Let's take a quick look at a paper by Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan that proves it.
"We must take a more rational approach. As we established in the previous section, eliminating poverty and improving human welfare requires focusing on specific types of outputs, and ensuring universal access to these things. PPP-based metrics of aggregate output (such as GDP) measure the production of all goods, including those that have limited relevance to poverty and human welfare."
"This ignores important questions about which sectors need to grow, and whether this could be achieved by reallocating productive capacities from other sectors. Labour and materials that are currently used to produce mansions and casinos can instead be shifted to producing affordable housing; farmland used to produce beef for consumers in the global North can instead be used to produce nutritious foods for workers in the global South, and so on."
"Recent empirical studies have established the minimum set of specific goods and services that are necessary for people to achieve decent-living standards (DLS), including nutritious food, modern housing, healthcare, education, electricity, clean-cooking stoves, sanitation systems, clothing, washing machines, refrigeration, heating/cooling, computers, mobile phones, internet, transit, etc. This basket of goods and services has been developed through an extensive literature..."
DLS minimum requirements
The paper goes on to calculate the energy and material needs for everyone to have access to these basic living standards. The results?
"These figures are based on a projected population of 8.5 billion in 2050 (consistent with SSP1), whereby extending DLS to all would require 125–183 EJ per year. This amounts to 30–44% of current annual global energy use (which was 418 EJ in 20198). Note that these are total annual requirements. To cover DLS gaps requires much less."
"For a population of 8.5 billion, provisioning DLS would therefore require 28–40 gigatons of material per year, representing 29–42% of current global annual material use (which was 95 gigatons in 201911)."
So we would only need 30-44% of global energy use, and 29-42% of global material use!
The paper goes on to highlight one of the key reasons that prevents us from doing this:
"This is challenging within a capitalist market economy, however, because capital generally requires increasing aggregate output (GDP) to stabilize accumulation ... and because in capitalist economies any reduction of aggregate output triggers social crises characterized by mass layoffs and unemployment. Furthermore, under capitalism, decisions about production are made by wealthy investors with the primary goal of maximizing private profits, rather than meeting social and ecological goals. "
"Necessary goods and services that are not profitable are often underproduced (e.g., Christophers 2022). Post-capitalist approaches are therefore needed, including public finance for urgently necessary forms of production (e.g., public transit, renewable energy, insulation, efficient appliances), establishing universal public services to ensure access to necessary goods... planning to reduce less-necessary output in a just and equitable way, and guaranteeing universal access to employment and livelihoods through a public job guarantee and income floor (Olk et al 2023; Durand et al., 2024, Foster, 2023)."
The paper goes on to describe changes for the Global South as well, it's worth a read!
Crossposted from Mastodon https://toot.community/@a2c_Helsinki/116131135598176328
