The abstract for A good life for all within planetary boundaries, O’Neill, Fanning, Lamb, Steinberger, Nature Sustainability:
Humanity faces the challenge of how to achieve a high quality of life for over 7 billion people without destabilizing critical planetary processes. Using indicators designed to measure a ‘safe and just’ development space, we quantify the resource use associated with meeting basic human needs, and compare this to downscaled planetary boundaries for over 150 nations. We find that no country meets basic needs for its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. Physical needs such as nutrition, sanitation, access to electricity and the elimination of extreme poverty could likely be met for all people without transgressing planetary boundaries. However, the universal achievement of more qualitative goals (for example, high life satisfaction) would require a level of resource use that is 2–6 times the sustainable level, based on current relationships. Strategies to improve physical and social provisioning systems, with a focus on sufficiency and equity, have the potential to move nations towards sustainability, but the challenge remains substantial.
I suspect the part about 7 billion people (and still rising) makes this equation impossible to solve – although I hope they do figure it out.
What am I saying? I hope we figure it out. It’s the inclination to wait for other people to figure it out which is part of the problem. Although, honestly, only a small part. Mostly humans just don’t think on the scale of worlds, and we probably never will. Not enough of us.
