Sustainability of living on 1 jafi?

[zbigi]

I can't find the source that Jacob used for his opinion that living on $7k a year is sustainable. Can anyone provide the link?

The reason behind the question is that I'm currently reading "Overshoot" and, according to author, even the medieval societies were not living sustainably (they depleted forests and soil over time), so now I'm wondering if a modern person on $7k a year can be.

[theanimal]

viewtopic.php?p=217084#p217084

[Lemur]

Maybe not 100% sustainable - those medieval folk but they also were not pumping CO2 into the air at industrial levels and trying to feed 8 billion people...

[zbigi]

Maybe not 100% sustainable - those medieval folk but they also were not pumping CO2 into the air at industrial levels and trying to feed 8 billion people...

Yep, that's for sure.
I was just wondering how the $7k per year number was derived and considered "sustainable". My understanding is that it's
based on some computations which omit some of the harder factors of sustainability (like - chemical pollution or depleting valuable ores in Earth's crust). In reality, probably the only way to be sustainable is to return to hunter-gatherer societies, and everything else only varies in degrees of unsustainability (that's at least the take I got from "Overshoot"). Having said that, I still see trying to be less unsustainable as a noble goal.

[jacob]

I was just wondering how the $7k per year number was derived and considered "sustainable".

Like this ...

viewtopic.php?p=217084#p217084

It's a short formula although I suspect the footprint number comes from a rather long formula. The formula has I=PAT parallels. I is GDP, P is population, A is ecological footprint, and T is "skill of living" as seen here: viewtopic.php?p=99322#p99322

There are many ways to calculate this and many ways to game it. Spending $7000 per year on diesel you're poured into a hole and lighting it on fire is obviously not sustainable. The idea was to get a simple number rather than engage in the highly detailed footprint calculations (see e.g. Jim Merkel's Radical Simplicity) that used to be popular. The argument is that whatever you spend in the economy on e.g. fair trade eco stuff will eventually be spent elsewhere (by the seller) on "normal stuff" thus voiding your good intentions. OTOH, they can't spend money you haven't given them. Hence: work less, because "no work" is more sustainable than "sustainable production". Also PPP concerns... this has all been discussed very many times before so chasing down the links is worthwhile.

[zbigi]

[...]

Yep, I got a lot of that already from theanimal's link and other posts. I was just noticing that, in some threads, the $7k is treated as a number that, if everyone adhered to it, would make humanity sustainable indefinitely (of course, the number would have to be adjusted over time based on current population size and other inputs). Whereas in reality it's more of a first approximation to sustainability and does not account for many less pressing aspects - for example the fact that, even the $7k people do use up copper that came from the ground and that copper will eventually run out on a planetary scale (since it's impossible to recycle 100% of copper that we throw away in various forms).

[jacob]

Yep, I got a lot of that already from theanimal's link and other posts. I was just noticing that, in some threads, the $7k is treated as a number that, if everyone adhered to it, would make humanity sustainable indefinitely (of course, the number would have to be adjusted over time based on current population size and other inputs).

Insofar that "ecological footprint(*) means what I think it means" it really would make humanity sustainable if everybody adhered to it. The way I think about it is that if you're spending more, then you're either adding to the overshoot or you're ensuring that somebody else will have correspondingly less (e.g. if you take 8k, someone else gets 6k) or both.

(*) For details go here: https://www.footprintnetwork.org/ ...

2019 number: $87345B/7.7B/1.7 = $6672/person cf. average global per capita of $11343/person.

[7Wannabe5]

In reality, probably the only way to be sustainable is to return to hunter-gatherer societies, and everything else only varies in degrees of unsustainability (that's at least the take I got from "Overshoot").

On some level even hunter-gatherer cultures are not sustainable. For instance, when humans first reached the North American continent they almost certainly caused the extinction of many big game species. So, The Super-Efficient Hunters of the Giant Beaver culture had to collapse and/or rebrand itself as The More Resilient Hunters of the Buffalo culture (fictional example, but you get my drift.) Obviously, even vegetative or microbial cultures are not infinitely sustainable at any given level.

Speaking of microbial cultures, one thing I found interesting in my recent re-read of "Overshoot" was that Catton only assigned a 41.5% increase in human population over 2.6 generations to "fossil fueled machinery", and he assigned a 191.8% increase in human population over 4.4 generations to "antiseptic, surgery, etc." There is some good evidence that even in our dim hunter-gatherer past, humans were a good deal more likely to die from "competition" with microbes than by other means such as starvation, violence, etc. So, one could argue that although it is obviously the case that the burning of fossil fuels is the direct cause of global climate change, the primary cause might actually be the invention of antibiotics. So, this might lead the curious to question whether the invention of fossil fueled machinery was necessary for the invention of antibiotics. According to the Technology Tree in "How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler", the only directly necessary prerequisite technologies for Antibiotics would be Glass-> Kilns, Smelting, and Forges-> Mining-> Farming. The Steam Engine was first invented to help with pumping water out of mines, but it wasn't strictly necessary for the technology of Mining, so I think alternate history in which Antibiotics are invented prior to Fossil Fueled Machinery would have been possible. OTOH, the Green Revolution in Agriculture was/is dependent on fossil fuel dependent fertilizer inputs, and a great number of the human beings that have been born since "Overshoot" was written in late 70s (humans born since 1979 represent overwhelming majority of current humans) might have died or not been born without the Green Revolution in Agriculture. IOW, if there was no fossil fuel based Green Revolution in Agriculture, it might be the case that almost half the people on the planet would be old affluent humans (like me) born in the period between Antibiotics and Mass Starvation Era Due to Lack of Green Revolution. Dunno.

So, I think it might be semi-important to keep track of if/when you are making a covert unenforceable "contract" with humans (or other complex organisms) who are currently alive but you don't know vs. humans (or other complex organisms" who are not yet currently alive but might be your "great-grand-baby" when you strive for equity in calculation such as Eco-jacob per year or more complicated formulas such as in "Radical Simplicity." The fact that these "contracts" are covert and unenforceable is made evident by the fact that 1 JAFI has now deviated quite a bit from 1 eco-Jacob calculation, because other current humans (including me) are clueless and/or not very good. Will future-not-yet-born-humans be any better? Dunno.

[theanimal]

For instance, when humans first reached the North American continent they almost certainly caused the extinction of many big game species.

This is one of the theories but is by no means certain. The extinction of nearly half the large animal population happened quite quickly in a geological sense, leading researchers to think it was some event with a dramatic impact such as human overkill, a comet strike or something else. Sorry I can't help but nitpick

[7Wannabe5]

@theanimal:


True, but I read something recently that made very good argument for humans-being-humans as most likely cause of this extinction event(s.) Unfortunately, I can't summon up source from my internal card catalogue at moment. I mean if some nice fat giant pre-historic beaver like creature is just acting like a dodo bird due to lack of previous exposure, how likely is it that human won't end up eating it?

[oldbeyond]

JMG (and I’m sure others) have made the argument that hunting and agriculture started out as weed-like pioneer strategies (kill everything in sight, slash and burn agriculture) and gradually evolved towards more sustainable practices (stewardship of the land, crop rotation). He sees industrial civilization as the pioneer variety of a ”technic” society that (after hundreds of years and major upheaval) will ultimately evolve into a more sustainable, complex version (”The Ecotechnic Society”).

[7Wannabe5]

@oldbeyond:

Yeah, I liked JMG’s model. I should re-read “The Eco-Technic Future.”

[Bankai]

Recalculating the 'per person' number as the population grows looks like moving the goalpost.

[theanimal]

Recalculating the 'per person' number as the population grows looks like moving the goalpost.

How? There is a presumed carbon number. With a higher population the allocation per person decreases and increases if the population decreases. How can there be a fixed solution if the variables are dynamic?

[Bankai]

Of course, the math is correct, however from an individual perspective, it very much feels like moving the goalpost.

If in 2007 you told people that due to previous generations in developed countries consuming more than their 'fair share' and considering the world population at the time, they would need to cut their spending to no more than $7k per year to live 'sustainably', that's already a huge ask. On top of that, there would only be inflation adjustment each year, meaning a person would be falling behind in relative terms with time as inflation lags wages growth (this might no longer be the case as real wages growth stagnated). Not the most tempting proposition ever, but you might've been able to find a very small number of people willing to do that.

Fast forward 15 years, inflation-adjusted $7k is now c. $9,280 (including this year's inflation), but due to increased population, you recalculate the number down to £6,672 (28% reduction). You now went from extremely difficult to close to impossible and also took away any hope since as the number will only the shrinking further as the population keeps growing, it will be less and less possible to get anywhere close to it. What you're in fact doing is not only asking a person to take responsibility for all previous generations' fuck-ups until this point in time, you also tell them they need to take responsibility for all the decisions of other humans and all newborn humans going forward. Might as well not bother.

A solution to sustainability issue cannot itself be unsustainable.

[jacob]

Fast forward 15 years, inflation-adjusted $7k is now c. $9,280 (including this year's inflation), but due to increased population, you recalculate the number down to £6,672 (28% reduction). You now went from extremely difficult to close to impossible and also took away any hope since as the number will only the shrinking further as the population keeps growing, it will be less and less possible to get anywhere close to it.

It was actually close to $6000 in year 2000 when I first calculated it. It's been 6-7k every time I've recalculated over the past two decades (admittedly I have not done the calculation every year). Inflation is reflected in nominal GDP and population growth is a big factor in GDP growth (more workers and consumers), so much of that evens out. Thus it's essentially a battle between footprint (growing) and GDP/worker productivity (also growing).

What you're in fact doing is not only asking a person to take responsibility for all previous generations' fuck-ups until this point in time, you also tell them they need to take responsibility for all the decisions of other humans and all newborn humans going forward. Might as well not bother.

Tragedy of the commons.

Morally speaking, I don't feel responsible. Rather it's that I don't want to be complicit. Ultimately, my attitude is still "scientific" can it be done, that is, "is it possible to live an interesting life/is sustainable living possible without it feeling like sacrifice".

[Seppia]

My two cents:

"Approximately right is better than precisely wrong" + "good enough"

Who cares if the "correct" number is $6300, $7000 or $5790.
People in the developed world live on way more than that, striving for $7000 is such a gigantic step forward that the details become irrelevant.

[ducknald_don]

There are so many ways to slice this. Do you include the cost of buying your house? What if it is in London where the price might be five times that in Liverpool yet it has the same embedded energy? Is it better to spend your $7K on planting trees or diesel for your truck? What about the money your government spends on your behalf? If you get sick are you going to refuse an MRI because the scanner has 100 tons of embedded Co2 in it? If we own a car for the second half of its life rather than the first can we really claim we are consuming less?

I just checked on Rightmove and the cheapest property to rent in my county is $6500 USD per year, that's a small single room in a house share. If I was renting should I move away from my family to attain this target?

Our spending is about half of the national average. If society gets its act together then we will get carried along with the trend. I'm fine with that even though I'm still part of the problem

[7Wannabe5]

The footprint number can also change as/if the economy “dematerializes.” Obvious example would be increase in sustainable energy usage, but could also reflect the extent to which affluent people just circle their funds around trading services with each other at the margin. For instance, a lawyer, massage therapist, and chef all buy each other’s services rather than a bigger house/car. Living/spending in virtual reality would be another option for dematerialization of the economy towards lowering footprint factor.

[chenda]

Why not just ignore $$ and estimate your carbon footprint ?