anyone who thinks runaway banks and credit derivative swaps are the major problem facing the world (and that kind of financial shenaniganism is a HUGE problem, yes), take a close look at these graphs. They tell the story of the real long-term crisis we are facing.
