A depressed man with a smiling face: Jorgen Randers speaks at the Summer School of the Club of Rome in Florence

This is not a picture taken at the summer school, but it is Jorgen Randers, the real one!

Jorgen Randers' speech at the Summer School at the Club of Rome has been dramatically different from the standard speech dealing with sustainability. Randers defined himself as a "depressed man with a smiling face" and he summarized his 47 years of work to promote sustainability as an utter failure. "We are worse off now," he said, "than we were 50 years ago. 

What went wrong? Randers asked to the audience to propose reasons. He got more than a dozen, from the financial system to greed. But he said that none of these is the real reason. It is not a fault of the government, it is not a fault of corporations, it is not a fault of banks. It is, simply, the fault of people. According to Randers, people are simply unable to postpone their immediate satisfaction for a better future. And that's the problem today as it was 50 years ago.

Randers supported his opinion with the example of Norway, the country where he comes from. He said that he and other scientists had prepared a plan that would have zeroed the country's emission by 2050 at a cost of some Eur 200 per person per year for 50 years. It was refused at all levels. The rich and well-educated people of Norway prefer to have an extra 200 Eurs to spend shopping in London rather than give an example of good management of the ecosystem to the world.

Randers's talk arose some strong reactions in the audience, some quite unfavorable. But, really, it made a sorely needed point: we are still reasoning as we were reasoning 50 years ago. We are creating environmental activists who are supposed to push people and governments to do something good for the environment. It doesn't seem to work. Not well enough for what we need to do, at least. And the batch of young activists being prepared at the summer school may face a task that will turn out to be even more difficult than it was for the previous generation.

So, what to do? Difficult to say, but at least asking the right questions is a good starting point

Jorgen Randers: updating "2052"

Jorgen Randers speaking in Cambridge, 12 Oct 2016

Today, in Cambridge, a meeting was held with several of the authors of the "Glimpses" that were part of the "2052" book by Jorgen Randers. The idea was to update the forecasts that were published in 2012.

Randers showed the update of his model, obtained with new data and with some modifications of the model itself. In five years, there have been modest changes and the basic results of the initial model are confirmed. Basically:

1. Randers' model sees the growth of both the economy (in terms of GDP) and of the population up to 2052; although the forecasted population is less than 9 billion people, much lower than the UN predictions.

2. Randers' model doesn't see scarcity for any resource, at least up to 2052

3. Inequality and poverty will remain as significant problems.

4. The model clearly says that we are NOT staying below the 2 degrees limits. Renewables will be growing fast, but so will do fossil fuels at least for another couple of decades. Randers' climate model (a different one) doesn't produce a "climate tipping point" for the rest of the century, but the raising temperatures will do enormous damage to the world's economy and to people.

Of course, forecasts are always difficult, especially when dealing with the future. My modest opinion is that Randers' model is good and I was impressed by the work that was done and that's being done to keep it up to date and to improve it; so I think that these results should be carefully studied and understood.

Then, still according to my modest opinion, there remains a fundamental problem: models based on system dynamics are not really made to catch tipping points. I think Randers is right when he says that we won't see the climate "catching fire" during this century. We may well be on our way to an ice free planet (and the corresponding 70 m of sea level rise) but that will not be for this century (hopefully!). The kind of tipping points that we are more likely to see are the result of coupling between the climate system and the socio-economic system. For instance, no model could predict the Syrian disaster, and yet its root cause is the double whammy of global warming and oil depletion. What can happen in the future as temperatures keep rising and resources being depleted, it is probably impossible to predict by any model.

But the meeting of today produced also elements of hope. The idea that renewables can make it seem to be diffusing and I myself presented the results of the study that we performed with Sgouridis and Csala that demonstrates just that. Others argued that the financial system is gearing up to provide the necessary resources for the transition. And, who knows? We might really make it! The future cannot be predicted, but we can always hope for a good future!