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Earth For All Advance Praise
Earth
for All
A SURVIVAL GUIDE for Humanity
A Report to the Club of Rome (2022)
Fifty Years After The Limits to Growth (1972)
by
Sandrine Dixson- Declève | Owen Gaffney
Jayati Ghosh | Jorgen Randers
Johan Rockström | Per Espen Stoknes
Copyright © 2022 by The Club of Rome. All rights reserved.
Written by Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Ganey, Jayati Ghosh,
Jorgen Randers, Johan Rockström, and Per Espen Stoknes
Cover design by Diane McIntosh.
Printed in Canada. First printing September 2022.
This book is intended to be educational and informative. It is not intended to serve as a
guide. The authors and publisher disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk
that may be associated with the application of any of the contents of this book.
Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Earth for All
should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.
To order directly from the publishers, order online at www.newsociety.com
Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:
New Society Publishers
P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC VR X, Canada (250) 247-9737
New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental
ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least
possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.
v
Contents
Contributors ..................... viii
. Earth for All: Five Extraordinary Turnarounds for
Global Equity on a Healthy Planet..........
Breakdown or Breakthrough? ..............
A Brief History of Future Scenarios ............
From The Limits to Growth to Planetary Boundaries ....
The Earth for All Initiative ................
People Support Economic Systems Change ........
. Exploring Two Scenarios:
Too Little Too Late or Giant Leap?..........
A Brief Review of to ..............
Scenario : Too Little Too Late ..............
Scenario : The Giant Leap ................
Which Scenario Do We Co- create? ............
. Saying Goodbye to Poverty ..............
What Is Our Current Problem? ..............
Turning Poverty Around .................
Solution : Expand Policy Space and Deal with Debt ....
Solution : Transform the Financial Architecture .....
Solution : Transform Global Trade ............
Solution : Improve Access to Technology
and Leapfrogging...................
Barriers to the Solutions .................
Conclusions .......................
. The Inequality Turnaround: “Sharing the Dividends” .
The Problems with Economic Inequality .........
vi | Contents
A Giant Leap Toward Greater Equality ..........
Overcoming Barriers to the Equality Levers ........
Conclusions .......................
. The Empowerment Turnaround:
“Achieving Gender Equity” .............
Population........................
Turning It All Around ..................
Transforming Education .................
Financial Independence and Leadership .........
A Secure Pension and Dignied Aging ..........
Conclusions .......................
. The Food Turnaround: Making the Food System
Healthy for People and Planet............
Consuming Earth’s Biosphere ..............
Solution : Revolutionize the Way We Farm ........
Solution : Change Our Diets ...............
Solution : Eliminate Food Loss and Waste ........
Barriers .........................
Conclusions .......................
. The Energy Turnaround: “Electrifying Everything” ..
Challenges........................
Don’t Look Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Solution : Introduce Systemic Eciency .........
Solution : Electrify (almost) Everything .........
Solution : Exponential Growth in New Renewables....
The Energy Turnaround in the EarthAll Analysis.....
Barriers .........................
Conclusions .......................
. From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to
EarthAll Economies ................
A New Economic Operating System............
The Rise of Rentier Capitalism ..............
Rethinking the Commons in the Anthropocene ......
Contents | vii
The Conventional Economic Gameboard .........
Redrawing the Gameboard ................
Short- termism: The Road to a Parasitic Financial System .
Putting the Systems Change into Eect ..........
How to Resolve the Systems Failure............
Conclusions .......................
. A Call to Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Is Earth for All Closer Than We Think? ..........
A Chorus of Voices ....................
Appendix: The EarthAll Model............
Model Purpose......................
Model History ......................
The Main Sectors in the Model ..............
Model Causal Loop Diagram ...............
Model Novelty ......................
The Earth for All Game ..................
Notes .........................
Index .........................
About the Authors ..................
About the Publisher ..................
viii
Contributors
MAIN AUTHORS
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Ganey, Jayati Gosh, Jorgen Randers,
Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
TEC= Members of the 21st Century Transformational Economics
Commission:
Anders Wijkman (TEC), Hunter Lovins (TEC),
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele (TEC), Ken Webster (TEC)
CONTRIBUTORS
Nafeez Ahmed (TEC), Lewis Akenji (TEC), Sharan Burrow (TEC),
Bob Costanza (TEC), David Collste, Emmanuel Faber (TEC), Lorenzo
Fioramonti (TEC), Eduardo Gudynas (TEC), Andrew Haines (TEC), Gaya
Herrington (TEC), Garry Jacobs (TEC), Till Kellerho, Karthik Manickam,
Anwesh Mukhopadhyay, Jane Kabubo-Mariara (TEC), David Korten
(TEC), Nigel Lake, Masse Lo, Chandran Nair (TEC), Carlota Perez (TEC),
Kate Pickett (TEC), Janez Potočnik (TEC), Otto Scharmer (TEC), Stewart
Wallis (TEC), Ernst von Weizsäcker (TEC), Richard Wilkinson (TEC)
DATA SYNTHESIS, SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND MODELLING TEAM
Jorgen Randers, Ulrich Golüke, David Collste, Sarah Mashhadi, Sarah
Cornell, Per Espen Stoknes, Jonathan Donges, Dieter Gerten, Jannes
Breier, Luana Schwarz, Ben Callegari, Johan Rockström
SUPPORTING DEEP DIVE PAPERS (AVAILABLE AT WWW.EARTH4ALL.LIFE)
Nafeez Ahmed, Shouvik Chakraborty, Anuar Sucar Diaz Ceballos,
Jayati Ghosh, Gaya Herrington, Adrina Ibnat Jamilee Adiba, Nigel Lake,
Masse Lô, Chandran Nair, Rebecca Nohl, Sanna O’Connor, Julia Okatz,
Kate Pickett, Janez Potočnik, Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, Otto Scharmer,
Anders Wijkman, Richard Wilkinson, Jorgen Randers, Ken Webster
EDITORS
Joni Praded, Ken Webster, Owen Ganey, and Per Espen Stoknes
Contributors | ix
EARTH4ALL PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT
Per Espen Stoknes (Scientic Work Packages), Sandrine Dixson-Declève,
Anders Wijkman (TEC), Owen Ganey (Communications), Till Kellerho
(Coordination)
EARTH4ALL CAMPAIGN TEAM AND BOOK STORY DEVELOPMENT
Philippa Baumgartner, Rachel Bloodworth, Liz Callegari,
Lena Belly-Le Guilloux, Andrew Higham, Nigel Lake, Luca Miggiano,
Zoe Tcholak-Antitch
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Azeem Azhar, Tomas Björkman, Alvaro Cedeño Molinari, John Fullerton,
Enrico Giovannini, Maja Göpel, Steve Keen, Connie Hedegaard, Sunita
Narain, Julian Popov, Kate Raworth, Tom Cummings, Petra Künkel, Grace
Eddy, Megan McGill, Roberta Benedetti, Vaclav Smil, Julia Kim, Roman
Krznaric, Sir Lord Nicholas Stern, Andrea Athanas, Kaddu Sebunya
FUNDERS
Angela Bennett Foundation, Global Challenges Foundation, Laudes
Foundation, Partners for a New Economy
GRAPHICS
Les Copland, Philippa Baumgartner
MEMBERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY TRANSFORMATIONAL ECONOMICS COMMISSION
Nafeez Ahmed, Investigative journalist
Lewis Akenji, Managing Director, Hot or Cool Institute
Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View
Tomas Björkman, Founder, Ekskäret Foundation
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union
Confederation
Alvaro Cedeño Molinari, Former Costa Rican Ambassador to Japan
andtheWTO
Bob Costanza, Professor of Ecological Economics, Institute for Global
Prosperity, University College London
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Co-President, The Club of Rome, and Project
Lead, Earth4All
Emmanuel Faber, Chair, International Sustainability Standards Board
Lorenzo Fioramonti, Professor of Political Economy, and Member of the
Italian Parliament
John Fullerton, Founder and President, Capital Institute
Jayati Ghosh, Professor, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences,
University of Massachusetts Amherst
x | Contributors
Maja Göpel, Political economist and transformation researcher
Eduardo Gudynas, Senior Researcher, Latin American Center on
Social Ecology (CLAES)
Andy Haines, Co-chair of the Lancet Pathnder Commission on
Health in the Zero-Carbon Economy
Connie Hedegaard, Chair, OECD’s Roundtable for Sustainable
Development
Gaya Herrington, Vice-President, ESG Research at Schneider Electric
Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development and Director,
University of Surrey
Garry Jacobs, CEO, World Academy of Art and Science
Jane Kabubo-Mariara, Professor of Economics, University of Nairobi
Steve Keen, Professor of Economics, Honorary Professor, University
College London
Julia Kim, Program Director, Gross National Happiness Centre, Bhutan
Roman Krznaric, Public philosopher and author
David Korten, Author, lecturer, political activist
Hunter Lovins, President, Natural Capital Solutions
Chandran Nair, Founder and CEO, Global Institute for Tomorrow
Sunita Narain, Environmentalist and political activist; Director
General, Centre for Science and Environment
Carlota Perez, Professor, Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose,
University College London
Janez Potočnik, Co-chair of the UN International Resource Panel
Kate Pickett, Professor of Epidemiology, University of York
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, Co-President, The Club of Rome
Kate Raworth, Senior Research Associate, Environmental Change
Institute, University of Oxford
Jorgen Randers, Professor Emeritus of Climate Strategy, BI Norwegian
Business School
Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research
Otto Scharmer, Senior Lecturer, Sloan School of Management, MIT
Ernst von Weizsäcker, Past Chairman, Bundestag Environment
Committee
Stewart Wallis, Executive Chair, Wellbeing Economy Alliance
Ken Webster, Director, International Society for Circular Economy
Anders Wijkman, Chair of the Governing Board, Climate-KIC
1
Earth for All
Five Extraordinary Turnarounds for
Global Equity on a Healthy Planet
This is a book about our future
—
the collective future of humanity
this century, to be precise. Civilization is at a unique moment, a junc-
ture. Pandemics, wildres, and wars swirl around us as we write, sure
signs that societies remain extremely vulnerable to shocks despite
unprecedented progress. Beyond the immediate turbulence, we are
in the midst of a planetary emergency of our own making. What this
book will argue is that the long- term potential of humanity depends
upon civilization
—
a wondrous, freewheeling, kaleidoscopic, inspir-
ing, confounding civilization
—
undergoing nothing short of ve
extraordinary turnarounds within the coming decades.
We know the pain points. Everyone knows we must end extreme
poverty for billions. Everyone knows we must x the inequality crisis.
Everyone knows we need an energy revolution. Everyone knows our
industrial diets are killing us, and the way we farm food is ripping
through nature, driving a sixth mass extinction of species. We know
human populations cannot increase endlessly. And we know our
material footprint cannot expand innitely on our nite, blue and
green Earth.
Can “we”
—
meaning all people and peoples
—
come together to
navigate this century? Can we take a collective leap in human develop-
ment with courage and conviction? Can we overcome divisions, neo-
colonial and nancial exploitation, historic inequalities, and deep,
deep distrust among nations to deal with the long- term emergency?
Can we achieve systemic transformation in decades, not centuries?
Our goal with Earth for All is to show you that this is indeed fully
possible. And that it won’t cost the Earth. Rather, it is an investment
| E A
in our future. Based on expert assessments supported by system
dynamics models, the pages ahead explore the most likely routes to
emerge from these emergencies; the pathways that bring the most
humanitarian, social, environmental, and economic benets to all.
Earth for All is about valuing our future. Most people value their
personal future. But what about valuing our collective future? As a
civilization, as eight billion people, as an entangled web of societies?
Well, the evidence that we do is very limited. The COVID- 19 pandemic
is certainly a prime example of this failure. Despite enormous wealth
in some countries, we simply did not put in place basic safeguards
to protect civilization from a threat that was known, highly likely,
and entirely avoidable. The investment in adequate preparation was,
essentially, peanuts compared with the global suering to date.
Another sign of chronic failure: Millions of children have had to
walk out of schools around the globe and march in the streets to get
our attention. The school strikers’ message is simple: “Our house is
on re.” Those with power, they say, are taking colossal risks with
their future, consigning them to live on a destabilized Earth. The plac-
ards on the streets read “Systems Change, Not Climate Change” and
“Listen to the Science.” And the youth carrying them are demanding,
rightly, a fair and just transition of societies. Now.
Their plea exposes some uncomfortable questions. Why are
actions to prevent pandemics or climate disruptions so shockingly
inadequate? Are economic systems driving industrial societies in a
direction that’s impossible to change? Is it even possible for everyone,
whether eight or ten billion people on Earth, to prosper within plane-
tary boundaries? Is societal collapse inevitable? Or can we nd a way
to value and invest in our collective future here on Earth?
This book tackles that last question head on. It presents the nd-
ings of the Earth for All initiative, which began in 2020. As the pan-
demic ripped through societies, an international team of scientists,
economists, and multidisciplinary experts joined together to analyze
what is necessary to build a fairer, more resilient economic system
to weather current interconnected crises and future storms. We
debated. We frequently disagreed. Some of our disagreements spilled
Earth for All |
over into heated arguments. Even with heartfelt commitment to end
poverty and neocolonialism and address inequality in all societies,
the perspectives between academics and authors in Europe and North
America and those from Asia and Africa turn out to be quite dierent.
For example, even though there is full agreement that a food system
turnaround is essential, it was tricky navigating how much emphasis
to place on organic farming, lab- based alternatives to meats, and the
role of man- made chemicals during the necessary transition.
Our analysis focused on two deeply intertwined systems: people
and planet, or more explicitly the global economy and Earth’s life
support system. It is grounded in systems thinking, a branch of sci-
ence that has exploded in the last ve decades and whose tools help
us understand complexity, feedback loops, and exponential impacts.
Systems thinkers are always on the lookout for leverage points
where a small change in one thing can make a big dierence to the
wholesystem.
At the heart of the analysis are two intellectual engines that
allowed us to explore the boldest economic proposals: the Transfor-
mational Economics Commission
—
an international group of leading
economic thinkers
—
and a system dynamics model we call Earth4All.
Through a series of feedback loops, economic ideas from the com-
mission could be tested by the Earth4All model to see if the proposals
would have a big enough eect on people and planet over time. Like-
wise, the commission could critique and challenge the outputs from
the Earth4All model.
All of this gave us a robust process to study possible alternative
future worlds. We could explore what may happen this century given
a wide set of assumptions about human behavior, future technologi-
cal development, economic growth, and food production
—
and how
all of this aects the biosphere and climate. We got a glimpse of what
could happen if the gap between rich and poor widens or shrinks, if
greenhouse gas emissions rise or fall, if population explodes or drops,
if material consumption mushrooms or is reined in, or if investment
in public infrastructure and technological innovations can prevent
catastrophe. While analyzing various future scenarios, the role of the
| E A
model was primarily to keep our thinking straight. It helped ensure
that our scenarios were internally consistent and actually followed
from the assumptions we made.
Two novelties included in the model are the Social Tension Index
and the Average Wellbeing Index. These allowed us to estimate
whether policies
—
for example, related to income redistribution
—
might cause social tensions in societies to rise or fall. We believe that
if social tensions rise too far, societies may enter a vicious cycle where
declining trust causes political destabilization, economies stagnate,
and wellbeing declines. In that situation, governments will struggle
to deal with rolling shocks let alone long- term existential challenges
like pandemic risk, climate change, or ecological collapse.
The Earth4All model operates at a global scale, which is useful for
exploring big- picture long- term trends. But this can mask important
regional dierences. For example, global trends showing strong eco-
nomic growth may hide economic stagnation in some areas. With
this in mind, we developed the model further to track ten regions of
the world.¹ This allows us a glimpse of how our scenarios play out
in low- income countries of sub- Saharan Africa and South Asia com-
pared with high- income countries of Europe and the United States.
Of course, with any additional complexity in any model, this creates
additional uncertainties so we interpret results cautiously.
Breakdown or Breakthrough?
Of all scenarios we could describe in some detail, in this book we have
chosen two, which we call Too Little Too Late and Giant Leap. Too Little
Too Late asks, What if the economic system driving the world (and
now the biosphere) continues operating largely as it has done over the
past fty years? Will current trends in reducing poverty, rapid techno-
logical innovation, and energy transformation be enough to avoid
societal collapses or Earth system shocks? Giant Leap asks, What if
the economic system is transformed through extraordinary eorts
to build a more resilient civilization? It explores what it may take to
eliminate poverty, create trust, and provide a stable global economic
system that delivers higher wellbeing to the majority. Our two sce-
narios are built from expert assessment and the existing academic
Earth for All |
literature, and are kept internally consistent by the Earth4All model.
When we combine these, we arrive at the following conclusions.
First, on current political and economic paths, we expect con-
tinuing rising inequality by design. We also expect slow economic
development in low- income countries, causing enduring poverty. As
a result of inequalities within countries, social tensions are likely to
rise toward the middle of the twenty- rst century.
Second, these factors are likely to contribute to inadequate re-
sponses to the climate and ecological emergency. Global average
temperature is likely to signicantly exceed 2°C, the limit stipulated
in the Paris Agreement on Climate, and established by science as a
red line it would be deeply unwise to cross.² Large populations will
increasingly face extreme heat waves, megadroughts leading to fre-
quent crop failures, torrential rain, and rising sea levels. The world
risks regional societal instabilities as a result of rising social tensions
this century with global impacts. Signicant parts of the Earth system
are more likely than today to cross more irreversible or abrupt tipping
points. This is likely to further exacerbate social tensions and con-
icts. The impacts of crossing climate and ecological tipping points
are likely to last centuries to millennia.
Third, ve extraordinary turnarounds are needed to substantially
reduce risks:
1. ending poverty
2. addressing gross inequality
3. empowering women
4. making our food system healthy for people and ecosystems
5. transitioning to clean energy
These extraordinary turnarounds are designed as policy road maps
that will work for the majority of people. They are not an attempt to
create some impossible- to-reach utopia; instead, they are an essential
foundation for a resilient civilization under extraordinary pressure.
And, what’s more, there is sucient knowledge, funds, and technolo-
gies in the world to implement them. These ve turnarounds are
not particularly new. The various actions that drive them have been
described separately in many reports. But what we have attempted
| E A
through Earth4All is to connect them up in one dynamic system,
to assess if together they create sucient economic momentum to
push the global economy o the destructive course it is on and onto
a resilient path.
We cannot claim this is the precise blueprint for a safe, just
future. But we do claim nothing less than focused, large- scale invest-
ment in these ve areas, starting now, is necessary. Why? Well, “just”
addressing the climate emergency requires reconguring the global
energy system
—
the foundation of all economies
—
in a single genera-
tion. Many of the engineering solutions such as solar panels, wind
turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles are here already and scal-
ing exponentially. But the solutions must be acceptable, fair, and
aordable to the global middle classes or risk deep resistance. If the
energy transformation already underway perpetuates historic injus-
tices, it will have a destabilizing eect on societies. The Earth for All
turnarounds show how, with a systemic approach, success might
beachieved.
This brings us to the fourth conclusion. The extra investment
needed to build a more resilient civilization is likely to be small: in the
order of 2% to 4% of global income per year for sustainable energy
security and food security.³ But this investment is highly unlikely
to emerge through market forces alone. These extraordinary turn-
arounds require reshaping of markets and long- term thinking. Only
governments, supported by citizens, can provide this. So, the clear
conclusion is that governments need to become much more active.
The investments will be highest during the rst decades after imple-
mentation starts, and then decline.
The fth conclusion: Income redistribution is not negotiable.
Long- term economic inequality combined with short- term economic
crises (this is the current modus operandi of most large economies)
contributes to economic anxiety, distrust, and political dysfunction.
These are important risk factors for destructive polarization in demo-
cratic societies, which leads to rising social tensions. Because the cur-
rent dominant economic model will lead to greater income inequality,
extraordinary interventions are needed to address that inequality so
that we can respond to global existential threats.
Earth for All |
We propose a series of policies to ensure the wealthiest 10% take
no more than 40% of national incomes. This is far from full income
equality in some impossible utopia, but we estimate this is a mini-
mum for functional democratic societies. When gross inequality cor-
rodes trust, it becomes more dicult for democratic societies to make
collective, long- term decisions that cut emissions, safeguard forests,
protect freshwater, and stabilize global temperature at what scientists
estimate is a relatively safe level (1.5°C). Failing to do this will in turn
commit the world to even more extreme heat waves, crop failures,
and food price shocks. It will worsen inequalities, erode trust further,
and test governability to the limit.
Sixth, these extraordinary turnarounds can be achieved by 2050,
within a single generation. But action needs to start now. Our future
will be vastly more peaceful, more prosperous, and more secure if we
do everything in our power to stabilize Earth this decade than if we do
not. Without urgent action, we can expect rising social tensions that
will make it more dicult to solve civilizational challenges in future.
Seventh, these extraordinary turnarounds will be disruptive.
There is no getting away from it. The turnarounds will interact with
ongoing disruptive trends, for example the next phase of the expo-
nential technological breakthroughs. Exponential technology prom-
ises revolutions in articial intelligence, robotics, connectivity, and
biotechnology bringing economic, health, and wellbeing benets
but with massive implications for privacy, security, and the future
of employment. We need to establish social safety nets during this
transformation to protect all in society. This is why we have proposed
Citizens Funds to distribute a “universal basic dividend” as a keystone
policy innovation to address inequality and protect populations from
inevitable economic disruptions. Like a traditional “fee and dividend”
policy, a Citizens Fund has two parts: The private sector is charged
for extracting and using resources that should be seen as under the
stewardship of all in society, including fossil fuels, land, freshwater,
the ocean, minerals, the atmosphere, and even data and knowledge.
The fees are put into national Citizens Funds, and this revenue is then
distributed back to all citizens in a country equally through a univer-
sal basic dividend (UBD).
| E A
And our nal conclusion is that, despite these warnings, it is pos-
sible, desirable, and even essential to be optimistic about our collec-
tive future. Our analysis indicates it’s fully doable. The window is
still open to achieve the Earth for All vision: human wellbeing within
planetary boundaries. A concerted eort to redistribute wealth can
build trust within nations and between nations, opening up the
space to make long- term decisions to reduce risk of existential chal-
lenges like climate disruptions or future pandemics. Rapid economic
development following these ve extraordinary turnarounds could
remove absolute poverty by 2050. A rapid shift away from today’s fos-
sil fuels and wasteful food chains has the potential to bring long- term
energy and food security to all societies. Millions of people currently
enduring horric air pollution in overcrowded cities will be able to
breathe clean air again as economies transform. And a clean energy
revolution driven by exponential technologies and systemic ecien-
cies can enable low- income countries to satisfy material needs while
avoiding the historic mistakes of the rich nations. Through these
extraordinary turnarounds we value our future.
The analysis clearly shows the next decade must see the fastest
economic transformation in history. The scale of that transformation
may seem daunting.
It is bigger than the Marshall Plan
—
the economic investments
that rebuilt Europe after two world wars.
It is bigger than the Green Revolution in the 1950s and 60s that
industrialized farming in Asia and Africa and helped eradicate famine.
It is bigger than the anticolonial movements that led to indepen-
dent nations in the mid- twentieth century.
It is bigger than the civil rights movements in the 1960s that
brought more equal rights to marginalized groups in the United
States, Europe, and elsewhere.
It is bigger than the moon landings that cost ~2% of US gross
domestic product (GDP) in the 1960s.
It is bigger than the Chinese economic miracle of the last thirty
years that lifted 800 million out of poverty.
It’s all of these rolled into one. On steroids. Our challenge with this
book is to convince you it can be done.
Earth for All |
It will require building the broadest coalition the world has ever
seen. And it will need to happen as economic power shifts away
from the old dominant West in the coming decades toward what
we call in this book “Most of the World.” Across regions we need
an engaged majority on board: both the political left and right, the
centrists and greens, nationalists and globalists, managers and
workers, businesses and society, voters and politicians, teachers and
students, rebels and traditionalists, grandparents and teenagers. It
will require rewiring the global economic system. In particular, we
need to rethink economic growth, so that economies that need to
grow can grow and economies that are overconsuming can develop
new operating systems.
It will require rethinking consumption of materials, which may
double by 2060 without the extraordinary turnarounds.
It will require redesigning the global nancial system from one
that is crowdfunding catastrophe to one that crowdfunds long- term
prosperity. One priority is redesigning the ow of money in the world.
This means upgrading institutions like the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank to make the ow benet those in poverty,
not just the top 10%.
And, it will require more ecient, smarter, and more entrepre-
neurial states that look out over the horizon and put the safety of
their citizens rst. Governments must actively support innovation,
redesign markets, and redistribute wealth. So, governments need to
wake up. The rst duty of a state, after all, is to protect citizens from
harm. In this volatile century, this means thinking in terms of sys-
tems, acting globally, and investing before it becomes protable, in
order to increase the wellbeing of future generations.
A Brief History of Future Scenarios
Earth for All builds on decades of economic and Earth system
research. Let’s spin the clock back fty years. People were increas-
ingly concerned about population growth, pollution, and the state of
the planet. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring published a decade ear-
lier had triggered a real and serious fear that humans could destroy
living conditions on Earth. Recognizing this, the United Nations
| E A
convened the rst Earth Summit
—
the UN Conference on the Human
Environment in Stockholm. In advance of this summit, a group of
young researchers based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy (MIT) published a remarkable book, The Limits to Growth.
The Limits to Growth warned about the possibility
—
even like li-
hood
—
of ecological overshoot and societal collapse. If humanity kept
pursuing economic growth and exponential consumption without
regard for nite natural resources or environmental costs, the authors
warned, global society would overshoot Earth’s physical limits and
experience sharp declines in available food and energy along with
rising pollution, an ensuing decline in standards of living, and ulti-
mately a dramatic fall in the human population, within the rst half of
the twenty- rst century. The book became an unlikely bestseller, with
millions of copies sold worldwide.
The Limits to Growth analysis was based on a then- new computer
model, World3. Computer power in the early seventies was severely
limited by today’s standards. But nevertheless, the MIT team created
the rst computer model that sought to capture the complex global
dynamics of human societies evolving on a nite planet.
The team used World3 to explore future scenarios related to popu-
lation growth, fertility, mortality, industrial output, food, and pol-
lution at a grand scale. The model captured some of the complexity
between, for example, the impact of population growth on food avail-
ability given that food production can’t keep expanding indenitely.
Since then, other computer models have been developed to explore
complex global challenges. The results presented here use the same
techniques as World3. Indeed, our central model, Earth4All, was
designed by Jorgen Randers, one of the four authors of The Limits
toGrowth.
Some of the scenarios explored in The Limits to Growth ended in
collapse due to rising pollution, food production falling, and a dra-
matic decline in population. But not all scenarios followed this course.
The team also identied a set of assumptions that produced “stabi-
lized world” scenarios. In those, human welfare grew and remained
high; key actions could be taken to avoid collapse. The media and
other commentators largely ignored these scenarios, instead focusing
Earth for All |
on the threat of collapse if growth followed the traditional trajectory.
Decision- makers ignored them, too, opting to remain complacent,
follow neoliberal economic theory, and pursue growth at all costs
—
despite the warnings The Limits to Growth issued about the long- term
eects of business as usual.
So, fty years on, what do we make of The Limits to Growth scenar-
ios? Did they align with reality in any shape or form?
What we can say with half a century of hindsight is that World3 is
not just one of the most famous but also a surprisingly accurate global
assessment model. In 2012, Australian physicist Graham Turner plot-
ted real- world data from 1970 to 2000 against The Limits to Growth
Business- as-Usual scenario. He found that the team’s scenario tracked
closely with reality. An updated look in 2014 showed the same.
In 2021, Dutch researcher Gaya Herrington, a member of Earth for
All’s Transformational Economics Commission, decided to see if the
data were still tracking today. She compared data gained in the last
four decades with four scenarios from the latest version of World3.
One of these old scenarios assumed the world does little to change
course, continuing on an economic and political business- as-usual
course (BAU in gure 1.1). An updated version of the original BAU
scenario assumed twice as much natural resources like fossil fuels
(BAU2). A third scenario assumed massive, comprehensive technol-
ogy innovation (CT) to solve some of the problems encountered when
approaching global limits, like food availability. And the fourth sce-
nario explored a route to stabilize the world (SW) by shifting priorities
away from growth in material consumption and instead investing in
health and education, reducing pollution, and using resources more
eciently.
Herrington’s study is a reminder that The Limits to Growth was
intended to explore several paths toward dierent possible long- term
futures, not to make one prediction. She found that the rst three
scenarios most accurately tracked the actual data. This tells us two
things. First, as Herrington put it, “The close alignment of empirical
data with the scenarios is a testament to the accuracy of World3.” And
second, this close alignment between model and reality should set
o alarm bells. The rst two scenarios pointed toward collapse in the
Figure 1.1. Four scenarios from The Limits to Growth: BAU, BAU2, CT, and SW.
Graphs by Hillary Moore.
Figure 1.2. The Limits to Growth scenarios vs historical data from the UN
Human Development Index up to 2020 plotted against human welfare
variables for all four scenarios. Credit: Gaya Herrington (2021).
Earth for All |
twenty- rst century. BAU showed a world whose material consump-
tion crashed up against planetary boundaries. When resources were
doubled in BAU2, inecient overuse continued for longer, ultimately
leading to the biggest collapse due to excessive pollution. The sce-
nario relying on technological innovation led to serious declines in
resources and industrial output but not collapse. Only the fourth
scenario
—
a large- scale transformation of societies
—
led to wide-
spread increases in human welfare and population stabilization.
Love it or hate it, The Limits to Growth report sparked international
debate about civilization, capitalism, fair resource use, and our col-
lective future that continued many years after publication. Ronald
Reagan famously attempted to discredit the report by stating: “There
are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human
intelligence, imagination, and wonder.”
Reagan may well be correct about limitless human imagination,
but that does not change the fact that we live on a physically nite,
crowded planet undergoing profound changes. It is time to start
using that intelligence, imagination, and wonder to reimagine and
build equitable societies where citizens can thrive and have freedom
to follow their dreams within the planetary boundaries of our one
and only Earth.
From The Limits to Growth to Planetary Boundaries
Since the publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972, one scientic
conclusion has eclipsed all other scientic insights in the last fty
years. Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
This paradigm shift in our understanding of both civilization and the
Earth system is as profound as Copernicus’s conclusion that Earth
orbits the sun or Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
Geologists split deep time into units: the Jurassic, the Creta-
ceous, the Carboniferous, and so on. These mark out the major shifts
in our planet’s evolution. In 2000, Paul Crutzen, a Nobel laureate
on the committee of the International Geosphere- Biosphere Pro-
gramme, proposed that Earth has entered a new geological epoch,
the Anthropocene. This idea quickly gained momentum among the
research community. By recognizing the Anthropocene, scientists
| E A
acknowledge that the dominant driver of change within the Earth
system is now a single species: Homo sapiens, us. Without doubt,
what has happened to our planet in recent decades is absolutely
unique in its 4.5 billion- year history.
The epoch we left behind, the Holocene, served human civiliza-
tions well. It began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. After
Figure 1.3. The Industrial Revolution (left- hand panel of graphs) began in 1750.
But the destabilizing impact of the revolution on the Earth system (right- hand
panel of graphs) only becomes apparent beyond 1950. This pattern has become
known as the Great Acceleration. This delineates the Holocene from the
Anthropocene. Source: Steen et al. (2015).
Earth for All |
a few bumps, the climate settled into a remarkably stable rhythm. It
is no coincidence that civilization emerged almost immediately. This
mild climate and relative stability allowed agriculture (and the pro-
duction of surplus). It has lasted 10,000 years and could have been
expected to last a further 50,000 years.¹ But this is now in jeop-
ardy. The growth of industrialized societies, largely since the 1950s,
has pushed Earth out of the Holocene boundary conditions. We are
in unknown territory. The explosive growth and its direct eect on
Earth’s life support system is best illustrated by the Great Acceleration
graphs (gure 1.3).¹¹
| E A
As the scientic understanding of the Anthropocene has grown,
researchers have become concerned about potential tipping points
on Earth
—
very large climate or ecological changes that are either
abrupt or irreversible or both. This concern has led some to explore
the conditions that keep Earth in a system state similar to the Holo-
cene. This is worth some emphasis. The Holocene is the only state
we know that will support a large civilization. In 2009, a team of
researchers published a new framework identifying nine planetary
boundaries that should not be exceeded if Earth is to stay within this
stable state. In 2015, scientists concluded that human actions have
breached the boundaries for climate, biodiversity, forests, and bio-
geochemical cycles (largely our use of fertilizers using nitrogen and
phosphorus). In 2022, scientists announced a fth boundary has been
crossed: chemical pollution including plastics (see gure 1.4).¹² As we
write, in May 2022, experts are exploring whether a sixth has been
transgressed, too: a proposed new category of freshwater known as
green water, the moisture held in soil around the roots of plants.¹³
The tipping point risk is now acute. Indeed, in 2019, scientists
announced that an alarming number of tipping “elements”
—
places
we know there are grave risks
—
are now getting “active.” The Amazon
rainforest is losing carbon at unprecedented rates. Critical parts of
the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are showing signs of destabilization. The
permafrost in Siberia and northern Canada is thawing. Coral reefs are
dying. And Arctic sea ice in summer is on a downward spiral.¹ Tip-
ping points are not some future risk later this century. We cannot rule
out that Earth has recently already crossed several tipping points.
For these reasons, we can categorically dene our current situa-
tion as a planetary emergency. To use a Titanic comparison, if sixty
seconds remain before colliding with an iceberg and it takes sixty
seconds or more to turn enough to avoid collision, this can obviously
be described as an emergency situation. It is touch- and-go whether
there is enough time to act. The alarms should be ringing. For our
own civilization here on Earth it will at best take one generation to
sail away from dangerous tipping points into a safe zone. The extraor
-
dinary turnaround must start now.
Figure 1.4. The planetary boundaries framework depicting nine boundaries
that determine the state of the planet. The central area represents a “safe
operating space for humanity,” which provides a good chance of ensuring
that Earth remains within Holocene- like conditions. Outside this area, there
are profound uncertainties about how the Earth system operates. The risk
of crossing abrupt or irreversible tipping points, for example, rises as Earth
goes further beyond boundaries. In 2015, the planetary boundaries research
team assessed that four boundaries had been transgressed. In 2022, another
research team assessed the novel entities boundary, which includes plastic
and other chemical pollutants, for the rst time. The team proposed
that this boundary, too, has been transgressed. Credit: Azote, Stockholm
Resilience Centre.
| E A
The planetary boundaries framework has helped catalyze new
thinking about risk and inspired many research groups to explore the
implications for policy and economic growth. UK- based economist
and Earth for All Transformational Economics Commissioner Kate
Raworth took the framework and added twelve social boundaries
—
minimum standards for essentials like access to water, food, health-
care, housing, energy, and education. The doughnut- shaped graphic
in gure 1.5 depicts both the planetary and social boundaries and
denes a safe operating space for the human economy
—
“living in
the doughnut,” the area in which human activity does not overshoot
Earth’s ecological ceiling and humanity does not fall beneath the
Figure 1.5. The “doughnut” of social and planetary boundaries. We have
crossed ve planetary boundaries, and many around the world live outside of
the social boundaries. The goal is to bring humanity back into its safe operat-
ing space, represented here by the area between the ecological ceiling and the
social foundation. Source: adapted from Raworth (2017).
Earth for All |
social foundation.¹ Within this space, economies focused on well-
being can ourish. Far too many people around the world live below
the social threshold, risking the social tipping points we will explore
in chapters 3 and 4.
The Earth for All Initiative
While The Limits to Growth, the planetary boundaries and the
doughnut are the scientic starting points for Earth for All, the clos-
est things the world has to an agreed vision for civilization are the
seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) announced by the
United Nations in 2015. All countries have agreed to try to meet these
goals, ranging from ending poverty to energy for all, by 2030.
But some pretty big questions remain unanswered though. Are
the SDGs even achievable? What will it take to achieve them? And
looking beyond 2030, what are the pathways likely to deliver long-
term prosperity for all on a stable planet?
The Earth for All initiative was created to build a network of scien-
tists, economists, and thought leaders to look at these questions and
explore the most plausible pathways to meet the SDGs, and beyond
toward a safe operating space for humanity, toward wellbeing econo-
mies, toward life in the doughnut. The analysis provides, we hope,
some useful guidance on what the priorities are, how much we need
to invest, and what fundamental changes our societies and econo-
mies must embrace to increase the likelihood of success this century.
In that sense, we hope Earth for All, the book, is a twenty- rst-century
survival guide for a civilization on a nite planet.
However, we must acknowledge we certainly don’t have all the
answers, nor can anyone predict the future. Other networks and
research groups are fortunately also working on these same chal-
lenges. Looking across at their work, we can see there is broad con-
vergence on the required urgent transformations. This gives us
condence that we are on the right track. Still, we will highlight where
there is (and will always be) disagreement among experts and contin-
ued tensions that make our path forward dicult.
We developed the Earth4All model to help explore and illustrate
scenarios. You will read more about the two most important scenarios
| E A
in chapter 2. Each describes a plausible future. Too Little Too Late
assumes societies make decisions and respond to future challenges
the same way they have in the past
—
through incremental policy
improvements. Giant Leap assumes societies recognize the shared
interlinked crises and immediately start changing course through
extraordinary actions in ve key areas.
Our foresight analysis for this century strongly indicates that
the Giant Leap’s ve extraordinary turnarounds can be achieved by
implementing key policy goals.
•
Poverty. Low- income countries should adopt new rapid economic
growth models that secure wellbeing for the most vulnerable. A
starting point is reform of the international nancial system to
de-risk and revolutionize investment in low- income countries.
Key policy goals: GDP growth rate of at least 5% per year for low-
income countries until GDP is greater than $15,000 per person per year;
the introduction of new indicators for wellbeing.¹
•
Inequality. Shocking levels of income inequality must be ad-
dressed. This can be achieved through progressive taxation and
wealth taxes, empowering workers, and dividends from a Citizens
Fund. Key policy goal: The wealthiest 10% take less than 40% of na-
tional incomes.
•
Empowerment of women. Transforming gender power imbal-
ances requires empowering women and investing in education
and health for all. Key policy goal: Gender equity that will contribute
to stabilization of global population below nine billion by 2050.
•
Food. To transform agriculture, diets, food access, and food waste;
by 2050 the food system must become regenerative (storing vast
volumes of carbon in soils, roots, and trunks) and nature positive.
Local food production should be incentivized, and excess inputs
of fertilizers and other chemicals signicantly reduced. Key policy
goals: Healthy diets for all while protecting soils and ecosystems and
not expanding the amount of land, overall, devoted to agriculture; dra-
matically reducing food waste.
• Energy. We must transform energy systems to increase eciency,
accelerate the rollout of wind and solar electricity, halve emis-
Earth for All |
sions of greenhouse gases every decade, and provide clean energy
to those without. This will also deliver energy security. Key policy
goal: Halve emissions approximately every decade to reach net- zero
emissions by 2050.
We called these ve main solutions “extraordinary turnarounds”
because they break with the trends of the past in signicant ways and
hold the potential to bring about real systems change. In a way, these
turnarounds might form the basis of a new social contract for func-
tioning democracies in the Anthropocene.
Chapters 3 to 7 describe in detail what these extraordinary turn-
arounds involve and how they can be accomplished. As you will see,
they are deeply, systemically interlinked: energy inuences food, and
both food and energy impact the larger economic system. Remov-
ing poverty entails redistribution of wealth, which creates trust and
accelerates wellbeing. And empowering women creates economic
Figure 1.6. The ve turnarounds are interlinked so that together they create a
whole system transformation.
| E A
opportunity, reduces family size and inequality, and promotes health-
ier relationships in all societies. As Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, Club of
Rome co- president and Earth for All Transformational Economics
Commissioner, reminds us, “The essence of being human is to be
interconnected and interdependent.”¹
For sure, implementing these extraordinary turnarounds is a
daunting challenge in a world of deep complexity. But, from termite
colonies to starlings sweeping through the sky, from weather pre-
diction to the global economy, we know that seemingly unfathom-
able complexity can arise from a small number of simple rules or
relationships.
We list three of the most powerful socioeconomic levers for each
turnaround in gure 1.7. At the bottom of the pyramids are what we
consider the basic policy changes within the current economic para-
digm, but then move upward to the bolder policies that really dene
a new economic paradigm t for the Anthropocene. At the top of the
pyramids are the levers that really deliver the transformation to a new
Figure 1.7. The Earth4All paradigm shift illustrated as ve triangles. Each
turnaround has key levers that will drive a disproportionate impact. Reading
from the bottom of each, we begin with the economic solutions within the
current paradigm. At the top are the proposals that really are a Giant Leap.
They move us into a new paradigm.
Earth for All |
economic paradigm, which some have called “wellbeing economics.”
Here you nd some of the big ideas that lock in Earth for All: It is
only when we pull these bold levers in the Earth4All model
—
early
and strongly
—
that we see accelerated transformation toward a su-
ciently fair, just, and safe world by the middle of this century.
You
—
yes, you
—
can explore other scenarios and solutions with
the Earth4All model, and we encourage you to do so. It is available as
a simple online tool. See appendix 1 for instructions.
You may have noticed that a number of issues are not explicitly the
subject of their own extraordinary turnaround. Where is governance?
Surely this needs an overhaul. Where is health? Or exponential tech-
nologies like automation and articial intelligence? What happens in
these domains will of course alter humanity’s future on Earth. These
issues are common threads woven into our scenarios. If you want
detail, read more about these issues in the accompanying Deep Dive
papers from the Transformational Economics Commission.
You may also have noticed that we haven’t given material con-
sumption its own turnaround. Instead, this, too, is a common thread
through all the turnarounds, as it must be, because the scale is eye
watering. Since 1970, natural resource extraction has tripled. In 2020,
Earth crossed a grim threshold: the weight of concrete, steel, plastic,
and all other materials produced by humans surpassed the weight
of all living biomass on the planet.¹ Today, with almost eight billion
people on Earth, we produce 530 kilograms of cement and 240 kilo-
grams of steel per person per year.¹ After clean water, concrete is the
second most consumed product on Earth. It is no surprise then that
production of steel, iron, and cement accounts for some 14% of car-
bon dioxide emissions globally.
Demand is growing. But it does not have to. Whatever future
we build, it will require materials. If we value our future on a stable
planet, then we simply have to do more with less. Ultimately, govern-
ments need to incentivize a rapid transition to circular economies.
Small changes to building codes could shrink demand for steel and
cement by around 25%. Steel and aluminum are already two of the
most recycled materials on the planet, but where we must use new
| E A
materials, we can change the production system. Using hydrogen,
instead of coal, to produce steel, for example, cuts emissions an
incredible 97%.²
But there are important issues around fairness when it comes to
consumption. Consumption is not evenly spread around the world.
The twenty wealthiest countries use over 70% of these resources.
And the fastest- rising source of greenhouse gas emissions world-
wide
—
by far
—
are the richest 1% of societies. Overconsumption is a
systemic challenge: economies optimize consumption at the expense
of social cohesion and human and planetary health. Here we tackle
consumption head- on. Each turnaround aims to reduce unfair and
unnecessary material footprints. Some of this is tackled through
progressive taxation, in other places, a Citizens Fund can help reduce
unsustainable consumption, and redistribute wealth more fairly. By
essentially reducing the material consumption of the wealthiest in
societies, and by adopting smarter ways to provide what people really
need, we can make more room for Most of the World to have their fair
share of resources.
Consumption and a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) are
linked. Over the last couple of generations, after World War II, GDP
has evolved into becoming the preferred way to determine the health
of an economy. This is despite the fact that it does not measure health
or wellbeing. GDP is simply a measure of the total activity level in
the economy, measured in dollars per year. It is nothing but the total
output of goods and services produced in a year, multiplied by the
price per unit of output. In poor economies, with low labor produc-
tivity, rising output initially leads to higher wellbeing. But above a
certain income, this no longer holds true. Many studies show well-
being plateaus as GDP grows. While, yes, people can buy things, they
have to contend with clogged arteries from poor diets, clogged cities
with SUV- infested streets, and clogged lungs from air pollution. At
this stage, rational government policies would shift focus away from
growth and rather seek increased wellbeing for the majority.
Generally, political leaders should be agnostic about growth. It
really depends on what is growing. Low- income countries need to
Earth for All |
grow their economies
—
especially since this can be done sustainably.
And if we succeed in solving the energy and food challenges, this will
lead to GDP growth
—
and this time, this type of growth will lead to
higher wellbeing in the long run. So instead of a myopic focus on the
last month’s gure for GDP growth, political leaders and their voters
should ask: Is the economy optimized to improve the lives of the
majority? Is the system perceived as reasonably fair? Is the economic
growth responsible growth? Few countries could answer yes to these
questions. And people know it.
People Support Economic Systems Change
What we are proposing will require unprecedented economic shifts
in a single generation
—
actually, within a single decade. Are citizens
ready to change? Beyond the protesters on the street catching media
headlines, is there a widespread mood for broader systems change
in societies? Are citizens aware of the scale of the risks we face in
future? And do people want to act? Are they ready for a new economic
system that truly values wellbeing for everyone? That is, a truly equi-
tablefuture?
We conducted a global survey (G20 countries²¹) to nd out (see
chapter 9). The results show overwhelming public support for policy-
makers to deliver systemic economic changes necessary for building
a nature- positive, zero emissions, and equitable future for all. The
ndings should provide leaders with the bottom- up public backing
to implement policies in line with Earth for All goals much faster.
Momentum is building for change. As we slide deeper into the
twenty- rst century, people everywhere have been impacted by fre-
quent economic crises, pandemics, wars, oods, res, and heat waves.
But too many people see no viable way to achieve economic security.
Even in the richest societies the world has ever known, many feel eco-
nomically insecure, left behind, or constantly worried about being left
behind. And in the poorest countries, they watch rich nations pulling
up the drawbridge around the fortress: “No entry.” The 2008 global
nancial crisis so blatantly showed that banking prots are in private
hands, but the public is expected to pick up the cost of the losses. The
| E A
conventional growth model seems as bankrupt as the conventional
economics of eciency and austerity. No coherent solutions are cur-
rently in sight.
We wrote Earth for All to provide a fresh, credible, consistent story
of how to transform the global socioeconomic system during the next
fty years based on scientic knowledge and illustrated using quanti-
tative system dynamic modeling. The results were reviewed by the
multidisciplinary experts from across the globe in the Transforma-
tional Economics Commission, and weaknesses identied and dis-
cussed. We are not presenting an exhaustive list of solutions. Rather,
these are some of the ideas that, in our opinion, could have the most
leverage in the shortest time. We hope they spark debate. And we
invite better ideas!
In Earth for All we present an aspirational, stubbornly optimistic
guide to the future. But how likely are we to get there? That, dear
reader, depends on what you do next.
2
Exploring Two Scenarios
Too Little Too Late or Giant Leap?
Scenarios are stories about the future that can help us make better
decisions today. Each one describes a plausible development path
over the coming decades or longer. But they are not forecasts. They
don’t predict the most likely future as, say, a weather forecast would
predict the most likely weather. Rather, scenarios give answers to
important “What if...?” questions:
“What if the world continues on with high levels of inequality
and planet- busting overuse of materials?” Or, “What if governments
change course?” or “What if new renewable technologies become
much cheaper quicker?”
Scenarios are useful when one is faced with large uncertainties
about the future. But to be really useful, each scenario, however, has
to be internally consistent, and derived from a set of valid assump-
tions drawn from data and observation over time. We know that
higher levels of education in a country, for example, will lead to
higher incomes and smaller family sizes, so a useful scenario on
social changes should reect that. Often researchers develop a group
of scenarios to reect possible futures and to evaluate their relative
attractiveness. In this way, scenarios can help people not only to plan
for an uncertain future but to actively create and shape it.
We use the Earth4All model to generate internally consistent sce-
narios for global development toward the year 2100. The assumptions
in the model are drawn from real- world data from 1980 to 2020, and
the model is designed to reproduce the observed historical develop-
ment patterns of population growth, education, economic growth,
greenhouse gas emissions, and all its other variables across all ten
| E A
regions during that time. And even though Earth4All is a grossly
simplied description of the real world, it does indeed track major
global and regional trends over the last four decades reasonably well.¹
This gives us some condence in its utility as a tool to describe possi-
ble future scenarios in an internally consistent manner. We start the
model in 1980, let it recreate historical trends to 2020, and then run
it into the future under dierent policy assumptions, to explore how
the ten regions could evolve over the century to 2100, depending on
what decisions people collectively make.
The role of the Earth4All model is to show consistent pictures of
possible futures
—
to help evaluate the potential consequences of vari-
ous alternative decisions, and to discover which system changes are
likely to have a big eect and which are likely to make little impact.
The model also gives us an idea of how much these changes will cost
and what level of investments are needed to reach a certain level of
wellbeing by a certain time.
We explored many scenarios but present just two in this book.
Too Little Too Late reects our current trajectory, where societies
keep boasting and bumbling about “sustainability” while muddling
through. In Too Little Too Late, most countries make piecemeal,
incremental progress toward ending poverty and stabilizing the cli-
mate, but do not really deal with the elephant in the room: inequal-
ity. Will “muddling through” produce safe passage to the end of this
century, or will deep fault lines emerge within and across societies,
throwing democracies into disarray and risking deep destabilization?
In Too Little Too Late, the latter possibility appears more likely. In this
scenario, social trust declines as the richest 10% and bottom 50% con-
tinue diverging, while societies and nations turn against each other,
competing for resources. There is too little collective action to limit
the immense pressure on nature. Earth’s life- supporting systems like
forests, rivers, soil, and climate keep deteriorating, and some systems
move closer or cross irreversible tipping points. For those in poverty,
Indigenous peoples, and wildlife, this is a steady “stairway to hell.”
As our second scenario, we chose Giant Leap, which illustrates
the eects of the powerful and immediate implementation of the ve
Exploring Two Scenarios |
extraordinary policy turnarounds. Its passage through the century is
driven not by tinkering at the fringes but by fundamentally recon-
guring economies, energy systems, and food systems. It’s a major
upgrade. A reset. An essential reboot of civilization’s guiding rules
before the system crashes. Due to inertia in economies and in the cli-
mate, the main impacts of any action taken today are often not seen
for years in economies and decades or centuries in the climate. We
believe that nothing less than a “giant leap” now is needed if human-
ity is serious about turning around from the current trajectory and
getting on a new track to a sustainable world by 2050. The Giant Leap
scenario spells out the details of a new type of economy t for the
Anthropocene
—
an economy that removes poverty, promotes social
and environmental wellbeing, and measures its progress by how well
people and the planet thrive.
The Giant Leap scenario requires active governments willing to
reshape markets and drive long- term visions for societies. It is our
fundamental belief that neither individuals nor markets can do it
alone. Turning our economy around is a collective action problem.
But how to create the conditions for governments to become more
active, particularly in democracies? A very basic condition is trust.
Two important features of the Earth4All model are the Average
Wellbeing Index and the Social Tension Index. The rst provides an
indication of people’s quality of life over time. (See the What Is Well-
being? sidebar.) The Social Tension Index indicates the governability
of a region and rises when there is decline of wellbeing, trust, and
equality within societies.
What Is Wellbeing?
The Wellbeing Economy and
Earth4All’s Average Wellbeing Index
A growing number of economists, policymakers, business
people, and other changemakers have been developing new
frameworks for organizing economies and measuring societal
progress. This new economic thinking has brought us concepts
| E A
like the caring economy, the sharing economy, and the circular
economy. It has incorporated ecological economics, feminist
economics, doughnut economics, and other new ways oflook-
ing at what creates and sustains prosperity while also protect-
ing the planet. These are not just competing buzzwords for
the same concept; rather they emphasize dierent aspects of
alternatives to our current linear, neoliberal, growth- at-all- costs
economic approach.
The transformed economy envisioned by the Earth for All
project adopts elements of all these frameworks and aligns
with the comprehensive framework known as a wellbeing econ-
omy. The Wellbeing Economic Alliance (WeAll) describes this
framework as “one that serves people and the planet, rather
than people and planet serving the economy. It does more than
‘move money around’ but delivers good lives to people.”² WeAll
describes the core needs for human wellbeing as:
• Dignity: Everyone has enough to live in comfort, health,
safety, and happiness.
• Nature: A restored and safe natural world for all life.
• Connection: A sense of belonging and institutions that serve
the common good.
• Fairness: Justice in all its dimensions is at the heart of
economic systems, and the gap between the richest and
poorest is greatly reduced.
• Participation: Citizens are actively engaged in their commu-
nities and locally rooted economies.
Setting wellbeing as the ultimate goal for economies means
meeting human needs and capabilities while acknowledg-
ing the biophysical reality of a nite planet. This is precisely
the goal of the Earth for All project, and it is reected in the
Earth4All model’s chief measure of progress
—
its Average
Wellbeing Index, which simulates wellbeing annually.
The index provides an alternative to GDP
—
an economic
progress indicator that has widely and wrongly been used as
Exploring Two Scenarios |
a proxy for human wellbeing. Researchers have found that
beyond a certain threshold of GDP per person, further rises in
GDP are not associated with further increases in life satisfac-
tion. A recent study from the Earth for All initiative conrms
that the fulllment of human needs and aspirations does not
increase considerably when GDP per person grows beyond a
threshold of some $15,000 per person per year).³ One reason is
that growth in GDP normally leads to higher negative environ-
mental side eects.
Despite its dominance as an indicator, GDP was never
intended to measure a society’s overall health, only to mea-
sure its activity level. Over the last several decades, the dire
consequences of treating GDP growth as a singular goal have
shied attention toward economic measures that emphasize
wellbeing. These frameworks are inherently pluralistic, and
take local circumstances, value systems, and traditions into
consideration. They are united in the acknowledgment that
human wellbeing requires a broader conception than merely
maximizing income and consumption.
The goal is not to eliminate GDP as an accounting metric
but to move beyond GDP to use wellbeing as the central guide
to societal progress. A viable indicator must include the inter-
dependence of human wellbeing and a healthy planet. Human
needs are universal, but how they are satised depends on
cultural circumstances.
Hence, the Earth4All Wellbeing Index builds on the WeAll
principles, and quanties wellbeing through these select vari-
ables in the model:
• Dignity: worker disposable income (aer tax)
• Nature: climate change (global surface average tempera-
ture, in Celsius)
• Connection: government services indicated by spending per
person, i.e., to institutions that serve common good
• Fairness: the ratio of owner income aer tax to worker
income aer tax
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• Participation: people’s observed progress (previously
improving wellbeing) and labor participation
The Average Wellbeing Index is calculated annually, based on
the variables listed above, for each of the ten regions in the
Earth4All model. It reects the wellbeing of an average person.
When the Average Wellbeing Index declines, people suer and
get angry, leading over time to increasing social tension and the
rising risk of political instability and even revolution.
The links between gross inequality and unstable societies are well-
known, as pointed out by Earth for All Transformational Economics
Commissioners Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. In societies with
large and growing economic inequality, unless checked, the wealth-
iest have a disproportionate inuence over governing institutions.
This undermines trust in the governance system and opens the doors
for corruption. Inequality also leads to lower wellbeing in societies:
It reduces social cohesion and heightens status competition. Over
time this drives the Social Tension Index upward. When the index
has been rising over a longer period, then we can expect deep rifts
within societies and an unhealthy us- versus-them dynamic emerging
that can be easily exploited by politicians. If the Social Tension Index
rises too far, societal collapses cannot be ruled out. We use this term
to mean societies enter a vicious cycle where rising social tensions
lead to a decline in trust causing political destabilization. This in turn
leads to stagnating economies and wellbeing falls further. Govern-
ments struggle to regain trust, making it increasingly challenging to
make coherent long- term decisions.
Both our scenarios are at the level of macroeconomics, looking
at economies as a whole. But what do these macro- system changes
actually mean to real peoples’ lives at the micro everyday level? To
make these two scenarios tangible, we developed four characters
—
all girls, born on the same day in early August 2020
—
and imagined
their trajectory through each one. Shu was born in the Chinese city of
Exploring Two Scenarios |
Changsha; Samiha in Dhaka, Bangladesh; Ayotola in Lagos, Nigeria;
and Carla lives just north of Los Angeles, California. These are not
real people but more like avatars that highlight what it is like to live in
the Too Little Too Late and Giant Leap worlds. We chose four girls in
order to better compare across regions, scenarios, and opportunities.
Like 1.4 billion other people on Earth, Samiha and Ayotola were
born into vulnerable informal settlements in their cities. And like 3 to
4 billion people on Earth, their families exist on less than $4 per day.
Shu and Carla’s families are better- o economically. Shu’s mother is
a teacher and her father an accountant in Changsha. Carla’s parents
moved to California from Colombia for the economic opportunities
in the United States. Her mother stays at home to look after the three
children, and her father works in the restaurant industry. We will fol-
low their journeys from 2020.
A Brief Review of to
Both scenarios build on the major trends since 1980. In this period,
the largest economies rapidly adopted neoliberal policies of privati-
zation, deregulation of markets, globalization, free trade, and public
commitment to reduced government spending. In the high- income
countries, corporations gained power and trade unions’ negotiating
strength dwindled. Declines in public spending weakened economic
security. The gap between rich and poor within countries grew ever
wider, and rising inequality undermined public trust in political insti-
tutions in many areas.
The global population continued to rise, and while the fraction
of poor declined, absolute poverty lasted well into the century. The
world economy (measured by its GDP) continued to grow, albeit
more slowly than in the twentieth century. The nancial sector (the
banks, money markets, hedge funds, and private equity rms, among
others) expanded like a balloon, growing in size and importance to
the point where the sector became a major driving force of many
countries’ economies. In 2008, the balloon burst spectacularly, desta-
bilizing economies and societies. Subsequent reforms appear to have
reduced the fragility of the nance sector but not its dominance over
| E A
our economy or the focus on short- term prots over long- term value
creation and human progress.
Greenhouse gas emissions rose rapidly, and global average tem-
perature exceeded 1°C above preindustrial times by 2015. This was
a landmark for the planet. The Holocene epoch was dened by its
stable temperature, never rising or falling more than 0.5°C in 10,000
years. This was a landmark, too, for civilization, which had thrived
within the Holocene boundary conditions.
Economic inequality within countries kept growing throughout
the four decades. New digital technologies disrupted traditional
industries and their workforces. As part of the process of globaliza-
tion, companies gravitated to cheap labor and lax regulations, aban-
doning many workers in the global North. The Social Tension Index
within most regions rose steadily, with implications for eective
governance.
Investment in clean energy technologies such as wind and solar
power and electric vehicles improved gradually until these technolo-
gies nally reached cost competitiveness (after subsidies) around
2015. Now, their costs and performance compete favorably with fossil
fuel alternatives as we enter deeper into the 2020s.
Carla’s parents were born when Reagan was president, and arrived
in a country where unions were seen as lazy and corrupt and selshly
out to destroy the United States’ competitiveness. In fact, globaliza-
tion and technological innovation were signicant drivers of the
shrinking US manufacturing industry. Shu’s parents were born in
China in the period when the communist government started under
Deng to implement market reforms and opened up to trade and
investment, while maintaining active control with the direction of
economic growth through ve- year plans and a competent central
government. This led to dramatic growth over four decades, pulling
hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty.
In Bangladesh, where Samiha’s parents were born, and in African
countries such as Nigeria where Ayotola’s father and mother grew up,
economic growth was slower. These countries often relied on inter-
national nancial institutions but became burdened by neo colonial
Exploring Two Scenarios |
arrangements and debt. This often resulted in a lack of investment in
building domestic manufacturing jobs and sectors.
Before we jump into the future, we want to emphasize that societ-
ies, ecosystems, and economic systems are dynamic. The forces that
drive them interact with one another and this can lead to surprises.
Likewise, the Earth4All model is dynamic: Dierent variables like
population, investment in public capacity, economic output, energy
demand, or food production interact with each other. If one vari-
able grows, the impacts ripple through the model system eventually
aecting the world economy and the planet’s life support systems.
This allows us to explore in a rudimentary way what may happen to
the global population when economies grow and how this aects
food supply and emissions. We can also introduce global and regional
policies into the model that help promote equity, trust, and system
resilience: What happens if governments implement a small or large
wealth tax, for example? Or invest more in technological innovation?
Scenario : Too Little Too Late
This scenario shows the potential consequences of continuing
world development along the same dynamics as 1980 to 2020 (see
Figure 2.2). The overall global result is a somewhat slowing popu-
lation growth and world economic growth to 2050 and beyond, but
also declining labor participation rates, declining trust in govern-
ment, a steady increase in the ecological footprint, and rising loss in
biodiversity.
The regional upshot in the coming decades is persistent poverty
in Most of the World and destabilizing inequality in the rich world.
Some of the Sustainable Development Goals are met, and there is
some progress toward living within planetary boundaries. But over-
all, there is a dramatic rise in the Social Tension Index (see gure 2.1),
which slows down the deployment of new solutions. The economy
is not turned around but churns on along as it has for the last few
decades. Although the scenario does not result in an overt global
ecological or climate collapse this century, the likelihood of societal
collapse nevertheless rises throughout the decades to 2050. This is a
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result of deepening social divisions both internal to and between soci-
eties and rising environmental damage. The risk is particularly acute
in the most vulnerable, badly governed, and ecologically vulnerable
economies.
Scenario Too Little Too Late: The Decisive Decade 2020–2030
The four girls, Shu, Samiha, Ayotola, and Carla, are born at a time of
deep uncertainty. A pandemic is sweeping the world. Cooperation
between countries is limited. Levels of inequality not seen since the
Great Depression have led to a rise in populism and authoritarianism
in many regions.
By 2030, our four girls are bright ten- year-olds growing up in a
turbulent world. In the outskirts of the Chinese city of Changsha,
Shu’s school is often closed due to air pollution across the city. When
ve years old, Shu suered pneumonia and later from asthma. Her
parents are saving up to move her to a “bubble school” where air is
ltered. Across the Pacic, Carla’s parents face a similar dilemma.
Figure 2.1. A declining Average Wellbeing Index drives the Social Tension
Index to rise over time to a peak in mid- century, reecting worsening distrust
and societal fragmentation.
Exploring Two Scenarios |
Droughts and wildres have become more intense in the Los Angeles
area. For several months of the year, the air quality is so bad it is
risky to go outdoors. Carla is taught to use water sparingly so there
is enough for everyone. Samiha’s parents in Bangladesh are also wor-
ried about water but for the opposite reasons. The Bangladesh gov-
ernment is now spending so much money on ood defenses it has
to make dicult decisions about investment in hospitals or educa-
tion. Samihi and her siblings have to drop out of school to help bring
in money. The settlement becomes more and more crowded due to
increasing numbers of climate refugees arriving on a daily basis.
In Africa, by the end of the decade, Ayotola’s home city of Lagos is
now home to 20 million people, making it among the largest cities
on Earth. But economic opportunities here are still limited, and her
parents dream of moving to Europe.
In Too Little Too Late, countries have agreed to set goals to curb cli-
mate disruptions, but policy actions remain far too weak to meet the
Paris Agreement. The energy transition begins to accelerate neverthe-
less, mainly through market forces and thus limited to what is prot-
able given limited subsidy and carbon pricing schemes. The share of
renewables in the energy mix rises slowly but steadily through the
decade. India and other low- income economies begin their rapid
growth phase through a mixture of old technologies
—
fossil fuels and
new technologies like wind and solar. Renewable energy tends to be
used in addition to fossil fuels, as energy demand rises briskly. The
promised climate funding from high- to low- income countries never
materialized. Old trade agreements still hinder sucient health and
green investments in low- income countries.
Investments in protable technology continue and create revo-
lutions in robotics, the Internet of Things, 3D printers, and articial
intelligence. These drive industrial disruptions in most sectors. Low-
and mid- skilled labor loses out as the economy is optimized for gig
work and zero- hour contracts. Conventional manufacturing struggles
to survive in rich regions. While new industries emerge, they are often
located in dierent geographies, and retraining is not prioritized. In
the transition, labor is viewed as expendable, forcing more people to
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live economically precarious lives. Real estate prices keep rising as
ever more speculative capital goes in search of easy prots rather than
supporting and driving a new economy. Living in large cities becomes
increasingly unaordable for many. In all regions, within- country
inequality keeps rising, as the top 10% capture most of the gains.
Climate injustice is more visible with the poorest bearing the
brunt of impacts. This contributes to a rise in social problems such
as polarization and tensions. Demonstrations erupt frequently, often
driven by violent nationalists. In democracies, people often vote out
of anger and express contempt for politics by swapping parties often.
At the UN General Assembly in 2030, despite absolute poverty
reaching its lowest level in history, the world has fallen short of meet-
ing the Sustainable Development Goals. The economic dierences
between high- and low- income regions keep increasing. The global
temperature is now 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. The world con-
tinues to witness an ominous rise in intense and deadly heatwaves
and other extreme weather.
Scenario Too Little Too Late: 2030–2050
Extreme poverty falls to its lowest level in 2050, but there is still a
long way to go until it disappears. And within- country inequality has
dramatically worsened. Inequality causes rifts between the super-
rich, with most access to power, and the poorest half of society. This
has implications for the stability of democracies, and some countries
become increasingly dicult to govern. There is private wealth but
public austerity. Public spending on health and education suers
along with pension schemes. This also prolongs population growth,
as people in many places view larger families as security for old age.
At the same time, the energy and technological innovations con-
tinue apace: better and cheaper solar panels, buildings, smart grids,
batteries, electric vehicles, and so on. But in high- income areas, the
deployment of long- term systemic solutions for sustainable energy
and food systems are delayed or scaled down repeatedly. This is due to
social and legal conict and weakened governments. Whereas in low-
income areas, there is lack of climate funding for such large upfront
Exploring Two Scenarios |
investments. Despite a lot of talk on climate and sustainability, the
shift to a circular economy is sluggish and haphazard. The construc-
tion industry keeps building roads, railways, skyscrapers, ports, and
airports using cement and steel from unsustainable production pro-
cesses, and governments make little eort to incentivize smaller cars,
smaller homes, and smaller fridges and freezers.
Eventually greenhouse gas emissions plateau in the 2030s and
start falling. New renewables have for some time now been cheaper
than coal, oil, and gas for electricity production. But fossil fuels
persist in many industries including steel, concrete, plastics, ship-
ping, aviation, and long- distance trucking. In most regions, the eco-
nomic transformation has had a devastating impact on labor, with
some industries contracting and disappearing while new industries
emerge. Governments leave the labor forces in these regions to fend
for themselves to a large extent. This creates deep and rising eco-
nomic anxiety, as boom- and-bust cycles continue.
There is some good news. Air pollution is falling across China,
India, Bangladesh, and the rest of Asia as coal- red power stations
close due to the rise of wind and solar and the switch to electric
vehicles. This is positive for Shu and Samiha. But temperatures keep
rising because greenhouse gases are still being emitted, albeit at lower
levels. Across the world, record high temperatures are constantly
being broken. More people are living within zones where outdoor
temperature extremes now regularly exceed human tolerance.
Diets have shifted predominantly to the Western industrial diet
that promotes obesity. This is driven by cheap, heavily processed
foods from large agro-industrial companies. Food waste remains a
major concern, and high grain- fed red meat consumption across the
world means the agricultural sector is still a major driver of green-
house gas emissions and biodiversity loss.
Africa is slowly progressing toward prosperity during the 2030s
but picks up speed in the 2040s as ever more women enter the paid
workforce. The savings rate eventually increases, and regional inves-
tors gain more funds. But terrible droughts and extreme climate
events incur huge costs. And investment in education of girls has not
| E A
rolled out fast enough to substantially slow population growth. The
patriarchal social systems continue to undermine gender equity in
allocation of resources and decision- making powers. By 2050, popu-
lation in Africa south of Sahara reaches 1.6 billion, up from 1.1 billion
in 2020. The income per person never reaches the acceptable thresh-
old level of $15,000 per year.
In the decades leading up to 2050, economic precariousness and
stagnating median incomes magnies social tensions in Most of the
World’s regions. On top of this, climate migration is reaching criti-
cal levels and global health pandemics are on the rise. This fuels the
spread of populist and autocratic leaders, with the risk that these
leaders undermine stable governance and democratic values. Ongo-
ing corruption reduces trust further. The risks of breakdown into
smaller states, enmeshed in perpetual conicts, remain high. Compe-
tition for common resources such as freshwater intensies. Across
ten regions of the world, our Social Tension Index, which estimates
risk of societal collapse, climbs into the danger zone. This keeps
destabilizing policy, which becomes characterized by abrupt starts
and stops. It makes the transitions in inequality, food, energy, health,
transparency, and law much, much slower than they otherwise could
have been.
Scenario Too Little Too Late: 2050 and Beyond
Shu, Samiha, Ayotola, and Carla celebrate their thirtieth birthdays in
2050. Shu is now a hydrology engineer working on major projects to
protect China’s water supply, but oods are frequent in some areas and
droughts in others. This threatens food security and the economic
security of hundreds of millions of people. Mass migration in mid-
century creates a housing, employment, and food crisis that escalates
into a conict. Carla is an oce manager in a successful architecture
business but decided to leave the extreme heat of southern California
and moved north to Seattle. But she now feels the res and heat are
following her. Her brother has the same job and qualications yet is
paid much more than her. Because of her six- gure student loans and
expensive rent, she lives paycheck to paycheck.
Exploring Two Scenarios |
In Bangladesh, Samiha has three children but lost her job in the
clothes factory as the city of Dhaka is progressively being abandoned
to the ash oods by the people with the means to move inland.
Means or not, Samiha knows that she will also soon have no choice,
and will have to try to escape the increasingly frequent oods and
heatwaves. She often wonders where she will be in a year. Ayotola left
school at fourteen and married the son of a family friend. They have
four children, but can only aord to send the boy to school. Ayotola
does some sewing at home to make money for sh, meat, or beans
to go with their ugali. The women have no experience of living on a
planet without climate extremes.
The Social Tension Index has been rising since 2020 across most
regions. It is not a steady rise, rather discontent comes in waves linked
to how inequality and economic cycles aect wellbeing (see gure
2.1). Societies become less able to put in place long- term resili ent solu-
tions to deal with immediate crises. However, signicant shocks keep
amassing from many directions. There are migrations as countries
near the equator become increasingly too hot to live in. Trade wars
erupt as regions ght for ownership of knowledge, market shares,
and resources. Supply chains falter due to extreme events. Govern-
ment spending is increasingly spent on crises and adaptation, leaving
less for long- term social and economic development. Soil quality is
falling, aecting yields and creating food price volatility.
Global population peaks at around 9 billion around 2050 and
then starts to decline toward the end of the century. As average GDP
per person goes above $10,000, women everywhere choose to have
fewer kids (see gure 5.3). The high- income countries provide ever-
increasing material standards of living and consumption to the
majority of their citizens. This is due to better technologies and an
ever- higher productive capacity per person. But wellbeing is falling,
due to falling social cohesion, status competition, and weak collective
action to solve the biggest challenges facing societies.
In this scenario, the world misses climate targets set out in the
Paris Agreement. Earth crashes through the 2°C boundary around
2050 and reaches a catastrophic 2.5°C before 2100. It is likely the
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Earth system will have passed several critical thresholds as a result of
the escalating temperature, but, while terried scientists keep report-
ing on the acceleration of meltdown of the West Antarctic and Green-
land ice sheets, there is no one big bang when Earth falls o a cli.
The losses of the Amazon rainforest get worse every year, as more
dries out and becomes savannah. Wildlife is lost, and extinctions
of insects and birds accelerate. People have gotten richer, but the
natural world is getting greyer year by year through a series of local
breakdowns. Civilization has lost its greatest foundation: a stable and
resili ent Earth system.
A steady stream of extreme events has become the new normal.
Only a few of the oldest people on Earth remember a stable climate.
Government investment in adaptation now forms a signicant pro-
portion of government spending. On paper this contributes to GDP
growth
—
but countries are “running to stand still.” Some are exper-
imenting with geoengineering to protect their populations. The cli-
mate scenario is deeply alarming, and a major contributor to societal
and economic turbulence. However, the climate emergency is still
unlikely to be the primary cause of societal breakdowns: the culprit
here is likely to be both within- country and between- country inequal-
ity. Several societies start to unravel after 2050, fracturing into smaller
states, often due to conicts accelerated by climate change, as human-
ity enters ever deeper into the second half of the twenty- rst century.
Figure 2.2. The Too Little Too Late (TLTL) scenario quantied as 4 time graphs
visualizing the global developments in this scenario from 1980 to 2100. These
curves are all relative to 1980 values and highlight the dynamics between
them. Global population grows from 4.4 billion in 1980 and peaks at 8.8bil-
lion in the 2050s before declining slowly. Income per person keeps rising
from 6,000 $/year through to 42,000 $/year in 2100 as shown on chart 2.
Chart 3 shows that carbon dioxide emissions and crop use per person remain
high throughout the century, which drives global warming to around 2.5°C
by 2100. Earth moves further beyond critical planetary boundaries. Chart 4
shows dierent components of wellbeing: the global Average Wellbeing Index
declines through most of the century (mainly due to increasing inequality and
worsening conditions in nature). “$” means US dollars (USD) at constant 2017
prices using purchasing power parity (PPP) rates. Source: E4A- global-220501.
The model and data are downloadable from earth4.life.
Exploring Two Scenarios |
In 2080, Carla still works long hours and knows she won’t be able
to aord to retire for another decade. Her sedentary lifestyle and pro-
cessed food diet, as well as the frequent heat dome events over the
US West Coast, make her vulnerable to health conditions. She dies of
diabetes at age 65. Samiha lives in a settlement camp just outside of
Dinajpur. She lost two of her three children to pandemics that swept
the settlements in the last decade, and her husband died in a raid.
There is no employment and limited food and safe drinking water.
Shu is by now a legend among hydrologists due to her ood-
management skills. She occasionally still teaches Chinese students
as professor emeritus, as she knows how badly these skills will be
needed in her region in the years to come. She worries about the
decline in public authority in her country. In Lagos, with deadly
oods becoming more frequent every decade, Ayotola and her hus
-
band abandoned their house to the rising waters, like many others
living in poverty. The population displacement contributed to ris-
ing tension across the country. Multiple governments over the past
ten years have failed to appease voters. This, in turn, fostered more
extremism, religious violence, and populist governments ruling by
fear. Extreme weather, heat, and tropical storms across Africa are
common and damage crops leading to food price volatility. Those
who have the means moved to Europe and the Americas in search of
better living conditions, though even in the wealthiest nations, eco-
nomic insecurity and environmental shocks are the new normal.
Scenario : The Giant Leap
Scenario Giant Leap: The Decisive Decade 2020–2030
The four girls, Shu, Samiha, Ayotola, and Carla, are born on the same
day in 2020, at the dawn of unprecedented transformation. Early in
the 2020s, nations agree to start transforming international nancial
institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund,
and World Trade Organization. Their mandates are dramati cally
shifted to support green transition investments in climate, sustain-
ability, and wellbeing, rather than just economic growth and nancial
stability in a narrow sense. By the end of the decade, these changes
| E A
have greatly expanded nancial resources for low- income countries
and improved access to investments in renewables and green indus-
tries. But most important, these changes have made it possible for
competent and active governments to raise the wellbeing of their
people, through investment in education, health, and infrastructure.
The exponential technologies of solar, wind, batteries, and electric
vehicles are drastically driving down the share of fossil fuels in the
energy system. New development and trade models replace the dys-
functional current system that previously perpetuated historic ineq-
uities between countries (see chapter 3).
Economic inequality becomes widely acknowledged as deeply
polarizing and a threat to political stability and human progress. Fol-
lowing shifts to wellbeing economies in Finland, Iceland, and New
Zealand, other nations follow suit. There is a broad shift in attitudes
in all regions to support the principle that the richest 10% should take
less than 40% of national incomes. This is based on the recognition
that
—
whether wealthy or not
—
fairer societies function better than
unfair societies. Dierent regions respond with a dierent mix of poli-
cies. Progressive income tax ensures the wealthiest contribute more.
Wealth taxes introduced in all regions, along with the closing of tax
havens, address runaway wealth inequality. An international corpora-
tion tax (agreed in 2021) provides additional income for redistribution
and investment by active governments seeking common prosperity,
and is adjusted and harmonized every ve years. And public invest-
ment in science and research is rewarded, for example, through
acknowledgment of intellectual property and stock co- ownership to
the public.
These new revenues allow governments to expand unemploy-
ment benets (essential in a time of economic transformation) and
pension schemes for all, particularly women. Gender equity improves
along with a sharp increase in investment in education, jobs retrain-
ing, and health.
More countries adopt a Universal Basic Income (or similar) to help
ght inequality, particularly as a stimulus during major shocks (like
Exploring Two Scenarios |
another pandemic), which then turns into regular transfers. This gives
people economic freedom to retrain as some industries contract while
others grow. As citizens of Earth, more feel they have a fair share of
the wealth generated from the world’s commons: Earth for All!
This principle evolves into Citizens Funds that pay a universal basic
dividend (UBD), where industries pay for the use of common resources
(for instance, from land use or ownership, nancial assets, intellectual
property rights [IPR], fossil fuels, rights to pollute, resource extraction
of other materials that can be considered a resource commonly owned
by all in society) into a Citizens Fund. This revenue is then distrib-
uted back to all citizens in a country equally. The dividend phrase,
writes Earth for All Transformational Economics Commissioner
Ken Webster, reects that citizens increasingly view themselves and
others by birthright as co- inhabitants and co- owners of Earth. This
should then also come with certain rights and responsibilities.¹
All nations have agreed to reach net- zero greenhouse gas emis-
sions this century. Coal power is in free- fall toward zero. The wealth-
iest countries commit to become net zero in 2050 or earlier. China
and India commit to 2060. And nations also aim to ramp up dietary
changes and regenerative agriculture practices to improve the health
of people and soils. Agricultural land has stopped expanding land use
by 2030 globally. Hence, deforestation is halted, and locally adapted
reforestation is growing everywhere.
Our four girls, Shu, Samiha, Ayotola, and Carla, now playful ten-
year-olds, are growing up in a rapidly transforming world. They still
have to deal with air pollution, extreme heat, oods, and res. But
by the end of the decade, Samiha and Ayotola have moved into new
apartments with a school and hospital close by. Ayotola is excelling in
math at school. As part of the universal basic dividend, Carla’s parents
receive an annual check of between $1,000 and $2,000 they can spend
on anything. They save it for Carla’s education. Over in Changsha,
China, pollution around Shu’s school is declining as the government
encourages more micro mobility, such as e- bikes, mass transit, and
electric vehicles, and renewables are phasing out fossil fuels fast.
| E A
Scenario Giant Leap: 2030–2050
The world achieves an end to extreme poverty (less than 2% living
on $1.90 per day) in the early 2030s as Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer-
ica develop rapidly. A key foundation of economic growth in these
countries is clean green energy (see chapter 7). Education systems
are revitalized to promote local knowledge, culture, experience,
and languages to “decolonize the mind,” as Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong’o once put it, alongside critical thinking and complex systems
thinking.¹¹
Policies to redistribute wealth fairly are now adopted in most coun-
tries and quickly ramp up. By 2050, the top 10% take less than 40% of
the national incomes in all regions. In the US, Carla’s family receives
around $20,000 every year from the Citizens Fund, as a universal basic
dividend. The fund is built from fees charged on top wealth holders,
real estate, and on companies that use natural resources and public
commons such as social media data usage. This means her family can
aord to eat healthier foods, have access to better healthcare, and put
money aside for education, hobbies, and travel.
Inequality, in disposable incomes within countries, is nally falling
across the world, and as a result, trust is building. Governments have
a stronger mandate to implement long- term policies on energy, agri-
culture, health, and education. Longevity increases globally. But since
birth rates drop, population growth slows dramatically and peaks
around 2050, well below the level in the Too Little Too Late scenario.
Around the world, people are eating healthier diets with less
grain- fed red meat and more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Food
loss and waste is reduced along the whole food chain by better logis-
tics, smart apps, and packaging. By 2050, most farms use regenerative
and/or sustainable intensication techniques. Thanks to large public-
private initiatives, trees and forests are starting to grow back on pre-
viously degraded lands, stopping the decline in the world’s forests.
Greenhouse gas emissions fall precipitously during the 2030s and
40s, and by the 2050s, temperatures look likely to stabilize at well
below 2°C, in line with the Paris Agreement. Nations must still con-
tend with climate chaos, extreme heat events, wildres, and rapidly
Exploring Two Scenarios |
rising sea levels, but governance systems are more resilient to cope
with these shocks.
Scenario Giant Leap: Beyond 2050
Population peaks at around 8.5 billion and begins to fall in the last
part of the century to reach around six billion by 2100, around the
same level as in 2000. Along with renewable energy, regenerative
agriculture, and healthier diets, this cuts overconsumption and mate-
rial footprints, particularly among the richest 10%. This takes a lot
of the pressure o natural resources. Greenhouse gas emissions in
the 2050s are now about 90% lower than they were in 2020 and still
falling. All remaining atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases
from industrial processes are now removed through carbon capture
and storage. As the century progresses, more carbon is captured than
emitted, keeping alive the prospect of returning the global tempera-
ture to about 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. There is rising hope
that much global biodiversity will thrive once again.
Shu, Samiha, Ayotola, and Carla are now thirty years old. They
have all nished university degrees and are at the early stages of their
careers. They do not expect to have the same career throughout their
lives. Instead, they see opportunities to have several careers in dier-
ent sectors. They’ll retrain when they need to or want to, supported by
an active state. Every month they receive a universal basic dividend.
This provides a level of economic security that allows them to take
more risks.
Thanks to a government relocation program and her universal
basic dividend, Ayotola and her parents were able to move away from
Lagos, threatened by the oods and rising waters. She works as an
accountant, specializing in wellbeing indicators, and has decided
to have one child. In Seattle, Carla has trained as an architect and
designs passive homes for community housing, while her partner is
a corruption analyst.
Samiha is now a food engineer, developing saltwater- resistant
grains to increase yields. In her free time, she tutors children at the
community center. Shu has chosen not to have kids, expending her
| E A
time on social networks, and busy with the marketing and managing
of huge eets of shared electric carpools. Floods and storms are a
regular occurrence, but measures have been taken to mitigate their
eects
—
green spaces and trees in strategic locations
—
and new urban
and sewage infrastructure make the city livable.
None of the women have ever experienced a stable climate, as
once existed back in the 1900s. Extreme weather events come and
go without toppling entire cities or nations. But they still cope pretty
well because their governments are investing in their futures.
After reaching a peak during the 2020s, the Social Tension Index
is steadily declining, indicating less social unrest. With improving
wellbeing levels, citizens rediscover trust in governments, which in
turn enables eective spending on education and universal health
coverage. These factors feed back into more wellbeing and trust. A
virtuous self- reinforcing cycle. Healthy diets are the norm. Universal
healthcare is available to all. This leads to increasingly thriving soci-
eties that are resilient to shocks.
The Giant Leap scenario delivers way more on the Sustainable
Development Goals than Too Little Too Late, and it does so while
bringing the world back within planetary boundaries. The world is
far from a utopia, conicts still erupt, climate disruptions are still
causing shocks, and the long- term stability of Earth is still deeply
uncertain. But much pain and suering is minimized. Extreme pov-
erty is all but eliminated, and the risk of runaway climate change is
diminished.
Figure 2.3. The Giant Leap (GL) scenario quantied as four time graphs
visualizing the global developments in this scenario from 1980 to 2100. The
curves are all relative to 1980 and highlights the dynamics between them. The
global population was 4.4 billion in 1980 and peaks at 8.5 billion in the 2050s,
before population starts a slow decline to around 6 billion in 2100. Income
per person (“GDP per person k$/p/y”) is 13% higher than in TLTL by 2050, and
21% higher in 2100. Notice that the net GHG emissions per person hit zero
by 2050, on chart 3. Chart 4 shows dierent aspects of wellbeing in GL. The
global Average Wellbeing Index rst declines during the early 2020s trans-
formations, but then improves dramatically for the rest of the century, as the
impacts from turnarounds kick in and improve the prospects for long- term
progress. Source: E4A- global-220501. The model and all data are download-
able from earth4all.life.
Exploring Two Scenarios |
In 2100, Shu, Samiha, Carla, and Ayotola celebrate their eightieth
birthdays, and they look back at eventful lives. Shu reects on how
China solved its river pollution challenges. She is still amazed to
see river dolphins alive and well in her city. Samiha’s retirement
is nanced through the national pensions scheme and universal
basic dividend, and she is writing a history of Bangladeshi women’s
rights. Carla lives in a passive home she designed herself, while
Ayotola serves on the advisory board of the multitrillion Nigeria Citi-
zensFund.
Which Scenario Do We Co- create?
Now that we have sketched out the two main scenarios, we will look at
the ve extraordinary turnarounds needed to achieve the Giant Leap
scenario. Why should people and politicians strive to make them hap-
pen, and how can they be realized? We present these extraordinary
turnarounds in order: poverty, inequality, empowerment of women,
food, and energy. In other words, addressing poverty accelerates
movement on inequality, and progress on these two fronts helps accel-
erate the empowerment, food, and energy turnarounds.
The reason we start with poverty is that global poverty is still one
of the very worst problems that humanity faces today. It has the great-
est importance for Most of the World, where billions today live below
a dignied living income. The poorest in the world suer malnourish-
ment, have greater health problems, and lack easy access to educa-
tion and light at night (a signicant barrier to a good education). They
also lack a voice in the public debate. Can we turn this giant problem
around much quicker than in previous decades in order to lift the
quality of life for Most of the World? If so
—
exactly how?
How Good Is the Earth4All Model?
When we look back at some of the twelve scenarios presented
in The Limits to Growth in 1972, we can see they tracked actual
and important global trajectories in the last y years with
| E A
surprising accuracy. We certainly hope that the Earth4All
model will be equally successful, given the huge progress in
understanding and data availability over the last y years.
Yet,there are many reasons why some caution is warranted.
The Earth4All model, like all other simulations, cannot
really predict the future. The model can only tell what are the
consequences of the assumptions that are built into the model.
Naturally we hope that we have included the most important
assumptions, and in the right manner, but the Earth4All model
is still a gross simplication of the real world.
So, while we believe the model is capable of exploring
trends in important system variables, like fertility, economic
growth, population, wellbeing, and climate change, we stress
that the model is not at all capable of predicting the timing of
future events and absolute values with any accuracy. The model
is most useful in ensuring consistent thinking, for example,
how investment in public services and economic development
aects population and climate. Also, the model allows us to
show the relative eect of policies, for example, how quickly
poverty is eliminated in one scenario compared with another
(poverty is eliminated one generation earlier in the Giant Leap
compared with Too Little Too Late) or how inequality and social
tensions evolve in each scenario: falling in the Giant Leap
scenario, and rising in Too Little Too Late.
There are other reasons for caution in interpreting the
model’s conclusions. The world is moving into a less stable and
therefore less predictable future. Geopolitical tensions are ris-
ing, countries are questioning the benets of globalization, and
we are seeing once strong democracies starting to decay. We
have moved into totally unknown territory on the climate front.
We have passed one threshold already: 1°C above preindustrial
temperatures. Earth has not been this hot for the entire 10,000-
year period of human civilization. We may expect to cross more
thresholds this century, depending on decisions made in the
coming decade. Food and energy production will exceed any-
Exploring Two Scenarios |
thing ever seen on the planet, with impacts on Earth’s biosphere
that will be huge, undoubtedly bringing many surprises. How
will societies adapt to crowding, megadroughts, and extreme
ooding? How will people contend with exorbitant energy costs
and multiple breadbasket failures?
Our scenarios show quite devastating consequences for
many regions around the globe; but even so, we cannot rule out
the possibility that our scenarios are too optimistic given the
uncertainties. The model can easily generate more gloom-and-
doom scenarios if anybody feels the need for it. The Earth for
All team did not. We chose to focus on the Giant Leap scenario,
which builds resilience to shocks through greater societal
cohesion and illustrates a possible way forward that leads to
increased wellbeing rather than collapse.
3
Saying Goodbye to Poverty
Picture this: A woman in India throws a desperate look over her
parched paddy elds. As a farmer, she is again reeling under the on-
slaught of another drought, this time worse than the last. Her income
has been slashed. What rice she managed to harvest, she was forced
to sell too cheaply due to undercutting by an inter national agro-
company. Now she can’t aord new drought- tolerant rice seeds. Aus-
terity measures in place mean that her state and federal governments
are of little help. All extra state funds are funneled to repay debt obli-
gations taken on during the last economic crisis. Climate change,
poverty, and the failure of institutions combine to lock her
—
and her
neighbors
—
into despair. Without seeds, what are they supposed to
do now?
All low- income countries want to prosper and develop sustain-
ably. But can they avoid the strategic pitfalls of Europe, the United
States, Japan, China, and South Korea and instead develop in a fairer,
cleaner way?
Our foresight analysis, building on historical cases, indicates it
can be done. Rapid economic growth that is fair and clean is feasible
but requires a new economic model. Under the current inter national
structure, the policy options available to these countries are severely
restricted and must be expanded. This will require a transformation of
current global nancial systems, trade agreements, and technology-
sharing mechanisms. Crucially, there is an urgent need to remove the
constraints on low- and middle- income countries to tackle the dual
challenges of climate change and poverty. Without urgent action, it is
exceedingly dicult for them to prosper economically and simulta-
neously reduce carbon emissions or adopt green technology.
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The current carbon emission levels in the atmosphere are a by-
product of rapid industrialization in the high- income countries over
the last 150 years. However, today it is the low- income countries, or
Most of the World, that have been left to deal with the consequences.
These countries have an acute lack of resources and technology. Yet
they are much more exposed to the climate emergency as a result of
their geographical location.
We also know that the billion richest individuals account for 72%
of the consumption of overall global resources, while the poorest
1.2 billion (the vast majority of whom reside in Most of the World)
consume only 1%. Hence, the richest global societies are consuming
the most natural resources while facing the fewest consequences, a
deeply unfair situation.¹ The moral and historical impetus falls on the
high- income countries to provide all possible support to low- income
economies. This would constitute a central tenet of climate justice.
Lifting hundreds of millions of people out of “extreme poverty”
—
where they live on less than $1.90 per day
—
would drive a global
Figure 3.1. The poverty turnaround. Dramatic expansion in policy space
forms the base of this turnaround. Along with massive changes in global
nance, trade, and technology- sharing, this leads to a new economic model
that allows the growth in low- income nations to rapidly reduce poverty in a
green and fair way when combined with the following turnarounds.
Saying Goodbye to Poverty |
increase in emissions of less than 1%, according to new research.²
That uptick could be countered elsewhere.
Poverty combined with climate change is not limited to low-
income countries alone. Research has shown, for example, that poor
and minority communities in the United States are worse aected
by extreme weather phenomena like Hurricane Katrina.³ The next
chapter will focus on inequality within countries. This chapter will
deal with inequality between countries: the challenges that poorer
countries face and viable solutions.
What Is Our Current Problem?
Extreme poverty has declined dramatically in the last fty years.
But still almost half the world lives in poverty, surviving on less than
$4 per day (equal to a GDP per person of some $1,500 per year). Pre-
pandemic estimates on meeting global targets such as the Sustain-
able Development Goal 1 (eradicating extreme poverty) required
low- income countries to grow at an average annual rate of 6%, and
the consumption (or income) of the bottom forty countries needed
to grow 2% faster than the average. COVID- 19, however, is estimated
to have set back progress on poverty by six or seven years. New eco-
nomic estimates, accounting for COVID- 19, indicate that up to 600
million could be living in extreme poverty by 2030 if economic devel-
opment goes back to “business as usual.” Compounding this, the
current economic system places low- and middle- income countries in
a position where they must choose between addressing poverty and
addressing climate change.
Issue 1: A Shrunken Policy Space
The policy space for governments seeking to act on both poverty and
global warming is severely restricted by the global economic system.
The free ow of nance is blocked by heavy debt- repayment restric-
tions. Through institutions like the International Monetary Fund or
the World Bank, rich countries exert strong control over the nances
of low- income countries, and extract considerable interest payments
from them, leaving them with limited funds to invest in their own
| E A
country. And foreign investors often extract more capital (when
accounting for human and natural capital) than they interject. In the
end, policies originally conceived to reduce poverty have either failed
or, worse, exacerbated it.
Low- income countries lack funds (and savings) to invest in key
development projects or infrastructure, such as power grids, water
supply, roads, rails, and hospitals. More of these investments could
spur a healthy growth model. Lack of such infrastructure, particularly
electricity, causes African countries to lose up to 3 to 4% of growth
per year, notes Masse Lô, founder and CEO, Institute of Leadership for
Development, in an Earth for All Deep Dive paper.
In many low- income countries, foreign investment is seen as a key
solution. But the current global system encourages markets, rather
than governments, to allocate the necessary funds or liquidity (cash)
to these countries. To add insult to injury, these funds are in foreign
currencies that means scarce nancial resources being allocated to
servicing ever- growing mountains of debt. This includes nance
coming from other countries or multinational corporations.
This attitude is actively fostered by the global economic bodies.
Governments are encouraged to have their economies completely
open to capital ows. Highly mobile international capital can park
itself in a country or sector it sees as protable, but there is no guar-
antee that such funds will be invested either in poverty alleviation or
in building energy- ecient capacity. Usually, this liquidity ends up
in the nancial sector of the economy, among stocks and derivatives,
which are potentially quick to withdraw.
Foreign capital has modest to little impact on economic develop-
ment, growth, or welfare in many countries. Further, foreign capi-
tal often displaces (or crowds out) domestic investment or drives up
greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. Footloose nance, which
is essentially looking to make a quick prot, is unlikely to be invested
in the long- term projects that would address the development needs
or clean energy capacity of a country. The investments for those pur-
poses have to be intentional, coordinated, and strategic
—
goals that
domestic economic policy stands a much better chance of meeting.
Saying Goodbye to Poverty |
For some low- income countries, the reduced maneuverability
from global structures is worsened by a large part of available re-
sources being directed toward debt and interest payments. In 2020,
debt in low- and middle- income countries rose to $8.7 trillion accord-
ing to the World Bank. Of this, the debt burden of the world’s low-
income countries rose 12% to a record $860 billion. Most of this was
related to pandemic needs.
According to economist Richard Wol, thirty- four of the poorest
countries now pay far more in debt repayment (chiey to rich coun-
tries) than they spend on the climate crisis. Similarly, the spending on
healthcare during the pandemic has suered. And as the debt burden
rocketed in many low- income countries, their economic growth was
stalling. Other countries, in seeking to stick to traditional recommen-
dations by multilateral institutions, may maintain a very low debt
burden. But they are only able to do so by limiting their expenditure
on welfare schemes or on large capital- intensive green investments.
Issue 2: Destructive Trade Architecture
The expansion of global trade has naturally led to concerns about how
much carbon dioxide is emitted at the various stages of production,
transportation, and consumption of goods and services. Supporters
of the current free trade model argue that the current global trade
architecture is compatible with poverty and climate goals under the
right circumstances. Just shift trade to favor cleaner producing coun-
tries, and use it to motivate polluting countries to adopt technological
solutions.
This can only happen, however, if high- income countries acknowl-
edge the structural hurdles that prevent such actions from occurring.
In actuality, the current global trade architecture hinders a shift to
addressing both climate and poverty.
High- income countries outsource their production to low- income
countries to benet from reduced costs while low- income countries
benet from increased jobs and wages to their many workers.¹ But
outsourcing has brought heavily polluting industries and more climate
emissions to low- income countries. When assigning responsibility,
| E A
however, the current standard method for determining carbon emis
-
sions is based on emissions within a country’s boundaries, notes Earth
for All Transformational Economics Commissioner Jayati Ghosh and
team.¹¹ There is no accountability for consumption emissions.
The outcome of this process has been that high- income countries
have been able to exploit cross- border trade to eectively “export”
emissions to producing countries. The latter have now been tasked
with the responsibility of cleaning up these exported emissions, but
under sti global competition. However, when countries attempt to
clean up
—
through national regulations, protectionist measures, or
controls on the importation of recyclable waste, for instance
—
they
are then unfairly criticized for opposing free trade. And oftentimes
taken to court.
This lack of distinction between consumption- based emissions
and production- based emissions not only allows high- income coun-
tries to bypass responsibility, it also places the burden of potential tar-
is on low- income countries, without providing them the knowledge/
technology or nancial resources to measure and control emissions.
For instance, carbon border taxes aim to control emissions by taxing
imports on goods produced in high- emission countries. Again, this
shifts the monetary benet to the high- income consumers rather
than the low- income producers that are lling their demand for mate-
rial goods.
Issue 3: Hurdles to Technological Access
From advanced materials to renewable energy, new technologies are
key to solving global warming. Practically every model of climate
response envisages some role for both existing and future forms of
technology to cut emissions and environmental degradation. Unfor-
tunately, much of this green technology is inaccessible. This is not
due to technological infeasibility. It happens because the frameworks
for tech transfer do not allow low- income countries to use them. From
restrictive intellectual property laws to prohibitively expensive access
in hard currencies, low- income countries that desperately need such
technology to green their operations, bring vaccines to their poor,
Saying Goodbye to Poverty |
or reduce expenses cannot access it. Countries in need, who have
already constrained nancial policy space, are then further squeezed
and compelled either to accept bad terms of use or else forgo access
to such technology.
Turning Poverty Around: Addressing the Challenges
Our rst turnaround, therefore, aims to enable three to four billion
people to move out of poverty (see gure 3.2). Upgrading and reboot-
ing failing economic systems to focus on both quality and quantity
of growth will enable low- income countries to reach at least $15,000
per capita per annum (or some $40 per person per day) before 2050.
At this level, these countries can deliver on most of the social Sus-
tainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as food, health, education,
and clean water to all their citizens. This turnaround is designed to
future- proof low- income economies as they forge economies focused
on wellbeing, while the interlinked energy and food turnarounds are
designed to make this possible within planetary boundaries.
Figure 3.2. The end of poverty. The lines show how many million people live
with an income per person below $40 per day ($15,000 per year). In the Giant
Leap scenario, this goes to zero not long after 2050, while in Too Little Too
Late, this happens a generation later, towards the end of the century.
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As countries get richer (see gure 3.3, horizontal axis), the annual
growth rate (vertical axis) rst rises from low values, and then peaks
at around 6% to 8% before it starts a long decline. The poverty turn-
around is achieved when low- income countries move from the left-
hand side of the peak toward the right- hand side of the peak. To do
this quickly, low- income countries must gain the policy space needed
to act, as well as just and viable terms of access to necessary nance
and technology.
Solution : Expand Policy Space and Deal with Debt
Building a productive infrastructure is hugely dependent on upfront
investments. Such mobilization of resources is extremely unlikely to
occur quickly enough without active steps undertaken by the gov-
ernments of the respective countries. Fiscal policy
—
the choices and
methods through which the government is able to spend
—
can be
an eective tool in generating the required investments. Mobilizing
Figure 3.3. Economic development in all the world’s main regions has followed
a similar pattern: rst the rate of growth rises to around 6–8% then falls to
around 1–3%. Dots show regional growth rates for 1980 to 2020 as ten-year aver-
ages. The large circles show how the South Asia region can turn around from
poverty toward mid-income levels by 2050, following a “growth guideline”
—
measured as incomes per person at constant purchasing power parity dollars
(2017 PPP per person per year). Data sources: Penn World Tables 10; UNPD.
Saying Goodbye to Poverty |
these investments requires a combination of increased public invest-
ment as well as changing regulations and incentives to ensure that
private investment also aligns with these goals. Dierent means exist
to help nance public investment
—
increasing taxes on the rich and
on large corporations, decit nancing, and creative use of central
and development banks are all viable options.
However, while these methods to expand the policy space are
available in principle to low- income nations, in practice they are
heavily discouraged by the larger international nancial architecture.
To reverse this, a rst step would be to grant debt relief to low- income
countries that require it. This relief will help these countries to com-
mit more funds to protect against climate change and transform their
economies. Greater global coordination to increase corporate taxa-
tion would help relieve the pressure on smaller countries whose tax-
based policy options are restricted.
Given the global nature of the challenge, cooperation on a Global
Green New Deal could be a possible measure to shift the global pro-
duction systems to greener paths as well as generating millions of
high- paying jobs throughout the world, which could deal a blow to
the bane of poverty.
Finally, high- income countries can legislate to regulate or other-
wise restrict transnational corporations from investing in brown
industries (highly polluting or carbon- intensive sectors) in low-
income countries and instead channel their investments toward green
industries (sectors that are less carbon- intensive or are supportive of
the larger process of transitioning to a sustainable economy). Low-
income countries seeking to grow their economies have little choice
when large conglomerates seek to invest in polluting industries, and
thus governments in high- income countries must necessarily take up
a greater responsibility in regulating their own companies.
Solution : Transform the Financial Architecture
Debt is like deep snow on a steep mountainside. The smallest of move-
ments can trigger an avalanche. Because low- income nations depend
on foreign capital for reserves (liquidity in the international economy),
capital ight is all the more damaging. When money rapidly ows out,
| E A
low- income economies are unable to pay for crucial imports. When
countries have high levels of debt, not only does capital ight reduce
reserves but it also weakens the national currency, increasing exist-
ing debt and interest payments. The lack of liquidity, augmented by
debt, can cripple a low- income country’s economy. It leaves countries
unable to generate any positive investment and reduces the ability to
spend on climate and poverty alleviation.
During the pandemic, some countries, like the United States, had
the incredible privilege of being able to inject trillions of dollars of
cash into their ailing economies through government loans and
“quantitative easing.” Can other countries adopt similar solutions? In
theory, any country with its own currency can. But in practice, it is
trickier. However, since 1969, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
has been empowered to lend in a country’s currency through Special
Drawing Rights (SDRs). SDRs are an international reserve asset (that
acts like a currency) that provides a backstop to maintain condence
in a country and its monetary system. The problem is that SDRs bene-
t rich nations far more than low- income countries.
In 2021, to counter the pandemic shock, $650 billion in SDRs were
allocated for IMF members to use. Unfortunately, the quota- based
system of the IMF means that SDRs are granted based largely on
GDP, and so $400 billion of this went to rich countries that would be
unlikely to need them. Even with this imperfect provision, the alloca-
tion helped several low- income countries struggling with balance- of-
payment issues. Notably, SDRs do not add to countries’ debt burdens
and are nonconditional. There is thus ample scope to use SDRs more
eectively
—
ensuring greater SDR availability to low- income nations,
exploring the option of allocating SDRs more frequently, using SDRs
as the basis for forming climate nance trusts, and channeling SDRs
to regional development banks for use in climate- related investment
eorts.¹² Over the medium term, the entire foreign- denominated
debt and trading system needs complete transformation to enable
countries in Most of the World to borrow at low cost in their own cur-
rencies. This simply means giving all countries the same extraordi-
nary privilege accorded to high- income countries today.
Saying Goodbye to Poverty |
Another promising solution could be a new multilateral insti-
tution: the International Currency Fund (ICF) to establish two- way
markets in currencies, especially for longer durations for which no
private market currently exists. Complementary to SDRs, the ICF
could improve how nancial markets work by nding and acting as a
counterparty to investors, borrowers, donors, corporates, and remit-
ters of foreign exchange to oset currency exposures, risks that occur
when investments are in another country’s currency. Its multilateral
treatment as a preferential creditor would reduce collateral required
for trades and allow it to oer more products that aid local market
development, increase liquidity, and attract private investors to cur-
rency risk as an asset class.
Solution : Transform Global Trade
Reforming the system that guides global trade requires several
important steps in order to address the barriers that aect low-
income economies.
A most radical need is to reconsider how carbon dioxide emissions
are accounted for in trade agreements
—
most importantly, carbon
dioxide emissions calculations and the consequent policy controls
need to distinguish between production and consumption of goods
and services. This would mean not just looking at the total emissions
within a country’s boundary but instead identifying the source
—
whether from consumption of goods or production of goods
—
and
treating them dierently for taxation and regulation. This would
ensure that countries that have historically played a minimal role in
climate change are not unfairly punished for seeking out the same
growth outcomes that other countries have enjoyed, and similarly
that countries seeking to simply outsource their carbon dioxide
emissions are unable to do so. This would also constrain material
footprints where they need to be constrained.
In a similar manner, there is a need to revive the concept of the
“infant industry model”
—
shielding new industries in a country from
global competition
—
with import restrictions. This model was so
successful in helping economies like South Korea and China escape
| E A
the middle- income trap. By recognizing the need to protect green
industries from competing prematurely with larger established
international players, countries are more likely to develop local green
investments that are sustainable in the long term.
Finally, there is a need to reconsider the role of regional trade. You
would never see a light- weight boxer being forced to compete with a
heavy- weight. Likewise, promoting and protecting trade across low-
income countries makes a lot of sense. Additionally, encouraging
the matching of regional production and demand can help shorten
supply chains, build resilience around edgling industries, and help
ensure that newer green markets have the time to grow.
Solution : Improve Access to Technology and Leapfrogging
The hurdles that prevent low- income countries from accessing tech-
nological solutions to climate change and poverty must be similarly
overcome. There are thankfully a number of steps, both in the imme-
diate and in the medium/long- term, that are available.
In the immediate term, the existing intellectual property rights
systems need to be used to mandate access to technology. Interna-
tional treaties related to intellectual property rights were initially
designed to require intellectual property holders to give access to
others. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is one example.
Over time, though, the WTO case law against low- and middle- income
nations has heavily diluted these provisions. Expanding and strength-
ening them to target climate change could greatly speed up the pro-
cess of technological transfer. Similarly, a TRIPS waiver
—
granting
immunity from legal challenges in the WTO for domestic intellectual
property rights laws
—
needs to be considered for green and health
technologies that low- income countries require but cannot access.
Going a step further, countries from which such technology
originates can legislate, incentivize, or otherwise compel corpora-
tions to enter into agreements with companies or governments in
low- income countries. Some corporations deceptively use treaties to
Saying Goodbye to Poverty |
avoid substantive technology transfers.¹³ The governments of origi-
nating countries are much better positioned to regulate or compel
multilateral corporations than low- income countries and must there-
fore take greater responsibility in doing so.
Finally, there is an urgent need to overhaul the entire intellec-
tual property rights regime and support the use of patents in a more
responsible manner. The selective application of patents can be use-
ful as a short- term, targeted incentive for investment, but the current
system heavily encourages simply holding onto long- term patents
for the sake of licensing and other forms of revenue. Strategically
shifting toward a system that makes innovation more accessible can
help ensure that as new technologies are developed, they can be more
readily deployed to countries that require them.
Barriers to the Solutions
If the solutions are so clear, what is keeping low- income countries
back? Many of the proposed solutions are quite radical, and thus can
be expected to experience signicant barriers to implementation.
Inertia and path dependence
—
the development of systems that rely
on choices made decades or even centuries ago
—
ensure that the cur-
rent nancial system is heavily in favor of maintaining the status quo.
From the pervasive free- market model of growth to the heavy anti-
regulatory bias that has emerged in contemporary policy, there are
major roadblocks holding progress back.
Multilateral Institutions
In order for low- income countries to attract nancial capital, multi-
lateral institutions like the IMF and World Bank have pushed them to
undergo several “disciplinary” or “macroprudential” reforms. These
reforms tend to privilege the perceptions of private cross- border
investors, rather than the interests of citizens. This discourages state
intervention to address issues such as poverty and basic needs. They
have forced states to curb their ability to use debt to nance welfare
programs, placing restrictions on capital ows or even raising taxes.
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Countries that do not adopt such reforms, or that deviate from them,
are downgraded by international credit- rating agencies and seen as
risky investments.
These credit ratings are indeed a decisive factor in how much
a government is able to help its citizens during a crisis. A recent
research paper has shown that credit ratings are correlated with the
size and promptness of scal relief that countries were able to pro-
vide during the COVID- 19 pandemic.¹ Governments of low- income
countries are extremely wary of losing credit scores since a down-
grading could result in capital ight, or funds being moved out of the
country, leading to an economic crisis. To retain their ratings, they
even engage in harsh austerity measures and limit essential public
investments required for poverty alleviation and a green transition.
Perceived and Actual Corruption
The conventional concern raised when considering the policy options
available to low- income countries is that corruption
—
both perceived
and actual
—
must be addressed before high- income countries and
their corporations can reasonably and reliably engage in investments.
Certainly, concerns about how institutions operate may present a bar-
rier to any systemic change. An additional important consideration,
however, is the role that such corporations themselves play in ensur-
ing that the barrier of corruption remains erect. In South Africa, for
example, the Zondo Commission’s reports into allegations of fraud
details the role of transnational corporations in initiating and fueling
massive corruption in the country.¹ Firms seeking to minimize costs
may nd it easier to simply exploit the laxity of legal institutions, and
this other side of the equation may also present a large barrier.
Arbitration and Litigation
The current legal framework is heavily skewed in favor of high-
income countries and transnational corporations. Countries like
India and China have faced the legal might of WTO when seeking to
expand production of solar panels. Similarly, large companies like
Monsanto have zealously used the legal system to pursue farmers in
Saying Goodbye to Poverty |
low- and middle- income countries over seed- related patenting viola-
tions. The argument
—
that protection of such a system is necessary
to encourage innovation and investments by private players
—
ignores
the reality that the regime ends up locking out countries and groups
who require the technology to shift away from polluting practices
and must then either abandon technological change or divert much-
needed funding from other areas. Where larger private corporations
are concerned, this is usually done with the backing of their respec-
tive governments. The ultimate outcome is a reduction in the capac-
ity for low- income countries to create green jobs and build productive
green capacity.
Conclusions: The Poverty Turnaround
Four essential actions for achieving the turnaround in low- income
countries have been provided: expand their policy options, address
the impact of debt and the larger nancial infrastructure, reconstruct
the global trade architecture, and x the systems of technology trans-
fer. These are not the only actions needed, but they are certainly a
Figure 3.4. Incomes per person (GDPpp $1,000 per year): in 2020; in 2050 with
Too Little Too Late; and in 2050 with Giant Leap. Source: E4A- regional-220401.
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necessity to ensure that progress in ghting poverty in a climate-
conscious manner can happen. Figure 3.4. visualizes the results per
region, showing the incomes per person in 2050 without the turn-
around (as in Too Little Too Late, TLTL) and if the turnaround is com-
pleted (as in Giant Leap, GL).
In sum, this amounts to a call for active and competent govern-
ments capable of increasing the wellbeing of their populations. A key
will be to increase labor productivity in the early decades of economic
take- o, and acknowledge that market solutions will not suce if the
goal is to build a strong nation for the benet of its working majority.
The energy and food revolutions that will sweep the world this
generation are a once- in-a- century opportunity for transformation,
and the economic opportunity presented by such a comprehensive
overhaul is immense for low- income countries. These economies can
leapfrog over obsolete technologies. They can avoid appalling pollu-
tion, and this can help them escape some of the legacies of historical
global inequality.
The scale of this transformation cannot be underestimated. Eco-
nomic growth of at least 5% per year across low- income countries
must be catalyzed immediately to achieve the SDGs by 2050. But
Figure 3.5. The ten world regions as used in EarthAll. Source: mapchart.net.
United States
Latin
America
Sub-Saharan
Africa
Middle East &
North Africa
Eastern Europe
& Central Asia
Europe
South Asia
China
Pacic
South
East Asia
Saying Goodbye to Poverty |
many low- income countries have seen growth stagnate in the last
decade. The pandemic has further crippled these vulnerable econ-
omies, and adapting to climate change is beginning to drain scarce
resources in low- income countries. This is an emergency situation.
This rst turnaround has focused on low- income countries, but of
course, many of the solutions will apply to middle- income and high-
income countries too. The global nancial system, after all, was built
in a bygone era. It has served a purpose and has contributed to some
forms of peace, stability, and prosperity; but its fault lines are visible
everywhere, and it is clearly not t for purpose in the Anthropocene.
Ultimately, though, building a new future- proof economic ecosystem
will require a shift away from a myopic focus on quantity of economic
growth. The new ecosystem will only succeed if it prioritizes well-
being
—
that is the quality of economic growth. That requires dealing,
next, with rampant inequality.
4
The Inequality Turnaround
“Sharing the Dividends”
Countries where citizens are economically more equal function bet-
ter. They have greater social cohesion, an essential ingredient for
making long- term collective decisions that benet the many, not the
few. So, if our Earth for All goal is collective action to protect civiliza-
tion in the long term, then greater equality is as close to a silver bullet
as we might nd.
New data has allowed us to see an unambiguous pattern related
to income inequality over the last decades. Countries that are more
equal perform better in all areas of human wellbeing and achieve-
ment than countries with divisive levels of income inequality.
Whether low- income (such as Costa Rica) or high- income (such as
Scandinavia), more equal countries tend to have better outcomes
when it comes to trust, education, social mobility, longevity, health,
obesity, child mortality, mental health, crime, homicides, and drug
misuse. The list goes on. Counter- intuitively, even wealthy people
in more equal societies, for example the Nordic countries, have
higher levels of wellbeing than wealthy people in countries with high
inequality such as the United States, Brazil, or South Africa.
The equality turnaround consists of three main levers that steadily
push toward a new economic paradigm:
•
More progressive taxation on both income and wealth for individ-
uals and corporations.¹
• Strengthening labor rights and trade unions’ negotiating power.
•
Safety nets and innovation nets to share prosperity and provide
security during a period of deep transformation, for example, big
ideas like universal basic income/dividend programs.
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Throughout this chapter, we will focus on economic inequality
within countries
—
the dierences in income and wealth between rich
and poor, whether in low- or high- income countries. Inequality is
broader than just wealth and income, but other aspects of inequality,
for example gender equity, are tackled elsewhere (see chapter 5 on
empowerment).
The major challenge is that within- country distribution has re-
cently been moving the wrong way. Decade by decade, countries have
become more unequal in every region of the world with the exception
of Europe. The poorest 50% of people take less than 15% in total earn-
ings, while the richest 10% take well over 40%. In many regions, it is
closer to 60%.²
A key goal of the inequality turnaround is to ensure the richest
10% in societies take no more than the total income of the poorest
40% in society. This means that four poor people together have the
same income as one person in the top 10% per year. This is seen as
Figure 4.1. The inequality turnaround. Progressive taxation and fees on wealth
distributes incomes more fairly; workers gain protections and fair compensa-
tion through re- unionization and other mechanisms to empower workers;
universal basic dividends allow citizens to benet from shared resources in a
Citizen Fund. This has co- benets including providing essential safety nets for
citizens during these transformative decades.
The Inequality Turnaround |
a tolerable level of inequality.³ Above this level of inequality, social
and health problems get much more severe and there is less social
cohesion, making it more dicult for governments to make long-
term decisions.
Our Earth4All model tracks changes in both wellbeing and
inequality, and then captures this through a novel “Social Tension
Index” and an “Average Wellbeing Index.” The Social Tension Index
is an indicator of potential polarization particularly in relation to
inequality. A rising index indicates strengthening polarization,
which is often not conducive to strong collective action within and
across societies. The scenario Too Little Too Late sees social tensions
rise as the wealthy elites become increasingly powerful and distant
from everyone else. The model cannot predict what will happen next,
of course, but it is easy to imagine scenarios where political institu-
tions struggle to bring all on board a journey of deep transformation.
Boom and bust economic cycles and shrinking safety nets for the
most vulnerable drive despair and resentment. Earth for All Trans-
formational Economics Commissioners Richard Wilkinson and Kate
Pickett make the major point that if countries implement a series of
policies to share the wealth and commit to greater equality, this opens
the door for the psychological conditions that build the level of social
trust necessary for any transformation to sustainability, such as in the
Giant Leap scenario.
How can we achieve this level of equality? Let’s clarify the three
broad groups of solutions to reduce inequality in some more detail
before we review the problems that must be overcome:
More fair distribution of disposable incomes is the starting point.
This can be achieved through progressive income taxation, meaning a
higher tax rate for those with higher incomes. But this is not even half
the story. Inheritance and wealth taxes also need to become more pro-
gressive because nancial assets are accumulating at far greater rates
than incomes are increasing. This means the gap between rich and
poor will inevitably get wider and wider until, that is, wealth accu-
mulation is taxed at a proportional rate. Globalization means that
we need greater international eorts to close nancial loopholes and
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stem the ow of money into oshore tax havens. This means stronger
oversight of transnational corporations. A minimum international
tax rate on businesses can also support greater equality. This was
agreed in 2021 by most wealthy nations, to the surprise of many
—
but
at a paltry 15%.
Labor rights and the negotiating strength of workers must be en-
hanced in order to increase the worker share of national income.
Collective bargaining needs to be greatly supported after decades
of erosion of union and worker power. More workers should be em-
powered with co- ownership and seats in the boardroom to inuence
decisions. During a turbulent period of transformation for industrial
sectors such as energy, food, transport, and heavy industry, such
changes are essential to ensure that workers support bold company
action and benet from the economic turnarounds, rather than fall
further behind.
Finally, our boldest proposal is to explore Citizens Funds that
would pay out universal basic dividends in all countries (see more on
this in chapter 8). This proposal is based on proven eective ways to
transfer a portion of the wealth extracted from common resources
such as fossil fuels, land, real estate, or social data. In addition to re-
distributing wealth more fairly, this will provide essential individual
economic security during the transformation of societies, and it is
likely to spur creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
The Problems with Economic Inequality
Between 1950 and 1980, inequality within countries actually shrank
in Europe, the United States, and a few other places. This remarkable
achievement occurred during three decades of enormous social,
political, and technological transformation and rising prosperity fol-
lowing the World War II. Since 1980, the gulf between the top wealth
holders and the rest has grown ever wider decade by decade. Today,
when it comes to wealth, half the population of the world owns a tiny
2% slice of the global pie, while over three quarters of the pie (76%) is
grabbed by the richest 10%.
A politically acceptable solution to inequality, you might think, is
The Inequality Turnaround |
to grow the pie even more: economic growth will eventually take care
of the problems, everyone’s prosperity and wellbeing will spiral ever
upward, and all will be happy eventually. For low- income countries,
this can work to some extent: life expectancy, education, wellbeing,
and happiness shoot up in early stages of a country’s development.
But among high- income countries, further strong economic growth
no longer connects to improving health, wellbeing, or happiness.
Some rich countries are almost twice as rich as others but show no
sign that the populations enjoy better health or wellbeing. The cur-
rent massively nancialized globalized economies ensure that, as the
pie grows, those already holding the largest shares snatch an ever-
greater slice.
Why is inequality so bad for societies? The argument goes that
high inequality provides necessary incentives to work harder. But evi-
dence does not support this. What evidence does show unequivocally
is that extreme inequality is a destructive force in societies.
Skewed Political Power
Wealth is an important source of economic and political power.
Extreme inequality means power is increasingly concentrated in the
hands of the super- wealthy and most valuable companies. This is
deeply destabilizing for societies in general and especially for democ-
racies because a foundational principle of democracies is fair repre-
sentation.
Take the catastrophic failure of the global nancial system be-
tween 2007 and 2009. People in the nancial sector wield extraor-
dinary political power. To prevent complete meltdown, governments
stepped in, nding trillions of dollars to shore up failing banks. Citi-
zens across the world were forced to pay for this failure through harsh
austerity measures. Badly run banks were saved and went on to make
ever- greater prots
—
with the same owners. The sense of injustice
that ensued is linked to a rise in populist leaders promoting division
and misinformation within societies.
Another example is the Gilet Jaune, or Yellow Vest movement in
France. Following the Paris Agreement on climate in 2015, French
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president Emmanuel Macron proposed a fuel tax to encourage a shift
away from cars and vans with high greenhouse gas emissions. Petrol
prices rose, sparking many weeks of protest that birthed a movement
eventually involving millions of people. And so, a long- term policy to
reduce emissions was undermined by low- paid workers and middle-
class workers hit hardest by decades of economic stagnation. The pro-
testers were convinced that the political system is in the palm of the
wealthy elite and refused to play ball. Solutions should be acceptable
to the majority or they risk catastrophic failure leading to potentially
decades of incremental progress.
Overconsumption Among the Rich
Besides political representation or lack thereof, inequality has an-
other pernicious eect on societies. In extremely unequal societies,
the desire for higher status drives extreme materialism and luxury
carbon consumption. Globally, nearly half (48%) of all emissions are
commandeered by the richest 10%. And the richest 1% are respon-
sible for a phenomenal 15% of all fossil fuel emissions on Earth and
growing rapidly.
Figure 4.2. Between 1990 and 2017, material footprints
—
the material con-
sumption per person measured in metric tons per year
—
grew dramatically for
upper- income and high- income consumers while they shrank slightly among
low- income consumers. Data source: UNEP & IRP GRO- 2019, g. 2.25.
The Inequality Turnaround |
In very unequal societies, people are more likely to feel anxiety
about their status in society, worry about how other people may judge
them, and hunt for designer labels, more expensive cars, and other
products that signal status. The SUVs and endless darting between
continents come with a high carbon price tag. But this is a zero- sum
game on an innite loop
—
we can’t all have higher status than every-
one else. And the pressure to consume can make it all come crash-
ing down. Debt and bankruptcy are more prevalent in more unequal
societies.
Tackling the drivers of excessive material consumption, and focus-
ing our systems on what people fundamentally need, will contribute
to accelerating all ve of Earth for All’s extraordinary turnarounds,
notes Earth for All Transformational Economics Commissioners
Anders Wijkman and Lewis Atkenji. We know that overconsumption
of natural resources drives ever- increasing environmental impacts. It
also brings negative consequences for wellbeing. The health impacts
of food overconsumption, for instance, are well- known. Furthermore,
mental health issues are concentrated in countries where resource
consumption is high. As Earth for All’s turnarounds recognize,
inequality reduction will be crucial for a sustainable future: Those in
the wealthiest countries are disproportionately responsible for the
world’s environmental impacts. Much of elite consumption places
excessive costs on the rest of society
—
costs that are not covered in
the market price of the goods consumed. Correcting this requires fun-
damentally changing how we govern our societies and economies.
Enclosure of the Commons = Privatization
One driver of wealth accumulation, and so inequality, was put in place
centuries ago: enclosure. Much of our land was once managed as a
commons
—
collectively shared and sustained. But over time a new
management system evolved. Governments, colonial powers, or other
“authorities” granted property rights and ownership of land. Little by
little, once open lands, common to all and managed sustainably for
generations, became enclosed. That is, privately owned for the sole
benet of the owner.
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Eventually this system of management entirely dominated. The
use, access, and benets of a resource became tightly controlled by
the “owner.” This expanded to other resources: minerals, data, and
knowledge through patents. But “ownership” is never as clear as it
seems. Government- funded research, paid for by taxes, led to many of
the key technologies within mobile phones. The Internet, GPS, touch
screen, even Siri, Apple’s AI assistant, started life at universities. Per-
haps a wider group of people, or even all citizens, should share in the
ongoing wealth generated by enclosure of land, data, and publicly
funded knowledge?
Even though these natural or intellectual resources may be con-
sidered part of the collective wealth of a nation, the accumulating
riches derived from these resources are often handed down through
auent families across the generations, often through mechanisms
that avoid taxation. Enclosure means wealth accumulates at a rate
that is higher than the growth in income from labor, so, naturally,
wealth will outpace income
—
opening up an ever- wider chasm be-
tween rich and poor.
Warning: Disruption Ahead
Whichever path the world follows, from Too Little Too Late to Giant
Leap, and everything in between, the coming decades will be disrup-
tive for too many people, in large part due to the legacy of chronic
inequality.
Exponential technologies, from solar power to genomics, will
continue to disrupt our lives, and this disruption is likely to acceler-
ate. Innovations are moving from the dreams of entrepreneurs and
engineers into the lives of billions of people. Accelerated articial
intelligence, machine learning, amazing mobile Internet speeds,
and robots will increasingly take over tasks at work that once kept
people busy. The advantage is that this will free them from drudgery
and make them available for green jobs, employment in the caring
professions as societies deal with aging populations, or the knowl-
edge economy. And this can work well
—
but only as long as some of
The Inequality Turnaround |
the super- prots in the robotized sectors are used by governments
to invest in retraining, and new jobs in an economy that builds well-
being for the majority.
This technological disruption will increase inequality in society,
often in ways that are dicult to predict, like the way social media has
at once connected more people but also industrialized misinforma-
tion and so helped undermine democracy. In parallel to social media
disruption, technology, from robotics to the Internet, has exerted a
downward pressure on wages, creating a class of gig workers and the
so- called precariat that live day to day on zero- hour contracts in “ful-
llment centers” where their movements are driven by algorithms.
Technological disruption is just part of the picture. China’s ris-
ing economic and political power will change the geopolitical order.
India will likely become the most populous country on Earth, and its
economy may grow rapidly if properly managed. We can expect fur-
ther disruption from climate change and other environmental haz-
ards as we edge toward the 1.5°C threshold. And, of course, we could
be hit by a black swan
—
a massive event that could not be predicted.
We could even be hit by a ock of black swans. Or by other high-
impact events that can be predicted and prepared for in advance but
normally ignored by voters and their politicians, for example, new
and deadlier pandemic risks.
The point is: Societies need to prepare for disruption and build for
resilience
—
this means providing essential safety nets. One import-
ant way to build resilience is to tackle inequality.
Measuring Inequality
A starting point for addressing inequality is to measure it. For a cen-
tury, the most common way to do this has been to calculate the “Gini
coecient” of a country, an index named after its creator, the statis-
tician and demographer Corrado Gini. This index measures income
distribution from poorest to richest in a society. But due to several
drawbacks, including its complexity, not everyone likes the Gini co-
ecient. More recently, economist Jose Gabriel Palma has argued
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that what really matters is how much income or wealth goes to the
richest 10% compared to how much goes to the poorest 40%. His ar-
gument is pretty sound: Statistics show that the middle 50% takes
about half of gross national income irrespective of country or time;
so what really matters is what is happening toward the extremes.¹
The Palma ratio, therefore, is quite simply the share of total in-
Figure 4.3. Inequality turnaround: The lower Inequality Index in Giant Leap
is due to higher transfer payments (from taxes and Citizens Fund dividends)
than in the Too Little Too Late scenario.
The Inequality Turnaround |
come captured by the richest 10% divided by the share taken by the
poorest 40%. Scandinavian countries have a Palma ratio of about 1.0.
This means the richest 10% take about the same total income as the
poorest 40%. In the United Kingdom it is 2.0, in the United States it
is 3.0, and South Africa has a Palma ratio of 7.0. We argue a ratio of
1.0 is a sustainable level of inequality. We can show that, over long
periods, a 1.0 ratio maintains strong social cohesion and supports
very high levels of wellbeing for the majority.
In Too Little Too Late, inequality continues to rise across regions.
But in the Giant Leap scenario, inequality is signicantly lower, as
more progressive taxation and bigger transfers from rich to poor make
workers’ disposable incomes go higher than in Too Little Too Late.
Social Tension Index
One innovation in the Earth4All model is a Social Tension Index. It
measures the perceived rate of societal progress, that is, increase in
wellbeing. The index is linked to inequality because nations with
greater inequality are less able to govern eectively. The index rises
Figure 4.4. Social tensions run higher in Too Little Too Late (dashed lines)
compared with Giant Leap (solid lines) toward 2100. Source: E4A-global
-220501.
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signicantly higher in the Too Little Too Late scenario compared with
the Giant Leap.
A Giant Leap Toward Greater Equality
The Giant Leap scenario succeeds by driving rapid shifts toward
greater equality across all ten regions of the world out to 2050. This is
driven by implementing three key solutions, each one at a greater scale
of ambition: progressive taxation, including a wealth tax; empower-
ment of workers; and a fee and dividend approach to exploitation of
natural resources. We argue all have a part to play in driving a Giant
Leap, but regions and nations might apply these solutions dierently.
One size is unlikely to t all, and we want to emphasize that this does
not rule out other excellent solutions to reduce inequality. We will
mention some of these as we go on.
Progressive Redistribution of Income and Wealth
Let’s start with income. There are several ways to ensure incomes can
be tamed to protect against destructive levels of inequality.
The main and obvious way to close the income gap is through pro-
gressive income taxation, with those on the lowest incomes paying
little in tax (or even none if jobs are threatened by automation) while
the highest earners are taxed more heavily.
A second challenge is to tame wealth accumulation. Inheritance
taxes and wealth taxes must be increased to prevent wealth accumu-
lating faster than workers’ incomes
—
in percent per year. Without
such an intervention, the gap between rich and poor will inevitably
get wider and wider. A famous example of the scale of the problem
was US billionaire Warren Buett’s incredulity over paying a lower tax
rate than his secretary
—
because his income is coming from invest-
ments not a salary.¹¹
A third solution, with a huge psychological impact, would be to
place limits on how much the salaries of company executives can
exceed the average salary in the organization. Executive- to-worker
pay disparity has skyrocketed in recent decades. A 2021 study by the
Economic Policy Institute found that America’s largest public rms
The Inequality Turnaround |
paid CEOs 352 times that of the average worker in 2020. In 1965,
before the dramatic expansion of the wage gap, the CEO- to-worker
pay ratio was 21- to-1.¹²
Globalization means that we need greater international eorts to
close nancial loopholes and stem the ow of money into oshore
tax havens. Of course, transnational corporations must also be held
accountable, and here we can report progress. In 2021, for the rst
time, the G20 group of high- income countries agreed on a foundation
for an international corporation tax. This is a signicant achievement
to begin to address the race to the bottom.
Economic Democracy: Retraining and Empowering Workers
Over the last four decades, the negotiating strength of workers has
been deliberately weakened to the point that even in the richest
nations on Earth zero- hour contracts are now normal. The common
argument for the erosion of the power of trade unions and workers
more generally has been to improve competitiveness in an increas-
ingly globalized cut- throat economic world.
In high- income countries, the manufacturing sectors shrunk
considerably in recent decades as manufacturing moved to middle-
income countries. In their place, the service sectors have grown,
with lower wage rates because unionization has been aggressively
resisted. A rst priority is to help workers regain past strengths. Gov-
ernments can also provide guaranteed jobs doing public work, paid
for by higher taxes on the rich. The need is high for workers that can
provide essential environmental and social services, including tree-
planting, rewilding, and soil protection. If trade unions in these coun-
tries cannot gain their former strength, other solutions to improve
economic democracy exist.
Many solutions have their roots in democratizing workplaces.
Employee co- ownership plans can give workers a stake in the com-
panies that employ them. Seats for workers on corporate boards
would allow workers, shareholders, and company executives to take
decisions collectively. More worker cooperatives can play key roles
too. All these measures allow workers to benet from the essential
| E A
economic turnarounds, which in turn will drive worker support for
bold plans rather than drive workers to resist change.
We also recognize that unpaid workers (largely but not only
women) provide priceless services to economies and society, enhanc-
ing social cohesion. How can this transformative moment be used to
not only acknowledge their contributions to society but protect them,
reward them, and empower them? We’d like to introduce the idea of
auniversal basic dividend.
Introducing Citizen Funds and a Universal Basic Dividend
In recent years, several promising ideas to help redistribute wealth
and normalize economic security have been proposed, trialled, and
even successfully implemented. French economist Thomas Piketty
proposes giving all young adults $100,000 to start their working lives
with a healthy degree of economic security. A universal basic income
has been trialled to limited extents in Finland, Canada, Ireland, and
Kenya, among other places. There are many dierent models (and
designing workable programs is not easy), but essentially all citizens
receive a small regular income regardless of working status.
In the US since 1976, the Alaska Permanent Fund collects a share
of revenues from oil companies extracting the state’s natural re-
sources and pays a dividend to all citizens. This typically ranges from
$1,000 to $2,000 per person every year. For 2021, the dividend was
$1,114, meaning that a family of four would receive $4,456. An ex-
tension of this idea was proposed in 2017 by Republicans associated
with the Climate Leadership Council (CLC). The CLC proposal calls
for fees linked to carbon emissions to be redistributed to all citizens
across the United States. It received bipartisan kudos as one of many
necessary solutions, but not as a rationale for relaxing or forgoing
other carbon- related regulations, as its proponents have proposed.
CLI estimates that a family of four would receive about $2,000 every
year from such a system, creating some economic security during
upheaval and transformation.¹³ (We’ll discuss dividends in greater
detail in chapter 8.)
The Inequality Turnaround |
All these proposals have merit. They provide a level of economic
security during transformation, they prevent workers being forced
to accept rock- bottom wages, and they give workers the power to say
no to exploitation. But they can also spur creativity, innovation, and
entrepreneurship by creating economic freedom. This is more than
just a safety net, it’s an innovation net.
Building on these proposals, and acknowledging the transforma-
tions to come, and the risks and deep uncertainties that will accom-
pany these changes, we propose providing universal basic income
through a Citizens Fund. Companies that, for instance, produce car-
bon dioxide emissions, contribute to deforestation, use public data,
or mine on land or in the deep sea would pay a fee for exploiting com-
mon resources. Governments would distribute this revenue equally
among all citizens as a dividend.
You might ask, wouldn’t it be fairer to just give the dividend to the
least well- o in society? It is important to bring everyone in society
on this journey or it risks failing, so the solution has to work for the
majority. We know that if the middle classes feel they are benet-
ing from a policy, then they will support it. We know if the middle
classes feel others are beneting from their hard work, then they are
less likely to support a policy. A universal basic dividend also has the
benet of simplicity. It is easy to communicate and this increases its
chance of broad support.
We’ve discussed three broad groups of solutions to drive greater
economic equality: progressive taxes on income and wealth, empow-
erment of workers, and a Citizens Fund or similarly bold fee and div-
idend initiative. There are plenty of other good solutions out there
that we certainly support too. During economic meltdowns, central
banks have ensured companies survive often by buying stocks at
discount rates. What if governments held on to these stocks when
economies recovered? In this way, governments can accumulate a
signicant portfolio and use the future earnings to grow and support
a basic dividend fund or make a lump- sum payment to every young
citizen. And of course, we should reconsider what we tax in the rst
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place
—
but always ensuring that the rich pay their fair share when
considering both income and wealth. In some cases, income tax
can create additional barriers to creating jobs, making people more
expensive to hire than robots. We might instead rebalance priorities
to also tax things that negatively aect employment, for example,
related to new technologies.
Overcoming Barriers to the Equality Levers
One signicant barrier toward greater equality is that any major
change in inequality will require those with power and those with the
most access to power to support the change. On the face of it, this may
seem an insurmountable challenge
—
like a turkey voting for Thanks-
giving. Wealthy donors swell the coers of political parties, ensuring
they have a stranglehold on politicians. This political interference
needs to be addressed, and a fairer playing eld created.
Meanwhile, there are some signs that the tide is changing. The
leading mouthpieces of the business elite and capitalism more
broadly
—
the Economist, the Financial Times, and the World Economic
Forum
—
have consistently shouted to anyone who will listen that:
inequality is deeply destabilizing and must be reined in, climate
and other environmental challenges are systemic challenges linked
to issues like inequality that require new economic solutions, and
that the business and nance community support stronger action
from governments. And groups of super- rich, like the United States’
Patriotic Millionaires, are vocally calling on governments to tax them
more. While these groups remain in the minority, they do show that
there is greater acknowledgment among the rich of the benets to all
of greater equality.
Another perceived barrier is aordability. How can countries
aord the increased nancial burden on governments? Well, much
of what we have discussed is not a question of aordability; it is a
question of distribution and allocation. In the long term, this will be
achieved through fairer, higher taxes on the rich. In the shorter term,
to protect the poorest in societies governments with their own stable
sovereign currencies can spend money into existence. This economic
The Inequality Turnaround |
strategy was successfully used to shore up the economy during the
global nancial crisis and again during the pandemic. There is no rea-
son it cannot be employed a third time to create essential economic
security during a deep transformation.
A nal barrier is the prevailing narrative, which perpetuates the
myth that inequality is a necessary consequence of creating a “better”
world. We must just live with it, the story goes; it’s the “natural” order
in a capitalist society.
We need a new narrative that emphasizes the reality: Extreme
levels of inequality are deeply destructive, even to the wealthy. They
hold societies back. They create division and resentment. They
breed conditions that are dangerous to everyone. They undermine
democracies.
Conversely, democracies are stronger in more equal societies.
The wellbeing and health of people is higher in more equal societies,
as can be seen in the data for parts of Europe, Japan, and elsewhere.
More importantly, we believe that the best way to uphold democratic
values and deliver food, energy, and economic security for all is a pro-
found redistribution of income and wealth.
Figure 4.5. The Inequality Index for ten world regions in 2020 (circle), 2050 in
Too Little Too Late (square), and 2050 in Giant Leap (triangle). The Inequality
Index vertical axis is relative to 1980 = 1. Source: E4A- regional-220401.
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Conclusions
These are big ideas for the Anthropocene. We think these are the
ideas that span the chasm between today and the Earth for All econ-
omy. These are the ideas that provide the safety net of economic
security across the gap during the transformation period. We have
to acknowledge the next decade will be disruptive. Without a safety
net people will dig in their heels, voters will be more likely to turn
toward populist leaders, and citizens will reject a transformation that
may feel like another attempt to line the pockets of the elite. But these
safety nets can also be seen as innovation nets, allowing people a little
more exibility to create the future economy.
In summary, governments should pull hard on these levers: more
progressive taxation, trade re- unionization for workers’ negotiating
strength, and a Citizens Fund with a fee and divided system. These
measures can contribute to reversing the historic decline in worker
share of output, as gure 4.5 demonstrates.
The solutions above address how to shift from the current eco-
nomic paradigm, characterized by growing long- term inequality
and divisions within society, to a new paradigm with greater equality
and more trust within societies and therefore the possibility of more
eective governance. Very simply, they are enablers, a foundation
and a catalyst for all other turnarounds. More equal countries are
more likely to support greater overseas development. They are more
likely to support gender empowerment and investment in health and
education. Or food and energy transformations that enable a regen-
eration of nature’s ecosystems. This is because they are more likely
to support an active, condent government to take real long- term
decisions.
5
The Empowerment
Turnaround
“Achieving Gender Equity”
This turnaround is about gender equity, women’s agency, and cham-
pioning families in a changing world. What do we mean by this?
Improving women’s access to education, economic opportunities,
and dignied jobs, and all life’s chances that these bring, will build
better, stronger, resilient societies. It will also determine the future
trajectory for humanity and our planet this century.
Discrimination against women’s rights to equal education, equal
pay, and nancial security in old age is still pervasive around the
world. In the empowerment turnaround, women gain better access to:
• Education, health services, and lifelong learning.
• Financial independence and leadership positions.
• Economic security through a universal basic dividend, or similar,
and expanded pension schemes.
Together, this will accelerate the shift from discrimination toward
greater gender equity and women’s agency in society, a necessary step
toward truly valuing our collective future.
More broadly, championing families means valuing whatever
family or household structure people want. Families, large or small,
can include childless couples, LGBTQ+ parents, multigenerational
households, and all the diverse forms of human bonds in everyday liv-
ing arrangements. Families need secure incomes, access to universal
healthcare, exible working, adequate pensions for all, and humane
parental leave. These are the essential foundations for a functioning
economy that drives human progress.
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Supporting the empowerment of women can easily undermine
itself if it leaves others behind or fails to understand the intersec-
tionality of discrimination. A more empowered society means the
specic context and needs of all marginalized groups, such as Indige-
nous groups and refugees, are understood and policy interventions
address them. This includes an understanding that men are also dis-
criminated against for reasons of race, sexual orientation, religion,
income, and so on and cannot be left out of gender empowerment
policies. Earth for All Transformational Economics Commissioner
Jane Kabubo- Mariara, president of the African Society for Ecological
Economists, also notes that empowerment of girls at the expense of
boys will backre: “In Kenya for instance, there is a general feeling
that since the Beijing Women’s Conference of 1995, too much arma-
tive action has given the girl child an upper hand over the boy child,
and there are calls to reverse this.” Boys are not to be left out. In a
culture of toxic masculinity, leaving men out without addressing
their anxieties has led to catastrophic gender- based violence and
femicide, notes Club of Rome co- president Dr. Mamphela Ramphele.
Hence this turnaround is toward removing discrimination in order to
rapidly transition toward inclusiveness and gender equity.
Figure 5.1. The empowerment turnaround brings the many benets of gender
equity to societies. A Giant Leap means to immediately create more opportu-
nities and equality for women and girls, from school via work life to old age.
The Empowerment Turnaround |
Public investment in universal education during a phase of tumul-
tuous change must therefore be seen as a top priority. But not just any
“education.” This turnaround also includes rethinking educational
systems to bring them out of a worldview steeped in thinking from
the Industrial Revolution (and largely designed to suit boys) and into
a worldview that values lifelong learning and connectivity between
people and ecosystems. This means equipping all children with the
cognitive tools they will need to navigate this century: critical think-
ing, systems thinking, and adaptive leadership in order that they can
thrive in a world undergoing deep transformation.
Public investment in healthcare for everyone has been shown
time and time again not only to provide the economically optimal
long- term healthcare and wellbeing for the most people but also, as
seen during the pandemic, to help build trust in the role of govern-
ments to protect societies. As economist Mariana Mazzucato points
out, “In 2020, global GDP grew by $2.2 trillion as a result of govern-
ments increasing their military spending; meanwhile, the world still
has not provided the mere $50 billion needed to vaccinate the global
population.”¹ Ultimately this turnaround requires states to become
more active in the economy to help build this future. A simple start-
ing point is to set a goal of universal education and healthcare and
work backward from there to work out how to achieve it.
Equal status in the workforce is an essential goal. Women are
roughly half of the world’s population yet remain on the losing
side when it comes to income and wealth. In a gender- equal world,
women would of course earn roughly 50% of all labor income. But
overall, women’s share of total incomes from work (labor income) was
30% in 1990 and still stands at less than 35% in 2022.² And less than
20% of landowners in the world are women. It’s not just that women
tend to earn less than men. Women are disproportionately stuck in
low- paying jobs and face glass ceilings that keep top jobs just out
of reach, perpetuating the problem. And, last but not least, women
are still too poorly represented in politics, nance, boardrooms, and
executive teams. Gender equity is, therefore, essential for resilient,
healthy societies. If achieved, it brings important secondary benets
to societies... and the planet.
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Population
Possibly the easiest way to start a long, heated debate is to mention
global population growth. Thomas Malthus famously ignited furious
arguments 220 years ago. These arguments were still raging in the
1960s when Paul and Anne Ehrlich added fuel to the re with their
bestseller The Population Bomb. They were onto something. In just
under fty years, the global population had almost doubled from
2billion people to reach 4 billion in around 1975. In 2022, the human
population has almost doubled again (7.9 billion people) and growing
at around 80 million per year.
So, when will the population double again to 16 billion?
It will not. It will not even get close to this number. In short, the
good news is that the “population bomb” that many feared has been
defused. The last forty years has seen a huge change in demo graphics.
The growth rate peaked in the sixties and has been falling steadily
since. Around the world, women are having fewer children. In fact,
the average number of children per woman in 2020 was just above
two. This hides a large divergence across the world. In places like
Japan and South Korea, it is less than two. In low- income countries
and in particular in fragile states, the numbers are much higher.
Despite progress on slowing population growth, if the world con-
tinues on current trends, the UN’s median population projection
sees a peak at around 11 billion people by the end of the century.³ The
additional pressure this would put on the Earth system is signicant,
and it could make or break societies. The UN forecasts this growth
to mainly happen in Africa. In some parts of West Africa, births per
woman are still as high as six or seven children. Currently, 1.3 billion
people live on the continent, and this could double according to the
UN median forecast, which we believe is too high. Our model sup-
ports our view that the world population will peak around some 9bil-
lion people around 2050.
This, in turn, means we can avoid a perfect storm. Birth rates are
connected to many factors including better education, better health,
more jobs for girls and women, higher income per person overall,
The Empowerment Turnaround |
and accessible contraception. All of these lead to more freedom to
choose how many children women desire. Yet recent data estimates
that 222 million women in low- income countries had an unmet need
for family planning. Implementing these solutions in sub- Saharan
Africa and other low- income countries would avert more than 1 mil-
lion infant deaths and 54 million unwanted pregnancies that, if not
prevented, would result in 21 million inadvertent births, 7 million
miscarriages, and 26 million abortions of which 15 million would
be unsafe. The Giant Leap aims to provide these solutions to help
address some of the health and social challenges related to poor fam-
ily planning provision.
Our analysis indicates that the main actions that make up the
empowerment turnaround (education, health, income, pensions) will
lead to smaller families, longer lives, and a global population peaking
possibly below nine billion people by around 2050. Then population
will start a slow and steady decline during the whole second half of
the century. How can this more steady situation come about?
Figure 5.2. As incomes per person have risen (horizontal axis), birth rates
have come down quickly in all regions. Lines show historic 1980–2020 data.
Dotted line shows the indicative guideline for future birth rates toward 2100
as a function of GDPpp. Sources: Earth4All analysis, based on data from Penn
World Tables; UN Population Division.
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Turning It All Around
On rst glance, the key challenges grouped in this turnaround may
seem like a ragbag of unconnected problems: rethinking education,
providing healthcare for all, and reversing overpopulation. But they
are all intrinsically linked to one central idea: gender equity. It is easy
to show empirically that societies that invest in greater gender equity,
particularly promoting equality of economic opportunities and social
mobility, have better outcomes for all.
As this century progresses, societies will increasingly have to
adapt to aging populations. This will require profound restructuring
of economies. On top of this, societies need to adapt to environmental
change and social transformations. Universal education and health-
care are foundational investments for resilience and to instill trust in
governments to bring all citizens on this journey. Put simply, Earth
for All requires more active governments, and this will not happen
unless the majority feel they are beneting from the arrangement.
The good news is that we are not starting from scratch.
Of all the turnarounds we will discuss, gender equity and agency
Figure 5.3. With rising incomes, women choose to have fewer children. In
1980 each woman on average had 4 children, by 2020 it was 2.4, and by 2050
it will be less than 2 in both scenarios. Sources: E4A- global-220501, based on
data from Penn World Tables; UN Population Division.
The Empowerment Turnaround |
has made the most progress in the last fty years. Admittedly, the
world started from a very low baseline, and there are mountains yet
to climb. Nevertheless, ve decades of progress has actually seen the
education gap and even the pay gap between men and women shrink
in most places. And it is becoming more common for parental inheri-
tance to be gender neutral.
But the pace of change is clearly not fast enough to deliver the
Giant Leap scenario. Most signicantly, without a renewed push,
populations may grow to levels that will be profoundly challenging
for all of humanity.
All ve extraordinary turnarounds will in some way improve gen-
der equity and agency, bringing a multitude of additional benets.
For example, availability of food and energy brings greater economic
security, inuencing long- term decisions relating to families. But
the biggest factor when it comes to making dierent choices is not
rocket science: it’s nancial independence. Financial independence
gives the freedom and the power to be able to say no to men, no to de-
meaning labor, no to unwanted marriage. And say yes to education,
training, career, and control over fertility.
Looking around the world, gender equity and valuing family life
is at least part of a recipe for economic success, it seems. The wealthy
Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden
regularly top international polls on wellbeing and happiness. These
are market economies with highly eective states that are commit-
ted to investing in families. The Nordic countries dominate the World
Economic Forum’s Global Social Mobility Index (2020); a child born
in Denmark has a better chance of living the American Dream than a
child born in the United States. Of course, these countries are far from
perfect, as they have very high consumption footprints. But interest
-
ingly, citizens have a high degree of trust in their governments, and
this has allowed these countries to make eective long- term decisions
that benet all; for example, these countries were among the rst to
commit to net- zero carbon emissions. More recently, other countries
have more actively embraced the notion of wellbeing econo mies. An
alliance has formed that includes New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales,
as well as Finland and Iceland, to promote new economic ideas that
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work for the majority. At the time of writing, these countries ercely
advocated for gender balance in government, and all are led by women.
The wellbeing economies are now grabbing the attention of other
countries. The governments of Costa Rica, Canada, and Rwanda are
exploring these approaches to economic prioritization. And in other
developments, some cities have begun to explore economic models
like the “doughnut” championed by economist Kate Raworth. They
are striving to operate their economies within both biogeophysical
planetary boundaries and social boundaries relating to inequality,
health, education, gender, and more.
There is no perfect economic system. But there is now a vibrant
ecosystem of powerful, transformational economic ideas that empir-
ically work in practice. Common to all is commitment and investment
in gender equity and agency.
Transforming Education
One of the most important policy interventions to address population
growth is investment in education. Education is the best escape route
from a life in chains. It provides social mobility, economic security
and opens up a world of opportunity. Educating girls increases their
lifelong earnings and national income, reduces child mortality and
maternal mortality, and helps prevent child marriage. Progress in the
last fty years means that in many places around the world there is
close to gender equity. In some, there are now more girls than boys in
education. However, Africa and South Asia have only just reached the
level that current high- income economies reached in the early part of
last century.
Education is often measured simply by the number of years at
school. This works up to a point. Just as higher incomes are often con-
ated with better lives, despite evidence that life satisfaction stops
growing above a certain income level, we nd education is often con-
ated with schooling. But schools have changed surprisingly little
since the Industrial Revolution. If you google “classroom,” though the
technology has changed over two centuries, the basic idea is intact;
you see a universal archetype of rows of desks facing a teacher.
The Empowerment Turnaround |
Our Schools Were Designed for a Dierent Era
It would seem to be a strange form of empowerment for women and
girls to be inducted into a schooling system that would not look out
of place in patriarchal nineteenth- century France. In the most com-
mon model for schooling, children are still repeatedly contained for
standard dened periods of perhaps an hour and given things to be
memorized, often without an obvious reason to do so. Examinations
usually focus on remembering these things. Much of what is learned
is more of a rite of passage and rapidly forgotten. Beyond literacy
and numeracy, the real learning is in the social interactions between
pupils and learning about the tricky business of growing up. But of
course, in many rural schools, just being there, having a teacher who
is competent and toilets that are functional, can seem like a triumph
of the everyday.
Beyond this lies the dream. The structured ladder of schooling,
often into higher education, oers something genuinely priceless:
social mobility. And this is why it is valued, for with social mobility
comes hopes for a better life not just for the learner but for the whole
family. But, just because the ladder is climbed, and there are now
whiteboards not chalkboards and computers along the back of many
classrooms, this does not signal better educational outcomes. If these
ve turnarounds have illustrated anything, it is that a mindset based
on nineteenth- century reductionist and linear causal relationships,
as if the best way to build knowledge is to assume the world is like
a machine that can be understood from the parts, is a big part of
theproblem.
The overhaul of education everywhere should build on two foun-
dations: critical thinking and complex systems thinking. Arguably the
biggest challenge in the world today is not climate change, biodiversity
loss, or even a pandemic. It is our collective inability to tell fact from
ction. In democratic societies, misinformation and dis information
had been kept at bay, to some extent at least, by checks and balances
within mass media. Social media smashed this model apart. It has
industrialized the spread of misinformation and disinformation in
the world, polarizing societies, reducing trust, and contributing to our
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shocking inability to cooperate around common challenges, or even
agree on the interpretation of basic facts. During the pandemic, mask
wearing, or not, in some countries became a politically polarized issue
where empirical evidence was ignored and ridiculed. This contributed
to many more unnecessary deaths. Failures like this arise from a sys-
temic issue that will require long- term solutions. Education systems
have a duty to step up and teach critical thinking to help the next gen-
eration navigate this information mineeld.
The second foundation for education is complex systems think-
ing. The Earth4All model is built on system dynamics and systems
thinking, tools The Limits to Growth pioneered fty years ago. Most
real- world systems are complex dynamic systems, whether ocean and
climate or urbanization and stock markets. So, an education system
that largely ignores these bedrock features until university is obso-
lete. Knowledge systems used by many Indigenous peoples often
embrace a systems view, a complexity view, and narrative approaches
to learning. These approaches could be incorporated into new curric-
ula based on systems thinking. Both of these foundations are critical
to one of the fundamental skills necessary for navigating the future:
adaptive leadership, or the ability to take decisive, informed action in
rapidly changing circumstances.
Cost Still Bars Millions of Children from Education
The question of education is a systemic economic challenge. In the
1980s, a debt crisis struck many countries in Africa. The Inter national
Monetary Fund and the World Bank stepped in to lend money to
cash- starved states. But this money came with conditions. They in-
sisted that countries control public expenditure. These international
demands translated on the ground to schools introducing user fees.
Paying for access to schooling became widespread. A UNICEF study
from the time found that the poorest 40% of families spent over 10%
of their yearly income just to send two children to primary school in
about half of low- income countries assessed. Recent UNESCO gures
put educational exclusion for all reasons around the world at 258
million children. The global pandemic has certainly increased this
The Empowerment Turnaround |
number, but at the time of writing (2022) no one knows by how much.
Closures in the rst two years of the pandemic lasted roughly twice
as long in low- income countries compared with high- income econo-
mies. And the adverse impact of this shock is magnied because the
share of those at school age in low- income countries is nearly double
that of high- income economies.
The good news is that there are many programs oering alter-
native models of schooling, as Dr. Mamphela Ramphele points out.
They are adapted to dierent cultural and geographic settings and
more suitable to the needs of today and the future, not the needs of
yesterday. One example is the LEAP schools in South Africa, which
ranks as one of the most economically unequal countries on Earth.
The LEAP schools are designed to address inequality by providing
freeeducation to the most marginalized communities. The curricu-
lum is designed to inspire and engage and instills a spirit of personal
agency and connected global citizenship. Around 80% of LEAP
students have degrees or diplomas or are continuing with higher
education. They say, “We are proving the impossible: that no mat-
ter how deprived, anychild in South Africa can graduate from high
school, obtain a tertiary qualication, and look forward to a fullling
future.” Their success has led to the creation of a new LEAP Institute
to facilitate diusion of the model across Southern Africa, notes
Ramphele.
Financial Independence and Leadership
There are many ways to create economic freedom and security be-
yond employment. What if all women in a community received
unconditional monthly cash payments? In trials in India, women re-
ceived a form of a universal basic income. The goal was to explore its
impact on poverty and to support greater empowerment and agency.
Assessments of the trials concluded that the supplemental income
delivered three benets: Nutrition improved in the women’s fami-
lies, meaning that health also improved and children spent more
time in school; The trials had a positive impact on economic growth;
and, the income gave women greater control of household spending
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decisions. It is important to emphasize that this approach did not
involve someone else deciding what a woman needs
—
as in so many
paternalistic welfare programs. Providing a stable source of income,
which is not means- tested or conditional, fosters agency, equity, and
inclusiveness.
The poverty turnaround chapter gave insights about creating self-
sustaining prosperity within poorer nations. Done well, this could
mean more government income could be available for better school-
ing. Education could be made free, accessible, and universal. How-
ever, when it comes to gender, the challenges are more than getting
and keeping a place in school. Cultural expectations and obligations
weigh heavily on girls and women in many parts of the world. Many
are
—
despite education
—
denied access to jobs.
Alongside universal basic income and free education, we strongly
support universal health coverage as a systemic solution toward
greater gender equity. In the twenty- rst century, we consider this
an essential human right and foundation for a functional society. In
places like the UK and Sweden, an eective, free healthcare system
instills trust in governments that the wealth of the nation is shared
more fairly among all citizens. This is true commonwealth.
Because universal health coverage is based on a systems approach
to healthcare provision across all of society, it can invest greater time
and resources in preventative interventions. Investment in preven-
tion is usually a small proportion of healthcare expenditure, notes
Earth for All Transformational Economics Commissioner Andrew
Haines.¹ Examples include education about diets and physical exer-
cise as well as structural changes in society to make healthy choices
more feasible and accessible. These actions can lower the overall
costs of healthcare, and help people make choices that benet their
long- term health. It also provides additional economic security for
those most vulnerable in society.
If the generally positive trends outlined in this chapter accelerate
beyond the historic trends, then we should expect more gender bal-
ance in leadership and power in business and in government. More
actions and regulations are needed to increase the diversity of people
in larger roles in economic and political life too.
The Empowerment Turnaround |
A Secure Pension and Dignied Aging
One of the main reasons the global population will keep rising for
some more decades in both our scenarios is because many of us are
still young (global median age was around thirty in 2020), and many
more people live to a ripe old age. An aging population requires
greater spending on health and long- term care, it shifts the burden
of disease, and it may lead to shortages in the labor force unless the
pension age is raised in tandem with rising life expectancies. Gaps
in pensions, where they exist, cause income insecurity. An aging
population requires greater investment in welfare provision and this
puts pressure on the workers in the economy. But the accompanying
reduction in the number of young will reduce the pressure.
A starting point to address the challenge of an aging population is
to simply increase the retirement age in line with increases in longev-
ity. This can help reduce the nancial burden on the national work-
force. Of course, this brings with it additional challenges: retirement
has always been a natural way for others to advance their careers.
Beyond this, nancial security in old age is essential, which is why
we support an expansion of pension provision especially for women.
The day for big ideas like an expanded pension, a universal basic
income, and a universal basic dividend is nally here. They could have
a profound impact on wellbeing, gender agency and empowerment in
Figure 5.4. Population per region in 2020 and in 2050 for Too Little Too
Late and Giant Leap. Sources: E4A- regional-220427; Penn World Tables;
UN Population Division.
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all countries. This is the moment to take bold decisions to implement
them. They will not only help redistribute income and wealth more
fairly, they will provide essential economic protections through what
we know will be an economically turbulent time of transformation.
These ideas are linked to the extraordinary turnarounds of inequality
and energy, and are further discussed in those chapters (4 and 7) as
well as in the new economic thinking chapter (8).
Conclusions
The starting point to valuing our future is valuing equality, diversity,
and inclusion. The empirical data shows that economies that sup-
port greater equality score highest in international league tables of
wellbeing and human development. These are conditions that also
enhance economic competitiveness. But more importantly, these are
the conditions that enhance resilience to shocks like nancial crises,
pandemics, and food price volatility. They help build social cohesion
because fairness and justice are valued. We will need wartime levels of
social cohesion in the coming decades to deliver the future we want.
A signicant barrier to progress is, of course, culture. Patriarchal
societies have dominated for so long that every single aspect of many
societies’ art, music, commerce, and politics is warped by a mindset
steeped in male hierarchy. It creates a powerful narrative based on a
single idea: “This is the natural order of people.” Bit by bit, the patri-
archal hierarchy is being broken down. This will take generations to
disappear entirely.
Gender equity brings a profound additional benet. In the last
fty years, the once exponential curve of population growth that
dominated from 1800 to 1975 has bent down. This is an astounding
achievement of economic development. But huge challenges remain
ahead of us, the most signicant being to provide a good life for all
within planetary boundaries. This can best be achieved by ensuring
that the world population stabilizes at about 9 billion around 2050,
and is allowed to decline toward 2100 because families choose to have
fewer children when they see a prosperous future. This is the ambi-
tion of the Giant Leap scenario.
6
The Food Turnaround
Making the Food System Healthy
for People and Planet
The last fty years has witnessed an astonishing turnaround in food
security. Starting in the 1970s, the world has seen a dramatic fall in
the number of deaths from famine even as the global population
doubled. Of course, far too many people have suered and died, and
far too many still lack food security, but it is still important to recog-
nize steady progress.
However, progress has come at a cost. The way we farm, transport,
and consume food aects more planetary boundaries than anything
else. The agriculture sector is one of the biggest sources of green-
house gas emissions. It is the largest driver of deforestation and bio-
diversity loss, by far the world’s largest sector consuming freshwater,
and excess fertilizers leak into air and streams, lakes, and oceans
—
causing vast dead zones and even more global warming.
So, agriculture is certainly not working for the planet, that is clear.
But it is not working for people either. We have increasingly moved
further away from local production for local consumption and become
alarmingly dependent on a few major food- producing countries.
Nearly one in ten people (9%) worldwide remain severely food
insecure with 821 million people undernourished. On the ipside,
an astonishing two billion people, one quarter of the planet, are
now overweight or obese.¹ In 2017, 8% of deaths worldwide were
attributed to obesity.²
The extraordinary food turnaround focuses on three groups of
solutions.
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The way we farm food and other commodities needs rapid and exten-
sive reform. Regenerative agriculture and sustainable intensication
can make farming more ecient, increase yield, and reduce inputs of
chemicals that are harmful. These are dierent approaches, but what
is called “sustainable intensication” can be a useful bridge to more
regenerative practices. Farms can do far more with much less. Land
expansion must stop and degraded land regenerated to protect price-
less biodiversity and carbon sinks. Farms themselves must become
vast stores of carbon, not vast emitters. And out on the high seas,
sh stock collapse must be avoided, while coastal aquaculture proj-
ects must contain their pollution and their encroachment on marine
habitats.
The well- fed must adopt healthy, lower- impact diets, while the mal-
nourished and undernourished must be lifted out of their predicament
with regeneratively grown, healthier foods. People everywhere need
access to safe, nutritious food that is produced within the planetary
boundaries.
Figure 6.1. The food turnaround: Regenerative agriculture and sustainable
intensication start creating healthier soils and ecosystems, while consumers
shift from grain- fed red meat to nourishing, healthier diets and the industry
tackles wastefulness across the entire food system.
The Food Turnaround |
We must tackle food waste along the entire food chain from production,
distribution, and shops to consumers’ tables and bins. About one third of
all food is wasted between the eld or shing net and the fork. Elimi-
nating just 25% of that would free up enough food to feed all people
on Earth.
This essential transformation to a new food system paradigm will
be one of the most dramatic changes in the history of our species.
Consuming Earth’s Biosphere
In the future, as population grows, we need to tread very, very care-
fully. Humanity is slicing, dicing, and simplifying Earth’s biosphere
—
our life support system
—
in the service of human food production
and material consumption. By mass, about 96% of all mammals on
Earth are either humans (36%) or our livestock (60%), mainly cattle
and pigs. Just 4% of mammals are now wild.³ Or put another way, our
livestock outweigh wild mammals 15 to 1.
The scale of appropriation and consumption requires vast tracts
of land. On Earth, glaciers and ice sheets make up about 10% of the
land surface. About 19% is taken up by barren lands
—
exposed rock,
desert, and salt ats. The remaining land (71%) is described as habit-
able. Humanity has commandeered about half of this habitable land
for farming, and we have modied or interfered with much of the
rest in some way. For livestock production alone, we use an area of
land equivalent to North and South America combined. In the ocean,
around 90% of sh stocks are either overexploited or fully exploited.
A rapidly growing aquaculture sector is taking up more coastal space
each year. When it comes to the air, about 70% of birds by mass are
farmed poultry, and the rest wild. We live on a planet of chickens.
But the impact of food production and deforestation goes beyond
the swallowing up of life on Earth. About one quarter of all green-
house gas emissions comes from land use. Agriculture is responsi-
ble for about 70% of all water withdrawals. The nal major impact is
pollution: the cause of growing aquatic dead zones is our overuse of
fertilizers. Agriculture is linked directly to 78% of eutrophication in
lakes, rivers, seas, and the ocean.
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It turns out the scale of impact is neither necessary nor does it par-
ticularly serve up healthy diets.
Today’s food crisis is only half the story. Tomorrow we face even
more challenges. Given the current food system, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization estimates that the world needs to produce
about 50% more food by 2050 to feed a population that is growing
in size and wealth. While some dispute that additional food pro-
duction is this high, demand will undoubtedly increase in the next
three decades while the food system will increasingly be hit by more
and more extremes. It is virtually certain that wet areas on Earth will
get wetter and dry areas drier this century. This means more oods
in regions prone to ooding and more droughts in drought- prone
regions. Extreme heat will increasingly damage plants. All of this
will be increasingly disastrous for food production. Historically, civi-
lizations thrive or fade, live or die, depending upon how their leaders
manage scarce water resources for food production.
The food system is not just unsustainable, it is also highly fragile,
dependent on tight global trade in monoculture crops, fertilizers, and
fossil energy. Staple food crops
—
like grain, meat, and oil
—
are traded
globally, with many countries heavily dependent on imports from a
few breadbaskets like Russia, Ukraine, Australia, Argentina, and the
United States. Phosphorus fertilizers often come from Morocco (West
Sahara), the United States, and China. Nitrogen fertilizers often come
from countries rich in natural gas, like Russia and Ukraine. Oil to run
farm equipment is sourced from a few nations. This creates supply
chain bottlenecks if these countries are hit by disruptions such as
harvest failures or war.
This broken system impacts food prices, too. In 2022, global food
prices reached their highest ever level following the Russian inva-
sion of Ukraine. Cereal prices alone rose 17% in one month. Global
crop and economic models project that cereal price could increase by
as much as 29% by 2050 as a result of climate change unless there
are immediate and deep cuts in emissions. But more than that,
extreme events like prolonged droughts have cascading impacts.
The Food Turnaround |
Societal unrest is tightly connected to the price of bread and other
foods. During the Arab Spring of 2010 and 2011, high food prices
were an important factor in driving people onto the streets to protest
and eventually topple governments across the region. At that time,
droughts in Russia, Ukraine, China, and Argentina severely cut wheat
harvests while torrential rains in Canada, Brazil, and Australia had a
similar eect. Grain prices skyrocketed.
The link between societal tension and food prices is particularly
acute in low- income countries. When prices of many commodities,
like oil, go up, people use less, but food consumption is “income
inelastic.” Or, to cut the jargon, people have to eat regardless of how
much money they earn. According to recent research, in low- income
countries, increases in international food prices lead to a signicant
deterioration of democratic institutions and a signicant increase
in the incidence of anti- government demonstrations, riots, and civil
conict. The slogan on the streets of Cairo during the Arab Spring
uprising in 2011 was “Bread, Freedom, Dignity,” in that order. Of
course, another risk
—
and legitimate coping strategy in times of
rising social tensions, poor economic opportunities, and conict
—
is
migration. When this happens, migration can have spillover eects
contributing to rising social tensions and political unrest elsewhere.
The multiple breadbasket failures seen in 2010 were a shock. Was
this event one of a kind or can we expect more as Earth heats up? Sci-
ence is getting a better handle on the risks related to breadbasket fail-
ures and what this might mean for the future. The jet stream is a band
of fast- moving air that swirls around the northern hemisphere above
the most important grain producing areas of Asia, North America,
and Europe. It is slowing down and beginning to act weirdly as the
planet warms up. Weather systems that are pulled along beneath
the jet stream can stall, intensifying weather conditions. Where
once a high- pressure weather system might sweep into Europe
bringing warm weather for a few days, now these high- pressure sys-
tems sometimes stick around for weeks bringing devastating heat-
waves. But more than that, these weather systems
—
bringing rain or
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drought
—
can stall in several regions simultaneously. The failure of
multiple breadbaskets across the world is now one of the biggest risks
facing food production and keeps climate scientists awake at night.
We face a triple challenge in agriculture: to produce more healthy
food, without destroying the planet, while building resilient produc-
tion systems that are able to withstand rising shocks. As we look out
over the horizon, we know demand for food is driven by both popu-
lation growth and income growth. We know that we are increasingly
dependent on only a few food- producing countries. We know income
also drives dietary preference toward the all- consuming Western
diet. We know agriculture is limited by the inevitable scarcity of land,
water access, and poor soil quality. And we know climate change will
aect yields and the spread of diseases aecting crops and livestock.
Throw in several black swans long the way
—
high- impact shocks that
are dicult to predict
—
and this reinforces the essential need for a
food- system turnaround to manage for fragility, volatility, and risk
and to rebuild for resilience, price stability, and wellbeing. While
there are no simple solutions, we believe the following three pro-
posals are the most signicant levers to drive large- scale change. We
are not naive enough to think these are the only levers, but when it
comes to human wellbeing, respect for planetary boundaries, and
reducing social tension, these give the most bang for the buck.
Solution : Revolutionize the Way We Farm
The legendary biologist E.O. Wilson proposed using no more than
half of Earth for human needs saying, “The Half- Earth proposal oers
a rst, emergency solution commensurate with the magnitude of the
problem: By setting aside half the planet in reserve, we can save the
living part of the environment and achieve the stabilization required
for our own survival.” The Half Earth proposal is supported by the
science of planetary boundaries. Having transformed and exploited
approximately 50% of natural ecosystems on land, we have trans-
gressed the boundaries on land system change (forests), chemical
pollution, biodiversity loss, and fertilizers.
The only way back into a safe operating space is to stop agricul-
tural expansion into remaining forests and wetlands and to use water
The Food Turnaround |
and nutrients more eciently. We have arrived at the red light. This
has major implications for how societies farm in the future, how we
make our food system resilient, and ultimately how we feed more
people without growing our environmental footprint.
We propose six principles for a new era in food production in the
Anthropocene. First and foremost, no more expansion of agricultural
lands into forests, wetlands, or other ecosystems. We must grow more
food on less land and regenerate degraded land. Second, farms must
become stores of carbon, not vast emitters
—
within the next decade
or so. Third, our farms must enhance the rich diversity of life. Fourth,
the future of our civilization depends on the health of our soil. We
must restore our soils to good health. Fifth, we must manage our
ocean and freshwater resources for resilience. And sixth, we must
support more local production for local consumption where possible.
Meeting these principles means revolutionizing the failing food
system. The modern farming system is really a high “through- ow”
system. Fertilizers, other chemicals, and water ow through the
system driven by energy from fossil fuels and pumping waste onto
land and into waterways and the atmosphere. The system needs to
move from linear to circular, from destructive to regenerative. The
good news is that many of the solutions to feed a population of 9 bil-
lion people exist already and are found within farming approaches
gaining popularity in recent years. But we must admit, of all the turn-
arounds, the future of the food system has generated the strongest
debates. How much emphasis should be placed on organic farming or
lab- based alternatives to beef? And, how do we minimize the harmful
impacts of articial fertilizers and other manmade chemicals but also
reap their benets? This is one reason we suggest creating a Food Sys-
tem Stability Board at the end of this chapter.
Key among those approaches are regenerative agriculture and sus-
tainable intensication. Both are lighter on the planet than conven-
tional agriculture. Sustainable intensication focuses on maximizing
crop production while improving ecosystem protection, employing
modern technologies, and adopting circular waste- reducing practices.
“Regenerative agriculture” is an umbrella term for a range of agricul-
tural systems that place emphasis on building soil health, carbon
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stores, and crop diversity while restoring ecosystems. Hunter Lovins,
president of Natural Capital Solutions, says regenerative agriculture
delivers increased soil health, increased farmer and community
health, greater economic resilience, better water conservation, dra-
matically more carbon in the soil, and increased biodiversity.
Regenerative farmers use a range of techniques, including cover
crops, crop rotation, and composting to build healthy living soil. To
protect the valuable carbon in soils, and to look after fungal networks,
microorganisms, worms, and other soil builders that lie beneath the
surface, they do little or no tilling. Rather than plowing elds, they
drill seeds into the soil.
More farmers are adopting these ideas. After several years of freak
storms and crop failures, North Dakota farmer Gabe Brown saved his
farm using regenerative agriculture. He raised the concentration of
carbon in his soil from a little under 2% organic matter per acre to
over 11%.¹ Over two decades, he helped rein in climate change and
increase yield at the same time.
Regenerative farmers also use grazing practices that regenerate
ecosystems. They do this by creating an environment where live-
stock mimic the role of wild ungulates on the landscape. Some farm-
ers plant trees on agricultural lands, which brings many benets: it
reduces erosion, it helps recharge groundwater, and provides shade
for livestock while also producing fruit, nuts, or timber.
These techniques improve soil health, and healthy soil retains
large stores of carbon.¹¹ Regenerative agriculture done right can also
increase biodiversity, cycle nutrients through the ecosystem, lter
water, and provide other environmental benets. And grass- fed live-
stock oers an alternative to the factory- farmed, grain- fed livestock
operations whose eects on the environment, health, and animal-
welfare are well- known.
Regenerative farming also increases food resilience. By increas-
ing soil fertility, using local seed varieties adapted to local conditions,
farmers can achieve greater yields with fewer inputs, and they become
less susceptible to crop failures as climatic variations intensify.
The Food Turnaround |
In 2015, Vijay Kumar, a retired civil servant from the agricultural
department, began working with smallholder farmers in India to
explore how they could become more resilient and more protable.
He now works with millions of farmers in nine Indian states to help
them move to regenerative practices, what he calls Indian Commu-
nity Managed Natural Farming. He is helping smallholders adopt
principles such as: minimal disturbance of the soil, biomass covering
the soil, and living root always in the soil. One big win for Commu-
nity Managed Natural Farming is increased soil moisture. Farmers
can harvest crops year- round, potentially tripling their income, while
sequestering large amounts of carbon.¹²
In Africa, Million Belay calls a similar approach agroecology.
Across the continent, Belay believes it can help poor farmers double
their productivity, bring real food security, and help store carbon to
areas previously vulnerable to famine.
Achieving the food turnaround at the requisite pace and scale will
require a mix of agricultural approaches and the adoption of sen-
sible technologies. Sustainable intensication allows agricultural
yields to increase while minimizing adverse environmental impact
and without the conversion of additional nonagricultural land. Sus-
tainable intensication does not promote any particular method of
agricultural production.¹³ The aims can be achieved using pesticides
or not, or using articial fertilizers or not.¹ On this last point, one
thing is clear: in high- income countries overuse of articial fertiliz-
ers is destroying ecosystems and must be reduced. However, in low-
income countries, the problem is low yields, soil health, and a lack
of adequate fertilizers. More fertilizer is needed desperately, at least
until there is food security and the soils are fully regenerated, but
new approaches to farming can substantially reduce fertilizer input.
So reducing fertilizer use in high- income nations but increasing it in
lower- income nations can increase food production without increas-
ing the footprint. A true win- win. Sustainable intensication also
prioritizes climate- resilient techniques, ever important in a future
marked by drought and deluge.
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Technologies from satellites and drones to moisture sensors and
robots are revolutionizing farming. Fertilizers can be targeted with
pinpoint accuracy using satellites to provide real- time data to farmers
reducing runo into streams and rivers. Irrigation can be more care-
fully monitored and managed in order to optimize the water used on
the farm. One of the technologies with the quickest returns has been
simply to add GPS to tractors so farmers always know where they have
covered and where there are gaps. And in cities and towns, vertical
farming can deliver higher productivity in smaller areas, with shorter
growing times and less water. The priority, then, is to direct this tech-
nological revolution to support and promote healthy, sustainable
diets with lower food footprints, and make this aordable for the mil-
lions of small farms worldwide.
In the Earth4All model, we assume these sustainable and regen-
erative approaches to farming are adopted more broadly decade by
decade, leading to yield increases and other benets related to soil
health and biodiversity. This can be achieved through changes to
agricultural policies, for example, subsidies to promote these farm-
ing approaches, education to drive behavioral change among farmers
and the agricultural industry more generally, and exponential scaling
of new technologies and knowledge exchange as the prices drop.
The Earth4All model allows you to turn a dial to increase the share
of agricultural land that has shifted from conventional to regenera-
tive practices with near- zero use of fossil fertilizers. Another dial
inuences the speed of the transition
—
how many years it takes to get
there. To make Giant Leap, 80% of agricultural land must be trans-
formed by 2050, up from a low baseline in 2020. In the Too Little Too
Late scenario, just 10% shifts by 2100.
Solution : Change Our Diets
The Western diet
—
packed full of industrially grown processed
meats, saturated fats, salt, corn- derived fructose syrup, rened
grains, washed down with large volumes of alcohol
—
is taking over
the world. Low on fruit and vegetables, this is both cheap and heavily
marketed as aspirational, the diet of the middle classes, and viewed
The Food Turnaround |
as a symbol of success and wealth. With its origins in the Industrial
Revo lution, the Western diet is associated with obesity, diabetes, can
-
cer, and cardiovascular diseases.
The goal, then, is to shift away from this toxic diet toward richer,
more varied diets that reduce risk of these diseases, and reduce the
risk of destabilizing the planet. These changes must also be accom-
panied by fairer distribution that makes healthy food aordable and
accessible to those living in urban food deserts and other underserved
regions.
Our analyses show there is space on Earth, without expanding
agricultural land any further, to feed at least nine billion people a
healthy, nutritious diet. Indeed, our work builds on the seminal analy-
sis conducted by the EAT- Lancet Commission on healthy diets from
sustainable food systems. Ultimately, this means reining in over-
consumption of industrially produced meat and dairy in some places,
but it does not mean forcing a vegan or vegetarian diet on anyone.
A shift from the typical Western diet to a planetary health diet,
notes Andrew Haines, means far more than just reduced industrially
produced meat consumption. It involves a large increase in consump-
tion of fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Many health bene-
ts arise from these changes. With them, some ten million premature
deaths could be prevented annually by 2040.¹ Much more impor-
tantly, poor nutrition still aects hundreds of millions of people, so
a planetary health diet must focus on underconsumption as much as
overconsumption.
The ocean is another important source of healthy food. Currently,
3 billion people get 20% of their animal protein from seafood. Sus-
tainable aquatic food has the potential to prevent 166 million people
from suering micronutrient deciencies. Global demand for sea-
food will roughly double by 2050, according to the 2021 Blue Food
Assessment published in the journal Nature.¹ This demand will be
met primarily through increased aquaculture production rather than
by capture sheries. But aquaculture must use sustainable practices.
Innovation will likely play an important role in the transition
toward a planetary health diet. Plant- based alternatives to milk are
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growing in popularity and increasingly marketed and perceived as
“aspirational” foods. So too are plant- based and “lab- grown” alter-
natives to beef and chicken. We are also heading for an innovation
revolution in the eld of “precision fermentation and cellular agri-
Figure 6.2. The food turnaround results in stable cropland and less fertilizer
use, while feeding the world sucient foods. In Giant Leap, agriculture no
longer expands into natural areas, allowing forests to grow back. As sustain-
able intensication, switching diets to less grain- fed red meat and regenera-
tive agriculture is scaled, the use of fossil fertilizer drops rapidly in Giant Leap.
The Food Turnaround |
culture”
—
in which microorganisms directly produce the kind of
proteins we would typically get via a cow, sh, or bird. Precision fer-
mentation uses the large and mostly untapped variety of yeasts, fungi,
mycelium, and microalgae as hosts to produce ingredients identical
to animal proteins, for example egg whites or dairy. The 2022 report
from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that
emerging food technologies such as cellular fermentation, cultured
meat, plant- based alternatives to animal- based food products, and
controlled environment agriculture can bring substantial reductions
in greenhouse gas emissions from food production. Of course, we
must be careful not to replace one problem with another. As always,
we need to look at the entire food system and adopt solutions that
are holistic while ensuring that we feed as many people as possible
nutritious food within planetary boundaries.
This diversity of new ideas and innovations is good as it pushes
people to think more broadly about what they eat and why they eat
it. Undoubtedly, the rise of these new industries in some places is a
sign that a signicant transformation is beginning. The Earth4All
model allows us to test the eect of dierent assumptions concern-
ing the future fraction of climate- neutral meats, whether grass- fed or
“new meats.” To achieve a Giant Leap, we must assume that 50% of
all red meat is climate neutral by 2050. In Too Little Too Late, we see
that only 10% has shifted by 2100, meaning that new meat remains a
pretty marginal product in TLTL. The consequences for cropland and
fertilizer use are shown in gure 6.2.
Solution : Eliminate Food Loss and Waste
With a growing population, potentially reaching nine or ten billion
people, it makes sense to worry about our scale of food production
and use. Can Earth provide enough food for an additional one to
two billion people given that hundreds of millions of people still go
hungry each year? Approximately one third of all food is either lost or
wasted, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Orga-
nization, which translates to some 5% of global greenhouse gas emis-
sions. This mountain of rotting food is set to keep growing. Absent
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signicant policies or behavioral change, food waste is predicted to
double by 2050.¹
When it comes to solutions for the food turnaround, reducing
loss and waste is arguably the lowest of low- hanging fruit (pardon
the pun). And it is clear where the problem lies. In wealthy countries,
fussy consumers buy more than they need and discard anything with
the slightest imperfection. Retailers both train consumers to over-
consume and then jump to the tune of the consumers’ unsustainable
and often arbitrary demands. Regulations and education can help
reduce waste.
Growing more food than is consumed means that we are using
land that could instead sustain greater biodiversity. Because we are,
in most cases, saturating that land with chemicals along the way,
we are also depleting soil and polluting land and waterways, all for
naught. So reducing true waste is critical. But the unused food that
remains should be directed away from landlls and used to address
hunger, most importantly. It can also be used to create soil- building
compost, supplement animal feed, or create energy through biogas
operations. While not the highest priority for food waste, biogas can
be a signicant source of energy. Anaerobic digesters, which use bac-
teria to break down organic matter in oxygen- free reactors, can power
800 to 1,400 homes a year by turning 100 tons of food waste per day
into biogas.¹
In low- income countries, food waste is often unintentional and
caused by poor storage conditions or transportation diculties. This
can be improved by better infrastructure to store, process, transport,
and distribute food. New food enterprises can work with excesses
in crops that ripen all at once
—
by turning fresh mangoes into dried
mango chips, for instance. And recapturing nutrients by techniques
such as biogas and composting at scale can reduce runo and get
nutrients recycled to the soil. But food wasted in one corner of the
world can’t really be diverted to feed the hungry in another.
Giant Leap calls for reducing food waste by 30% by 2050. Slow the
pace down to just a 10% reduction by 2100, and you get the Too Little
Too Late scenario.
The Food Turnaround |
Barriers
There are many barriers to building a resilient farming system. Sim-
ple inertia is one. Farmers are, rightly, skeptical of change. Change
managed badly can be disastrous for their income. But change is
essential. Take the delicious almond, for example. The vast majority
of the world’s supply is grown in sunny California, bringing farmers
$11 billion in revenue. But almonds are thirsty, and California is run-
ning dry; it is enduring the worst megadrought in at least 1,200 years.
It is likely to get worse not better in the coming decades. Precision
irrigation will help, but ultimately farmers need to adapt their crops
to a more suitable climate. This can be a slow process as dumping
generations of wisdom is a painful business.
A second barrier is consumer behavior, which may be the biggest
barrier of all. As income grows, diets change. The aspirational diet is
the Western diet. Consumer demand can be managed through edu-
cation and awareness campaigns; after all, most people want to eat
a healthy diet. Governments can also inuence consumer behavior
through price (taxing sugar has reduced intake of zzy drinks), nudg-
ing choices, and other regulations. But in democracies at least, govern-
ments are reluctant to tell citizens what they should or should not eat.
Mandating a sustainable healthy diet seems an unlikely proposition.
Cost is a third barrier. Transitioning from conventional to regen-
erative or sustainable operations can be expensive. Farmers need
help nancing the transformation. A starting point is to incentivize
loans for resilient farming at preferential rates and remove nonsen-
sical subsidies that drive environmental degradation and pollution.
In some parts of the world, smallholders face additional economic
challenges brought on by agricultural monopolies that control seed
stock or otherwise impoverish local farmers and destabilize farming
communities.
As in all the other turnarounds, progress depends on fundamental
changes in our political system that drives our economic operating
system. The food turnaround requires introducing nancial models
that drive investments into the food sector and rewards those stew-
arding agricultural land, enhancing ecosystems, and producing safe
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and healthy food. This in turn will shift employment from conven-
tional to green activities. With regenerative agriculture, for example,
capturing carbon in soil instead of emitting it creates new business
opportunities. Farmers given nancial support to monetize carbon
sequestration and the other ecosystem services will deliver value for
Figure 6.3. Regional crop production (top chart) and food footprint per person
in 2020 and 2050 in Too Little Too Late and 2050 in Giant Leap (bottom chart).
In this context, we dene the food footprint (bottom chart) as the kilograms of
nitrogen fertilizer per person per year on the vertical axis.
The Food Turnaround |
societies. At present, governments around the world subsidize indus-
trial agriculture to the tune of a million dollars a minute. The money
is there. It just needs to be redirected.
We all have to eat. But we should pay more for food. So- called
cheap food comes at the cost of impoverished communities, chronic
disease, and collapsing ecosystems. The issues around justice and
inequality must be addressed. Government support should ensure
aordable access to healthy diets. New legislation can ensure that
even low- income families can aord good food. It can also force
industrialized food producers to internalize more of the costs they
have pushed o onto society
—
such as the costs of dealing with their
pollution, their waste, and the health issues that their marketing
exacerbates. That, in turn, will incentivize better corporate behavior.
A nal barrier to overcome is the tangled web of regulations that
incentivize vast monocultures, deforestation, and waste. To speed
the transformation, governments need to revolutionize farming
subsidies and tax incentives to promote sustainable, regenerative
farming techniques that build on locally suitable seeds and varieties
and encourage locally grown, low- carbon healthy food. Governments
must also act to remove market barriers for innovative food technolo-
gies such as precision fermentation and cellular agriculture to allow
new animal proteins to reach markets quickly and safely. While they
are doing it, governments need to protect workers in the food indus-
try and agriculture during the turnaround. A bare minimum is to
regulate food companies to implement workers’ rights across supply
chains.¹ Governments must also loosen the control that agricultural
monopolies have over the world’s food supply, especially where it
impedes farmers’ rights to grow and sell food. The real challenge will
be to gather democratic support for such action.
Conclusions
The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization says “Business as Usual
is no longer an option.” The food system is on a catastrophic pathway.
Left unchecked, the Western diet will take over the world. At some
point this century, we risk crossing a tipping point where over half
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the population on Earth is overweight or obese, while famine plagues
other regions. The beneciaries of this are the transnational corpo-
rations fattening us up. But corporations can benet from providing
healthy diets that do not cost the Earth.
The only way to lock in a turnaround of the food system is through
active governments willing to build an economic system that places
a value on sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices. With
that will come greater national food security. The turnaround is
a win- win for people and planet. But at a minimum, it will require
eliminating perverse subsidies, reallocating these funds to regenera-
tive agriculture, and tightening regulation to ban the most damaging
products. It will also require making dicult decisions under great
uncertainty.
For these reasons
—
the uncertainty, the risks to global food secu-
rity, the need for active governments, and the desire for greater
cooperation
—
we propose that governments consider creating a
Food System Stability Board charged with helping to ensure food
system resilience as the climate crisis deepens, pandemics become
more frequent, and conicts grow. The board could ensure short-
term solutions during crises while steering long- term food system
transformation. The G20 group of countries created the Financial
Stability Board in the aftermath of the global nancial crisis. There
are indications that this has had some success in reducing systemic
risk; the nancial system was in a better place to deal with the shock
to follow
—
the COVID- 19 pandemic. A Food System Stability Board,
overseen by the G20 or another international forum, would build on
the notion of collective stability for the food system, developing more
sustainable policies and regulations relating to trade, carbon storage,
healthy diets, and price shocks.
The food system is beginning to transform. The signs are every-
where. Nearly one third of farms worldwide have crossed a redesign
threshold and are using at least some farming techniques that fulll
our principles, including, for example, integrated pest management,
conservation agriculture, integrated crop and biodiversity systems,
agroforestry, irrigation management, and small or patch systems.
The Food Turnaround |
These turnarounds are happening on an estimated tenth of all agri-
cultural land worldwide.² Perhaps this is an early sign of a tipping
point to a more circular regenerative farming system. But this of
course does not help dent food waste or incentivize healthy diets,
and rst of all, we need to ensure scale in order to drastically reduce
hunger in many parts of the world
—
including the growing levels in
high- income countries.
In summary, our challenge is to turn the global food system
around so that it can securely provide nourishing and delicious foods
for around nine billion people within planetary boundaries. This is
genuinely possible.²¹ But it means not taking any additional land or
seascapes and safeguarding remaining wildlife. It also means reduc-
ing freshwater use and cutting the overuse of nitrogen and phospho-
rus fertilizers in rich countries, while shifting toward net positive
carbon dioxide emissions without further increase in other green-
house gases.²² Ultimately, this means treating
—
and compensating
—
our farmers as biosphere stewards.
7
The Energy Turnaround
“Electrifying Everything”
People often express shocked disbelief that societies are failing to
remove fossil fuels from the global economy at the speed and scale
required. It is worth remembering that what is being demanded is a
complete restructuring of the foundation of all industrial economies.
Fossil fuels were at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and remain
the cornerstone for economic growth away from poverty. Calls for
action are entirely correct, but transformation was always going to
be dicult. On top of that, the fossil fuel industry’s unique position
in society also means that it has become the most powerful and inu-
ential industry on Earth.
So, the fth and nal turnaround is a complete restructuring of a
foundation of our economies: energy. The Paris Agreement’s goal to
stay well below 2°C requires approximately halving greenhouse gas
emissions (at the global level) every decade from 2020, to reach close
to zero in the 2050s, a trajectory called the Carbon Law¹
—
not because
it is mandatory (the Paris Agreement remains voluntary) but because
it is required.
Within the current economic paradigm, the most important step is
to increase eciency. Like food, much of our energy is simply wasted.
We throw it away. But analysis shows that global energy demand in
2050 could be up to 40% lower than today if all energy eciencies are
implemented. This could be achieved while giving all societies ample
access to energy.²
Pushing into a new economic paradigm, a good rule of thumb is to
electrify everything while simultaneously rapidly scaling renewable
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energy and energy storage to provide energy abundance. Anything
that once needed fossil fuels to be burned needs to go. Gone are belch-
ing power stations, noisy polluting internal combustion engines, and
inecient boilers and heaters. In their place come roofs and elds of
solar power and twirling, clean wind turbines. Electric vehicles and
mass transport systems. And energy- storage solutions that range
from batteries to pumped hydro, which uses renewable energy to
pump water into reservoirs to ensure ample backup energy.
An important part of the transformation will be a shift to more con-
scious production, and to consuming less. We not only need electric
vehicles, we need smaller vehicles, and fewer vehicles on the roads.
Along this journey, the fossil fuel industry will put up a ght. This is
why transformation will not happen without active states creating the
right economic conditions for an energy upgrade. Immediate steps are
to remove fossil fuel subsidies, remove market barriers for renewable
energy, and make it easy for families, communities, and companies to
Figure 7.1. The energy turnaround starts with systemic eciency along the
entire existing energy systems. At the same time, heat, industrial processes,
and transport transition to renewable electricity and energy carriers derived
from it, such as green hydrogen. Large investments in abundant renewables
with storage keep making power cheaper due to zero marginal costs, i.e.,
“freesun.”
The Energy Turnaround |
share and trade clean energy. We also need an overall shift to circular
manufacturing practices throughout our economy not only to recycle
materials but also to reduce the amount of materials used in products
across the board.
The good news is that the world is already on the cusp of the most
profound and rapid transformation of the global energy system in
history. Clean power technologies are growing exponentially every-
where. Incredibly, in 2021, wind and solar accounted for 10% of all
electricity production in the world; it was just 5% in 2016. Doubling at
this pace means wind and solar could account for half of all electricity
supply in the early 2030s. The key issues are whether the turnaround
will be rapid enough and whether it will be fair.
Challenges
The rst major challenge for the energy turnaround is fairness. Car-
bon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels still hover around thirty- ve
billion tons per year. But we only get the full story when we break this
number down.
Rich countries make up just a small fraction of the global popula-
tion yet have been responsible for about 85% of excess global carbon
dioxide emissions.³ While some have argued that the world did not
know the risks, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, over half
of all carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement have
been emitted since 1990. That is well after the rst alarm bells were
sounded by scientists in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Concern was
so high by 1988 that the rst Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change was established, and in 1994, the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change entered into force.
The “net- zero commitments” for 2050 that are currently being
made by rich countries do not account for this truly vast disparity in
historical emissions, nor do they account for the fact that rich econo-
mies have essentially exported their emissions to countries like China
and Vietnam that now produce the majority of their consumer goods.
Not only is this unfair and unjust, it also means that the carbon emis-
sions of a small group of rich countries will continue to grow overseas
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even as they scale down their emissions toward zero over the next
thirty years.
There will be no energy turnaround toward a healthy planet
—
“just” or otherwise
—
if the legitimate concerns of low- income coun-
tries are not taken into account. This means changing the ow of
investment. But the global nancial system is already rigged in favor
of high- income countries, wealthy elites, and fossil fuel companies.
As articulated in the poverty turnaround chapter, the global nan-
cial system needs transformation to support the energy turnaround
in low- income and middle- income countries. This means de- risking
investments in low- income and emerging markets that are on the
receiving end of unfairly low credit ratings that generate sky- high
interest rates on borrowing.
Fairness is also important in other ways. Men tend to have a bigger
carbon footprint than women, for example. Ethnicity is also a factor.
In the United States, Caucasian neighborhoods tend to have higher
carbon footprints than African- American neighborhoods. And car-
bon footprints tend to be tightly connected to income. The poorest
people in rich countries have relatively small carbon footprints, and
the billionaires in lower- income countries have very high footprints.
Globally, the richest 10% have carbon footprints equivalent to the
poorest 50%. The luxury carbon consumption of the ultrarich 1%
accounts for 15% of global emissions. And this luxury carbon con-
sumption is marketed as an aspirational symbol of success, vitality,
and wellbeing. Without changing course, the miniscule carbon bud-
get left for humanity’s remaining time on Earth risks being exhausted
out of the back end of private jets.
On top of these inequities, the fossil fuel industry has an unfair
advantage. According to the International Monetary Fund, the burn-
ing of coal, oil, and gas is subsidized to the tune of $5.9 trillion annu-
ally when accounting for both direct and indirect costs, including the
health costs of air pollution and the costs of climate change. We need
to tilt the playing eld to favor cleaner alternatives. Dealing with all
these challenges will require active governments willing to reshape
markets (starting with removing perverse subsidies and pricing car-
bon fairly) and make long- term energy plans.
The Energy Turnaround |
A nal challenge is the very real risks of destabilizing societies as
the energy system transforms. It is the poorest majority that are hard-
est hit if fossil subsidies are removed or costs of energy rise for other
reasons. And predictably and understandably, these people will react
against energy policies as happened to French president Emmanuel
Macron. As coal industries shutter, governments will need to invest
in retraining and regional redevelopment, like Spain and Germany
are attempting to do. And fossil fuel companies face the real threat
of “stranded assets”
—
pipelines, mines, and oil rigs worth trillions
of dollars that will potentially become worthless if oil stays in the
ground or nancial capital exits the industry rapidly, with serious
implications for the stability of the nance sector.
Don’t Look Up
All of this perhaps helps explain why for two centuries we’ve looked
down below ground for energy instead of looking up at the sun and
the wind. This mindset needs to change. We need to bust a few myths
about the upgrade to clean energy.
Myth 1: Energy transitions are slow. The transitions from biomass
to coal and coal to oil have taken about sixty years. We are not start-
ing from scratch. We are already thirty years into a renewable energy
transition, and crucially, we have reached the critical inection point
in the exponential curve when the cost of renewables is comparable
to the cost of fossil energy, or cheaper, in many regions. On top of this,
government funding plus recent technological breakthroughs will
accelerate existing trends if the right policy incentives are in place.
Myth 2: Many sectors are hard to electrify. Long- distance truck-
ing, shipping, cement, and steel manufacturing were once considered
among the sectors that were hardest to decarbonize. New solutions
exist to almost entirely remove carbon from these industries while
improving eciencies.
Myth 3: It is dicult to change people’s behavior. The global pan-
demic has shown that behavior and business models can change very
rapidly and bring many benets, for example, working from home
not only reduces commuting emissions and congestion, it also helps
to juggle work and family life when the right supports are in place.
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Myth 4: Electric vehicles are not as good as internal combus-
tion engines. Electric vehicles often now have higher performance
in terms of speed and acceleration than fossil cars. They can be up-
graded more regularly. They pollute less. They are even more reliable;
an electric motor and drivetrain may have just 20 moving parts com-
pared to up to 2,000 in an internal combustion engine, which means
fewer parts to break down.
Myth 5: Intermittency means clean energy is unreliable. Many
studies have shown that uctuations in the availability of sun or
wind can be oset by building more power generation capacity than
needed, using energy storage systems, and creating super grids that
allow energy to be transmitted over wide areas. Other factors, too, can
ensure supply. And of course, nuclear energy has been proven over
two generations to provide reliable electricity.
So, now some of the myths have been busted, let’s explore the
solutions.
Solution : Introduce Systemic Eciency
No one needs steel, cement, or petrol; people need comfortablehomes,
oces, and other buildings, and a way to move between them. People
need to do their jobs, see their friends, and access all sorts of services.
In other words, what people need are the functions that energy and
materials enable. In 2018, Arnulf Grubler and colleagues published
a groundbreaking scenario of energy eciency. They focused on
end- use demand, rather than supply. What do people want to do with
energy? They based their scenario on the desire for greater quality of
life globally and current exponential trends in technology, for exam-
ple, the move to smartphones that consolidate many services (TV,
Internet, telephone, map tools) and less energy. Looking at demand
for these services in both North and South, and assuming those in
low- income countries want the same access to services as those in
high- income countries, the team calculated that, despite a rising
population and rising auence, nal energy demand in 2050 has the
potential to be around 40% lower than today if this type of technology
diusion is incentivized by governments. This is remarkable. The
The Energy Turnaround |
current energy narrative
—
that energy demand will keep rising
—
is
not the only narrative, and it is not the most desirable outcome.
Systemic optimization toward greater eciencies would not only
save energy, it would drive down use of materials and reduce air pol-
lution. We can nd eciencies everywhere. Most urban journeys are
very short: half are under three kilometers (two miles). Large vehicles
with lone drivers are not the most ecient way to move people around
in congested cities. Redesigning transport systems in cities to oer
cycling and walking options, ecient public transport, and shared
mobility will reduce emissions and improve health without neces-
sarily increasing commuting time. The bubble schools in chapter 2
would not be needed. Everyone, rich or poor, could breathe cleaner
air in cities. In homes, improving insulation is a better solution than
adding air conditioners or heaters. Refurbishing and reusing are bet-
ter than demolition. Opening up buildings to daylight is smarter than
running light bulbs, and so on. Whether transport, buildings, heating,
or materials, the potential for radical systemic eciency is vast across
all such energy- consuming sectors.
But swapping out combustion engine vehicles for electric vehi-
cles is not the optimal solution for transport. This would still create
congestion and take a large footprint to achieve. A systems- wide shift
would mean that electric vehicles and the much- lauded self- driving
vehicle, while they might have a place, should be one option among
many for getting around. And don’t wait for ying taxis, electric or
otherwise. This does not solve congestion on the ground and creates
space for a new problem down the line: more congestion in the skies.
Focus on a denser infrastructure around bike lanes and public trans-
port in walkable, livable cities.
In the exponential age we are living through, clean energy tech-
nologies will mix with other emerging technologies, and the com-
bined eects, if directed, could drive even greater eciencies. Again,
take cars. The average European car is parked 92% of the time, often
on scarce inner- city land. Car- sharing systems, using mobile phone
technologies to share digital keys, have the potential to transform
consumer demand from car ownership to mobility as a service. When
| E A
driverless cars become mainstream, this could accelerate the shift to
mobility as a service reducing the number of cars on city streets. This
may be easier to imagine in California than Karachi, but the exponen-
tial technology advocates are right to remind us that the technologies
that came together to give us the smartphone accelerated Internet
access in low- income countries as well as the wealthy nations.
Solution : Electrify (Almost) Everything
The rst principle of ghting the climate crisis is simple: stop lighting
coal, oil, gas, and trees on re, as soon as possible. Bill McKibben sug-
gests we add a second rule: “denitely don’t build anything new that
connects to a ame.”¹ Instead we should substitute carbon mole-
cules with electrons wherever something needs energy.
While Solution 1 makes the case for eciencies, our second solu-
tion is, as a rule of thumb, to electrify everything that today combusts
carbon. Shift from molecules to electrons. This often makes things
more ecient, as it happens. In cities, most energy demand comes
from transport and buildings. The solutions are market ready: move
fully from combustion engines to electric mobility and use heat
pumps rather than burners for heating. The electric engine is already
three to four times more ecient than fossil engines. And heat
pumps are yet more ecient compared with fossil heating. The more
you electrify, the less (primary) energy demand you get. This is a gen-
eral rule, and there is no simple electrical x in all sectors, for exam-
ple, steel production or shipping. But green hydrogen and ammonia
can replace fossil fuels in these sectors, and major steel, fertilizer, and
shipping transnational corporations are already committing to these
solutions. Still, substantial governmental support is urgently needed
to get the ball rolling, given that the upfront cost of renewable energy
still is much higher than that of conventional fuels.
We can leverage the scaling potential of solar, wind, and batteries
to transition industries onto the new clean energy system. The divi-
dend here is the opportunity to rapidly bring down operating costs in
the long run
—
in a system where clean energy is being produced with
The Energy Turnaround |
nearly zero marginal costs for most of the year. In summary, we are
facing a temporary cost hurdle, once it is passed (with the associated
upfront investment costs), we will be closer to an electric wonderland
with lower costs per energy unit.
But we have to acknowledge risks in this transformation. How
can it occur without human exploitation in new mining operations?
And how can it roll out without the destructive expansion of and pol-
lution from mining and other extractive industries? Compensation
and justice must be embedded and regulated into the shift to the new
technologies.
Solution : Exponential Growth in New Renewables
The energy paradigm shift calls for the almost complete replacement
of the fossil fuel industry with clean green energy. In many parts of
the world, renewables are now the cheapest source of new power
generation
—
if you look at the lifetime cost of energy. They have
reached market maturity and will outcompete fossil fuel incumbents
on price and performance, while drastically cutting pollution.¹¹ But
only if the government provides the necessary subsidies, so the up-
front investment cost is brought down to that of the fossil alternative.
Luckily, this is happening. The share of wind and solar in the energy
mix has been doubling globally every ve years. An ever- longer line
of energy experts are pointing out that exponential technological
change is nally here.¹²
Renewable energy technologies keep getting cheaper because they
follow learning curves. For each doubling of the total installed capac-
ity, their cost declines by around 20% to 25%. But power from fossil
fuel technologies do not have such learning curves. The technology
behind coal- red power stations has barely changed in decades, and
this will not change because these are mature technologies. Another
reason for the dierence in innovation speed is that fossil fuel infra-
structure and plants are often big and bulky rather than small and
granular. Small granular technologies, think smartphones or electric
vehicles, have rapid innovation and marketing cycles. Wind and solar
| E A
do, too. Therefore, renewables will plausibly keep getting cheaper
than fossils in the coming decades, outcompeting them in ever more
applications and areas.
Exponential change is not just about adding ever more solar
panels or wind turbines. It’s about how a number of digital and granu-
lar technologies interact in systemic, self- reinforcing ways and what
comes from this. It is feasible to meet 100% of electricity demand in
most regions of the world using solar, wind, and battery (SWB) solu-
tions, given parallel investment in smart grids and super grids (wide-
area transmission networks). That means solar panels everywhere
on existing infrastructure, integrated with transmission and energy
storage. That storage would come from a variety of methods: chemi-
cal and gravity- based batteries, pumped hydro, thermal, compressed
air, or combinations of all.
Signicant challenges remain, such as sourcing the additional
metals and materials and nancing a build- out. While no realistic
industrial changes predicated on maintaining human civilization can
sidestep this hurdle, this can certainly be achieved without injustice
and exploitation.¹³ But not without government support to accelerate
the process, so things happen before the world gets too warm.
Before we leave our discussion on the solutions and move to
the barriers, we’d also like to explore the potential of energy super-
abundance. The exciting spin in the tail from the acceleration in
new renewables is what results from overbuilding the new energy
supply and network to go beyond current demands. As the costs of
solar, wind, and batteries fall, we reach a point of clean energy super-
abundance at near- zero marginal costs. Rather than concern about
intermittent supply, the implication is that the clean energy disrup-
tion based on solar, wind, and batteries heralds the potential to break
through to a new energy system the likes of which we have never seen
before. It will enable humanity not only to meet our current energy
needs sustainably but to electrify for a vast array of other things that
are economically impossible within the current system. We can power
carbon and capture and storage systems like direct air capture to
assist with the drawdown of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide. This
is needed to go beyond net zero and create a climate- positive energy
The Energy Turnaround |
system that helps reduce carbon dioxide concentrations toward pre-
industrial levels.
As Earth for All Transformational Economics Commissioner
Nafeez Ahmed points out, the electrication of a vast array of indus-
tries and sectors, from wastewater treatment and desalination to
recycling, from mining to manufacturing, will reduce their primary
energy consumption and shift to clean cheap power. This can also
bring about a nearly fully circular economy as there is sucient
power to purify and upcycle the waste fractions. For the rst time, the
vast amount of additional power generated by the new system, com-
bined with eciencies, will allow us to cleanly sustain the extensive
new industrial processes required for the circular economy in a way
that was previously inconceivable.¹
The Energy Turnaround in the EarthAll Analysis
How far and quickly can the three solutions push the energy turn-
around globally? It is clear that the speed of renewable deployment
will determine how fast fossil fuels can be phased out. Figures 7.2
through 7.5 show the eect of going from no extra action to a strong
turnaround, by ramping up investments in systemic eciency, elec-
trifying everything, and making renewable energy abundant. Global
energy costs (total annual costs in both investments and operations)
are higher in Giant Leap than in the Too Little Too Late scenario for
the 2025–2050 period. But global CO emissions from fossil power
production then decline to zero around 2050, while annual total
energy costs become much lower from around 2050 on, as the energy
system by then has a huge renewable capacity driven by free sun
andwind.
Barriers
It is clear the energy turnaround is already underway. The biggest
obstacles are no longer technologies or inadequacies of solar, wind,
and other clean energies. Most major economies have now commit-
ted to net- zero emissions by 2050, or in the case of China and India,
2060 and 2070 respectively. As the upgrade, and in some cases
complete transformation, gathers pace, it is possible to imagine
Figure 7.2. Renewable energy production with storage soars globally in the
Giant Leap scenario, helping to electrify “everything” and making clean power
available for all humans. Source: E4A- global-220501.
Figure 7.3. Global CO emissions from energy and industrial processes
decline rapidly in the Giant Leap scenario, following the Carbon Law and
making it possible to keep temperatures below 2°C by 2100. Source: E4A
- global-220501.
Figure 7.5. Turning energy investments around from conventional fossils to
the solutions in the Giant Leap scenario leads to higher energy cost in the rst
decades compared to the Too Little Too Late scenario, but dramatically lower
cost in the long run. Units: billion USD, at PPP- 2017 constant prices. Source:
E4A- global-220501.
Figure 7.4. Global CO emissions from energy and industrial processes
decline rapidly in the Giant Leap scenario, following the Carbon Law and
making it possible to keep temperatures well below 2°C by 2100. Source: E4A
- global-220501.
| E A
even these countries achieve their targets earlier than expected. But
despite rhetoric, most governments have failed to commit to halv-
ing emissions by around 2030, preferring to set more distant goals
far over their political horizons, keeping us on the Too Little Too
Late scenario. This is fully understandable given the huge subsidies
needed to bring down upfront investment costs that need higher
taxes or government debt to nance. But these subsidies are paltry
in a long- term global perspective to deliver energy security and plan-
etary stability.
A second barrier are the enormous subsidies received by the fossil
fuel industry, and their lack of accountability for the damage caused.
There is little logic to keep most subsidies (some though are designed
to help people on low incomes access energy, and these must be
redesigned).
A third barrier has been to implement a fair price on carbon emis-
sions. For decades, climate and energy politics have been dominated
by the idea of pricing carbon emissions. Carbon pricing provides an
elegant response to a complex problem: increase the cost of releas-
ing carbon into the atmosphere and let energy markets take care of
the rest. While the policy may look good on paper from conventional
economic thinking, in practice it has proven weak in the real world.
Since the beginning of most carbon trading schemes, the annual sup-
ply of pollution permits has most of the time been consistently higher
than overall pollution. And after thirty years of policy on the issue,
only 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions were covered by some
carbon pricing initiatives in 2020. But of these 20%, less than 5%
(meaning less than 1% of total global emissions) are currently priced
at a level consistent with achieving the temperature goals of the Paris
Agreement.¹ New thinking is needed to price carbon fairly.
Pricing carbon is linked to a fourth barrier. In many democracies,
politicians with ambitious energy agendas have so far struggled to
reach power at the national level (though it is often a dierent story
at the state and city levels). This is despite a plethora of surveys indi-
cating public support for government action to deal with the crisis.
The political problems are, of course, that citizens in general oppose
The Energy Turnaround |
more expensive gas or electricity bills, and that energy poverty is a
real concern in most countries. Thus, there have been severe politi-
cal constraints on climate action. Discontent is often rooted not in
doubts about the need for climate action but in a distaste for solutions
that put too much of the burden on the lower- income groups. Citizens
distrust politicians, bureaucrats, and elites and feel that the ruling
class treats them with contempt.¹ From the French Yellow Vests to
demonstrations in Iran, Turkey, Nigeria, Mexico, Jordan, or Kazakh-
stan, the opposition has been predictable. In a nutshell, “Axe the tax!”
slogans have worked wonders for politicians.
This is why a fee and dividend approach, mentioned in previous
chapters, merits further discussion. In the next chapter, we will dis-
cuss the full concept of a fee and dividend and how it applies to all
global commons
—
that is, all the natural resources that are at risk of
destabilizing as a result of human pressures. But for now, let’s stick
with the atmosphere and carbon. We know that the rich consume
most of everything. Charging a fee for carbon emissions and then
distributing all fees back to every citizen equally is fair and reects
the principle that we are all stewards of the atmospheric global com-
mons. In addition, it has the eect of reducing inequality because
heavy users of carbon must pay more. And those that use little receive
compensation. A surprisingly large number of economists agree it is
a good idea. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2019, 3,500 econo-
mists endorsed a carbon fee and dividend approach to pricing carbon
as “the most cost- eective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the
scale and speed that is necessary.”¹ The fee and dividend approach
also keeps the revenue raised out of the general tax fund. The fees are
only for redistribution, not for diverting to a thousand other policy
objectives because the heart of the matter is trust. Clarity is critical.
It is important that people see where the money is going and that
people benet personally and visibly from changing their behavior.
Scaling all solutions until we reach net zero by 2050 is not only
extremely ambitious but also impossible to accomplish unless we
can overcome the barriers mentioned above: the dramatic inequal-
ities in footprints and energy access between high- and low- income
| E A
countries on the one hand and within- country political constraints
on the other.
This is why the practical and technical solutions above need coor-
dination by trusted and active governments to succeed with reducing
both emissions and inequalities at the same time. This means recog-
nizing and redressing existing global inequalities. The world’s largest
economies
—
the US, EU, and China
—
must ramp up (at least triple)
annual domestic investments in renewable capacity at high speed.
Together these three emit roughly half of all greenhouse gas emis-
sions from their own territories. In addition, to speed the turnaround
in low- income countries where most of the world lives, there is the
need to ramp up action in three key international areas:
• Redress carbon footprint inequalities by a massive increase in cli-
mate nance.
• New nancial architecture for debt resolution and to incentivize
green investments.
•
Reforms of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and trade rules to en-
able green economic trajectories.
Expanding on the rst point, a massive injection of climate nance is
urgently required. Obviously, there is no excuse for the rich countries
to renege on their promise from 2012 of $100 billion per year in cli-
mate nance. They have consistently underdelivered, and the funds
should be paid in full covering all the shortfall. One immediate and
costless means of providing this is to expand SDRs, the international
liquidity created by the International Monetary Fund. A much larger
issuance of at least $2 to $3 trillion per year is needed, and is easily
achievable, earmarked for investments in clean energy systems. In
addition, there is a strong case for high- income nations to recycle
their own allocations of SDRs (which they are unlikely to use anyway)
to regional multilateral development banks for such investment (see
Ghosh et al., 2022).
Second, create an international framework for sovereign debt
resolution that dramatically reduces the unpayable debt burdens in
low- income (<$10,000 per person per year) countries. This restruc-
turing mechanism should necessarily include not just bilateral and
The Energy Turnaround |
multilateral lenders but also private lenders by mandatory regulatory
and legal changes. In addition, there must be stricter regulation on
private nancial markets to prevent any more “brown” and carbon-
intensive investments by private lenders and bond holders, and to
incentivize green investment.
Third, the concentration of the necessary knowledge and tech-
nology in the global North companies is deeply dangerous for all. It
Figure 7.6. Large dierences in regional energy footprints: showing the
power consumption and CO emissions per person for 10 regions in 2020,
2050 in Too Little Too Late and 2050 in Giant Leap. Source: E4A - regional
-220427.
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prevents the dissemination of critical clean technologies. The global
system of intellectual property rights put in place by the World Trade
Organization must end for critical technologies that are essential
for leapfrogging toward a green transition in low- income countries.
Far from encouraging more invention and innovation, it has led to
monopolies of knowledge and “rent seeking” at the cost of the pub-
lic good. It is preventing the possibility of ensuring that all countries
can access the crucial technologies, from vaccines to solar. When low-
income countries seek to encourage renewables through subsidies to
their own producers, they quickly face cases in the WTO. Avoiding the
systematic destruction of Earth’s life support system should perhaps
not depend on the whims and prot of a few large companies that
control knowledge, particularly when that knowledge was largely
created by public research.
Conclusions
The collapse of carbon- intensive industries in energy, transport, and
food will end the huge demand for global logistics and transport, free
up billions of hectares of land, allow oceans to regenerate, and elimi-
nate air pollution. With the right choices, the new energy, transport,
and food system disruptions will lead to a net reduction in the mate-
rials intensity of human civilization. And provide sucient energy
to the poor.
While the ultimate demise of the age of fossil fuels is unstoppable,
the survival of human civilization in the face of dangerous climate
disruptions is not. It depends entirely on the societal choices we make
today. Whatever specic tools nations choose, they should aim for
those that merge systemic productivity with social and environmen-
tal justice. The right choices now could open up an unprecedented
era of clean energy abundance by the late 2030s. The new possibil-
ities could empower humanity to solve some of its most intractable
problems: in addition to energy scarcity and volatility, the persistence
of food insecurity and malnutrition, along with the entrenchment of
global poverty and widening inequalities.
8
From “Winner Take All”
Capitalism to
Earth4All Economies
A New Economic Operating System
So there we have it: ve extraordinary turnarounds that can transport
us into the next decades of the twenty- rst century far more safely
and comfortably than our current course. If you feel the ambitions
are daunting, you are right. If you suspect we could never accomplish
them, think again. Getting humanity back within a safe operating
space in this century may be complex and monumental, but like
many other complex and monumental undertakings, it can be set in
motion by a handful of well- chosen levers, by groups of committed
people.
Those levers are in plain sight and waiting to be pulled. And they
all reside in one sector: the economy. You may have noticed them
embedded in all ve turnarounds discussed in the preceding chap-
ters. Key among them:
•
Creation of Citizens Funds to distribute the wealth of the global
commons fairly to all citizens.
• Government intervention (subsidies, incentives, and regulations)
to accelerate the turnarounds.
• Transformation of the international nancial system to facilitate
rapid poverty alleviation in Most of the World.
• De- risking investments in low- income countries and cancel debt.
•
Investment in ecient, regenerative food and renewable energy
systems.
| E A
Traditional economists will take pause here, rightly recognizing
these shifts as catalysts for massive economic transformation.
Some will also, undoubtedly, fear these shifts will lead to an abrupt
end of economic growth and, then, to economic collapse. On these
counts, though, they would be wrong. To understand why, it will help
to understand a little bit about leverage points and why they often
surprise us.
Donella Meadows, the lead author of The Limits of Growth,
famously described leverage points as “places within a complex sys-
tem (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem)
where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in every-
thing.” Seems simple enough, but she also noted another reality:
While people often intuitively know where leverage points lie, they
tend to push them in the wrong direction, creating a web of unin-
tended consequences. That is, said Meadows, exactly what has hap-
pened with growth: “The world’s leaders are correctly xated on
economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they’re
pushing with all their might in the wrong direction.”¹
Hence, we end up with global economic policy that was crafted to
alleviate poverty but many decades later has morphed into a poverty
trap, economically enslaving whole nations, destabilizing democ-
racies, and “crowdfunding” environmental catastrophe. We have
watched the purpose of our economy morph from valuing our future
to discounting it entirely.
No surprise, then, that many increasingly angry citizens have in-
tuited that conventional economic thinking is no longer delivering
economic security, and agency, for them or their families. And no
surprise that we need to upend that conventional economic thinking.
But does this necessarily mean an abrupt end to growth or the risk of
economic collapse? No and no.
The energy transformation alone will drive economic growth. How
can it not? It is nothing less than a complete reorganization of the
foundation of the economic system. It will create economic optimism,
investment opportunities, and jobs in all sectors. And if the transfor-
mation is managed fairly, where everyone is granted a stake in the
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
future, this will help ensure the necessary political stability to avert
the risk of economic collapse. That said, we should be largely agnostic
about growth
—
it depends on what is growing. For sure, economies
need to shrink their material footprints by shifting to circular models.
And ultimately, the economic focus has to shift to growth in wellbeing.
This is beginning to happen. Some local and national governments are
experimenting with new economic models. We’ve already mentioned
the Wellbeing Alliance of New Zealand, Finland, Iceland, Scotland,
and Wales, but also cities like Amsterdam, Brussels and Copenhagen
are actively challenging the old values of their economies and nding
ways to turn them around.
But is the cost of avoiding catastrophes prohibitively expensive?
Perhaps this is the reason for the hesitancy? Well, rst of all, it is not
a cost. It is an investment in the future. We estimate the investment
needed is roughly 2% to 4% of global income per year. The largest
investments are needed in sustainable energy and food security. This
estimate aligns well with other studies.² Indeed, the writer and aca-
demic Yuval Noah Harari and his team have pored over various eco-
nomic and climate reports and found that estimates for the energy
turnaround converged around 2% to 3% of annual global GDP. As
a comparison, governments directed the equivalent of over 10% of
global output to counter the shock of the pandemic.
If the benets are so great and the investments so small, relatively,
what is holding us back? Ultimately, our mindset; the all- pervasive
winner- takes-all worldview.
The Rise of Rentier Capitalism
Our economy has undergone massive transformations before, par-
ticularly since World War II. What came with that transformation
was a gradual shift in mindset
—
one that led us away from economies
organized, however imperfectly, to serve the public good and, since
1980, toward a dominant economy that served a small set of global
elites. The wealth of this “rentier” class grows from the ownership of
nancial assets. In systems terms, a vicious cycle kicked in: As assets
begat more assets, they concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. We
| E A
can see how this shift unfolded through three economic narratives
—
specically the narratives of wealthy nations, because it is their
metamorphosis that dramatically changed the economic landscape
worldwide.
Narrative one was dominant in the West during the postwar era
(1945–1975). Economies were more national than global. Decision-
making was a three- way split between business, organized labor,
and government. The banking and nance sector served a secondary
role; it was a support for the overall economy, not its driver. Key aims
included full employment that would then support social safety nets.
Infrastructure was supplied by the government, and taxation was
on prots, income, and consumption. This economic system drove
stability, prosperity, and greater equality in some parts of the world.
Some challenges emerged over time: ination, competition from new
industrial nations, labor unrest.
What followed? Narrative two, the market liberalization era (circa
1980–2008). Dominant Western nations embraced globalization in
return for eciency. Government functions were increasingly privat-
ized. The power of government and organized labor weakened while
the power of business expanded. The nance sector rose to dominate
the economy, becoming highly deregulated, expanding globally. Gov-
ernment priorities shifted at home to helping the market work well,
subduing ination, and limiting their own direct economic activity.
Taxes on prots and capital were lowered. New problems emerged:
expanded private debt, weakened infrastructure, short- term nancial
decision- making, and rising inequality.
By the time of the 2008 nancial crash, it was clear that the sec-
ond narrative had been tested as a social contract between citizens
and governments and failed. What was revealed in that moment of
crisis was the identity of most governments’ rst priority: to protect
asset prices and the nancial system. Emphasis turned to the supply
of new liquidity, the forcing down of interest rates, and the purchase
of shaky assets. Even worse, the costs of the bailout were transferred
to the public purse.
After 2008, attempts were made to reboot the second narrative
using debt while imposing austerity on the public sector. Ongoing
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
structural economic forces accelerated inequality, expanded the
numbers of the economically insecure, shrank the middle classes, and
undermined growth. Perhaps it is no wonder that by 2015/16 dierent
shades of populism were rapidly gaining ground, particularly in the
English- speaking world. Yet come the COVID- 19 pandemic, trillions
of new dollars owed into the nancial system as a priority. Rinse
andrepeat.
Narrative three, then, has been the steady rise of a parasitic rentier
economy in the name of free markets. Gone is the economy most
people think we have
—
one organized around production, consump-
tion, and exchange. Money is made on money and the shifting value
of various assets from stocks and bonds to real estate to intellectual
property and crypto. The manipulation of these nancial assets now
dominates economic decision- making across the globe.
This “unsustainable monopoly game,” says Dr. Mamphela Ram-
phele, “needs to be unmasked for what it is
—
a self- serving platform
for those who have gamed the system as both players and referees.”³
Indeed, the shift to rentier capitalism has cost billions of people
opportunity, security, and wellbeing. The toll it takes on social and
environmental justice is becoming ever clearer. As it does, calls for a
new economic logic have grown louder.
Rethinking the Commons in the Anthropocene
Trace economies back further, or look more deeply in the modern
world for alternative models, and you will nd an economic organiz-
ing tool that is the polar opposite from today’s rentier capitalism. It
rests on the original narrative
—
one that focuses on securing a peo-
ple’s wellbeing by securing their shared commons.
A simple example. Villagers far up in Nepal’s valleys used to help
maintain canals downstream while villagers downstream helped
maintain dams upstream. In this way they all got access to a common
resource
—
water. They got a dividend from the systemic benets,
and they pooled eorts into maintaining these cultural and natural
assets.
The world was once replete with sophisticated examples of com-
mons management. These systems ensure that land remains a public
| E A
good to be held in stewardship by current generations for the bene-
t of future generations. In their truest form, they are still found in
Indigenous and traditional cultures. The notion of the “commons”
runs like a thread through human history. That thread mostly records
displacement and dispossession, but it never disappears. In a twenty-
rst-century revival, it is showing up almost everywhere, including in
a suburb of London under a tree.
Ankerwycke’s Yew tree, in Surrey, England, is about 2,500 years
old. It was already old when England’s Charter of the Forests was
sealed in 1217, recognizing the inalienable right of local people to meet
their needs for subsistence from the various fruits of the forest, from
the collection of rewood or peat, fallen wood, the seasonal grazing
of animals, and more. In short, to access their common inheri tance
on land then owned by others in a feudal system. It was actually a
smart move. The king did not want to risk food riots, banditry, and
a population unable to pay taxes. Nor did he want to give the major
landowners leverage in a power struggle.
The charter was read out four times a year in every church in the
land by locals courageously reminding the powers that be that the
“commons exist for a way of living, not prots.” History tells a dif-
ferent story. Nearly 400 Acts of Parliament between 1760 and 1870
conscated nearly 2.8 million hectares (corresponding to one fth of
England). Strangely, the charter was only repealed 754 years later, in
1971, as neoliberal economics began to crystallize. The Ankerwycke
Yew still stands, though, and in 2017, on the charter’s 800th anniver-
sary, people gathered there to issue a dierent reminder
—
that reviv-
ing the commons is about valuing our future.
Land was only the rst target of an assault on common inheri-
tance. Eventually the obliteration of user- oriented customs and prac-
tices turned global. Conscation, colonialism, and slavery replaced a
degree of self- reliance, and the misery and uncertainty of exchanging
labor for wages displaced independent livelihoods. Property rights
became enshrined ahead of human rights, a tension that is pervasive
across all times, including our own.
The excesses of early industrial capitalism did not go unchal-
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
lenged. Social evolution
—
and indeed revolutions
—
from the end of
the eighteenth century led to pressure rst to abolish slavery. The
emerging labor movement after the political convulsions of the
mid- nineteenth century sought to exert a counterforce. By the turn
of the twentieth century in disparate parts of the world, a socialist
counter point
—
state control of key resources in the name of the
people
—
acted as a political challenge, another polestar. In the West,
especially after World War I, the piecemeal establishment of a public
sector replaced the notion of the commons with the idea of “welfare”:
citi zens would be working full- time but paying taxes toward pensions
and unemployment benets.
Public investment would then, in this social contract, provide
essential social goods and services at low cost: education, transport
infrastructure, health, open spaces, and housing. Businesses would
contribute tax income to this public sector
—
in compensation for
exclusive enclosed access to the Earth’s endowment. The idea of the
commons did not die, but it was submerged. The tendency to en-
croach on this planetary endowment and that bequeathed by previ-
ous societies continued unabated.
Even knowledge was enclosed, through the expansion of copy-
right and patents
—
in other words, intellectual property rights. In-
creasingly, by the late twentieth century, this appropriation of the
commons was extended into the digital arena
—
capturing the value
from personal data, for example
—
as well as into the biological world.
Private claims were made on seeds and organisms all over the world,
abusing the genetic commons that are necessary for long- term envi-
ronmental integrity.
Eventually money itself, that practical public utility, shifted.
Credit was now mainly created by a loosely regulated, private bank-
ing system, not by governments. This credit was increasingly directed
to what banking perceived as a priority, and overwhelmingly banks
chose to lend money for the purchase of existing assets. Even cash,
that minimal guarantee of independent economic action and ex-
change, is now in steep decline too. In sum, large parts of what used
to be commons, available to all, have been enclosed by corporations.
| E A
Along the way, citizens of nations that were resource- rich but
cash- poor watched their commons get absorbed and exploited as
mining, rivers, timber, and other extraction rights were sold away, or
possessed in loan repayment schemes. Vast swathes of agricultural
lands were swept up into the hands of those who lived thousands of
miles away, and even human capital was appropriated as regional eco-
nomic systems were swept away by globalism.
The challenge now is to rebuild an economic operating system that
values the commons and operates in a twenty- rst-century context.
Dr. Ramphele puts it this way: “There is a need to become Indigenous
again with community- based economic systems based on local pro-
duction and consumption needs. Reciprocal exchanges of surpluses
with neighboring communities to ensure wellbeing for all and pro-
tection of ecosystems need to be revived. The model of inter- linked
village communities that restores a sense of place and belonging to
all people.”
Doing that requires a major change in the economic gameboard.
The Conventional Economic Gameboard
Rentier capitalism is not the only economic system in play in the
world today. China operates a state capitalism model in which the con-
trol of land, the money system, and signicant core businesses (steel,
cement, rail, utilities, and the application of credit) have been retained
by the central government, often through state enterprises. China has
a very dierent compass, evidenced by moves in 2021 to damp down
on property bubbles, take down tech moguls that were too outspoken
and rich, and create a less unequal society under the leader’s mantra
of “creating common prosperity.”
However, there seem to be enough similarities between the sys-
tems to describe a couple of signicant stages within each of these
modern economies. At rst, develop markets at home, create credit,
invest in infrastructure, and support the growth of an industrial
economy, as opposed to an agricultural economy. As productivity and
opportunities expand, urbanization concentrates the population. The
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
scale and eciency of production increases, and unless other markets
become available (for example through colonial expansion or capture
of market share elsewhere), it soon falls into overproduction and mar-
gins decline. The workforce moves from the primary sector via the
industrial secondary sector, and then to the tertiary servicesector.
Industry at scale is just too ecient at what it does (if utterly negli-
gent in accounting for social and environmental impacts). Wages and
incomes rst rise (so poverty declines), and domestic demand rises
too. But so do savings. Investment bodies begin to look elsewhere for
returns, as do savers. If the productive economy has slower returns on
investment, then the second stage sees shifts toward existing nan-
cial assets, particularly real estate, stocks, and bonds. At the far end
comes currency and commodity speculation with complex deriva-
tives and futures instruments.
An expanded nancial sector also drives down the number of
competitors in a sector. Private equity rms roll up ownership of
small companies in niche sectors. This results in more monopolies
and the phenomenon of tech companies “blitz- scaling” to monopo-
lize new sectors at all costs. So the system functions in the very oppo-
site way to eective competition in a free and fair market. The rentier
economy is about charging for access to resources, limiting competi-
tion, and, in short, extracting value more than creating it. It then fun-
nels such economic rents (unearned surplus) to the benet of what
economist Michael Hudson calls the FIRE sector: nance, insurance,
and real estate. This activity is not a bug in the current system, it is a
predictable structural outcome of the rentier capitalism gameboard.
Along the way, workers become expensive to hire, as they accu-
mulate higher overheads. Access to mortgages, to credit, and the
associated debt service costs are higher than they need be, and that
eats up larger shares of household budgets over time. Workers are
replaced with more robots and articial intelligence. This diminishes
the overall quality of life as workers’ share of national income falls, as
it has been since 1980. Gig work, welfare erosion, inequality, and inse-
curity abound. Add in the increasingly disrupted ecology
—
climate
| E A
breakdown, pandemics, biodiversity loss
—
and rent- seeking brings
societal collapse closer, as our Social Tension Index shows, as ever-
fewer people can see how the system can be reset in their favor and
in time.
But if we know something of the economic gameboard and take
a look at some of the systemic tools available, it is surely possible to
imagine and then actualize the ve extraordinary turnarounds that
are the focus of this book in a way that is about the common good.
Take a look at the economic gameboard depicted in gure 8.1,
which reects the ows in the Earth4All model. Bang in the middle
are two main players that represent the economy as introductory eco-
nomics textbooks and most people see it: producers (such as rms)
in a market exchange with consumers (households, workers, citi-
Figure 8.1. Like gravity, the current economic gameboard has a trickle- down
eect
—
but the money ows down mainly to the wealthy. “Financial wealth
accounted for $250 trillion (52%) of global wealth in 2020. But real assets
eectively doubled the size of the pool. Led primarily by real estate owner-
ship, these assets generated $235 trillion, or 48% of total global wealth.” Anna
Zakrzewski et al., When Clients Take the Lead: Global Wealth 2021, BCG (June
2021). See also Sean Ross, “Financial Services: Sizing the Sector in the Global
Economy,” Investopedia, September 30, 2021.
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
zens). In a rentier economy, we also have two other major players: the
nance and banking sector and the owners of assets, real estate, and
monopolistic arrangements. Government tries to oversee this, but
has been weakened and cornered by neoliberal ideology.
The gameboard shows where money comes from and how it
travels through the economy, before it trickles down
—
not to the many
poor but to the wealthy. So, let’s look rst at the board’s two “money-
making trees.” At the top right is the private moneymaking tree. The
“secret” of banking is that money is mostly created out of nothing, as
credit each time a new loan is made. Here moneymaking is performed
by private banks, which create money as credit, with debt as its dark
shadow. It feeds the nance sector.
On the left top is the public moneymaking tree. It is available to
any government with a sovereign economy, but it is noticeably absent
from many countries with a weak or non- sovereign currency, as
explained in chapter 3, on the poverty turnaround.
The nance sector, top right, today currently dominates the game-
board. The second most dominant sector is comprised of the top
wealth holders
—
the owners of monopolies and existing assets such
as real estate, intellectual property, and mineral resources. They are
in an intimate alliance with the creators of credit.
In today’s economy, these two dominant players always win; they
have become the beasts the rest of the players must constantly feed.
They are “too big to fail.” Money ows to the few top wealth holders.
It is worth remembering, though, that money is after all a social con-
struct. Finance and banking licenses are granted and (at least nation-
ally) regulated by governments. Which means the game doesn’t
always have to play out as it currently does.
Redrawing the Gameboard
Now let’s imagine what the gameboard could look like if we pull three
levers.
The rst lever
—
a Citizens Fund to distribute universal basic divi-
dends generated from fees on wealth extraction and use of shared
commons
—
adds another money tree to the board: nature. It was
| E A
there all along
—
the invisible source of all wealth
—
yet it wasn’t val-
ued, which made it easy to ignore, and to destroy. Once the benets
from nature are shared with citizens, as in the commons of old, wealth
begins shifting back to workers, communities, and households.
The second lever
—
regulating nance to invest in strategies that
address inequality, climate change, and other crises
—
shakes the pri-
vate money tree in new ways. Regulations can channel lending away
from fossil fuels and unsustainable agriculture and toward clean
energy and regenerative practices. Or away from luxury apartment
complexes and toward aordable, resilient community- focused
buildings. To make this happen, two players wake up: The govern-
ment takes a stronger role to encourage the shift, and citizens start
viewing themselves as a public whose future is worth investing in.
To stimulate both these levers, governments with sovereign cur-
rency can shake their public money tree and reap rewards that trans-
late into long- term environmental and human security. Remember,
governments that fully control their own currency, and have a cur-
rency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold, don’t have to
spend only what they earn or borrow. They can actually spend money
into existence, as long as there is unused real capacity in the econ-
omy, without causing excessive ination.
The third lever
—
the cancellation of unfair debt
—
upends the
gameboard dramatically. Here, governments step in to insist that debt
held by creditors on unfair terms be forgiven. Cancelling $900 bil-
lion in international debt burdening low- income nations could free
up spending that addresses post- COVID poverty and replenishes or
sustains resources. Such a move would aect almost a billion people.
Now, assets on our gameboard no longer concentrate only in the
nancial sector and with owners. They begin to lter back to the
middle of the gameboard
—
producers, consumers, governments
—
and they support the formerly invisible foundations in drastic need
of investment: nature and society, or put in modern economic terms,
natural and social capital.
In this context, economic growth, that holy grail of the modern
economy, takes on an entirely new character and purpose. We shift
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
our focus away from measuring progress by the narrowly conceived
annual ows of consumption and production, and toward measur-
ing growth in a broad, shared wealth. Wealth in this sense needs
explaining.
The productive commons include those human- made assets that
are readily measured and accounted for in money and market prices:
machines, roads, Internet, power grids, water, harbors, patents, all
kinds of built infrastructure with public access, and above all, an
educated, capable workforce. The natural commons consist of land,
soils, a stable climate, rivers, coastal seas, deep oceans, seaweed and
kelp, forests, clouds, mountain ecosystems, mineral deposits, a safe
ozone layer, and the Earth’s other life- supporting systems. The most
important form of natural capital is the capacity of intact ecosystems
to create conditions conducive to life, and to repair themselves. The
Figure 8.2. A fairer trickle down of wealth via the Citizen Fund to all citizens.
Those who extract wealth from common resources (productive, natural, intel-
lectual, social commons) are charged fees that go into a Citizens Fund. This
mechanism corrects and counters the unfair neoliberal gameboard dynamics
in gure 8.1 and provides essential safety nets for citizens during periods of
economic transformation.
| E A
social commons include arts and culture, shared knowledge, tradi-
tions, laws, databases, social media data, genes, open- source algo-
rithms, languages, norms, and shared worldviews. All these and
more inuence the stock of interpersonal and institutional trust, the
core of social capital.
In other words, if the stocks and ows in the economic system are
managed to prioritize nancial capital, you will see GDP and national
wealth rise but environmental stability and social wellbeing erode.
That is how the system is playing out on the conventional gameboard.
If production is then harmonized with natural stocks and the
materials produced use and reuse increasingly fewer resources, you
may then experience lower ecological footprints and genuine green
growth. This is given that the rate of change in resource productivity
is fast enough to reverse resource depletion or climate emissions. But
not until you also account for human wellbeing through the fair dis-
tribution of assets and opportunities, and the maintenance of social
capital, do you arrive at a truly healthy economy.
In a healthy economy, what many refer to as a wellbeing economy
(see box page 29, What Is Wellbeing?), future prosperity relies not as
much on the annual ups or downs of economic activities, which is
what GDP per year measures, but on how well those activities build
and maintain the commons
—
in other words, all of its broad capital
stocks
—
over time. The change in a nation’s wealth can be measured
as the annual change of all the capitals in a balanced way over time.
In this approach to running an economy, emphasis is placed on
balanced growth in the broad wealth that serves all people, no longer
in just growing incomes and the wealth of the top wealth holders. It is
the kind of wealth that truly trickled down to Shu, Samiha, Ayotola,
and Carla as we imagined their paths through the Giant Leap future
in chapter 2. As they grew up, these girls would have received endow-
ments from Citizens Funds for their share in the wealth of the global
commons. Those endowments provided them a positive start in life,
healthy diets, and better access to good health and education. Later
on, the funds gave them economic security as their cities trans-
formed. They allowed them to retrain as some industries contracted
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
and others grew. Unlike their parents’ generation, throughout their
lives, these four felt governments were working in their interests
much of the time.
Short- termism: The Road to a Parasitic Financial System
So why do we so tenaciously cling to our current economic system?
Even if we know it leads to value extraction from natural and social
capitals? And even if we know it neglects long- term value creation
through reinvestment in the commons? The reason is not (or at least
mostly not) evil intentions. Rather, the traditional and systemic
focus has been on short- term prot ows and decision- making at the
expense of long- term commons stocks and survival and planning for
resilience to future shocks and stresses. Most economic managers
engage in short- termism because they tend to be evaluated on their
one-, three-, and ve- year performance records. Further, most invest-
ment fund managers have (incorrectly) assumed that the conse-
quences of the climate crisis were far in the future.
A frequently remarked feature of the last twenty- plus years is that
interest rates have been pushed down through the operation of cen-
tral banks. They’ve been driven by the fear that a sudden uptick in
interest rates would send shock waves through the precarious moun-
tains of debt and cause a sharp increase in business failures and deep
recession. Low interest rates were intended to encourage borrowing
for investments in real productive capacity. More often, though, they
have encouraged borrowing for yet more “paper” asset purchases
and to increase the search for capital gain. The low rates also herald a
rather simple assumption: Since the cost of borrowing is now so low,
governments with a sovereign currency can easily borrow what they
want to
—
and they did so in 2008 and again in 2020
—
and without
“burdening” the future with interest on the debt.
This underlying dynamic is what drives a systems failure. The
overly nancialized economic system becomes parasitic, extracting
more out of the commons than can be regenerated and undermining
the broad wealth that supports human security. When inequality gets
worse, wellbeing and trust is undermined, and social tensions rise.
| E A
Putting the Systems Change into Eect
So now we understand that governments can adjust the stocks and
ows on the gameboard
—
if they want to activate the ve extraordi-
nary turnarounds we describe in this book
—
by creating the vast sums
needed to implement change. Those funds can be used to replenish
and sustain the commons, building a wellbeing economy from the
revamped tools of the old extractive one.
But how do we incorporate that sustenance and benet into the
fabric of our new operating system? For a wellbeing economy to func-
tion well, citizens need to benet from their commons. Given that
our commons have been enclosed (read “stolen” by the few), we are
surely entitled to seek compensation or a share of them. This divi-
dend would come from those economic activities by right of our citi-
zenship, not as a “welfare transfer.”
In Plunder of the Commons, labor and social policy expert Guy
Standing identies three main types of commons that would attract
levies.¹ The rst: “exhaustible commons,” the nonrenewables like
minerals and fossil fuels that should be treated as common natural
capital assets. The second: “replenishable commons” that require
funds to be set aside for their replenishment. Last are the “renew-
able commons” that range from tangibles like water and the atmo-
sphereto intangibles like ideas. Fees earned from all these commons
could be made available for immediate distribution back to everyone.
This would be compensation for enclosing the commons.
In addition, just as in the examples of Nepal and the Charter of the
Forests, the commons should be able to contribute to subsistence, to
meeting basic needs. Access or minor use under a commons banner
—
which is always about maintaining the value of the commons stock,
or asset
—
is surely to be encouraged. The commons allow us to nd a
way of participating in economic activity to meet our needs and those
of our community. This activity often slips o the radar as it is usually
incredibly small- scale, very often a peer- to-peer exercise.
In Latin America, the Transnational Institute lists the criteria that
underpins a wellbeing economy based on the commons: “(1) material
or immaterial resources managed collectively and democratically,
(2)social processes that foster and deepen cooperative relationships,
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
(3) a new logic of production and a new set of productive processes,
and (4) a paradigm shift, which conceives the commons as an advance
beyond the classical market/state or public/private binary oppo-
sitions.”¹¹ That last point is a recurrent theme: neither market nor
state, and perhaps the better for that.
Indeed, new commons can be established and managed with suf-
ciency and optimism in mind
—
whether through a social enterprise,
a trust, a cooperative, or simply a user group. A host of initiatives,
many crystallized by digital infrastructure, have emerged in recent
years. Such diverse commons include seed- sharing cooperatives;
communities of open- source software programmers; the creation
and use of complementary currencies to stimulate local economies;
and local food initiatives such as community- supported agriculture,
rewilding, Slow Food, and community land trusts. They all reect
the value- creating aspect of having accessible resources and tools
outside private or state governance. Michel Bauwens, founder of the
P2P Foundation, focusing on peer- to-peer economics, also describes
them as “schools for democracy”
—
real exercises in participation and
collaboration.
How to Resolve the Systems Failure
A rentier economy is all about gatekeeping access to stocks and the
value of stocks to the benet of owners. Taxation doesn’t impact
the overuse of land and minerals (through resource taxes) signi-
cantly either. An additional toolbox is needed to capture some of the
economic rents as fees and direct them to become part of a citizens’
dividend.
An example of such a dividend was developed by economist James
Boyce and entrepreneur Peter Barnes to address carbon pollution
and the use of our atmosphere. They propose charging a fee as far up
the supply chain as possible. If the atmosphere is polluted by carbon
emissions, then a cap on emissions (for example) should be associ-
ated with a suciently high price per metric ton to drive polluters to
reduce their assault on our common resource of a stable climate. This
would imply a rising price on carbon emissions. So far, so familiar.
But at this stage, it is not really about the commons; it is simply a kind
| E A
of tax on the “bads” (pollution, or, in economic jargon, an “external-
ity”). Such taxes are clearly a good idea. However, the impact of much
higher energy prices has a disproportionate impact on the poor, and
those in Most of the World who did not cause a signicant part of
global warming. This has always reduced the appeal of resource taxes,
and with very good reason.
If a fee and dividend approach is introduced, then the proceeds
from the large increase in the price of carbon are recirculated to
everyone, as the co- owners. It becomes a universal basic dividend.
This helps compensate those on low incomes, who have extremely
low carbon emissions compared with wealthy people, while damp-
ing down carbon- heavy activity by companies. It incentivizes
conservation- oriented choices everywhere. To make this authentic
and trustworthy, in a context when few trust either government or
corporations, the fees and distribution could be handled by a Citizens
Fund set up as a duciary trust alongside the central bank. Such a
new institution would be dedicated to this one task, and if well man-
aged should garner condence. It may seem a bold step today, but
central banks are already exploring digital currencies with accounts
for everyone. And other semi- autonomous institutions already exist.
The carbon fee/dividend is an example of a process that taxes
unearned income or economic rents, not earned incomes. It is about
recognizing asset classes potentially as diverse as our personal data,
land value uplift created primarily by location, nancial infrastruc-
ture, and the backbone networks, like the Internet, that were created
by governments but have been appropriated by private owners. It is a
key tool for economic justice and has the potential to gain huge politi-
cal support as a consequence.
Alaska’s Permanent Fund is a genuinely universal fund, as every
man, woman, and child is entitled to their share. It varies with the
fees gathered for each year, and is sensitive to market realities. It
is not a welfare payment; it’s not supposed to do more than add to
existing income and benets. It is popular, and seen as a matter of
economic justice and inclusion of all citizens.
The basic concept of fee/dividend was supported by 3,000 econo-
mists when it appeared in 2019 as a bipartisan proposal in the US
From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to Earth4All Economies |
called the Baker- Schultz plan. If it is less well- known than it should
be, it is not without considerable support.
In his book With Liberty and Dividends for All, Barnes suggests that
a comprehensive fee and dividend system imposed predominantly on
carbon, nancial infrastructure transaction fees, and fees related to
intellectual property has the potential to pay $5,000 a year to each
American citizen. In the US, where the median annual income is
approximately $80,000, a family of four could receive an additional
$20,000 from a Citizens Fund.
This would be a signicant addition to incomes during a period
of disruptive transformation
—
while reducing overconsumption of
resources like fossil energy in a fair way. It is clear that good policy
design around Citizens Funds could be a game- changing economic
innovation to build trust, goodwill, and economic security in a time
of crisis.
It is scenarios like these that underscore that there is more to a
commons perspective than dividends. What is required when think-
ing as co- owners (and trustees) of a commons is not complicated to
understand. It has just three main strands:
•
A chance to participate in the economy, with access to tools
and resources, as well as to add value beyond just employee or
customer.
•
A share or dividend of the outcomes of any enclosure (as a co-
owner is due a dividend).
• A commitment to ensuring that this dividend endures
—
through
capital maintenance or enhancement of the resource that pro-
vides it.
Conclusions
It comes as no surprise that so many of the turnarounds discussed
in this book have focused on readjusting ows within today’s eco-
nomic systems. The energy turnaround requires the combination of
technologies, behavioral change, and price to accelerate change and
attract investments through public and private channels. The same
pattern underpins the food turnaround. Very rapid innovation cycles
for regenerative agriculture, precision fermentation, and cellular
| E A
agriculture will both attract investment and lower prices thus gener-
ating greater demand: a virtuous cycle. Three of the ve turnarounds
are about redistribution: namely the poverty, inequality, and empow-
erment turnarounds. Together, the three make the economy more
inclusive and strengthen social capital.
We have also acknowledged that the economy we experience
has increasingly become a monetary phenomenon. And while we
propose a shift to a commons- based wellbeing economy, it is worth
contemplating that many of the tools that enable this shift are rooted
in our existing system. It is a delicate balance between realism and
idealism, upgrading and transforming, evolution and revolution.
In addressing poverty, the role of the monetary economy is cen-
tral: International institutions like the IMF and World Bank could cre-
ate and use existing instruments
—
like Special Drawing Rights
—
and
the cancellation of onerous debt to create a clean slate and protect the
bedrock domestic development of low- and middle- income nations.
This could be coupled with a reform of the trading rules. Both these
shifts are embedded in the mores of the recent past.
Even the turnarounds focused on the empowerment of women
and a reduction in inequality include expanding existing social
programs, adjusting taxes, and appropriate legislation
—
the sorts
of activities that have, over decades, made slow but still insucient
progress but could make signicant change with more eort.
Yet all these changes lead to a more profound look at economic
relationships and at the nature of economics itself. They are exactly
what Donella Meadows described: “places within a complex system...
where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in every-
thing.” Used well, and coupled with a renewed and reimagined focus
on the commons, these tools and the radical shifts they enable can
close the loop on an extractive economic system and make it not just
circulatory but also regenerative. It can reduce our material foot-
prints and help people steward the Earth that sustains them. And it
can put the economy back in service to people.
We call it a transformational wellbeing economics. Earth for all.
9
A Call to Action
Dear readers, you came, you read. Thank you.
We hear you. The tasks are monumental. The barriers are huge.
The risks are profound. The timeline is short. We have been talking
about catalyzing the fastest economic transformation in history. And
the heavy lifting has to start in the rst decade. Right now. As you
close this book.
It is probably worth reminding ourselves what we will gain from
upgrading and rebooting our economic system.
An end to poverty in one generation
This is now within reach. We estimate that all countries could have
average national incomes above $15,000 per person per year by 2050.
Snoozing means waiting a generation later
—
approaching 2100 to
reach this monumental goal.
Greater equality among people and nations
Our societies will not be torn apart by excessive inequalities. Redis-
tributing wealth within and among nations means that future gener-
ations can have more chances to realize their dreams, irrespective of
their family or country of origin.
Healthy people on a healthy planet
All people have the choice to eat well. Healthy food is the founda-
tion of a good, long, healthy life. It is also the foundation of a livable
planet. The alternative means reaching an uncomfortable tipping
point this century when over half the planet will be overweight or
obese, while hundreds of millions go hungry.
| E A
Abundant clean, cheap energy
By 2050, most countries could have abundant clean energy for the
rst time and at a price considerably cheaper than today’s energy.
And for the rst time, most could have energy security. This will
allow countries to break away from uncomfortable relationships with
authoritarian regimes that control fossil fuel supplies.
Fresh air
The toxic brown clouds hanging over major cities will disappear. The
shift to clean energy and energy eciency brings with it a dramatic
fall in air pollution. Without it, the markets will “solve” the problem
of air pollution with “solutions” such as the bubble schools in our four
girls’ narratives (these schools exist today!)
—
where children of rich
parents can play in playgrounds with ltered air, while other children
breathe polluted air.
Gender equity
The dismantling of the patriarchal hierarchy will really help drive
wellbeing for all and human development. Gender equity helps build
social cohesion because diversity, fairness, and justice are valued.
Economic resilience and security
Upgrading the economic system so that all people more fairly share
in the common wealth of societies will build resilience to inevitable
shocks; improve trust in democracies, making them better equipped
to take long- term decisions that benet the majority of people; and
build support for an almighty economic reboot.
Population stabilization
Within a single generation, the population of the planet can peak
—
potentially below nine billion
—
and begin to fall in the second half of
the century. Succeeding here, in a way that is fair and just and sup-
ported by people
—
that is, through providing economic security and
promoting gender equity
—
will be one of the most important achieve-
ments in the history of humanity.
A Call to Action |
A livable planet
Our future will be vastly more peaceful, more prosperous, and more
secure if we do everything in our power to stabilize Earth by 2050,
starting today. The longer we wait, the more dangerous our future
becomes. Our proposal is intended to help ensure a future on a liv-
able planet, a relatively stable planet with resilient societies better
equipped to adapt to change. If anything, this book is a response to
their call for “systems change”.
We gain back our future
Most of all, what we gain is our future. The foundations of a vibrant
economy are not money, nor energy, nor trade; they are optimistic
people with hope for a better future... and the tools to create this
future.
Is Earth for All Closer Than We Think?
If you feel the scale of the transformation is daunting, join the club.
Perhaps you feel it is like pushing a boulder up a hill. Well, here we
have some good news. You will have to push a boulder, for sure, but
what if you have to push the boulder downhill instead of uphill? What
if we just need to get the damn thing moving and the force of gravity
will help us after that?
We believe we are reaching a social tipping point across societies.
Indeed, four forces
—
social movements, new economic logic, tech-
nological development, and political action
—
are already aligning
to push societies across a tipping point in a way that leads us to self-
reinforcing virtuous cycles, an Earth for All world.
Social movements
—
the voice of the future
In 2018, Greta Thunberg began her strike from school outside the
Swedish parliament building. Her protests about inaction on climate
were joined by other young people around the world. From nowhere,
the future had a voice and it was loud and angry. Around the same
time, other movements have emerged or grown to prominence
—
#MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Sunrise, and Extinction Rebellion among
| E A
them. Public awareness has never been so high. These inspirational
movements are shaping the public debate and forcing politicians to
sit up and seriously take a systems approach to existential risk, for
the rst time.
Crossing an economic tipping point
For too long, those arguing against systems change have said it is too
expensive. In recent years, the logic behind this argument has disap-
peared. In many places, it is now cheaper to build a solar array than
it is to keep a coal- red power station running. And getting cheaper
every year. The cost of wind power is dropping precipitously too. The
cheapest sources of electricity in history are now renewables. Even
without strong economic policies to promote clean technology, the
transition is inevitable and will happen faster than many predictions
just a few years ago. But we can’t aord delays.
Technology
—
disruption is coming
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway and will accelerate this
decade. Digitalization and other technologies including automation,
articial intelligence, and machine learning will have a disruptive
impact across all industries, which will change demand for products,
change the nature of work, and change societies in ways that are
dicult to predict. Harnessed and directed, the technological revo-
lution can dramatically drive down demand for energy; help provide
sustainable food; improve gender equity through changing how we
work and live our lives; and it can reduce poverty by connecting more
people into the global economy.
Accelerating political momentum
Politicians have been shaken awake to a new narrative driven by
youth movement, new economic logic, and technological break-
throughs. Most major economies have now committed to reach net-
zero emissions by 2050 (and 2060 and 2070 in the cases of China and
India). Some countries are embracing wellbeing economies: Finland,
Iceland, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales. Europe’s Green Deal
A Call to Action |
promises a fair and just transition to a zero- carbon future. Countries
such as Spain are investing in protection of coal workers to help them
retrain during the transition period. In the United States, the Green
New Deal, again built on the foundation of a fair and just transition,
is gaining momentum. And China’s Ecological Civilization is a pro-
found long- term economic narrative based on a society operating
in harmony with nature. The time is right for extraordinary turn-
arounds.
Given these social tipping points, the boulder we need to push may
only require a large shove to really get it moving, with its own unstop-
pable momentum. And when we push the boulder, we may have a lot
of hands pushing with us. At the start of the Earth for All initiative, we
commissioned market research company Ipsos MORI to run an exten-
sive international survey of G20 countries.¹ Ipsos MORI recruited
around 20,000 people across these countries to complete the survey.
The ndings are informative and even provide a beacon of hope. The
world is not sleepwalking toward catastrophe. People are well aware
of the colossal risks we are taking by continuing business as usual.
•
Across the G20, three in ve people (58%) are “extremely worried”
or “very worried” about the current state of the planet. Even more
are concerned about the future. Concern is at its highest level
among: women (62%), young people aged 25 to 34 (60%), those
educated, high earners, and people who identify more as global
citizens than those who have a very strong national identity.
•
Three in four people (73%) believe Earth is edging closer to tipping
points because of human action. Those living in places close to
large, vital ecosystems currently under attack from development,
like Indonesia and Brazil’s rainforests, are most aware.
• Do people want to become better planetary stewards? Are people
willing to do more to protect nature and the climate? Again, the
answer is a resounding, “Yes” (83%). So most people across the
world’s largest economies do indeed want to do more to protect
and restore nature. But that does not mean that they are willing
to pay the bill.
| E A
The biggest surprise in the survey came in response to our asking
people if they want to transform economic systems to prioritize well-
being, health, and protection of the planet over a singular focus on
prot and economic growth. The answer is once again a resounding
“Yes.” Among G20 countries, 74% of people support the idea that their
country’s economic priorities should move beyond prot and increas-
ing wealth and focus more on human wellbeing and ecological pro-
tection. This view is consistently high among all G20 countries. It is
particularly high in Indonesia (86%), and even in the lowest- scoring
countries like the United States (68%), people support change.
A Chorus of Voices
The solutions we have described in this book require big changes in
societies everywhere. Those of us who have responsibilities in gov-
ernments and international institutions, or the private and nancial
sector, are already in privileged positions to become champions of
this transformation. Ultimately, though, the solutions are largely
macroeconomic and so require governments to create new policies
to make stu happen. Things like progressive taxation, creating
a Citizens Fund, redesigning the International Monetary Fund, or
transforming the energy system are beyond the power of individuals
or even banks or major companies to deliver at the scale needed. (See
Fifteen Policy Recommendations sidebar.)
Fieen Policy Recommendations
Poverty
• Allow the International Monetary Fund to allocate over
$1trillion annually to low-income countries for green jobs
—
creating investments through so-called Special Drawing
Rights.
• Cancel all debt to low- income countries (<$10,000 income
per person).
• Protect edgling industries in low- income countries and
A Call to Action |
promote South- South trade between these countries.
Improve access to renewables and health technologies
by removing obstacles to technology transfer, including
intellectual property constraints.
Inequality
• Increase taxes on the 10% richest in societies until they take
less than 40% of national incomes. The world needs strong
progressive taxation; and closing international loopholes
is essential to deal with destabilizing inequality and luxury
carbon and biosphere consumption.
• Legislate to strengthen worker’s rights. In a time of deep
transformation, workers need economic protection.
• Introduce Citizens Funds to give all citizens their fair share
of the national income, wealth, and the global commons
through fee and dividend schemes.
Gender Equity
• Provide access to education for all girls and women.
• Achieve gender equity in jobs and leadership.
• Provide adequate pensions.
Food
• Legislate to reduce food loss and waste.
• Scale up economic incentives for regenerative agriculture
and sustainable intensication.
• Promote healthy diets that respect planetary boundaries.
Energy
• Immediately phase out fossil fuels and scale up energy
eciency and renewables. Triple investments immediately
to >$1 trillion per year in new renewables.
• Electrify everything.
• Invest in energy storage at scale.
| E A
We want to close with a call to action. Sometimes change can seem
impossibly slow, generational even. But it does not need to be so. The
global nancial crisis that played out between 2007 and 2009 drove
extremely rapid political and economic change to build more resilient
banking systems. The COVID- 19 pandemic led to overnight changes
in behavior and business models. This gives us hope that this decade
will see the fastest economic transformation in history.
All of us have a role to play, as concerned citizens, as human
beings, as people who value our future, to support this change. Poli-
ticians respond to public voices, and the pathways we are advocating
will need public action and a chorus of voices to reach unstoppable
momentum. We need a movement of movements built on outrage
and optimism. We need a change in the narrative, we need to open
a conversation in every home, every school, every university, every
town and city on how to upgrade our economic system. We think this
is possible. At the end of the day, it is about defending our common
sacred values, providing a home for our families, our kids, our loved
ones, ensuring the dignity of each human being, and looking forward
to the future on a livable planet.
The call to action for governments is this: commit to the ve
extraordinary turnarounds and the accompanying policy levers. To
create momentum to drive these turnarounds:
•
Reduce polarization. Improve social cohesion. Find common
ground. Or lose democracy.
•
Share wealth more fairly. Citizens Funds and Universal Basic Divi-
dends bring multiple benets. They are likely to gain the support
from the majority of people. They reduce harmful pollution. And
they protect citizens during a turbulent period.
•
Act in the interests of future generations and create institutions
that ensure current generations think intergenerationally.
• Change how you measure progress, valuing wellbeing over nan-
cial growth.
• Engage with citizens about what really matters in society.
• Send unequivocal signals to markets that long- term commitment
and investment in transformation is locked in. This will create
economic optimism for transformation.
A Call to Action |
The call to action for citizens is this:
• Join the movements!
• Vote for politicians who value the future.
•
Wherever you are, start conversations about how the economic
transformation that has to come will aect you, your family, your
job, your life. How can you benet from it? How can it improve
your career, your education? Is this societal transformation an
opportunity to follow your dream, to change course?
• In your town, or city, or country, demand a citizens’ assembly on
economic systems change. Citizens’ assemblies have been used to
navigate dicult, contentious political issues like climate change.
They can help diuse polarization and provide fresh ideas and
perspectives. We believe they are one of the most exciting ways to
get politicians to sit up and take notice.
•
Ask your local and national politicians to act to bring our societies
closer to Earth for All.
Across our tribes, cultures, and societies, people everywhere are wor-
ried and anxious about the future. But we have two things in com-
mon: We all value our future, and the majority of people want change
and want support to change. If this book does one thing, we hope to
convince you there is a future out there worth striving toward. This
future is not some bright utopia without shadows. But we believe
the pathways discussed here are the ones most likely to secure the
long- term potential of our wondrous, freewheeling, endlessly inven-
tive, often confounding, and truly global civilization on a relatively
stableplanet.
Appendix
The Earth4All Model
As everyone who works methodologically and professionally in
foresight knows, the future does not exist yet, so there can be no
evidence- based data from the future (until we get there).
So scenarios are narratives about the future. They are plausible
and uncertain stories. And numbers from the future are metaphors
in that story, not absolute truths about some predetermined reality.
Those numbers are sound bites about the future intended to inform
the decisions we make in the present.
This applies, of course, to all models that calculate, assess, or esti-
mate climate change, demographics, or anything else into the distant
future.
Here, we share some of the workings of Earth4All that helped us
visualize Too Little Too Late, Giant Leap, and other scenarios that
were part of our project analysis. And we invite you to access the data
and use it for your own investigations.
Model Purpose
Earth4All is a system dynamics computer model to study the dynam-
ics of human wellbeing on nite planet Earth this century. The model
is designed primarily to generate internally consistent scenarios for
population, poverty, GDP, inequality, food, energy, and other rele vant
variables from 1980 to 2100 and to see how they evolve in concert.
The ambition is to identify policies that increase the likelihood of
a future that combines high wellbeing for the global majority with
thriving nature keeping Earth within planetary boundaries.
| E A
Two main versions of the model exist: One calculates global aver-
ages (E4A- global), and the other calculates development paths for ten
regions of the world (E4A- regional).
The model was built to recreate the broad sweep of history from
1980 to 2020, using as few exogenous drivers as possible. An exo-
genous driver is where the value of a variable in the model is imposed
externally
—
we turn up a knob on the model manually
—
rather than
generated internally by the dynamics of the model, for instance, if
a nation or region increases taxes on the top earners in society, the
model responds by calculating how this driver impacts the nancial
system and available income to the government into the future.
We can run the model to 2100 to study the eect of parameter
changes made in 2022. The model has intentionally been kept as sim-
ple as possible, to increase transparency and understandability, even
though this lowers the precision level.
Model History
The Earth4All model has been under construction for a decade.
It was (of course) inspired by the World3 model that underlaid The
Limits to Growth and, in dierent versions, the follow- up studies in
1992 and 2004. In 2011, two of us (Jorgen Randers and Ulrich Goluke)
began a concerted eort to develop a system dynamics model to
include investment needs that might help actually solve some of
the existential challenges World3 highlighted so eectively, speci-
cally the unavoidable nonprotable spending required to solve the
climate emergency. We did not succeed in turning our work into a
system dynamics model, but we successfully created a regionalized
spreadsheet model, called Earth2, which supported the book 2052:
A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, which appeared in 2012.¹
During the following years, Earth2 was gradually improved into the
Earth3 model, which supported the book Transformation Is Feasible!
published in 2018.² In parallel, we evolved the climate component of
Earth2 into a fully- edged system dynamics model of climate change
this century, published in 2016.³
The Earth4All Model |
The (big) job of converting these earlier models into a fully endog-
enized system dynamics model was completed during the Earth
for All project over the last several years and given the name the
Earth4All model.
The Main Sectors in the Model
The model consists of the following sectors (in the regionalized
model, one for each of the regions):
•
Population sector: generates total population from fertility and
mortality processes, potential workforce size, and the number of
pensioners.
• Output sector: generates GDP, consumption, investment, govern-
ment spending, and jobs. The economy is seen as a sum of a pri-
vate sector and a public sector.
•
Public sector: generates public spending from tax revenue, the
net eect of debt transactions, and the distribution of the budget
on governmental goods and services (including on technological
advance and the ve turnarounds).
•
Labor market sector: generates the unemployment rate worker
share of output, and the workforce participation rate, based on the
capital output ratio.
• Demand sector: generates income distribution between owners,
workers, and the public sector.
• Inventory sector: generates capacity utilization and the ination
rate.
• Finance sector: generates the interest rates.
• Energy sector: generates fossil fuel- based and renewable energy
production, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use, and
the cost of energy.
• Food and land sector: generates crop production, environmental
impacts of agriculture, and the cost of food.
•
Reform delay sector: generates the societal ability to react to a
challenge (like climate change) as a function of social trust and
social tension.
Figure A.1 The main causal loops that make up the core structure of the Earth4All model.
The Earth4All Model |
•
Wellbeing sector: generates global indicators measuring both
environmental and societal sustainability. Including the Average
Wellbeing Index.
In the regionalized version of Earth4All, world development is calcu-
lated as the sum of the development in ten regions (each being rep-
resented by the same structure and parametrized to t their regional
style of socioeconomic development). When tting to the regions, we
learned that numerous Sustainable Development Goals and behav-
ior traits vary systematically as a function of GDP per person. This
applies to savings rate, fertility, life expectancy, pension age, energy
use per person, food use per person, minerals use per person, hours
worked per year, and other factors.
Model Causal Loop Diagram
A high- level description of the model structure is shown in gure A.1.
A full technical description of the model is available on the web at
earth4all.life. This includes the model’s underlying equations. Users
can also download and run the open- source model on their own
computers.
Model Novelty
Why make a new model when there are so many others out there
already? What unique attributes does the Earth4All model oer?
Here we list eight novelties that address some of the shortcomings in
the global systems modeling eld:
1. Inequality: We investigate the distributional eects in terms of
owner and worker share of output from both private investment
and public sector activities, conrming the preliminary evidence
that distributional patterns are relevant to sustainable policy-
making.
2. Ecology: We include the wider eect of the human economy on
the main planetary boundaries (climate, nutrients, forests, biodi-
versity), the impact of natural boundaries on economic develop-
ment, and their complex feedback eects.
| E A
3. Public sector: We model an active public sector with public infra-
structure capacity, welfare policies, and climate- change mitiga-
tion policy stance.
4. Finance: We include the eects from debt and money supply, cen-
tral bank interest rates, and corporate capital costs, addressing
the call for further integration of nancial mechanisms within
integrated assessment models (IAMs), used to test the feasibility
of climate goals.
5. Labor: We are able to simulate a recurrent ten- year unemploy-
ment cycle, and its macroeconomic consequences, a global rst.
6. Population: In contrast to the UN’s statistical approach, the
Earth4All model has endogenous population dynamics aected
by investment levels in public spending, education, and income
levels, improving on existing IAMs with demographic sectors.¹
7. Wellbeing: We integrate an Average Wellbeing Index (as a func-
tion of disposable income, income inequality, government ser-
vices, the climate crisis, and perceived progress), illustrating the
connection between environmental sustainability and social
trust, and linking declining trust to public decision- making delays
in an integrated assessment model for the rst time.¹¹
8. Social tension: We integrate a Social Tension Index (as a function
of perceived progress, dened as the rate of change in the Average
Wellbeing Index) that inuences the speed and strength at which
societies react to an emerging challenge. That is, as the Social Ten-
sion Index rises, we interpret this as driving greater polarization
in societies, making it more challenging to agree on solutions to
societal challenges like the climate emergency.
The Earth for All Game
The Earth4All model will also become freely available with a user-
friendly, intuitive interface. This is to make it simpler for those who
want to run the model with their own set of parameters to do so.
Playing with models is a helpful way to learn how the system’s
dynamics work, and how certain changes stimulate other changes.
In interactive sessions, classes, groups, and citizen assemblies can
negotiate and game together to create their own future.
Notes
Chapter : Earth for All
Sub- Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, western Europe,
eastern Europe and central Asia, Latin America, Middle East and North
Africa, Pacic region, and United States.
By 2100, the Too Little Too Late scenario sees an approximate 2.5°C rise in
global average surface temperature above preindustrial levels.
This is the rough assessment that arises from all the assumptions that
constitute the Earth4All model. It is supported by other studies on the
likely cost of action. See, for example: the International Energy Agency’s
Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector (2021); the Inter-
governmental Panel on Climate Change’s “Mitigation Pathways Compati-
ble with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development,” Chapter2 in:
Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report (2018); Yuval Noah Harari,
“The Surprisingly Low Price Tag on Preventing Climate Disaster,” Time
(January 18, 2022); DNV’s Energy Transition Outlook–2021 (Oslo: DNV,
2021); Nicholas Stern’s “Economic Development, Climate and Values:
Making Policy,” Proceedings of the Royal Society 282, no. 1812 (August 7,
2015).
Chandran Nair, The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy,
and Society (Oakland, CA: BK Publishers, 2018); Mariana Mazzucato,
Value of Everything (S.l.: Public Aairs, 2020).
Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of
Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe Books,
1972). This report was commissioned by the Club of Rome. Despite its
name, this is an international think tank dedicated to systemic systems
thinking about global problems.
Graham M. Turner, “On the Cusp of Global Collapse? Updated Com-
parison of The Limits to Growth with Historical Data,” GAIA- Ecological
Perspectives for Science and Society 21, no. 2 (2012): 116–24; Graham Turner,
Is Global Collapse Imminent? MSSI Research Paper No. 4, (Melbourne
Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne, 2014).
Gaya Herrington, “Update to Limits to Growth: Comparing the World3
Model with Empirical Data,” Journal of Industrial Ecology 25, no. 3 (June
2021): 614–26.
| Notes
Colin N. Waters et al., “The Anthropocene Is Functionally and Strati-
graphically Distinct from the Holocene,” Science 351, no. 6269 (2016).
Paul J. Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature 415, no. 6867 (2002): 23.
A. Ganopolski, R. Winkelmann, and H. J. Schellnhuber, “Critical
Insolation–CO Relation for Diagnosing Past and Future Glacial Incep-
tion,” Nature 529, no. 7585 (2016): 200–203.
Will Steen et al., “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Accel-
eration,” Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (April 2015): 81–98.
Will Steen et al., “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human Development
on a Changing Planet,” Science 347, no. 6223 (2015).
Lan Wang- Erlandsson et al., “A Planetary Boundary for Green Water,”
Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2022): 1–13.
Timothy M. Lenton et al., “Climate Tipping Points: Too Risky to Bet
Against,” Nature 575 (2019): 592–95; Jorgen Randers and Ulrich Goluke,
“An Earth System Model Shows Self- Sustained Thawing of Permafrost
Even If All Man- Made GHG Emissions Stop in 2020,” Scientic Reports 10,
no. 1 (2020): 18456.
Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st- Century
Economist (VT: Chelsea Green, 2017).
In Earth4All, when we write $, USD, or US$, the default we refer to is US
dollars at stable, real 2017 prices, measured at purchasing power parity
(PPP)
—
in this case, 15,000 US$ 2017- PPP
—
building on the Penn World
Tables v.10.
See Dr. Mamphela Ramphele (2022), Deep Dive paper, Global Equity for a
Healthy Planet, available at earth4all.life/resources.
Emily Elhacham et al., “Global Human- Made Mass Exceeds All Living
Biomass,” Nature 588, no. 7838 (December 2020): 442–44.
Paul Fennell et al., “Cement and Steel: Nine Steps to Net Zero,” Nature
603, no. 7902 (March 2022): 574–77.
Ibid.
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great
Britain, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South
Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States.
Chapter : Exploring Two Scenarios
See Randers et al. (2022), The Earth4All Scenarios Technical report,
earth4all.life/resources.
For more information, see weall.org.
David Collste et al., “Human Well- being in the Anthropocene: Limits to
Growth,” Global Sustainability 4 (2021): e30.
Manfred A. Max- Neef, Human Scale Development: Conception, Applica-
tion and Further Reections (NY: Apex, 1991); Len Doyal and Ian Gough,
“A Theory of Human Needs,” Critical Social Policy 4, no. 10 (1984): 6–38.
Notes |
See Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2022), Deep Dive paper, From
Inequality to Sustainability, available at earth4all.life/resources.
Jon Reiersen, “Inequality and Trust Dynamics,” in Disaster, Diversity and
Emergency Preparation, ed. Leif Inge Magnussen (NATO/IOS Press, 2019).
See L. Chancel et al., World Inequality Report 2022 (World Inequality Lab,
2021).
Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth, Angrynomics (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK:
Agenda, 2020).
The Earth4All project’s Too Little Too Late scenario has a climate trajec-
tory that is close to the “Middle of the road” scenario in the Shared Socio-
economic Pathway family of scenarios, i.e., the “IPCC SSP2- 4.5” scenario.
See Malte Meinshausen et al., “The Shared Socio- Economic Pathway
(SSP) Greenhouse Gas Concentrations and Their Extensions to 2500,”
Geoscientic Model Development 13, no. 8 (August 13, 2020): 3571–3605.
For more on fee and dividends, see chapter 4 on the inequality turn-
around, chapter 8 on wellbeing economics, and the full Deep Dive paper
by Ken Webster (2022), The Long Road to a Social Dividend, available at
earth4all.life/resources.
Ngúgí wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in Afri-
can Literature (London, Nairobi: J. Currey Heinemann Kenya [etc.], 1986).
Chapter : Saying Goodbye to Povery
IRP et al., Global Resources Outlook 2019: Natural Resources for the Future
We Want (UNEP/IRP, 2019).
B. Bruckner et al., “Impacts of Poverty Alleviation on National and Global
Carbon Emissions,” Nature Sustainability 5 (April 2022): 311–20.
Henry A. Giroux, “Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the
Biopolitics of Disposability,” College Literature 33, no. 3 (2006): 171–96.
Nishant Yonzan, Christoph Lakner, and Daniel Gerszon Mahler, “Project-
ing Global Extreme Poverty up to 2030,” World Bank Blog (October 9, 2020).
Masse Lô (2022), Growth Within Limits Through Solidarity and Equity, Earth
for All Deep Dive paper, available at earth4all.life/resources.
K. Sahoo and N. Sethi, “Impact of Foreign Capital on Economic Develop-
ment in India: An Econometric Investigation,” Global Business Review
18, no. 3 (2017): 766–80; S. Sharma et al., “A Study of Relationship and
Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on Economic Growth Rate of India,”
International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues 10, no. 5 (2020): 327;
A. T. Bui, C. V. Nguyen, and T. P. Pham, “Impact of Foreign Investment on
Household Welfare: Evidence from Vietnam,” Journal of Asian Economics
64 (October 2019): 101130.
J. Zheng and P. Sheng, “The Impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
on the Environment: Market Perspectives and Evidence from China,”
Economies 5, no. 1 (March 2017): 8.
| Notes
World Bank (2022), “International Debt Statistics | Data.”
Paul Brenton and Vicky Chemutai, The Trade and Climate Change Nexus:
The Urgency and Opportunities for Developing Countries (Washington, DC:
World Bank, 2021).
“Lawrence Summers’ Principle,” ejolt.org/2013/02/lawrence- summers’
-principle.
See Jayati Ghosh et al. (2022), Deep Dive paper, Assigning Responsibility
for Climate Change: An Assessment Based on Recent Trends, written with
co- authors from Political Economy Research Institute, University of
Massachusetts Amherst, US, available at earth4all.life/resources.
Jayati Ghosh “Free the Money We Need,” Project Syndicate (February 14,
2022).
An important recent case of this can be seen in the eorts by drug com-
panies to discourage bringing COVID- 19 vaccines to Africa, see Madlen
Davies, “COVID- 19: WHO Eorts to Bring Vaccine Manufacturing to
Africa Are Undermined by the Drug Industry, Documents Show,” BMJ 376
(2022): o304.
Anuragh Balajee, Shekhar Tomar, Gautham Udupa, “COVID- 19, Fiscal
Stimulus, and Credit Ratings,” SSRN Electronic Journal (2020).
“Home–Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture,”
accessed April 7, 2022, statecapture.org.za.
Chapter : The Inequality Turnaround
In addition to taxation, there is an urgent need for regulation of markets
and investor behavior to align private investments with social goals,
prevent excessive concentration, and reduce monopolistic behavior and
rent seeking by large corporations.
L. Chancel et al., World Inequality Report 2022 (World Inequality Lab, 2021).
Michael W. Doyle and Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Eliminating Extreme Inequality:
A Sustainable Development Goal, 2015–2030,” Ethics & International
Aairs 28, no. 1 (2014): 5–13.
See Wilkinson and Pickett (2022), Deep Dive paper, From Inequality to
Sustainability, available at earth4all.life/resources.
Chancel et al., World Inequality Report 2022.
Wilkinson and Pickett (2022).
Chancel et al., World Inequality Report 2022.
Oxfam (September 21, 2020), Media Brieng, “Confronting Carbon
Inequality: Putting Climate Justice at the Heart of the COVID- 19 Recovery.”
See Chandran Nair (2022), Deep Dive paper, Transformations for a Dispa-
rate and More Equitable World, available at earth4all.life/resources.
Alex Cobham and Andy Sumner, “Is It All About the Tails? The Palma
Measure of Income Inequality,” Center for Global Development Working
Paper No. 343, SSRN Electronic Journal (2013).
Chris Isidore, “Buett Says He’s Still Paying Lower Tax Rate Than His
Secretary,” CNN Money (March 4, 2013).
Notes |
Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra, CEO Pay Has Skyrocketed 1,322% Since
1978 (Economic Policy Institute, August 10, 2021).
Climate Leadership Council, “The Four Pillars of Our Carbon Dividends
Plan,” accessed March 31, 2022; “Opinion | Larry Summers: Why We
Should All Embrace a Fantastic Republican Proposal to Save the Planet,”
Washington Post (February 9, 2017), accessed March 31, 2022.
Chapter : The Empowerment Turnaround
Mariana Mazzucato, “What If Our Economy Valued What Matters?”
Project Syndicate (March 8, 2022).
L. Chancel et al., World Inequality Report 2022 (World Inequality Lab, 2021).
Max Roser, “Future Population Growth,” Our World in Data (2022).
Wolfgang Lutz et al., Demographic and Human Capital Scenarios for the
21st Century: 2018 Assessment for 201 Countries (Publications Oce of
the European Union, 2018); see also Callegari et al. (2022), The Earth4All
Population Report to GCF, at earth4all.life/resources.
Jumaine Gahungu, Mariam Vahdaninia, and Pramod R. Regmi, “The
Unmet Needs for Modern Family Planning Methods among Postpartum
Women in Sub- Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review of the Literature,”
Reproductive Health 18, no. 1 (February 10, 2021): 35.
UNESCO, New Methodology Shows 258 Million Children, Adolescents and
Youth Are Out of School, Fact Sheet no. 56 (September 2019).
Ruchir Agarwal, “Pandemic Scars May Be Twice as Deep for Students in
Developing Countries,” IMFBlog (February 3, 2022).
See Dr. Mamphela Ramphele (2022), Deep Dive paper, Global Equity for a
Healthy Planet, available at earth4all.life/resources.
Sarath Davala et al., Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India
( London; New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2015).
Andy Haines and Howard Frumkin, Planetary Health: Safeguarding
Human Health and the Environment in the Anthropocene (NY: Cambridge
University Press, 2021).
Chapter : The Food Turnaround
Cheikh Mbow et al., “Food Security,” in Climate Change and Land, IPCC
Special Report, ed. P. R. Shukla et al. (IPCC, 2019).
“Hunger and Undernourishment” and “Obesity,” Ourworldindata.org,
accessed February 20, 2022.
Yinon M. Bar- On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo, “The Biomass Distribution
on Earth,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 25 (June
19, 2018): 6506–11.
Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “Land Use,” Our World in Data (November
13, 2013).
M. Nyström et al., “Anatomy and Resilience of the Global Production
Ecosystem,” Nature 575, no. 7781 (November 2019): 98–108.
Bar- On et al., “The Biomass Distribution on Earth.”
| Notes
The Future of Food and Agriculture: Alternative Pathways to 2050 (Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2018), accessed March
31, 2022; Climate Change and Land (IPCC Special Report), accessed March
31, 2022.
Joe Weinberg and Ryan Bakker, “Let Them Eat Cake: Food Prices, Domes-
tic Policy and Social Unrest,” Conict Management and Peace Science 32,
no. 3 (2015): 309–26.
Rabah Arezki and Markus Brückner, Food Prices and Political Instability,
CESifo Working Paper Series (CESifo, August 2011).
Gabe Brown, Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
(VT: Chelsea Green, 2018).
Mark A. Bradford et al., “Soil Carbon Science for Policy and Practice,”
Nature Sustainability 2, no. 12 (December 2019): 1070–72.
T. Vijay Kumar and Didi Pershouse, “The Remarkable Success of India’s
Natural Farming Movement,” Forum Network lecture (January 21, 2021).
Johan Rockström et al., “Sustainable Intensication of Agriculture for
Human Prosperity and Global Sustainability,” Ambio 46, no. 1 (February
2017): 4–17.
Jules Pretty and Zareen Pervez Bharucha, “Sustainable Intensication
in Agricultural Systems,” Annals of Botany 114, no. 8 (December 1, 2014):
1571–96.
Andy Haines and Howard Frumkin, Planetary Health: Safeguarding
Human Health and the Environment in the Anthropocene (NY: Cambridge
University Press, 2021).
“Blue Food,” Nature, nature.com (2021).
The Future of Food and Agriculture.
Sara Tanigawa, “Fact Sheet | Biogas: Converting Waste to Energy,” EESI
White Papers (October 3, 2017), accessed April 7, 2022.
Regulations should at least require implementation of the OECD/ILO
Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) process.
Jules Pretty et al., “Global Assessment of Agricultural System Redesign
for Sustainable Intensication,” Nature Sustainability 1, no. 8 (August 1,
2018): 441–46.
Dieter Gerten et al., “Feeding Ten Billion People Is Possible Within Four
Terrestrial Planetary Boundaries,” Nature Sustainability 3 (January 20,
2020): 200–08.
Walter Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Com-
mission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems,” Lancet 393,
no. 10170 (2019): 447–92.
Chapter : The Energy Turnaround
The Carbon Law is an exponential trajectory (halving every decade). Its
name derives from another famous exponential trajectory, Moore’s Law,
Notes |
in the digital technology sector, that observes computer power approxi-
mately doubles every two years.
Arnulf Grubler et al., “A Low Energy Demand Scenario for Meeting the
1.5°C Target and Sustainable Development Goals without Negative Emis-
sion Technologies,” Nature Energy 3, no. 6 (June 2018): 515–27.
Jason Hickel, “Quantifying National Responsibility for Climate Break-
down: An Equality- Based Attribution Approach for Carbon Dioxide
Emissions in Excess of the Planetary Boundary,” The Lancet Planetary
Health4, no. 9 (September 1, 2020): e399–404.
Pierre Friedlingstein et al., Global Carbon Budget 2021, Earth System
Science Data (November 4, 2021): 1–191.
See Jayati Ghosh et al. (2022), Deep Dive paper, Assigning Responsibility
for Climate Change: An Assessment Based on Recent Trends, written with
co- authors from Political Economy Research Institute, University of
Massachusetts Amherst, US, available at earth4all.life/resources.
Benjamin Goldstein, Tony G. Reames, and Joshua P. Newell, “Racial
Inequity in Household Energy Eciency and Carbon Emissions in the
United States: An Emissions Paradox,” Energy Research & Social Science 84
(February 1, 2022): 102365.
Nate Vernon, Ian Parry, and Simon Black, Still Not Getting Energy Prices
Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, IMF Working
Papers (September 2021).
Grubler et al., “A Low Energy Demand Scenario.”
See more in Janez Potočnik and Anders Wijkman (2022), Deep Dive
paper, Why Resource Eciency of Provisioning Systems Is a Crucial Path-
wayto Ensuring Wellbeing Within Planetary Boundaries, available at
earth4all.life/resources.
Bill McKibben, “Build Nothing New That Ultimately Leads to a Flame,”
New Yorker (February 10, 2021).
Johan Falk et al., “Exponential Roadmap: Scaling 36 Solutions to Halve
Emissions by 2030, version 1.5” (Sweden: Future Earth, January 2020).
Such commentators on the exponential rise of renewables include
researcher groups at Stanford, IEA’s Net Zero by 2050, IIASA; EWG &
LUT, RMI, RethinkX, Singularity, Rystad, Statnett, Exponential View. See
Nafeez Ahmed (2022), Deep Dive paper, The Clean Energy Transformation,
available at earth4all.life/resources.
See Ahmed, Deep Dive paper, ibid., for discussion.
Ibid.
World Bank Group, State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2019 (Washington,
DC: World Bank, June 2019): 9–10.
See Rimel I. Mehleb, Giorgos Kallis, and Christos Zografos, “A Discourse
Analysis of Yellow- Vest Resistance against Carbon Taxes,” Environmental
Innovation and Societal Transitions 40 (September 2021): 382–94.
| Notes
“Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends Organized by the Climate
Leadership Council,” Original publication in the Wall Street Journal,
econstatement.org.
Chapter : From “Winner Take All” Capitalism to EarthAll Economies
Donella H. Meadows, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System (Hart-
land, VT: Sustainability Institute, 1999).
Yuval Noah Harari, “The Surprisingly Low Price Tag on Preventing
Climate Disaster,” Time (January 18, 2022).
See Dr. Mamphela Ramphele (2021), Deep Dive paper, Global Equity for a
Healthy Planet, available at earth4all.life/resources.
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for
Collective Action, Canto Classics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2015); Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Com-
mons (San Francisco: Berrett- Kohler, 2014).
Club of Rome, China Chapter (2022), “Understanding China” (forth-
coming).
World Bank, International Debt Statistics 2022 (Washington, DC: World
Bank, 2021).
Per Espen Stoknes, Tomorrow’s Economy: A Guide to Creating Healthy Green
Growth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021).
Wellington Management (August 2021), “Adapting to Climate Change:
Investing in the Resiliency Imperative.”
So long as most debt is held domestically or in the extraordinary privi-
lege of the US, there is an unlimited demand abroad to hold dollars.
Guy Standing, Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public
Wealth (London: Pelican, 2019).
“The Commons, the State and the Public: A Latin American Perspective,”
an interview with Daniel Chavez, Transnational Institute (January 10,
2019).
Chapter : A Call to Action
G20: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great
Britain, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South
Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States, and the countries of the
European Union.
Appendix : The EarthAll Model
J. Randers, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (VT: Chelsea
Green, 2012).
J. Randers et al., Transformation Is Feasible! How to Achieve the Sustainable
Development Goals Within Planetary Boundaries (Stockholm Resilience
Center: Stockholm, 2018).
Notes |
J. Randers et al., “A User- friendly Earth System Model of Low Complexity:
The ESCIMO System Dynamics Model of Global Warming Towards 2100,”
Earth System Dynamics 7 (2016): 831–50.
D. Collste et al., “Human Well- being in the Anthropocene: Limits to
Growth,” Global Sustainability 4 (2021): 1–17.
Narasimha D. Rao, Bas J. van Ruijven, Keywan Riahi, and Valentina
Bosetti, “Improving Poverty and Inequality Modelling in Climate
Research,” Nature Climate Change 7, no. 12 (2017): 857–62.
Michael Harfoot et al., “Integrated Assessment Models for Ecologists:
The Present and the Future,” Global Ecology and Biogeography 23, no. 2
(2014): 124–43.
Mariana Mazzucato, “Financing the Green New Deal,” Nature Sustainabil-
ity (2021): 1–2.
Stefano Battiston, Irene Monasterolo, Keywan Riahi, and Bas J. van
Ruijven, “Accounting for Finance Is Key for Climate Mitigation Path-
ways,” Science 372, no. 6545 (2021): 918–20.
Tommaso Ciarli and Maria Savona, “Modelling the Evolution of Eco-
nomic Structure and Climate Change: A Review,” Ecological Economics 158
(2019): 51–64.
Victor Court and Florent McIsaac, “A Representation of the World
Population Dynamics for Integrated Assessment Models,” Environmental
Modeling & Assessment 25, no. 5 (2020): 611–32.
Efrat Eizenberg and Yosef Jabareen, “Social Sustainability: A New Con-
ceptual Framework,” Sustainability 9, no. 1 (2017): 68.
Index
| Index
Index |
| Index
Index |
| Index
About the Authors
Sandrine Dixson- Declève is co- president of the Club of Rome and has over
30 years of leadership in climate change, sustainability, innovation, and
energy. GreenBiz named her one of the 30 most inuential women driving
change in the low- carbon economy. She is a policy advisor, facilitator, TED
speaker, teacher, and author of Quel Monde Pour Demain?
Owen Ganey is a changemaker, strategist, writer, lmmaker, and global
sustainability analyst at Stockholm Resilience Centre and Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research. He is co-founder of the Exponential Roadmap
Initiative and has written, produced and advised on multimedia and docu-
mentaries for the BBC, Netix, TED, WWF and the World Economic Forum.
Jayati Ghosh is an internationally recognized development economist
and professor at the University of Massachusetts. She has authored and/or
edited 19 books and nearly 200 scholarly articles, received several national
and international prizes, and is member of an array of international com-
missions. She writes regularly for a variety of media.
Jorgen Randers is professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Nor-
wegian Business School. A global leader on the intersections of economy,
the environment, and human wellbeing, he coauthored The Limits to Growth
in 1972 and the 30- year update. He is the author of 2052 and coauthor of
Reinventing Prosperity and Transformation Is Feasible!
Johan Rockström is director of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research. He led the team of scientists that proposed the inuential
planetary boundaries framework. Rockström’s TED talks have received over
ve million views. He is the subject of the Netix documentary Breaking
Boundaries, narrated by David Attenborough.
Per Espen Stoknes directs the Center for Sustainability and Energy at the BI
Norwegian Business School. He is a TED speaker, and was an MP in the Nor-
wegian parliament (2017–2018), has co- founded clean- energy companies,
and is the author of several books, including Tomorrow’s Economy and What
We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming.
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