The first law

There is little doubt that the term 'sustainable' has been appropriated for all kinds of inappropriate uses over recent years. But how are we to discern what is really sustainable? A systems approach leads one to think about this in terms of the characteristics of a complete system that is sustainable, where ideally the system is the entire humansphere, but also potentially (and somewhat problematically) sub-systems such as a country, an industry or a business. To be sustainable, a system must be able to theoretically continue in its current basic structure for an indefinite period.

This is not to say that a sustainable system has to be static in its structure, as it could certainly morph into a different but also sustainable structure. However, if the current structure is not able to be maintained indefinitely then the system is not sustainable. Indeed change may be necessary if and when external circumstances change. By 'structure' I mean the way in which it operates, its processes and dynamics, its scale and technology etc.

The concept is perhaps analogous to a business that is profitable. If a business is losing money then it cannot continue in that state indefinitely and is therefore not sustainable. Furthermore, we wouldn't try to claim that a business that is losing less money than previously is now more profitable! Likewise, if our society is unsustainable then it is misleading to say that some change is making it more sustainable even if it may be moving towards a sustainable state. We must first achieve a sustainable state (analogous to a profitable business) before we can contemplate being more sustainable, which perhaps means being more resilient to any impact of external or unforeseen changes.

So what are the characteristics of this sustainable state? The first and perhaps most important characteristic is often attributed to Professor Albert Bartlett of Colorado University, sometimes called the first law of sustainability:

Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained. (Bartlett 1994).

Richard Heinberg lists this as one of his five axioms of sustainability and calls it Bartlett's Axiom. This is a necessary, although not sufficient condition, for a sustainable system. I shall explore some of the other conditions in later blog posts.

The truth of this axiom is apparent as follows. The system of human civilisation is constrained to the Earth, at least for the foreseeable future, and the Earth is finite in its material resources and its available flows of energy. Therefore all activity within this human system can never exceed these limits. If human activity was far below those limits then it could grow until it approached those limits, but note that such growth is not sustainable because it cannot continue indefinitely. So a growing system is never sustainable, even if it has not yet reached the limits. And whilst human activity has for much of human history been at a level far below these limits, that is certainly not the case in the current era where the evidence suggests that human civilisation has in fact overshot the limits by drawing down stored resources of energy.

It is also important to understand the 'and/or' in the first law. A growing population cannot be sustained even if rates of consumption fell, as they must, because ultimately the population will reach a level above which the necessarily lower level of consumption is simply insufficient to sustain life. Conversely, growing rates of consumption cannot be sustained by reducing the population, because ultimately the level of consumption even for a very small population will exceed the limits. Of course this is unlikely to happen, as we have a very large human population which shows no prospects of falling significantly in the foreseeable future.

But surely we can use better and better technology to achieve higher levels of affluence that use less resources. This may be true to a point but (a) it still does not allow population growth to be sustainable and (b) it runs up against the law of diminishing returns. Again, a little thought reveals that it is impossible to produce the same amounts of some product, such as food, with ever less material and energy resources. In other words, efficiency gains have their limits and once the big efficiency gains have been achieved it gets harder and harder to achieve even greater efficiencies. Therefore, continued improvements in affluence cannot be sustained either, and nor can greater efficiencies sustain growing populations indefinitely.

The law of diminishing returns was inherent in Thomas Malthus' 1798 Essay on the principle of population in which he stated that:

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.

What Malthus meant by 'subsistence' was the ability to provide food and other products from a fixed amount of resources and that subsistence would only increase by small 'arithmetic' amounts, consistent with the law of diminishing returns. In contrast, population will grow geometrically, by which he meant exponentially, as human population has done throughout recent history. Malthus then concluded that once a population exceeds a 'set point' that 'misery and vice' would prevail to return the population below the set point. In modern parlance, Malthus' 'set point' is what we call carrying capacity. The 'misery and vice' was a quaint way of talking about starvation, conflict and disease.

Carrying capacity is in one sense a simple concept but also devilishly complex. Farmers understand that their land can carry a certain number of sheep or cattle, and they also understand that the long term carrying capacity will depend in part upon the worst conditions, not the best, notwithstanding techniques to even out the good and bad seasons by storing resources. For humans the concept is more complex because we aren't that keen on living a subsistence lifestyle, and so our demands can vary considerably. Whatever the numbers, it is clear that the Earth could support a lot more people if they all chose to live like Africans than if they lived like Americans or Australians. Often carrying capacity is converted into an ecological footprint being the per person share of the Earth's resources used at a given standard of living. The first law tells us that our ecological footprint cannot continue to grow.

It is apparent that the population and/or consumption of one part of the human system can increase at the expense of another part. For example, we can live more affluently in Australia because we are stealing resources from other countries that are living a far less affluent lifestyle. But such imbalances in themselves do not invalidate the first law. The total available resources do not change if we allocate them differently and so even growth in population or consumption in one region balanced be commensurate decreases in another region are unsustainable simply because such growth cannot continue indefinitely. Quite simply, when one region has access to all the resources and the rest have nothing, the game is up!

We must also remember that we have to share the Earth with all the other species and cannot appropriate all of the Earth's resources for the exclusive use of humans. This is obvious from a biocentric view that considers the interests of all the other species. However it is also true from a purely anthropocentric view because humans are almost completely reliant upon the ecosystem services that provide us with clean water, breathable air, food and fibre. Those ecosystem services are provided by complex ecosystems that we are unable to manufacture, even if we wanted to. So in a very real sense we are dependent upon the millions of other species that make the Earth's ecosystems work, even if we are selfish enough to think they are working just for us!

The implications of the first law cannot be understated. As Bartlett (1994) states, anyone who argues for a so-called sustainability initiative while failing to argue for a stable (or shrinking) population is being disingenuous. I made this point in my post regarding the ethics of sustainability, in which I suggested that human happiness will only be maximised if our actions lead to a stable and preferably smaller human population, and hence, any action or policy that leads to a growth in population will be ethically inferior to actions or policies that stabilise or reduce population. We can now see from the first law that a sustainable future will only be achievable if both population and consumption are stabilised - no if's and no but's! That we still live in a country that favours continued population growth and a world that is wedded to economic growth tells us that sustainability is not yet a serious prospect!