Am Freitag, den 5. August hatte der Dax alle Jahresgewinne des Jahres 2011 abgegeben. Sarkozy und Merkel im Urlaub wollten sich der neuesten finanziellen Krise schnellstens widmen, zusammen mit dem Noch- Regierungschef Sabatero. Ganze zwei Wochen also hatten die milliardenschweren Gipfelbeschlüsse vom 21 Juli Geltung. Die Finanzwelt gerät offenbar weiter aus den Fugen. Und leider auch die Umwelt, wenngleich mit sehr viel weniger Medieninteresse als die globale Finanzaffäre.

Vor etwa 60 Jahren begann der Umweltschutz in (West) Deutschland. Damals ging es noch hauptsächlich um die menschliche Gesundheit. Sie war durch giftige Umweltchemikalien bedroht, wie etwa Blei und Dioxine. Das war die Zeit der “Chemikalie der Woche“ und das Buch „Seveso ist überall“ hatte Hochkonjunktur. Die Bundesregierung reagierte gezielt und ziemlich erfolgreich in Übereinstimmung mit der Kommission in Brüssel und der OECD. Der Umweltschutz sorgte für hundert Tausende von Arbeitsplätzen in Deutschland. Natürlich war er teuer, sehr teuer sogar, weil „aufgepflanzt“ auf die traditionellen Gestehungs- und Entsorgungskosten.

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uns der Zukunftsfähigkeit näher zu bringen.

Um in unserer Wirtschaft erfolgreich zu sein, sind wir mehr oder weniger gezwungen,

unsere natürlichen Lebensgrundlagen zu zerstören.

Wir sollten eine umfassende Politik der Vorsorge vereinbaren bevor es zu spät ist,

unseren und deren Kinder eine Zukunft mit Zukunft zu ermöglichen.

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Physikalische Schlüsselursache für den Zerfall unserer Lebensgrundlage ist der weltweit hemmungslose Umgang mit den natürlichen Ressourcen Material, Wasser und Land. Das gilt auch und besonders für Energie, ist doch ihr ökologisches „Wirkungsprinzip“ die Menge der Ressource Material, die von der Wiege bis zu ihrer Anwendung aufgewendet wird. Und so lange die Naturnutzung einen Preis von Null hat, wird sich an unserem suizidalen Umgang mit der Ökosphäre kaum etwas ändern. Das westliche Wirtschaftsmodell macht Menschen zu Gefangenen einer Zivilisation, die mehr oder weniger dazu zwingt, die Umwelt zu zerstören, um zu leben.

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HERSTELLUNG (ökologischer Rucksack)

an average factor of 10 or more,

as well as de-energize them,

if they are to be sustainable

F. Schmidt-Bleek, 1993

In the early 70ies of last century it became apparent hat all products of chemical industry should be examined for their potential dangers to humans and the environment. Early legislation was put in place in Japan, the USA and in the EU. The OECD undertook a considerable effort to develop harmonized testing guidelines and Good Laboratory Practice procedures in order to avoid non-tariff barriers to trade. Jim McNeill, Margarita Idman, Peter Mencke-Gückert, Rune Longren, and Bio F. Schmidt-Bleek were among the first to put this work in motion. The Chemicals “Part Two Program” was established within the OECD Environment Directorate and Peter Crawford became its first leader.

In its work, the OECD focused on the toxicity of chemicals to humans and the biosphere, as well as on chemical and physical effects and the behavior of chemicals during production (worker’s safety) and after release into the environment. During the past 30 years, the OECD chemical’s testing procedures have become world standard.

The concepts for judging the relative environmental burden of material insults to the environment were only at their beginning in the 70ies and 80ies: the analyses generally remained on the level of the examined case study. It is scientifically impossible to derive a complete picture of the ecological consequences of placing even a single chemical compound onto the market. Future surprises can never be ruled out as we learned from cases like the use of CFC’s. Generalizations of testing results were rarely possible, in part because of the tremendous complexity of ecological linkages and effects. And even if this complexity was ever completely understood for a particular case, it is by no means certain that the resulting discoveries would be transferable to other materials, procedures, facilities or services. In addition, something even more basic from an ecological point of view was missing from judging the dangers inherent in marketing chemicals in the 70ies and 80ies: although members of both industry and politics had endorsed it as essential for analyzing the ecological quality of goods, the “cradle to cradle” principle was not applied.

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The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The

occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.

As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must

disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862

A. Where we stand

Ecological disruption is still increasing at a fast pace, as are global natural resource use, and population. Current environmental and economic policies have not been able to stop this trend. Traditional environmental protection and economic policies were not designed to lead to ecologically sustainable conditions. They tend to focus on correcting specific dangerous developments in the environment after these were discovered and politically acknowledged as a thread. Obviously, these policies cannot be precautious.

Planet earth is a closed system. Materials, fresh water and space are limited. Only solar radiation and geothermal energy are available without limits. Within one hour, the sun radiates to earth as much energy as the entire yearly energy need of the world economy. To date, neither solar energy nor the inexhaustible storage of geothermal energy have as yet been utilized to the possible extent. This is not because technology could not have been developed for transforming this ecologically “neutral” energy into technically useful forms. This failure is a consequence of “saving money” at the expense of ecological stability. Massive material flows in form of fossil energy carriers are set in motion in order to drive the industrial metabolism.

As a consequence, we are losing natural capital and in particular eco-systemic services at increasing speed, services that are pre-requisite to human life on earth. Increasingly, the world experiences such costly consequences as water shortages, desertification, climatic change, extinction of species, spread of old and new diseases, floods and hurricanes. In order to approach sustainable conditions, a systemic risk reduction policy has to be applied that focuses on the basic reasons for the present disharmony between the human economy and nature.

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• Natural resources are understood to mean materials – including fossils -, water, and land, as they are available on planet earth.

• Eco-systemic services and functions are vital for the survival of humans on planet earth.

• In a system sense, environment protection means: the best possible maintenance of eco-systemic services and functions.

• The physical root cause of the continuing destabilization of eco-systemic services and functions is the gigantic mobilization and excessive consumption of natural resources for the production and consumption of technical energy, shelter, food, material wealth and security.

• The ecological quality of goods, services and technical energy depends essentially upon their life-cycle-wide resource intensity (“ecological rucksack”, MIPS).

• Eco-systemic services and functions cannot be created by technology to any noteworthy extent.

• The limitation of physical resources on planet earth, population growth, and the need to protect the eco-systemic services and functions call for an average tenfold increase in resource productivity of western goods and services as well as for providing technical energy.

• The minimization of mobilization, extraction, and use of natural resources should preferably take place at the front end of economic activities.

• The economic root cause for the growing loss of eco-systemic services and functions is the near zero price for using nature.

• The human economy must be constrained to function within the limits of the environment and its resources and in such a way that it works with the grain of, rather than against, natural laws and processes. Sustainability cannot be reached otherwise.

• To measure welfare with GNP is counterproductive from a systems point of view.

• Traditional policies have not been able to prevent the life-threatening deterioration of eco-system services or other serious developments like financial or nuclear meltdowns. Rather than continuing to seek successive solutions for individual problems, system policies must be developed that aim to improve welfare and wellbeing of people by optimizing the efficiency and precautionary nature of measures. This can be achieved by eliminating root causes of (potentially) harmful developments first, rather than separately repairing their symptoms. System policies reduce the risks associated with taking actions. System policies are essential for approaching sustainability. They do not exclude that certain mayor existing problems are treated with priority (e. g. climatic change). However, all solutions must aim at minimizing the use of natural resources. 

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Birkhäuser, Basel, Boston, Berlin, 1994

Translated by Reuben Deumling Berkeley, California, 1993

PREFACE

You have before you the English translation of the first extensive account of the Factor Concept 1. And here is a bit of history how Factor 10 came about:

It was in 1989 when I realized that our approach to environmental protection could not get us to sustainability. Lack of progress demanded that we had to re-consider getting involved in solving one isolated problem after the after. Our attention had to be switched from the emission side of the economy to the enormous consumption of natural resources. Only this way we could control the outputs and make the right decisions before the damage was done and payments for it became due. And what about energy? Shouldn’t we begin to worry about its material intensity, rather than limiting our focus on the associated emissions, like SO2 and CO2?

It was a difficult and exciting time. Hardly anybody believed that maintaining a stable ecosphere would require dramatically reducing the use of resources. Factor 10 I said was the average reduction goal for rich countries! What I claimed was that we should measure environmental stress potentials of goods and services with a balance rather than - or at least in addition to - with a gas chromatograph or a mass spectrometer. Megatons, so I declared, were our overriding problem, not nano-grams. And the ecological rucksack was to be the new yardstick for the production of dematerialized goods, and its big brother MIPS for assessing their whole life-cycle. Ernst von Weizsäcker gave me a chance to solidify my model at the newly created Wuppertal Institute. To some degree he even believed my ideas. As is well known: he reached out for factor 4 later when he began writing about resources and energy. When you ask him about that, he will tell you that a tenfold improvement has to be reached in the long term. His earlier finding that prices do not speak the ecological truth is as true today as ever. And as long as this is the case, sustainability is but a dream.

In my endeavors at Wuppertal I got selfless competent help from young colleagues who had the guts to stand up to doubts, ridicule and even abuse from inside and outside the institute. Without being able to name them all, here are those who made vital contributions early: Stefan Bringezu, Friedrich Hinterberger, Harry Lehmann, Christa Liedtke, Christopher Manstein, Helmut Schütz, Joachim Spangenberg, Hartmut Stiller, Ursula Tischner, und Jola Welfens. I am grateful for their help in bringing my model to life. Without them a large basket of publications would not have appeared, convincing the world slowly that resource productivity of goods and services play a decisive role if a future with a future is to be gained.

Lately, industry and the ministers of economy have begun to worry seriously about the continued availability of natural resources. Welcome to the debate on a limited planet earth! One can only hope that nations will not apply economic power ruthlessly in the struggles ahead. The poor people would be again the ones to pay the price. And ecologically as well as economically we would continue to move away even further from sustainable conditions.

During the past 20 years we have shown in many enterprises that a radical reduction of resource use for goods and services must not lead to a loss in end-use satisfaction.

But the big question stubbornly remains: what does it take for finally breaking away from the old ways and move toward a new economic reality?

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1. Unter natürlichen Ressourcen werden auf dem Pleneten Erde vorkommendes Material(einschliesslich Fossile), Wasser und Landoberfläche verstanden.
2. Öko-systemische Dienstleisungen und Funktionen 1 sind für das Überleben von Menschen auf dem Planeten Erde entscheidend.
3. Im systemischen Sinne bedeutet Umweltschutz die weitestgehend mögliche Erhaltung der ökosystemischen Dienstleisungen und Funktionen.
4. Die physikalische Wurzelursache der fortschreitenden Destabilisierung öko-systemischer Dienstleisungen und Funktionen ist die enorm umfangreiche Verschiebung und der verschwenderische Verbrauch/Veränderung natürlicher Ressourcen zur Schaffung von technischer Energie, Nahrung, materiellem Wohlstand, und Sicherheit.
5. Die ökologische Qualität von Gütern, Dienstleistungen und technischer Energie hängt entscheidend von ihrer lebenszyklusweiten Ressourcenintensität ab (“Rucksack” und MIPS).
6. Öko-systemische Dienstleisungen und Funktionen können mittels Technik nicht in nennenswertem Umfang erzeugt werden
7. Die Begrenztheit physikalischer Ressourcen auf dem Planeten Erde, das Bevölkerungswachstum und die Notwendigkeit des Schutzes der öko-systemischen Dienstleistungen und Funktionen zwingen langfristig zu einer im Schnitt etwa zehnfachen Erhöhung der Resourccen-Produktivität (= Verminderung der Ressourcenintensität) 2 westlicher Güter und Dienstleistungen, wie auch der Versorgung mit technischer Energie.
8. Die gezielte Minimierung des Verbrauches natürlicher Ressourcen muss möglichst an der Input- Seite der Wirtschaft erfolgen.
9. Die entscheidende wirtschaftliche Wurzelursache für den wachsenden Verlust an ökologischer Nachhaltigkeit ist der traditionell Nahe-Null-Preis für die Nutzung der Natur.
10. Ohne Einpassung der Wirtschaft in die “Leitplanken” der Natur kann es wirtschaftliche Nachhaltigkeit nicht geben.
11. Mit Hilfe von BIP (GNP) das Wohlergehen einer Wirtschaft zu messen, ist aus systemischer Sicht kontraproduktiv.
12. Zur Annäherung an nachhaltige Verhältnisse der Weltwirtschaft müssen Entscheidungsträger und deren Ratgeber aufhören, nachsorgende Lösungen für isolierte Probleme zu suchen, wie etwa Wassermangel oder “financial or nuclear melt-downs”. Zukunftsfähige Massnahmen müssen in eine system-konsistent vorsorgende Politik unter Berücksichtigung der Wurzelursachen wirtschaftlicher und ökologischer Fehlentwicklungen eingebunden werden. Diese Forderung schliesst nicht aus, dass gewisse Problme prioritär behandelt werden (z.B. Klimawandel und Arbeitslosigkeit). Aber auch die Lösung prioritärer Probleme darf kein Anlaß sein, sie mit erhöhtem Verbrauch an natürlichen Ressourcen zu bezahlen.

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In brief

While the world is talking about climate change, the real challenge of sustainability lies in a diminishing resource base for humans that calls for radical action. Sustainable economic conditions cannot be reached without increasing the resource productivity of the industrialized world dramatically. The price structure as well as economic boni and mali must be adjusted for approaching sustainability. The necessity to change lifestyles needs to be encouraged by all means of public policies. By 2050, the world-wide average per capita consumption shall not exceed 8 tons of material per year. System policies need be developed and applied to ascertain success. We need to start acting now. > more