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	New model reveals how "perfect storm" of crises could unravel global system by Dr Nafeez Ahmed Guardian News   A new study sponsored by Nasa"s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.   Noting that warnings of "collapse" are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."   The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary "Human And Nature DYnamical" (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.   It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:   "The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."   By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.   These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."   Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:   "... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels."   The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:   "Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."   Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.   Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:   ".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."   Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites."   In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue "business as usual" despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)."   Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:   "While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory "so far" in support of doing nothing."   However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.   The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth:   "Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."   The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise that "business as usual" cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately.   Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance - have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a "perfect storm" within about fifteen years. But these "business as usual" forecasts could be very conservative.   * Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development. Visit the related web page
	Why every environmentalist should care about inequality by Sam Lowe Open Democracy & agencies   May 2014   Climate Crisis demands "Fundamental Transformation of Capitalism", says Prince Charles.   "We can choose to act now before it is finally too late to create an inclusive, sustainable and resilient society".   Perhaps irrelevant to some—coming from a man who owes both his wealth and prestige to the antiquated (though persistent) privilege of being born into a royal family—Prince Charles of England told a crowd of financiers and global elites that the "current form of capitalism" must come to an end if humanity wants to save itself from the perils of global warming and climate change.   In a speech to a group of financial, economic and business experts at the Inclusive Capitalism Conference in London —and an audience that included IMF Chief Christine Lagarde and former U.S. President Bill Clinton—The Prince of Wales pushed for those gathered to accept the need for what he called the "fundamental transformation of global capitalism."   "We can choose to act now before it is finally too late, using all of the power and influence that you can bring to bear to create an inclusive, sustainable and resilient society," he said. "There will, of course, be hard choices to make in the short term, you will not be popular with your peers, but if you stand firm and take the kind of action that is needed, I have every confidence the rewards will be immense."   On Charle"s speech, the Sydney Morning Herald adds: Prince Charles highlighted the growing plight of the world"s most vulnerable people and the unprecedented environmental change that he said was undoubtedly compounded by man-made global warming and the great strain put on nature"s life-support systems.   "These changes threaten to undermine all of the progress we have achieved, unless we can create a much more sustainable and inclusive approach," he said.   "If there is a price to pay for achieving the necessary transformation, it will be our abandoning of the next short-term solution that our current form of capitalism thinks is necessary and, instead, focusing on approaches that achieve lasting and meaningful returns."   May 2014   Why every environmentalist should care about inequality, by Sam Lowe.   Thomas Picketty"s work shows us that growth is not the solution to the world"s problems, and is further confirmation that the system is broken.   With the (English) publication of ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ Thomas Piketty has burst from relative obscurity onto the main stage. Crowned by the Financial Times as the new ‘rockstar’ economist he has seen his book sell out on Amazon, presented to crammed auditoriums across the globe. So, who is he? What has he got to say? And what lessons might it have for environmental campaigners?   Thomas Piketty is a French economist, renowned for his work on inequality. As far as economists go he is now a pretty big deal. What has he got to say?   In a sentence: In a market-capitalist system, inequality doesn’t decrease as the world gets richer, it gets worse (and he has centuries of data to prove it).   In a little more detail:   1.The already wealthy predominantly rely on capital returns (money earned from their ownership of financial assets, property, land, etc.) to increase their fortune; the not so wealthy and poor are more reliant on incomes paid to them by their employer.   2.In market-capitalist societies the rate of return on so called ‘capital’ has on average been higher than the growth rate of the economy.   3.This has led to wealth growing at a faster rate than incomes, leading to increased inequality.   4.There is nothing in the historical trends to suggest (non-withstanding anomalous extreme social shocks such as the cumulative period of WW1, WW2 and the Great Depression) that inequality will not continue to increase indefinitely, heralding the return of an 18th century style economy, where those with wealth are for the most part those lucky enough to inherit it.   Why, as environmentalists, should we care? One pretty big reason: The wealthier you are, the more disproportionate your hold over the political process. This is something that Ezra Klein has referred to as the ‘doom loop of oligarchy’: more wealth buys you more political power, which buys you more wealth, which buys you more political power, and so on.   The sad, and ironic, thing is that one of the possible exogenous shocks that could halt the general trend of increasing disparity between those reliant on wealth and those reliant on income is some form of climate disaster. This would wipe out a large amount of the wealth in a manner similar to WW1 and 2 (and potentially a load of people with it).   Why is this ironic? Well, a significant proportion of this wealth, or capital, is held in stocks or bonds of extractive companies and known contributors to climate change. This means that any push to combat climate change, and to encourage divestment from fossil fuels, is also a push against inequality where we are asking the wealthy to give up (or at least reallocate) some of their wealth. In both cases we are asking elites, and the politicians they unduly influence, to abandon their myopia and act for the greater good of everyone. What can be done?   Piketty himself has proposed one ambitious policy solution: a global progressive tax on net wealth. Whilst this may feel far removed from the standard playing field of the environmental campaigner it is certainly something to think about. So long as inequality of wealth (often with a vested interest in maintaining the fossil fuel dependent status quo, at least in the short term) equates to inequality of power, it remains difficult to get the change we so urgently need, delivered in a timeframe the planet requires.   Now his solution may seem improbable; if the elite already have a disproportionate hold over our politics, why would they ever consent to a law being passed weakening that hold? But what other solutions are there?   The classic liberal answer would be that we just need more growth (surprise!). If everyone’s incomes rise more quickly, relative to the returns on invested wealth, then the gap closes and the problem is solved, right? In practice, probably not. Piketty demonstrates that high levels of growth are a historical anomaly, largely driven by the relatively recent massive increase in world population, and should in no way be considered the norm. Additionally, from a sustainability perspective, the quest for more growth at any cost is a really great way to knacker the planet. We need better growth, not more growth (if any at all).   As is Piketty’s central point, wealth is largely concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of elites (Pension Funds only hold 20% of total capital). So maybe the answer is to improve access to capital. Higher rates of return (relative to growth) wouldn’t be a problem if the benefits were spread more widely across the population. This is notoriously difficult to achieve (Thatcher’s ‘ownership society’ being a case in point), yet policies that promote community energy ownership and food sovereignty would certainly go some way towards addressing the imbalances (as well as being great from a sustainability perspective).   I want to finish by referencing a recent article by Naomi Klein, in which she eloquently sets out the thesis that just maybe the capitalist system that we live in has left us ill-equipped to deal with the perils of climate change. The changes we need are drastic, off trend and in-essence countercultural. Piketty’s work taken in this context is timely, it is further confirmation that the system is broken and that it is not enough to continue the way we have. The challenge now is not to fix it, it is to reinvent it entirely.   http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/sam-lowe/why-every-environmentalist-should-care-about-inequality-0 http://m.thenation.com/article/179460-change-within-obstacles-we-face-are-not-just-external
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