Could the earth's resources sustain a middle class lifestyle for everyone?

[Agnostic_Pagan]

It may be possible through some major restructuring, and a willingness to change our consumption patterns. A US lifestyle at 12000 watts per person (per year) is unsustainable. Yet a Swiss project envisions a 2000-watt society while still providing a good standard of living. It is currently running initiatives in Basel, Zurich and Geneva. The goal is to achieve that standard by 2050.

From Zurich’s city page: "Ten years ago, the vision of a “2000-Watt Society” was developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. It is a model for energy policy which demonstrates how it is possible to consume only as much energy as worldwide energy reserves permit and which is justifiable in terms of the impact on the environment. It is possible when every person in every society limits their energy consumption to a maximum of 2000 watts.

Furthermore, at least 75% of energy needs need to be met using renewable energy sources, meaning that on an annual basis only one tonne of greenhouse gas is given off per person per year. The 2000-Watt Society is Zürich’s approach to tackling climate change and the future conflict of resources."

From the same page: “In a referendum held in 2008, three-quarters of the Zürich population voted in favour of achieving the 2000-Watt Society by 2050, making it the first city in the world to give these ambitious goals a democratic legitimacy and enshrine them in the constitution.”

So while it may be possible, it seems to require at least three things to happen. 1) A respect for basic science; 2) Long-term political leadership; 3) A long-term commitment by the populace.

Unfortunately, only a very small fraction of humanity lives in communities with those requirements. Considering the Republican party initiatives against “Agenda 21” and their general disregard for science, the US will not be leading the pack any time soon, and the world suffers for it.

I lost the cite for it, but one of the pages stated Switzerland last had a 2000-watt society in the 1960’s. I was not around back then, but watching the TV shows from that period, I would say that was a tolerable lifestyle. Add in our advances in communication, medical care, robotics, etc., I think we could still have an incredibly rich standard of living at 2000-watts.

Something worth studying would be how cities such as Zurich achieved such a successful consensus, and how much is replicable elsewhere, particularly in large cities where sustainability would have the greatest impact.

[Quintas]

@msmith537

Maybe a family of four making $50k and living in NYC. Tiny apartment, no car, public transportation. Certainly not everyone living in McMansions and 5 cars to a family.

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nitpick. I don’t know of anyplace where a family of 4 could live in a McMansion and have multiple cars on 50k.

[SuperAbe]

@Quintas

nitpick. I don’t know of anyplace where a family of 4 could live in a McMansion and have multiple cars on 50k.

Wichita Falls, TX might - average house price is right around $100k. MLS lists a number of what I would think of as ‘McMansions’ (>3,000 sq ft, “bonus rooms”, etc) at around $160k. Overall cost of living is also ~15% lower than the national average. As a *gedanken *experiment, it might just be possible to meet the criteria.

Of course, that would be inflicting *Wichita Falls *on the Average Person…a fate I wouldn’t wish on (almost) anyone.

[eburacum45]

We could, in theory, give everyone on Earth an American standard of living if certain not-invented-yet technologies are possible.
This remarkable on-line book
Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air
has this to say;

Deuterium fusion

If we imagine that scientists and engineers crack the problem of getting
the DD reaction going, we have some very good news. There’s 33 g of
deuterium in every ton of water, and the energy that would be released
from fusing just one gram of deuterium is a mind-boggling 100 000 kWh.
Bearing in mind that the mass of the oceans is 230 million tons per person,
we can deduce that there’s enough deuterium to supply every person in
a ten-fold increased world population with a power of 30 000 kWh per
day (that’s more than 100 times the average American consumption) for 1
million years (figure 24.17).

Ch 24 Page 173: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air | David MacKay

The OP specifies that we should be limited to the Earth’s resources. Does that mean that we should not use the power of the Sun that comes from outside our world? Our planet is not, after all, a closed system, and we should not treat it like one.

We could build vast solar power collectors in the deserts and perhaps more usefully, build floating collectors in the calm oceanic midlatitudes- use some of this power to produce fresh water, some of it for consumption, and some of it to fill floatation tanks.

Alternately there is space based solar power - over time we could gather enough raw power to boil the sea if we wanted to do that. This may go beyond the restrictions in the OP, but I see no reason to limit ourselves to only the solar energy incident upon our planet - our species is more ingenious than that.

And we aren’t running out of resources in a real sense - except for helium, which escapes from the top of the atmosphere. Everything else is still here, on Earth, in the form of elements in use, elements which haven’t been extracted yet, or in waste form. If we start to run out of some element or other then we could in theory obtain more from the asteroid belt, by using some of that vast resource of solar energy to be found in the sky.

The real answer is that yes, we could support vast numbers of people on our planet at a standard of living far above American norms; but our planet would be changed drastically if we did so.

[Consensus]

Seeing this played out in my mind I doubt it’s a technical challenge. Even if there was a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this, the only logical outcome will be all out war and chaos. And even if these so called technological marvels will come do you really believe they will be introduced to better all of mankind?

So yeah, could be done… on planet Utopia. Such a nice place

[PhillyGuy]

Can the earth’s resources any better withstand the pollution brought on by poverty?

See:

Shanghaiist - China in bite-sized portions!

Not only can the earth sustain a middle class lifestyle, it probably can even withstand a lifestyle where almost everyone lives like those in luxurious upper east side Manhattan apartments. Especially if they take the subway to work rather than a cab.

[BrainGlutton]

@eburacum45

We could, in theory, give everyone on Earth an American standard of living if certain not-invented-yet technologies are possible.

Quite true, but, see post #18.

[eburacum45]

Well, out of the three options you mentioned, fusion would be a significant source of energy, but matter/antimatter plants would require a significant input of energy to manufacture the antimatter. They would be massive energy sinks, not energy sources.

And shipstone is simply nonsense.

So really we only need to concentrate on the fusion option, even if we can only ever tap the massive fusion generator 149 million kilometres above our heads.

[BrainGlutton]

@eburacum45

And we aren’t running out of resources in a real sense - except for helium, which escapes from the top of the atmosphere.

Of course, if fusion is ever perfected, helium is the waste-product.

[BrainGlutton]

@eburacum45

And shipstone is simply nonsense.

It’s simply a black-box technology, like most used on Star Trek. Heinlein offered no suggestion as to how it works (except, if you breach the casing, it explodes; seems to be something atomic). Which does not mean nobody could invent such a thing; you’d have to look at the theoretical mechanism before saying, “That’s impossible.” I see nothing flatly impossible about a battery of near-limitless storage capacity, but I have no idea how it could be possible either.