The Graph: A Picture of the Present and Future

by Ray Grigg
Shades of Green
July 5, 2009

Click for larger graph

The multi-coloured graph sprawls across two facing pages of the New Scientist magazine (Oct. 18/08). The horizontal axis marks the years from 1750 to 2000, while the vertical axis marks increments of change in 12 crucial categories linking global economic activity with environmental conditions on the planet. All the lines begin to rise steeply after 1950, and by 2000 they have converged in a nearly vertical ascent. Taken together, they are a picture of the present and a prospect for the future - a future that seems to hint at some uncertain but inevitable climax. The following is a more detailed description of the graph's lines.

• Northern hemisphere average surface temperature (orange). It rises from 1750 to 1775 then drops gradually until about 1830, levels out until about 1912, rises again until 1950, drops until 1975, then angles sharply upwards thereafter. This irregular course is probably the result of the warming effect of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in conflict with the cooling effect of industrial air pollution and volcanos.


• Population (red). It rises gradually from 1750, then ascends sharply after 1950, indicating a doubling since 1950 and a nearly eight-fold increase since 1750.


• Carbon dioxide concentration (dark blue). It follows the population curve but then crosses it on an even steeper trajectory after 1975. Atmospheric concentrations have risen from 280 parts per million to 388, with actual increases during the last decade.


• Gross domestic product (dark red). It marks a slow curve, then is nearly vertical after 1960. All human history was required for the economy to reach its present level; barring any changes, it will double in two decades.


• Loss of tropical rainforest and woodland (dark green). This line follows the gross domestic product curve. About half of the world's tree cover has now been converted to other uses.


• Water use (blue). Not tracked until 1900, it begins by increasing gradually but it has risen to a nearly vertical trend by 1970.


• Paper consumption (yellow). First tracked about 1908, it follows a jagged but nearly vertical ascent after 1950.


• Species extinction (light green). Tracking starts about 1890, showing a sweeping curve that is rising nearly vertically by 2000.


• Motor vehicles (black). From the time they were invented just before 1900, they show little increase until about 1930. After 1945, their trajectory is nearly vertical. Almost one billion vehicles now populate the planet. World traffic fatalities are now about 1.2 million per year, with vehicle accidents injuring 20 to 50 million people annually.


• Fisheries exploited (light blue). Tracking starts in 1950 and shows a steepening curve that is nearly vertical by 1980. Large fish have now been depleted by 90%.


• Foreign investment (brown). Tracking begins about 1952 and shows a zig-zag line rising nearly vertically after 1980.


• Ozone depletion (beige). Tracking begins in 1950 and shows the same dramatic rise.

Considered in their totality, these coloured graph lines form the famous "hockey stick" figure, a relatively long horizontal handle that turns into a sharply rising curve as it reaches the present. Mathematically, these upward-moving lines resemble an asymptote, a condition in which the ever-steepening curve approaches a theoretical vertical. In this situation, any small advance in time on the horizontal axis measures a nearly infinite change on the vertical.

Since numbers seem to be infinite, the asymptote is an interesting mathematical curiosity. In the real world, however, infinity is not an option. Practical limits are soon reached for the number of people we can accommodate on our planet, for the amount of carbon dioxide the atmosphere can hold without poisoning the biosphere, for the forest cover we can remove without radically altering global ecologies. Limited space is available for parking and driving vehicles. Oceans can only provide a finite supply of fish. Species cannot be removed indefinitely from Earth's web of life without eventually shredding the fabric that binds together its biological integrity.

Scientist who examine the "hockey stick" graph are acutely aware of the stark difference between the mathematical possibility of the infinite and the finite limitation of the real. This is why they are getting nervous. When time is plotted against change in an asymptote, just a few moments has an enormous impact on consequence. The nearly vertical trajectory of so many crucial categories in our civilization's graph suggests that a collision with the reality of limits is a "when" rather than an "if".

No one knows when this will happen. But in an asymptote, every moment becomes increasingly important - critical becomes literal. This probably explains the rising level of anxiety in nearly everyone who closely follows the world's unfolding events. The present economic system, built on the assumption of continual growth, does not seem to be sustainable.

Most traditional economists, of course, do not reckon a limit to growth. They see it as a cure to all that ails humanity. And optimists believe the dire concerns illustrated by the "hockey stick" graph can be addressed by the promises of new technologies, recycling, increased efficiencies and human resourcefulness. The future of our civilization seems suspended in the balance between optimistic hopefulness and a catastrophic collision with limits.

In 1848, one of the founders of modern economics, John Stuart Mill, published a landmark book called Principles of Political Economy (Ibid.). He envisioned a time when we would complete our task of "economic growth" and, having satisfied our material needs, could then graduate to a "stationary" economy in which our efforts would be spent on bettering ourselves with "all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress... for improving the art of living...". Our present circumstances suggest that we should each take his vision very, very seriously.

How our economy is killing the Earth

THE graphs climbing across these pages (see graph in detail, or explore the data) are a stark reminder of the crisis facing our planet. Consumption of resources is rising rapidly, biodiversity is plummeting and just about every measure shows humans affecting Earth on a vast scale. Most of us accept the need for a more sustainable way to live, by reducing carbon emissions, developing renewable technology and increasing energy efficiency.

But are these efforts to save the planet doomed? A growing band of experts are looking at figures like these and arguing that personal carbon virtue and collective environmentalism are futile as long as our economic system is built on the assumption of growth. The science tells us that if we are serious about saving Earth, we must reshape our economy.

This, of course, is economic heresy. Growth to most economists is as essential as the air we breathe: it is, they claim, the only force capable of lifting the poor out of poverty, feeding the world’s growing population, meeting the costs of rising public spending and stimulating technological development - not to mention funding increasingly expensive lifestyles. They see no limits to that growth, ever.

In recent weeks it has become clear just how terrified governments are of anything that threatens growth, as they pour billions of public money into a failing financial system. Amid the confusion, any challenge to the growth dogma needs to be looked at very carefully. This one is built on a long-standing question: how do we square Earth’s finite resources with the fact that as the economy grows, the amount of natural resources needed to sustain that activity must grow too? It has taken all of human history for the economy to reach its current size. On current form it will take just two decades to double.

In this special issue, New Scientist brings together key thinkers from politics, economics and philosophy who profoundly disagree with the growth dogma but agree with the scientists monitoring our fragile biosphere. The father of ecological economics, Herman Daly, explains why our economy is blind to the environmental costs of growth (”The World Bank’s blind spot”), while Tim Jackson, adviser to the UK government on sustainable development, crunches numbers to show that technological fixes won’t compensate for the hair-raising speed at which the economy is expanding (”Why politicians dare not limit economic growth”).

Gus Speth, one-time environment adviser to President Jimmy Carter, explains why after four decades working at the highest levels of US policy-making he believes green values have no chance against today’s capitalism (”Champion for green growth”), followed by Susan George, a leading thinker of the political left, who argues that only a global government-led effort can shift the destructive course we are on (”We must think big to fight environmental disaster”).

For Andrew Simms, policy director of the London-based New Economics Foundation, it is crucial to demolish one of the main justifications for unbridled growth: that it can pull the poor out of poverty (”The poverty myth”). And the broadcaster and activist David Suzuki explains how he inspires business leaders and politicians to change their thinking (”Interview with an environmental activist”).

Just what a truly sustainable economy would look like is explored in "Life in a land without growth", when New Scientist uses Daly's blueprint to imagine life in a society that doesn't use up resources faster than the world can replace them. Expect tough decisions on wealth, tax, jobs and birth rates. But as Daly says, shifting from growth to development doesn't have to mean freezing in the dark under communist tyranny. Technological innovation would give us more and more from the resources we have, and as philosopher Kate Soper argues in "Nothing to fear from curbing growth", curbing our addiction to work and profits would in many ways improve our lives.

It is a vision John Stuart Mill, one of the founders of classical economics, would have approved of. In his Principles of Political Economy, published in 1848, he predicted that once the work of economic growth was done, a "stationary" economy would emerge in which we could focus on human improvement: "There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress... for improving the art of living and much more likelihood of it being improved, when minds cease to be engrossed by the art of getting on."

Today's economists dismiss such ideas as naive and utopian, but with financial markets crashing, food prices spiralling, the world warming and peak oil approaching (or passed), they are becoming harder than ever to ignore.

Complete articles and sources at the New Scientist, here.

The facts of overconsumption

The two sets of graphs, below, illustrate 1. how human activity has changed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and 2. the impacts that our societies have had on the Earth as a whole.

1. Human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

The increasing rates of change in human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Significant increases in rates of change occur around the 1950s in each case, and illustrate how the past 50 years have been a period of dramatic and unprecedented change in human history

2. The impacts that our societies have had on the Earth

Global-scale changes in the Earth system, as a result of the dramatic increase in human activity:
(a) atmospheric CO2 concentration (Etheridge et al, 1996);
(b) atmospheric N2O concentration (Machida et al, 1995);
(c) atmospheric CH4 concentration (Blunier et al, 1993);
(d) percentage total column ozone loss over Antarctica, using the average annual total column ozone, 330, as a base (Image: J D Shanklin, British Antarctic Survey);
(e) northern hemisphere average surface temperature anomalies (Mann et al, 1999);
(f) natural disasters after 1900 resulting in more than ten people killed or more than 100 people affected (OFDA/CRED, 2002);
(g) percentage of global fisheries either fully exploited, overfished or collapsed (FAOSTAT, 2002);
(h) annual shrimp production as a proxy for coastal zone alteration (WRI, 2003; FAOSTAT, 2002);
(i) model-calculated partitioning of the human-induced nitrogen perturbation fluxes in the global coastal margin for the period since 1850 (Mackenzie et al, 2002);
(j) loss of tropical rainforest and woodland, as estimated for tropical Africa, Latin America and South and Southeast Asia (Richards, 1990; WRI, 1990);
(k) amount of land converted to pasture and cropland (Klein Goldewijk and Battjes, 1997); and
(l) mathematically calculated rate of extinction (based on Wilson, 1992)

Complete article and sources at the New Scientist, here.