‘If we continue the linear “take, make, break, waste” model then we don’t have a long future on Earth’

What is the long-term destiny of our civilisation? In 1972, the Club of Rome, an alliance of thought leaders, sought to answer that question. Their response alerted the world to the harm economic systems were doing to the health of planet Earth through a seminal publication, The Limits to Growth.

It was dismissed by some sceptics as “a collection of questionable prophecies” but stood the test of time, and 50 years later a new question is being asked: how can we become better stewards to ensure a relatively stable planet this century? The answer comes in Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, and one of six co-authors commissioned by the club is Irishman Owen Gaffney, a Swedish-based specialist on global sustainability.

Owen Gaffney believes the future is bright; collapse is avoidable if we get our act together quickly

Limits to Growth’s warning about the dangers of unbridled exponential economic growth have proven to be broadly correct. In its wake are devastating impacts from a rapidly worsening climate crisis and nature under intolerable strain – all due to a human imprint. The update records we have entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, “where the dominant driver of change within the Earth system is now a single species: Homo sapiens, us”.

Science cannot predict the future but it can point to likely scenarios with enhanced accuracy nowadays, and what will happen if certain paths are taken, as indicated, for instance, by climate modelling.

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Gaffney and his co-authors, backed by a team of climate experts, economists and scientists from around the world, are marking the 50th anniversary of the original landmark work with a contribution building on its shoulders, assured by evidence backing the case for overhaul of the prevailing economic paradigm – a crude obsession with growth indicated by GDP.

Gaffney was born in Limerick and lived in Clare before moving to Antrim, where he went to school. He qualified as an engineer at the University of Southampton, specialising in the design of spacecraft and satellites. He soon was drawn to systems that sustain the planet, and how best to make climate science relevant to policymakers.

He is, perhaps, best described as a climate action influencer embracing research, journalism and film-making. He believes the future is bright; collapse is avoidable if we get our act together quickly. He is author of two books on the future of humanity written from his perch at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

He works with a team across both organisations who deploy climate modelling to predict how close the world is to climate tipping points; an emerging science once regarded with some scepticism but they have been vindicated by AR6, the latest global assessment by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It concluded dangerous tipping points are likely to occur if global temperature rise exceeds 1.5 degrees, resulting in unstoppable impacts.

Most recent indications suggest five of 16 tipping points may be triggered at today’s temperatures: accelerated melting of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, widespread abrupt thermafrost thaw, collapse of convection in the Labrador Sea and large die-off of coral reefs.

Gaffney, who lives in a forest on the Stockholm archipelago, also helps build networks like the Planetary Emergency Partnership and the Earth4All initiative. This month he joined the Nobel Prizes team as its chief impact officer. It awards prizes for endeavour bringing the greatest benefit to humanity, but wants to have more impact on achieving societal goals and addressing big issues facing the planet.

He published the first research paper saying emissions need to be halved every decade to reach critical Paris Agreement targets because a flawed narrative suggests “we need to be net zero sometime after 2050, and there’s a thousand pathways to do it”.

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Many of them are not realistic, he believes, relying heavily on geoengineering or huge carbon drawdown systems that are not technically or economically feasible – or they rely on transforming land use to biofuels to a level that would interfere with food production.

Earth for All is not doomsday analysis calling on us to about turn and embrace the bold, pure green – even romantic – vision of degrowth. By implication it suggests a personal ethos does not solve the unfolding problems of climate disaster, wide-scale poverty and forced migration due to a warming world where nature – Earth’s life-support system – is increasingly out of balance.

It concludes the next decade must see the fastest economic transformation in history. Its scale may seem daunting; bigger than the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after two world Wars, bigger than the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s that industrialised farming in Asia and Africa and helped eradicate frequent famine; bigger than anti-colonial movements that led to Independent nations in the mid-20th century, bigger than the moon landings that cost about 2 per cent of US GDP in the 1960s, bigger than the Chinese economic miracle of the past 30 years that lifted 800 million out of poverty.

We say there are two core boundaries that affect everything else and everything affects them; that’s climate and biodiversity

“It’s all of these rolled into one. On steroids. Our challenge with this book is to convince you it can be done,” it adds.

The co-authors propose a roadmap moving away from unsustainable lifestyles facilitated by fossil fuels, polluting production systems and intensive agriculture – a catastrophic scenario marked by gross inequality, particularly in global south.

In the new realm, interconnectedness stands out. “We say there are two core boundaries that affect everything else and everything affects them; that’s climate and biodiversity,” says Gaffney.

It all comes down to a simple choice: if humanity snaps out of its collective denial it can move to a “great leap” scenario in which global temperatures are stabilised at below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. But for this to happen the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis need to be addressed.

If the world continues with the economic policies of the past 40 years, the rich get richer while the poor fall farther behind, creating extreme inequalities and growing social tensions within and between countries.

In this “too little, too late scenario”, political division and lack of trust will make it increasingly difficult to address climate and ecological risks, while regional societal collapse – driven by rising social tensions, populism, authoritarianism, food insecurity and environmental degradation – is likely.

With a “great leap” scenario in which global temperatures are stabilised, benefits are accrued quickly. Within a single generation the population of the planet can peak – potentially below nine billion – and begin to fall in the second half of the century. “Succeeding here, in a way that is fair and just and sup­ported by people – that is, through providing economic security and promoting gender equity – will be one of the most important achieve­ments in the history of humanity.”

With bold action now, a large population can thrive on a liveable planet

To address fundamental inequalities requires reform of the international financial system; addressing gross inequality by ensuring the wealthiest 10 per cent take less than 40 per cent of national incomes; empowering women to achieve full gender equity by 2050; transforming the global food system to provide healthy diets for people and the planet; and transitioning to clean energy to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

“With bold action now a large population can thrive on a liveable planet,” says Gaffney. “We need five transformations in parallel at speed, with the biggest effort this decade on poverty; inequality, food, energy and gender equity. This is the minimum. This does not lead to some utopia but this leads to societies that are functional enough to deal with the scale of the crises we know are coming.”

With MIT in 1972 a basic computer model, World3, was used for the first time and simulated the consequences of interactions between Earth and human systems, focusing on pollution, resources and overconsumption.

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In contrast, the Earth4All model behind the authors’ work can be used to explore different future scenarios, Gaffney says. “What happens if societies adopt policies to redistribute wealth more fairly, or if they don’t? Or what happens if countries adopt policies to empower women? Or what happens to Earth if more people eat healthy diets?”

High-wealth inequality has a destabilising influence by eroding social cohesion, he believes, comparing Sweden to the United States as evidence. In the US an “elite versus the rest” worldview has emerged. This, compounded by race and religious divisions, has contributed to an increasingly dysfunctional society. “In more economically-equal societies there is more trust in governments. We need trust in governments to allow societies to take large, long-term decisions.”

Earth for All sets out 15 policy recommendations with the greatest potential to accelerate turnarounds. It also calls for a citizen fund to distribute the wealth of global commons – the natural resources at risk of destabilising as a result of human pressures including those that fall outside national jurisdictions, namely the high seas, the atmosphere, Antarctica and outer space. The universal basic dividend would tackle inequality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a safety net for the most vulnerable through economic shocks.

If we have growth in circular economies and regenerative economies, this is good. If we continue growing the linear ‘take, make, break, waste’ model then we don’t have a long future on Earth

“And while we propose a shift to a commons-based wellbeing economy, it is worth contemplating that many of the tools that enable this shift are rooted in our existing system. It is a delicate balance between realism and idealism, upgrading and transforming, evolution and revolution,” the authors suggest.

The giant leap would not spell the end of economic growth but the end of the directionless economic growth that is deepening social divisions both internal to and between soci­eties and rising environmental damage, says Gaffney.

“Exponential economic growth comes hand in hand with exponential growth in material consumption, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the current economic system,” Gaffney adds, “Whereas an energy transformation to clean energy, for instance, will cause economic growth in the clean energy sector and a contraction of the fossil fuel sector.

“So it depends what is growing. If we have growth in circular economies and regenerative economies, this is good. If we continue growing the linear ‘take, make, break, waste’ model then we don’t have a long future on Earth.”

Although solutions proposed are largely macroeconomic ones that can only be implemented by governments, the book is a call to action for everyone.

Gaffney admits there are bleak indications: even if we stopped all emissions today we are set to hit 1.5 degrees in the 2030s; UN sustainable development goals will not be achieved by 2030 and we cannot blame Covid-19. With every 10th of a degree rise we lose resilience in the Earth’s life-support systems and increase the likelihood of crossing tipping points and ever more extreme events. “This generation will be responsible for destabilising the planet for thousands of years and many, many future generations.”

So we have to cut emissions as fast as possible and determine “what’s a plausible level of reduction that isn’t too destabilising for societies? If it’s too destabilising, then you’ll end up with leaders who rail against it,” he says — authoritarians who do not want to put investment into making this happen, thereby greatly adding to the eventual cost of climate mitigation and adaptation.

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Yet Gaffney says he is an optimist. He is heartened by the impact of social movements like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, and the findings of an Earth4All-Ipsos MORI survey which suggests 74 per cent of people in G20 countries want economic systems to change.

He hopes we are reaching a positive “social tipping point” in which these new ideas take hold and embed in the political sphere rapidly. Science is helping to identify to positive tipping points that can enable transformation at greater pace.

A wellbeing alliance, including New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, Finland and Iceland, to promote new economic ideas that work for the majority is gaining traction. President Michael D Higgins “is also very supportive”, while Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has questioned if GDP is a useful metric to describe the state of the Irish economy, he notes, even if it’s for different reasons ie the disproportionate influence of multinationals.

It’s gone past the point where we can have a sort of linear transformation. It’s going to be non-linear. It’s going to be disruptive to get to net zero now

Cities like Amsterdam, Brussels and Copenhagen are actively challenging the old values of their economies and finding ways to turn them around, but Gaffney stresses collective action is coming up short. “We simply do not have a big enough Coalition of politicians and political parties that are pushing for this agenda yet.

“So there’s this incredible balancing act we need to think about in this transformation to a zero-emission society,” is Gaffney’s take on that rebalancing. “It’s gone past the point where we can have a sort of linear transformation. It’s going to be non-linear. It’s going to be disruptive to get to net zero now. But if we don’t do the transformation we’re going to have more disruption ...[in any event] we’re not going to have a fully stable planet as we’ve had in the past, which is profound in itself.”

The Earth for All model could have been used to explore “many collapse scenarios”. Instead, Gaffney says, they asked what are the solutions to avoid those scenarios?

Time is not on our planet’s side but this is a realistic way forward, and omens for meaningful action are better. The co-authors declare: “We believe we are reaching a social tipping point across societies. Indeed, four forces – social movements, new economic logic, tech­nological development and political action – are already aligning to push societies across a tipping point in a way that leads us to self-reinforcing virtuous cycles, an Earth for All world.”