sustainable development
sustainable development: Capitalism became the dominant global economic system after the old Soviet Union fell apart. With rare exceptions, even countries that have maintained socialism or communist political regimes have gravitated toward capitalist market economies. The popularity of capitalism is based on a record of extraordinary economic production in industrial economies worldwide for more than two centuries. Industrial development tactics were also used by socialist and communist countries, indicating that capitalism’s success was not primarily due to industrialization.
However, as we reach the twenty-first century, capitalism’s negative environmental and social consequences raise significant issues about its long-term viability. Despite outstanding production records, many worldwide are beginning to wonder whether capitalist economies are environmentally, socially, or economically viable over the term. In the 1960s, the detrimental environmental effects of industrialization became widely known, leading to a worldwide movement to safeguard the environment. Limits to Growth, a Club of Rome report published in 1972, drew attention to the broader challenges of long-term ecological sustainable development.
The Brundtland report, published in 1987 by the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development, later defined sustainable development in social and ethical and ecological dimensions. Meeting the demands of the current generation without jeopardizing future generations’ ability to meet their own needs is what sustainable development entails. Despite the gains made over three decades of environmental legislation, risks to ecological sustainability remain. Soil erosion, water and air pollution, acid rain, atomic radiation, biological diversity loss, ozone depletion, and global warming are only a few of the ongoing dangers, and the list of environmental injustices keeps growing.
Threats to social sustainability are just as severe but underappreciated. While not unique to capitalist countries, social isolation, distrust, unfairness, inequity, despair, litigation, conflict, terrorism, and war are all-natural social repercussions of industrial capitalism. Despite mounting evidence of environmental degradation and societal degradation linked to economic exploitation, the world’s so-called developed countries continue to pursue ever-greater economic prosperity. Despite mounting evidence of ecological degradation and continuing poverty connected to overpopulation, the so-called developing countries continue to grow at an unsustainable rate.
National politicians, scientists, and activists cite various figures and discuss the tradeoffs between short-term economic benefits and long-term ecological and social costs. Still, there is no genuine argument on whether these issues are relevant or crucial to the future of global society. Scientists and academics also debate whether capitalism can coexist with sustainable development through government policies or other societal interventions. However, the current system of capitalism, which dominates the global economy, is unsustainable due to a lack of robust moral and social restrictions.
The incapacity of capitalism to last is due to the most fundamental physics principles, the laws of thermodynamics. Because everything effective in sustaining life on Earth ultimately relies on energy, sustainable development is ultimately dependent on its utilization. All tangible objects humans utilize, such as food, clothing, housing, and automobiles, require energy to produce and use.
Human power is needed for all beneficial human actions such as working and thinking. And all human energy is derived from the point contained in the foods, clothing, and devices that people utilize. Work is a term used by physical scientists to describe all of these beneficial activities. As a result, all work necessitates the expenditure of energy. Most importantly, every time energy is used to produce work, a portion of its usefulness is lost.
Because entropy causes the loss of useable energy, sustainability may be unattainable. Wastes are energy by-products of work that may be repurposed if the technology to restore the utility of squandered energy were accessible. Pollution isn’t just a waste of energy; it also has a negative utility. It reduces the efficiency of other energy sources or necessitates the use of energy for mitigation.
Even if all waste and pollution could be eliminated, the tendency toward entropy would persist. Without the daily input of additional solar energy, life on Earth would not be possible. In the end, solar energy utilization to counteract the consequences of entropy is required for sustainability. In the end, solar energy utilization to counteract the effects of entropy is needed for sustainability.
Capitalism is a highly effective energy extraction system. Still, it ignores the eventual need to employ solar energy, the only genuinely renewable energy source, to counteract the utility of power lost to entropy. Capitalism’s economic advantage is due to its emphasis on short-term, individual self-interest. Still, this emphasis also accelerates the natural trend of all closed systems toward energy dissipation and depletion, leading to entropy. Individuals have little motivation to invest in resource rejuvenation for future generations under capitalism.
Only when it is advantageous, when it is in their particular self-interest, do capitalists reduce waste and pollution or reuse and recycle resources. When capitalists employ renewable energy, they sell the output for immediate consumption rather than storing it to counteract entropy. This is why capitalism is so efficient and why it is unsustainable because it always leads to physical entropy.
Capitalism distinguishes itself from other economic systems by focusing on short-term, individual self-interest rather than sacrificing current production for future generations. The productivity advantage of capitalism is strongly related to its lack of long-term viability. As a result, it is just unsustainable. This is not a personal view but rather the logical conclusion of science’s most fundamental rules. In the end, sustainable development will necessitate a social commitment to rely on renewable solar energy, not just to meet the demands of the present generation but also to secure adequate energy resources for future generations to counteract entropy.
A sustainable development-based economy must be founded on a fundamentally different worldview, namely the paradigm of living systems. By their very nature, living things are self-creating, self-renewing, reproducing, and regenerative. Living plants can capture, organize, and store solar energy, which they use to support other living species and counteract the energy lost to entropy. Living beings have an inherent desire to reproduce to maintain their species. Humans, for example, invest a significant amount of time and energy in raising their children despite having little financial incentive to do so. Individual lives are unsustainable because all living things die at some point.
Communities and societies of live humans, on the other hand, plainly have the potential and natural propensity to be productive while devoting a considerable portion of their life’s energy to conceiving and raising the next generation. Any capitalist economy’s long-term viability is dependent on the viability of its social and ecological capital, which are the sources of all economic capital. To maintain financial capital, sustainable development depended capitalism necessitates the continuous renewal and regeneration of environmental and social capital.
To keep the wealth and well-being of their people individually, socially, and ecologically, sustainable development-based societies must manage their ecological, social, and economic capital. Sustainable development-based economies must learn to capture and store solar energy using the principles of living systems to maintain production and counteract the inherent entropy of non-living systems. Societies must integrate life economics, life culture, and life politics to establish new economies based on the life paradigm to attain sustainability.