Solving for Sustainability

Achieving sustainability is a grand challenge for the human civilization. This analysis is to show that we have the ability to achieve it.

The grand challenge: sustainability

Sustainability is the ability for generations of humans to continue indefinitely without running out of the resources they need to have a good quality of life. Sustainability has three elements:

1. Survive: reduce the risks to human survival
2. Thrive: improve the quality of life and personal well-being, start with removing hunger and extreme poverty
3. Nurture: help others (including other species) to survive and thrive. For species that provide crucial ecosystem services, this element underpins human survival. For quality of life, humans delight in diverse natural ecosystems.

Sustainability = Survive, Thrive, and Nurture

Zoning and taxation lead to zero footprint and re-wilding of ecosystems. Welfare becomes easier in an urbanized civilization, as do improvements in prosperity. Funding recycling and building the capabilities for sustainability makes the migration to sustainability a virtuous cycle.

The sustainable civilization

Decarbonization is needed to mitigate the adverse impacts of carbon dioxide emissions on Earth’s climate. Population is slated to increase to 11 billion. Greater prosperity has always remained an objective, along with a happier life with freedom and fulfillment.

We can eliminate the limits to sustainability without restricting freedom, innovation, growth, and prosperity. With current levels of agriculture and high-income urban lifestyles, all the building blocks of human civilization can be made sustainable.

The building blocks of sustainability are:

1. Live and work in dense, walkable, prosperous, innovative, and interconnected towns, enabling local interactions and remote collaborations
2. Agriculture and animal husbandry with minimum waste
3. Synthetic fuels replace fossil fuels (coal, oil, and methane)
4. Energy distribution wires and pipelines for electricity and synthetic fuels
5. Transportation with energy from synthetic fuels and electricity
6. Energy from nuclear plants to power the entire civilization
7. Industry based on maximum recycling and minimum extraction
8. Zoning to protect and nurture the wilderness.

The building blocks of sustainability

Steps towards the sustainable civilization

Zoning laws set aside land and water areas for living, farming, pasture, and wildlife. Take only what we need to support a projected population of 11 billion without a crisis in food, water, living standards, and ecosystems.

• Urban: in high-rise “Transit Oriented Development” urban spaces, a nice home can have an on-ground density of 100 sq.m. (square meters) per home. Set a town size of 150,000 people so that it can support a good education and healthcare infrastructure. 2.5 people/home gives a population density of 40 sq.m./capita and a city size of 6 sq.km. (square kilometers). This can fit into a 1.4 km radius, quite friendly for walking or cycling and with short in-town commutes, cutting the need for personal vehicles for in-town commutes and shopping. Provide inter-town transport by railways, highways, and waterways. Airports can serve sets of towns, at scales ranging from 10 to 100. For 11 billion people we will need 0.44 million sq.km. living area, about 0.3% of the Earth’s land surface. Add space for industry, commercial, government, etc. to double the urban land requirement to 0.6%.
• Agriculture: a fit adult needs 2,500 kCal per day and there are 3.7 kCal per gram of cereal. Take 0.68 kg/head/day as an average that overcounts lower demand by children, the aged, etc. The world average cereal productivity is 4,071 kg/hectare. There are 100 hectares per square kilometer. Based on this, 11 billion people need 6.7 million sq.km. of farms, about 4.5% of the land. Since the current land area under agriculture is 51 million sq.km., we can double the agricultural allotment to 8.9% to allow for other crops and wastage and still have to return most of the farmland to nature.
• Buffer: pastures for livestock, orchards, gardens, and plantations in another 8.9% of the land (13.3 million sq.km.). These lands are designed as buffers between urban and agricultural zones and the wild.
• Wild: the remaining land (81.5%) is for natural landscapes (forests, grasslands, wetlands, etc.) and all the water surfaces except those in the living, agriculture, and buffer zones. Wild areas are “no-take” zones. No fishing, hunting, animal husbandry, or farming in these areas so that wilderness is restored and ecosystems thrive. This includes 24 million sq.km. (almost half the land under agriculture) returned to the wild.

Taxation to penalize wastes and extractions, so that global warming due to carbon dioxide and methane (natural gas), nitrification, and other threats to sustainability are controlled and eliminated. Implement a originator-pays regime, instead of placing the burden on consumers. Assessment and collection of this tax on the originator businesses makes it an effective and efficient method for penalizing wastes. The taxation levels can be ratcheted to minimize harms from extraction and waste and to promote recycling.

• Tax extraction of water, minerals, oil, sand, etc.
• Penalize wastes including gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, etc.), liquids (paint, water, etc.), dissolved chemicals (such as fertilizer runoff from farms and detergents in drain water), and solids (such as plastics, sludge, or fly ash)
• Fund recycling, waste removal, and sustainability research
• Develop the institutional capabilities to analyze and govern for continuously improving sustainability.

Welfare for basics so that hunger and extreme poverty are eliminated, and access to transport, communication, justice, shelter, healthcare, etc. is universally available. The increase in living standards comes with a decrease in land use and reduction in wastes because of the zoning and taxation steps.

• Eliminate hunger with free kitchens for all
• Homes in towns become a universal guarantee
• Delivery of justice, healthcare, and education via pervasive systems
• Towns connected to global transport and communication networks enable commerce and collaboration as well as access to markets and jobs.

Sustainability solves the big challenges of today

This sustainability solution handles the big issues confronting humanity:

1. The Anthropocene extinction, biodiversity loss, overfished oceans, overexploited farmlands, and human/animal conflicts by zoning 81.5% of the land and all water surfaces as wild, with an 8.9% buffer area of the land designated as pasture, orchards, gardens, and plantations.
2. Global warming, by implementing a zero-carbon energy infrastructure with current technologies.
3. Other waste-impact threats, such as nitrification, plastics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other industrial wastes from the waste penalties. For instance, methane emissions from dams, rice paddies, fertilizer runoff into water bodies, and aquaculture ponds would get monitored and minimized by taxation-driven innovation.
4. Water pollution, aquifer depletion, and the sustainable use of water and other minerals because of zoning and extraction taxes.
5. Elimination of hunger and extreme poverty, higher living standards, and prosperity by urbanization, welfare, and zero-carbon transportation.

We already know how to do all of these things. There is no “missing knowledge” to block this solution. The zoning and taxation steps enable innovation to be unleashed in the direction of sustainability, and welfare makes prosperity inclusive.

Assuring sustainability in the long term

Sustainability has a time-limit on Earth, driven by the fact that planetary-scale disasters such as asteroid collisions or nearby supernovae can and do happen at random intervals. We must define the feasibility of sustainability in three ways:

1. To survive on Earth until energy balancing imposes an unacceptable limit to human population or prosperity on Earth. Prosperity is currently highly correlated with energy use, so if this correlation holds it will lead to temperature increases that will curtail increased prosperity.
2. To survive on Earth until an unavoidably large-scale event reduces or destroys human population on Earth. These events include asteroid collisions, super-volcano eruptions, nearby supernovae, superbugs, etc.
3. To survive off the Earth in multiple locations to reduce the chance that any single event can eliminate the entire human population.

It is a matter of prudence to buy insurance for the sustainability of human civilization. This insurance is provided by funding the exploration and colonization of space. Such funding for space sciences and engineering are the insurance premiums for long term sustainability of the human civilization.

Jobs in the sustainable civilization

New jobs will be created for sustainability.

1. Wilderness wardens to protect and nurture the wilderness.
2. Zero-footprint food and drink from farming and animal husbandry
3. Organic waste recycling industry
4. Construction, operations, and maintenance of high-speed inter-city transport with zero footprint fuels
5. New energy distribution grids and pipelines
6. Synthetic fuel production
7. Recycled materials production
8. Sustainable product design and manufacturing
9. Nuclear power plant construction, operations, and maintenance
10. Waste capture and storage, such as sequestration of carbon dioxide
11. Space research, design, development, production, exploration, and settlement. This includes staffing off-planet bases, mining asteroids, managing satellite networks, etc.
12. Sustainability analysis and maximization, with jobs in science (for R&D) and data analysis (to monitor, analyze, and govern).

Added prosperity conferred by sustainable growth will require jobs not only in the sustainability initiatives but in other areas:

1. Medical care for people as they become richer and older and wish to improve their health and lifespan
2. Art, fashion, and sports
3. New materials, nanotechnology, and biomimicry
4. Biotechnology, including genetic design, microbiota engineering, bioremediation, bioconstruction of devices and buildings, etc.
5. Generations of the internet such as the metaverse, with higher-bandwidth human-to-network interconnections including immersive experience hardware, brain-computer interfaces, higher-speed interconnections, and software that can leverage or drive these changes with artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality experiences.

Low skill jobs will also increase in tandem with rising population and prosperity, such as:

1. Hospitality and travel, restaurants and food services
2. Retail and assisted e-commerce
3. Delivery/pick-up, chauffeurs, and mass-transit staff
4. Beauty salons, fitness trainers, yoga, and other personal services
5. Gardening and landscaping, pet care, and other plant/animal services
6. Patrolling, security, legal services, and political advocacy
7. Companions, caregivers, and assistants for the aged and the infirm.

Jobs in the older polluting and non-sustainable industries will be lost, and their workers will have to be migrated to the new jobs.

Can we solve the political challenge to get us there?

There remains the unsolved problem of aligning political and social will to convert to sustainability. Get alignment to the vision of the sustainable civilization, engage everyone towards this grand objective. Take the steps to establish the sustainable civilization.

Is this the right vision? The right path? What needs to be changed, explored, or explained?