A presentation held by Harald Svedrup at the Green Economy Workshop in Stockholm 10-11/2 2014.

1. A critical review and considerations:
Green economy, what is it?
Shaping society to serve sustainability
— minor adjustments or a paradigm shift?
Trying to think as if the results mattered….
Professor Harald Sverdrup
Chemical Engineering, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
Harald.sverdrup@chemeng.lth.se

2. Growth, de-growth and sustainability
Exponential
growth
Overshoot and
contraction
Approaching
dynamic
stability
Overshoot and
collapse
Approaching
Steady state

3. Options available
1.
2.
3.
4.
…make more with growth in resource use
…make more with the same resource use
…make the same with less resource use
…make less with significantly less resource use
We talk about 4, hope for 3, try to get 2 and end up with 1

4. Running out of everything at the
present speed of consumption
Fossil fuels
Phosphorus
Iron
Copper
Figure 1. If we go on extracting metals, phosphorus or fossil fuels like we do now, we will in the
worst case run out of them. Before that, they will get expensive. From Sverdrup et al. (2013).

5. Renewable
energy
technologies
need a lot of
metals

6. Energy
Society
Metals and
materials
Population
Food
Everything
is linked
Agricultural land
and soils

7. Wealth, resources and the trophic
levels in the human ecosystem
Mr l
ai s
t a
e
Ery
ng
e
Wh
et
a
l
W
o
r
k
Pp
el
oe
Ps os
hp r
o hu
Fd
o
o
Ci a n
i i zi
v t
l o
C t iy
ra t
ei
v

8. Human ecosystem

9. Remember Tainter’s syndrome

11. The basic Ehrlich equation
Impact = P * A * (1-XR) * E
• P is population size, the number of consumers;
• A is affluence or net consumption per capita;
• XR is the degree of recycling of the amount supplied
to society, depending on technology and
organization;
• E is the resource efficiency of producing the
affluence A, depending on technology.

12. The world description is incomplete
• Thermodynamics forbids growth forever;
– GROWTH IS OVER
• The issues of future generations and
intergenerational issues needs to be addressed
• Address systems overshoot
• The banking system and financial system
description is naïve and lacking in understanding
• Big business is totally out of control from a
perspective of government and parliaments

13. The systems dimension is missing
• There is no systems analysis of the whole.
• Do connect simultaneously;
– energy, metals, materials,
– population dynamics, soils, food,
– social resilience, social values.
• Present economic models, econometrics and
economic equilibrium modelling are gravely
dysfuntional.
– consistently fail on field tests
– lack prediction capability
– correlation has been systematically mistaken for
causality.

14. Building completely new models:
Sustainable Germany by 2040
Dynamic Integrated Assessment Model being built 2014-2016. Models the
world trade, major resources, population dynamics and economics in 38
countries/regions, for 60 major commodities and 20 different services.

15. The proposal
• Good start, many good points have been
made
• Such a project is absolutely necessary.
• The economic understanding is simple and
and still has some faulty assumptions
• The proposal has essential and necessary
parts, but is insufficient in design and scope

16. Research tools needed
• Use systems analysis thoroughly throughout
the project. Use the systems insights to create
new models for a sustainable economy
• Use integrated assessment modelling
methods to analyse the past, do scenarios and
predict future possible outcomes to design the
path to sustainable society.
• Have a synthesizing group from day 1 that are
seasoned hands-on systems analysts

17. Conclusions specified
• The proposal has some taboos and blind spots
• Needs to
– Connect the whole system
– discuss the time horizon and the moral challenge of
setting time-to-doom
– address population, demographic shift and
population size management
– Include international trade, derivatives and
speculation
– include corruption, nepotism, lack of democracy and
abuse of power

18. Research tools needed
• Use visions of a goal for
backcasting from those goals
• Engage the policy and
government level properly
• Think about how to create real
paradigm shift
• Use researchers that dare take
part in real change and be
politically incorrect
• The role of learning, education
and shaping values, norms and
attitudes