What are the Main Drivers to Reach Sustainability?

Klima-Wende-Zeit

 First of all:

 My new book (in German) just appeared:

 Klima-Wende-Zeit.
 Warum wir auch bei Entwicklungshilfe
 und Ernährung umdenken müssen.

 Link to sample chapters and book.

 

  • With high probability, world population grows faster than usually assumed. Until 2050 we will not be just 9.7 billion people but possibly more than 11 billion, until 2100 more than 16 billion instead of just 11 billion.  more 

  • The land area available for food production will not be sufficient to properly feed all people because of population growth and the large fraction of animal-based food. This will always compete for land area with production of bio-energy and bio-materials, which are thus ethically questionable as long as we do not change our nutritional habits and globally limit the number of children per couple.  more 

  • With high probability we overslept the goal to limit climate change at 1.5°C above pre-industrial level. Even for reaching the 2°C climate goal, we would need to significantly foster implementation of renewable-energy technology as compared to today.  more 

  • The basis for today's politics, for example the studies of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), builds on much too optimistic scenarios concerning the above-mentioned points. Also recent EU publications do not take realistically high scenarios of population growth into account.   more 

  • A sustainable society can build materially either on utilizing carbon dioxide (CO2) from air or on using biomass. While a CO2 economy is rather energy intensive and the technology challenging, bio-economy competes with food production for land area, but is already technically feasible today. Our behaviour with regard to nutrition and the number of children thus determines whether we can take the simpler route of bio-economy or if we are forced for ethical reasons to take the much more challenging route towards a CO2 economy.  more