If civilization is to endure, it will not be ruled. It will have to rule itself.
Due to my long-running interest in the parameters of sustainable civilizations, I’ve become convinced that although democracy by no means guarantees sustainability, only democratic societies can be truly sustainable. In this essay, I unpack that reasoning.
Why sustainable civilizations need limits
Let us first consider the root causes of our predicament.
The first root cause is the relatively sudden growth of our powers, amplified by technology. Technology has always been an amplifier of human wants and desires, but global humanity exceeded its “safe operating space” only after the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution unlocked the true potential of fossil fuels. For 250 years, our power to alter and dominate our world has increased immensely. Unfortunately, our collective wisdom to use these powers safely lags behind.
The second root cause is the fact that the biosphere where human civilization and life as we know it can survive is a finite resource. It offers only so much surface area and habitable volume. Furthermore, a large part of this finite resource has to remain in a relatively undisturbed state to maintain the life support systems of Spaceship Earth—ecosystems and geophysical processes.
These life support systems are absolutely necessary for human civilization. Not only do they produce crucial goods and services, but they also treat and safely sequester the waste products of civilizational metabolism.
As a whole, these ecosystem and geophysical services do not have realistic or more efficient technological substitutes. But even if we presume, for the sake of argument, that we managed to replace all natural services with technological marvels, those technologies would still require finite resources—probably more than what ecosystems, honed by billions of years of evolution, already provide.
We cannot escape this problem to space either. Just as conserving resources here on Earth cannot permit spacefarers to exceed the limits of the life support systems of their spaceship, no number of cities on Mars permits the inhabitants of Earth to exceed the limits of our own.
No amount of technological wizardry can alter these facts. More efficient technology may allow us to get more from less. But no matter how advanced technologies future societies invent, they still have to maintain their crucial support systems within safe limits. They have to recognize the safe limits, and actively decide not to exceed them.
It follows that for as long as humans wish to maintain technological civilization on Earth, we must learn to stay within the safe operating limits of the planet and its vital systems. A sustainable civilization cannot use more resources or cause more damage than what the Earth’s life support systems can renew and repair.
Environmental sustainability is therefore ultimately about setting sustainable, safe limits to the rate of resource use and environmental damage.
Why only democracies can sustain those limits
In theory, a hypothetical enlightened eco-authoritarian Leviathan could perhaps set these limits by diktat and maintain them by force. But in practice, there are numerous reasons to believe that only democracies can even hope to set and sustain such limits in a way that is widely acceptable, that is, socially sustainable.
However, democracy in name only isn’t enough. Environmental boundaries are exceeded and safe limits are hard to set largely because our current socioeconomic system practically forces even well-meaning people to consume more and more in the Red Queen race for (relative) security and status. Unless the incentives and pressures to exceed safe limits can be reduced, those limits will be very hard to set and nearly impossible to maintain in the long term.
What logically follows is that sustainable civilizations must provide comprehensive social security that frees people from the fear of becoming destitute. No one should ever have to choose between cutting down the last tree or having food, medical treatment, or whatever goods and services are de facto required to participate in society as a valued member.
From this conclusion and the undeniable fact that the Earth’s biosphere is finite follows another logically inescapable conclusion: in order to provide a secure floor, sustainable civilizations must establish a ceiling.
In other words, a sustainable civilization must distribute resources fairly: it cannot afford billionaires as long as millions are excluded from society and its decision-making by their lack of a secure resource base.
The moral logic of fairness in finite worlds
Curbing massive disparities in wealth, purchasing power, and power in general is likely the sine qua non of a truly sustainable civilization. Power can take many forms, of which control over economic resources is only one. But for this essay, a generic definition of power suffices:
Power is the ability of an actor, artefact, or structure to cause or prevent changes in the world that would not have occurred otherwise—especially where such changes affect the capacities or choices of others.
Thermodynamics decrees that causing (irreversible) changes in the world inevitably increases entropy. In other words, every use of any form of power involves irreversible resource use. Even in theory, changing the world requires good-quality (low-entropy) energy at a minimum. In physics, you can’t move a stone without expending energy; in politics, you can’t move society without consuming resources.
This is another way to restate a simple fact: in a finite world, one person’s freedom to amass decision-making power—such as wealth—eats into the freedom of others.
Current economic orthodoxy claims this is not true: that economy is not a zero-sum game and one person getting richer does not make others poorer. But this is a simplification that is increasingly out of step with reality.
Economies are not supernatural systems. When a billionaire uses his wealth to build a pleasure fleet, the material and energy resources do not simply appear, nor do the waste products of the fleet’s construction and use just disappear. Iron ore has to be mined, smelted and processed into structural steel. Fuel oil must be pumped from the ground. Workers have to eat food that has to be grown or raised. And wastes will be discharged somewhere.
All these require the use of pieces of biosphere, its area or volume. All are finite resources. And if they hadn’t been spent on the pleasure fleet, they could have been used for other purposes—or left “unused,” that is, for the other species. For our life support systems.
Some parts of the economy can be non-zero sum games or even positive sum games. But the only reason we’ve been able to pretend that modern economies as a whole are always non-zero sum games—where the wealth of the few won’t harm the freedoms of others—is because in traditional economics, most of the others do not count.
Simplistic economic logic used to defend the increasing wealth disparities rarely mentions even very real externalities caused to very real humans, such as the effects of climate change to poor people in poor countries. The ecosystems and their inhabitants are generally seen, if at all, as “resources” for humans to use for our benefit. This may have been a somewhat justifiable simplification a century ago, but as humanity keeps exceeding its safe environmental limits, it is increasingly problematic by day.
A sustainable civilization must afford due consideration to the rights of other species. We’ve been able to ignore non-humans because they do not vote, nor can they spend money to pay specialists to lobby for their behalf. Therefore, their rights, which must be maintained to maintain our own life support system, must be defended by humans.
Because power corrupts, because gains from exploiting the weak accrue quickly, and because the costs become visible only over time, sustainable civilizations cannot rely on aristocracies of the enlightened but powerful. Unless ordinary humans can realistically exert enough power to defend others, politics will continue to trample upon the rights of the weak. And if the alternative is destitution, there will always be those willing to trample others for pay.
In a sustainable civilization, ordinary people must have enough resources and realistic opportunities to devote some of their time to influencing political decision-making for altruistic purposes.
This is necessary not just to maintain environmental limits but to safeguard all other vulnerable groups. By helping and defending the freedoms of others, ordinary people ultimately defend themselves. No one can be truly free before everyone is.
The first rule of a truly sustainable civilization can therefore be stated as:
No individual or group should have so little power that they are easy to dominate; no individual or group should have so much power that they can easily dominate others.
In this rule, “others” refers to non-humans too. Since they cannot do human politics, they have to have human defenders instead.
Every act of power changes the world, and every change consumes resources. On a finite planet, the freedom to accumulate unlimited power—whether political, economic, or technological—inevitably erodes the freedom of others. This balance cannot be preserved by enlightened elites or clever algorithms. It requires the messy, self-correcting machinery of democracy. A sustainable civilization must limit the power individuals or small groups can wield, and have institutions that continuously prevent dangerous concentrations of power by sharing resources more equitably.
Technological development, one of the root causes of our predicament, hasn’t stopped. Foreseeable advances may give wealthy individuals and small groups powers that were, until recently, restricted to the wealthiest nation-states. Even if these powers are never used to unleash gruesome terrors, there will inevitably be hideous errors. This is formalized as the unilateralist’s curse: powerful individuals or small groups can make disastrous mistakes and are more likely to do so than larger groups, even if every decision-maker were completely altruistic.
In an age where a billionaire’s whim could command weak godlike powers, the infamous “good-idea fairy” must be kept on a leash for everyone to survive and thrive. A sustainable civilization cannot afford billionaires, or any other dangerous concentration of power beyond democratic accountability and control.
In short, a sustainable civilization must extend democracy beyond its current limited domain of political power to other spheres. Of particular importance is the economic one. When a handful of investors can decide the fate of forests, fisheries, or data networks that millions depend on, the system is already undemocratic.
Until resources and power are shared fairly, erratic oligarchs and outright fascists will keep rising to power. Their false promises will keep attracting those who fear they won’t have enough to live free from fear. Such societies may endure for a while, but they are unlikely to last. Sooner or later, reality will assert itself—in a combination of ecological collapse and unilateralist’s curses.
The facts and logic are simple and compelling: finite biospheres cannot support infinite greed and ambition. I’m certain that eventually, enough survivors will understand both, and conclude:
Egalitarianism and fairness are not utopian dreams. They are crucial survival mechanisms.
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