Why we should reject the CSIRO's 'sustainable' growth scenario

All globally minded people should reject this state of affairs, and be working for a more just world order. As Saral Sarkar and Bruno Kern put it:

If we do not want to disregard this global horizon, then we cannot avoid the insight that the people of the industrial countries, but also the rich and the middle class of the Third World, with their ecologically unsustainable mode of production and way of life, are participating in a worldwide chauvinistic selection process, which robs others of their chances of survival.

But, even putting aside the demands of justice, the failure of the authors to think about fair shares, crucially undermines their entire 'sustainability' case. One only needs to ask, how sustainable would the Australian and/or world economy be if attempts were made to globalize rich world affluence - that is, the implicit or explicit, global 'development' goal?

Predictably, the report never attempts to answer this question. Obviously, its most ambitious, and highly questionable, 'decoupling' scenarios would be pathetically inadequate. These scenarios assume a factor four reduction in Australian resource use to GDP. But if by 2050 all 9.7 billion people were to have risen to projected Australia per capita income, world GDP would have to multiply by 20 times present levels. In other words, factor 20 (not 4), resource reductions would be required, just to maintain already too high resource consumption levels. Do the CSIRO authors think that is possible? Or, to take another measure, the global 2050 energy supply target would have to be at least trebled for all people to have Australian 2050 per capita energy consumption (i.e. from 850 EJ to 2100 EJ). And yet, as noted above, the 850 EJ target will, in all probability take us well past safe climate levels.

What then is the answer?

Arguments like the above (and many others) suggest that sustainability – true sustainability - requires a multi-dimensional, transformational process of change, which enables the world to greatly reduce current levels of resource/energy consumption. There is a case this could be done, without causing severe deprivation, and indeed improving the quality of life, even in rich countries. But it could not be achieved in any thing like today's globalized capitalist-consumer society. In other words this type of society needs to be replaced (not reformed) with utterly new/different social order – in both rich and poor countries – based on i.e. intense localism, new settlement geography, new economies and governance systems, and very different cultures – what some describe as a Simpler Way.