Transcript Political/Business Perspectives + Global Conferences

Global and Business Perspectives
of Sustainability
Deanna Matthews
12-712 / 19-622
Lecture 4
1
About Me
Deanna Matthews
Research Associate with Green Design
Institute
Duke BSE, CMU MS and PhD
Administrative Issues
HW 1 Graded. Returned Wednesday
Office hours –same times
HW 2 Given Out, Due Wednesday
3
Recap of Last Time
US-focused: manifest destiny as our right
to resources and ownership
Emerson,Thoreau environment as escape
Tragedy of the Commons: everyone
maximizes their own utility, at the expense
of society
IPAT (Impact as a function of humanity)
4
Recap: Time to Depletion
= Quantity available in reserves / rate of
use
(need this for the Club of Rome updated
index in a few slides)
5
Today’s Lecture
Transition from qualitative/background
information to quantitative/technical
Various organizations have studied the
state of the world with respect to
environment and sustainability
Focus on data - needed, where to find it,
how to use it
6
Club of Rome
Commissioned in early 1970s “Limits to
Growth”
Fundamental issue was social institutions
had not recognized relevance of finite earth
resources – aka growth not sustainable
Have they yet? Examples?
7
Club of Rome (2)
Point wasn’t predicting, but really looking
at effects of exponential growth
“A major purpose in constructing the world
model has been to determine which, if any, of
these behavior modes will be most
characteristic of the world system as it
reaches the limits to growth.”
Lecture 1:
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Lecture 1:
9
Updated for Recent Data
Source: Stephen Brown (Dallas Fed)
 http://www.dallasfed.org/educate/events/2004/04ecsummit-brown.pdf
Lecture 1:
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Lecture 1:
11
An area of concern is the many
developing countries in the middle of that
list that were nowhere in 1972 report
What else do you see?
12
Natural resource use post CoR
Switch to excel
Concept From Club of Rome:
Exponential reserve index
If rate of resource use is increasing, the
amount of reserves cannot be calculated
by simply taking the current known
reserves and dividing by the current yearly
usage (it misses the growth effect)
Lecture 1:
14
Depletion Examples
Chromium
Available reserves 1977
775 million metric tons (M MT)
Current mining rate
1.85 M MT/year
Time to Depletion
Constant use
= Quantity available in reserves / rate of
use
Time to Depletion
Constant use
= Quantity available in reserves / rate of
use
~419 years of chromium available
Time to Depletion
Constant growth of use
Factor in increased use by 2.6% annually
1.85 M MT this year
1.90 M MT next year
1.95 M MT the next year…
Time to Depletion
In general, the formula for calculating the
amount of time left for a resource with constant
consumption growth is :
 where:
 y = years left
 g = 1.026 (2.6% annual cons. growth)
 R = reserve
 C = consumption (annually)
Time to Depletion
 In general, the formula for calculating the amount of time
left for a resource with constant consumption growth is :





where:
y = years left
g = 1.026 (2.6% annual cons. growth)
R = reserve
C = consumption (annually)
 ~95 years of chromium left
Results
Static index from initial equation
Exponential from slide above
5x comes assuming our reserve #s too low
Source: Wikipedia, “exponential reserves index”
21
Club of Rome report
IS JUST A MODEL
Any of you could build it. This is what
grad school research is all about.
22
Club of Rome report
focused on five key elements that
contribute to these world-wide problems
and ultimately limit human development:
(1) population growth,
(2) industrial production,
(3) food production,
(4) use of nonrenewable resources, and
(5) discharges of pollution.
23
Group exercise
Split into groups, each group assigned a
key element.
What info (DATA) you would need/want to
know to make informed decisions?
e.g., Food (calorie demand or yields or
both?)
What info/data relates to one of the other
key elements?
24
Brundtland Commission
Not sure what to say here
Recommendations?
Lecture 1:
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Brundtland Commission
Lesson learned
Be the head of a important group with a
long, uninteresting name and write two
sentences of important stuff and your
name lives on.
BCSD
Similar thoughts but from the business
perspective
“in a unique position to take a major role”
“used to making big decisions given great
uncertainty”
“businesses that work on understanding
these changes before they become
widespread will gain competitive advantage.
Have they? Which industries?
Lecture 1:
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Fundamental Quandary of Leaders
Leaders with all the power have little
motivation to change the status quo
Political
Business
“establish a new vision and collective ethic
based on equality of opportunity for all
countries of the present world and
between this generation and the next.”
28
Eco-efficiency
Adding value with minimum resource use
(and maintaining quality)
29
WBCSD today
Switch to safari
Where does this history lead us?
Three decades of smart people writing
recommendations
Still asking “paper versus plastic”
Fun with Data
U.S. Census (and other national censuses),
Statistical Abstract
Energy Information Association
U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Department of Agriculture
World mapper
Resources 1900 and 2000
Forests..
Lecture 1:
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Summary
End of the history lesson
This is an engineering class Use engineering tools to solve problems and model
scenarios
This is a policy class Using tool and scenario results to suggest plans for
action
Wednesday - How many people in the world…?
Today, tomorrow, 10 years, 100 years…