The transition to a sustainable society: a new social contract |
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Authors: | Tony Pereira |
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Institution: | (1) Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, UCLA—University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA |
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Abstract: | This paper explores issues that are central to ecological economics. In spite of a substantial body of research and other
literature that has appeared in recent decades on transition, and countless other efforts, no progress has been made to halt
the increase in global warming, global emissions, rampant population growth, or several hundred other critical planet sustainability
indicators including global species extinction. The opposite is true. Consumption has escalated and it is poised to double
and, with it, planetary decay has followed closely. The aim of this work is to introduce a pragmatic solution and the economics
mechanisms solidly rooted in science, in the laws of conservation of mass and energy, and in environmental and ecological
sustainability that are necessary to overcome the tremendous forces of social, political, and economic resistance to major
change. To advance towards a sustainable civilization, adopting a holistic approach with those underlying principles in all
aspects of human activity, among others economy, finance, industry, commerce, engineering, politics, architecture, and education,
is both lacking and fundamentally required. A short review of the state-of-the-art of the science on the critical status of
the planet’s resources and its life-supporting systems is presented, as well as a brief catalog of the seminal works of the
science that gave rise to its metrics and established early on the groundwork for the understanding of the degree of sustainability
of the planet. We present the argument why past and current schemes of human economics, organization, culture, and politics
cannot achieve anything else, but complete and utter failure under their own underlying precepts. A rigorous and disciplined
process on how to overcome and avoid the precipitous decline and collapse of the environmental and planetary biosystems on
which all life depends, including human life, and a new view towards the world and the universe we all have no choice but
to live in, are also offered. |
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