But what we also know is the fact that the specific metabolic profile of agrarian or not yet fully
industrialized countries (which contain about two thirds of the world population) is indeed much lower, by a
factor 3-5, both materially and energetically. Many of these countries are currently on a pathway of transition
from the agrarian to the industrial metabolic profile. They move on this pathway under very different global
conditions than their European and New World predecessors in the past, and they move much faster: a process of
transformation that took the United Kingdom 300 years was accomplished by Japan in 100 years and seems now
to be completed by, say, Thailand, in 50 years. On the other hand, there is a certain international division of labour
and a distribution of economic power that shapes development pathways in ways that are not yet fully understood.
While sociologists like Wallerstein or Bunker discussed an exploitative core-periphery structure, biophysical
analyses of material and energy flows suggest more complex relationships (Eisenmenger, Schandl, and Ramos-
Martin 179-222) in which the roles and metabolic profiles of developing countries that serve as extractive
economies differ from those of labour supply economies, a difference that again coincides with population
density. In both cases though these countries seem to pretty much follow the historical industrial transformation
pathway and may get trapped in a deadlock of newly built infrastructures that require a large amount of materials
and energy with uncertain supplies and catastrophic implications for the world climate.
A last and very new finding that will still require additional in-depth analysis is just under publication
(Steinberger & Roberts, submitted). In an analysis of a large number of countries worldwide (representing 80%
of the world population), the authors found in the course of the past 30 years a systematic lowering of thresholds
for high human development, as measured by the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) and each of its
components, in terms of both primary energy input and carbon emissions. This is a very remarkable finding as
the authors demonstrate that the reduction of energy / carbon required for “high development” is so strong that at
present, and in the next decades, world energy consumption levels and carbon levels far under the Kyoto protocol
requirements would suffice to allow for the whole world population to reach high human development levels.
Global high development thus requires less and less total energy and carbon – while the global trend is towards
dramatically increasing energy use and accompanying carbon emissions. The current trend is driven by metabolic
and economic growth in industrialized and industrializing countries, mostly decoupled from human development
goals.
What do we need to know: What are the major sociological research questions?
I see a key role of sociology in providing a different, and maybe more complex, picture of human well-being
under conditions of environmental constraint than that provided by, for example, by economics. What this
means can best be illustrated by looking at the “sustainability triangle” down below. While the “three pillars”
of sustainability – the ecological, the economic and the social - are more or less commonly accepted, they are
here interpreted in the specific systemic way of societal parameters interconnected by positive feedback, thus
reinforcing each other and producing a non-sustainable growth spiral that may then lead to a massive negative
feedback from climate change. This picture suggests as a particular role for sustainability research to search for
ways of “decoupling” the feedback between the three nodes.
Decoupling between welfare (i.e. economic activity) and metabolism (i.e. material and energy throughput)
is a task for technology developers and economists. Decoupling between welfare and life chances (an operational
interpretation of social well-being) is an issue for economists and sociologists. And, finally, decoupling between
life chances and metabolism is a particular sociological challenge. In effect, all three axes need decoupling if we
do not want to further face massive “rebound effects” as in the past where gains in efficiency are overwhelmed
by, or indeed fuel (Ayres and Warr, 2005), economic and metabolic growth. In order to do our job, we need to