FACTOR FOUR - ethics

The Ethical Dimension of the FACTOR FOUR Concept


1. The FACTOR FOUR concept as such has no ethical dimension
FACTOR FOUR is essentially an economic concept. Targeted technologies and processes use a lower amount of resources to meet the human need for goods and services (increased resource efficiency). This concept evolved independently of ethical considerations, which makes it attractive and workable as it enables technology and the economy to act as efficient driving forces (market mechanisms, financial incentives) unimpeded by ideological concerns.


Provided users receive appropriate training, technologies work in any cultural context. What users think and which motivations guide their actions makes no difference to machines. Technology exported to a different culture may turn into an ethical or moral issue in that culture (with the concomitant obstacles to its establishment and spread). But for the exporting culture the transfer requires no specifically ethical or moral attitude. It does not even require environmental awareness. For the core argument of the FACTOR FOUR concept is the economic profit to be gained from saving resources, and for simplicity's sake we will at this point consider profit an ethically neutral aim.


2. But FACTOR FOUR does not operate in an ethical vacuum
Resource efficiency as such is no ethical value. By its nature it is primarily an economic or technological and therefore ethically neutral aim. However, resource efficiency is pursued for the sake of another, superordinate end, and implementing the FACTOR FOUR concept in an ethically acceptable way requires examining why and how it is implemented. To discuss the ethical dimension of FACTOR FOUR technologies we must evaluate the goals they target.

The FACTOR FOUR concept defines resource efficiency as a means to an end, which is to sustain and stabilise the conditions for the survival of human life on Earth in harmony with nature. Saving resources with the help of technologies, however, does not imply any specific way of life. The money and materials saved could just as well be used for criminal purposes as for promoting ecological or social progress. The ethical perspective focuses on the uses to which new possibilities resulting from saved resources are put. From an ETHICAL point of view, FACTOR FOUR is an unfinished project.

The FACTOR FOUR concept allows considerable scope in implementation: Resources can be saved not only by technical means, but also through changed behaviours and habits. That does not simply mean doing without certain goods or services. On the contrary, alternative lifestyles can generate a new, improved quality of life based in conscious consumption, closer involvement with the local and global environment, awareness of ecological and social causes and effects, as well as the physical and mental well-being related to outdoor exercise.

In a remarkable analogy, resource-saving measures and the recommendations physicians make for improving public health coincide in a number of points:

(1.) Food: Eating more fruit and vegetables, less meat and animal fat also helps save resources. The production of meat consumes a much higher amount of energy than it provides when eaten. Resource-efficient consumption in this context means eating the vegetable raw materials themselves rather than feeding them to animals. Organic food, that is, largely unprocessed foodstuffs whose production consumes less energy and raw materials is considered particularly healthy.

(2.) Exercise: Our modern lifestyle gives few opportunities for physical activity. What is advisable from an ecological point of view also increases physical well-being when we cover short distances on foot or by bicycle.
So while purely technical measures (FACTOR FOUR-technologies) would sufficiently improve resource management, such narrow technocentricity would leave great potentials for improving human quality of life untapped.


3. Increased wealth as the goal of resource efficiency cannot be defined in exclusively economic terms
The subtitle of the book "Factor Four: Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use" (Ernst Ulrich v. Weizsäcker, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Earthscan Publications Ltd., London, 1997 [1995 (1)]) points to the economic potential of resource efficiency.

The title's simple equation expresses the calculable link between resource use and economic situation at both local and global levels. At the same time, it emphasises that protecting resources does not go hand in hand with reduced quality of life, and that improving quality of life is possible without further damaging nature.

Paraphrasing this twofold message (1. "Resource efficiency generates economic benefits," 2. "Resource efficiency improves the quality of life.") reveals the double meaning of the term "wealth" when it refers both to economic prosperity and quality of life.

The question from an ethical perspective is, how does economic prosperity relate to quality of life and vice versa?
a. Economic prosperity and quality of life are not the same thing, for wealth is neither a necessary condition nor a guarantee for happiness: We all know the images of obviously content, smiling people who judged by our "civilised" standards are living in dire poverty. And we also know images of people amply provided with material goods who experience deep crises down to alcohol and drug abuse and suicide. So quality of life does not increase in proportion to the amount of the available financial or material means.

b. Having said this, a happy life does require a certain degree of economic well-being. Our physical existence comes with certain needs that have to be satisfied to a sufficient extent (though in different ways in different cultures and parts of the globe) if we are to experience quality of life. Where this condition is met, however, numerous immaterial aspects come in that a mere increase of material wealth will not satisfy. Along similar lines, the satisfaction of basic needs creates room for ethical considerations. Only when the search for food and shelter from the weather and predators ceased to take up all time and energy could humans develop a civilisation with room for scientific, philosophical and also ethical considerations.

c. Activities aimed at saving resources and creating wealth must also take the prevailing global distribution of resources and wealth into account. "Doubling wealth" on today's basis is only justified if overall global wealth is targeted, for as long as only the areas that create them reap the benefits of increased efficiency, doubling wealth will widen the existing North-South gap between industrialised and developing countries.

Moreover, exporting FACTOR FOUR technologies from industrialised to developing countries strengthens relations of dependence to an even greater extent.


4. Economic activity, however, occurs at the interface of humans' ethical attitudes and the ecological contexts of nature
The economy encompasses all activities undertaken to cover the human need for goods. Whatever humans do to acquire goods intended to meet their needs is, by definition, an economic activity. Humans directly extract these goods from nature, or acquire them by trading with others who in their turn extract material from nature, purchase goods or produce them on the basis of raw materials extracted from nature. The natural genesis of raw materials and the extraction of these materials by human beings therefore forms the basis for our material economy.

If it is not to harm the ecosystems that generate raw materials, extraction from nature must be limited. Drawing a comparison with the financial world, F. J. Radermacher writes that sustainable living means using the interest without touching the capital (F.J. Radermacher: Balance or Destruction: Ein Plädoyer für eine weltweite öko-soziale Marktwirtschaft. Beitrag zur Konferenz "Nachhaltigkeit als Geschäftsfeld - Natur, Macht, Märkte", Wuppertal 2001). Spending the capital diminishes the interest, that is, the resources we need for living.

So the material limit to human survival on Earth is the amount of raw material that can be extracted from nature without bringing to a standstill the natural processes that sustain human life. Of course the tacit assumption here is that human life on Earth is worth preserving, a precondition for any debate on future-oriented environmental ethics that moreover lies beyond positions like anthropocentrism (which gives priority to human concerns) and bio- or physiocentrism (which gives priority to life or nature). Putting humankind’s right to exist into question would obviate any efforts to outline an environmental ethics. Ethics as we understand it here only makes sense if the survival of human life on Earth is considered a goal worth pursuing.

But defining the survival of human life on Earth as a binding goal of human activities also spells the duty of keeping resource use within the amounts that can be extracted from nature without jeopardising the basis for life. Though the amount of "permitted" resource use may be defined in words, as we have above, only approximations to concrete figures are possible. Even tentative statements on concrete amounts are treacherous as they might encourage people to exhaust them. Fixing numbers is a difficult business, and closely observing assumed critical values may in effect lead us to exceed the real limits of sustainability.

Apart from the general problem that fixing limits of consumption involves, it is important to note that there are probably regional differences in nature's carrying capacity. In areas with an above-average load, extraction would have to stay significantly below a worldwide critical value x for environmentally benign per-capita consumption of certain materials, while there is more leeway. in areas so far little affected by extraction of these materials Just because a certain material exists in abundance in one part of the world, however, does not mean that it should be distributed evenly all over the world. The idea is much rather to adapt to the natural environment and use materials available locally. In fact, different parts of the world have always used different materials to achieve the same purpose.


5. Resource use is the starting point for environmentally responsible, ethical action

5.1 Eco-efficiency gives environmental pioneers a guideline for their activities (FACTOR FOUR as a rule of thumb)
Setting reliable goals requires information on the relevant framework conditions to be as exact as possible. As pointed out above, it will be difficult to determine even comparatively vague limits for the carrying capacity of ecosystems. These limits result from the highly complex dynamics at work between the existence of the most diverse organisms, between these organisms and their environment. They are therefore hard to determine in any empirical or methodical way, and that distinguishes them from such single factors as water quality, which are easy to determine along predefined criteria and can be documented in water quality maps.

Calculating real material consumption gives a better basis for comparison as largely transparent human decisions determine the amount of materials used. Figures for raw material consumption on the one hand show up in existing statistics and on the other can be traced back to human decisions and activities. If a certain level of resource use is defined as a baseline, reduction of use by a factor x implies a reduction of the load on ecosystems by the same factor. Implementing (above all technical) measures that increase the efficiency of resource use, however, does not reduce the standard of living by the same factor x, but keeps it at the same level, or even increases it in harmony with nature.
Efficiency factors as rules of thumb for technological and business activities opens up new market opportunities for environmentally aware pioneers.

5.2 Nature's specific regional characteristics are not ignored but respected as the basis for adapted solutions
Determining efficiency factors, Janne Hukkinen has warned, makes resource efficiency a concept far removed from nature (2001, "Eco-efficiency as abandonment of nature". In: Ecological Economics 38, pp. 311-315). Eco-efficiency, he says, implies abstract target values enforced in global top-down processes that ignore regional differences and preclude individuals engaging with nature at the cognitive level. Hukkinen points out that it is civilisations that achieved close familiarity with their regionally distinctive environment that survived for centuries, while centrally organised states operating on the basis of abstract goals soon declined. Hukkinen’s historical comparison explicitly criticises institutions like the OECD, the European Commission, the United Nations and the World Bank.

But what his criticism really attacks are technical and administrative targets, not the objective core of efforts toward resource efficiency. Reducing raw materials consumption and measuring that reduction in terms of Factor 4 or 10 are not necessarily instruments of centralised environmental management. On the contrary, the technical measures implemented to achieve reductions have to be adapted to local environments. Resource efficiency relies on combined individual, in their majority technological solutions. A specific efficiency factor may be an abstract target, but successfully increasing efficiency requires knowledge of local environments on which to base the technologies and processes used. So abstract planning along the lines of Factor 4 or 10 in actual implementation produces very tangible results oriented on the possibilities provided by nature.

As a starting point, "resource use" improves on "limited carrying capacity" in that it circumvents the difficulties of evaluating natural conditions – so in a sense defining resource efficiency as a target really does entail a certain abandonment of nature. Achieving resource efficiency however requires knowledge about nature, and that in turn involves closely observing nature. The processes relevant here, however, are more accessible than the complex dynamics that determine nature's carrying capacity. For the development of resource-saving technologies and processes usually concerns a limited number of materials to be used or to be used more efficiently. And the area under observation is not Earth's nature in its entirety, but the concrete local environment in which the technology is to be implemented.


6. Technology can influence resource use, but human wants form the basis for economic activities
For the purpose of ethical debate let us divide resource use into three steps while keeping in mind that such a division is purely analytical. It does not imply any division of functions between actors in the economy. Actors - be they individuals or companies - only differ in the extent to which they are involved in any of these steps. Environmental ethics, however, subjects all three to the same amount of scrutiny when evaluating a particular case of resource use. A first step of planning and reflection identifies which wants are satisfied or how they are to be satisfied. In a second, economic-technological step, technical processes and market mechanisms are employed to extract materials for meeting human needs from nature and feed them to consumption cycles in an appropriate form. The way resource use affects nature is analysed in a third, ecological-scientific step.

The present article in this sense has put the cart before the horse: We first pointed to the limits of ecosystems’ carrying capacity (third step), then outlined the technological possibilities for increasing efficiency (second step). The first step however is to examine the needs met by extracting materials from nature.

Ulrich Witt (2001, "Learning to consume - A theory of wants and the growth of demand". Journal of Evolutionary Economics 11, p. 23-36) has analysed human wants and their bearing on resource use by introducing a number of distinctions.
Among human wants and needs he distinguishes genetically determined innate wants from acquired ones, which emerge in learning processes (conditioning) often rooted in an innate want. Acquired wants come to play an important role in human decisions.
Among consumer goods corresponding to these needs, Witt distinguishes direct and indirect inputs. Direct inputs are, for example, food, drink, air, and medicine, the kind of goods that are literally consumed or ingested to satisfy a need. Consumption of direct inputs results in physical satiation, i.e., additional consumption does not create further want satisfaction beyond the temporary satiation level. However, the organism's activities gradually use up direct inputs. A state of deprivation re-emerges and with it the motivation to consume.

Examples for indirect inputs are electrical and household appliances. In their case, not the material equipment as such but the services it provides to consumers satisfy wants. At the end of a process of consumption the tool used generally continues to exist and can again satisfy the need when it returns. Examples include beds for satisfying the need to sleep or television sets for satisfying the need for intellectual stimulation.

The relations between needs and the means used to satisfy them are highly flexible. One and the same need can be satisfied by various different means, and conversely, the same consumer good can satisfy several wants at once. Conversation with friends can stimulate the mind just as well as an evening spent watching television. And apart from providing the service it was built for, a television set also satisfies its owner's want for status symbols. These are the effects, one may add to Witt’s observations, that advertising plays on when it promotes certain products or brands by emphasising the immaterial wants they fulfil, associating cars with freedom, zest for living, or prestige, rather than referring to their actual function (mobility).

While the satisfaction of innate wants has physical limits, this is not the case with acquired wants. Moreover, though physical limits determine the amount of consumption that satisfies innate wants, the number of different means that can satisfy them is not. The extent to which the need for sleep, clothing, heating and intellectual stimulation can be satisfied is limited, but the number of goods purchased (beds, clothing, heating devices, television sets) is not. The acquisition of goods is therefore not limited by natural or physical conditions, and can exceed the point at which the innate want is satisfied. Manufacturers seek to increase sales by stimulating demand for goods through, for example, increased variety, exotic flair and other immaterial, additional functions that go beyond straightforward satisfaction of wants. An extreme result is the production of foodstuffs in which ingredients like sugar substitutes reduce satiation so that more can be consumed, or, once more from the manufacturer’s point of view, sold.

Witt describes how cognitive abilities and education enable human beings to develop ever more differentiated consumer behaviours. Increased knowledge, including technical know-how, enables humans to appreciate the variegated functions and operational options in appliances they want to acquire for consumption (or that manufacturers want them to acquire. Combined perhaps with a certain sense of prestige, an appliance’s abundance of functions may convince buyers even if they actually need or use only a limited number of functions.)

Human intelligence also plays a role where acquired wants evolve from innate wants. On the basis of physically determined wants, association and conditioning generate complex need structures. And since these for the most part acquired wants are not inflexibly bound to specific consumer goods, ever new motivations for purchase and consumption emerge. Maintaining blood heat, for example, in many climate zones requires wearing clothes. That is an innate need. But beyond this technical function clothes also adorn, convey status, let one stand out from the mass of people or adapt to existing codes. Clothes and numerous other consumer goods satisfy acquired wants that could only evolve in the context of humankind’s intellectual and social development. Intensified communication and the mutual exchange of experiences not only generated ever more sophisticated ways of satisfying needs. Subcultures with different consumer behaviours emerged, and group dynamics further strengthened and refined acquired wants.

Pursuing Witt's analysis in an economic-ecological direction, one may conclude that a large part of modern societies’ economic structure essentially depends on the consumption of goods beyond physical wants. The economy would break down if the broad masses suddenly decided to take a critical stance on consumption. Even today, when no such subversive action is in sight, retailers suffer from low demand resulting from political and economic insecurity at global, local and family levels.

The existing economic structure hinges on consumption beyond physical necessity. This kind of consumption, however, could soon exceed nature's capacity to provide raw materials and absorb waste. There is a danger that the prevailing economic and organisational basis of human life (the economic structure) will destroy its ecological basis.


7. Resource efficiency is both an ethical and an economic and technological necessity
Is the clash of economy and ecology an ethical or merely a technological problem, a problem that warns us to examine our behaviour patterns or one that only requires improved resource management? Ethics considers problems from a perspective that touches on the existential meaning of human action and seeks normative rules for it. Resource management, in contrast, centres on the logistics of providing people with goods, taking human behaviour as a natural given (much like raw material deposits) rather than considering its ethical or moral dimension.

While ethical judgments are founded in systems of value that are themselves part of historical, cultural and geographic contexts, the question of resources is the same at all global and local levels. Science also belongs to the contexts just mentioned, though environmental degradation is a problem of our time, even if, as Hukkinen points out, non-sustainable resource use has always existed. Nevertheless, it should be possible to put the problem of limited resources in terms that are acceptable the world over, and so establish a shared basis for evaluating the global situation. Surely the initial diagnosis applies in many parts of the world, as one or a number of raw materials always limit human action.

So on the one hand resource use is ethically relevant, on the other it may be defined in economic and ecological terms. An approach restricted to quantitative values like resource use is attractive because such values are largely neutral in terms of ethics and culture. Though keeping resource use within sustainable limits is an ethical necessity, that does not – in contrast to norms based on ethical or religious tenets – specify what action needs to be taken. Resource efficiency therefore integrates well into the theoretical frameworks of very different societies.

Moreover, and independently of any ethical considerations, sustainable resource use is a condition for the survival of human life, not only on the global, but also on the local scale. The carrying capacity of local ecosystems depends on people satisfying their wants and needs with raw materials that can be obtained sustainably, either locally or by sustainable means of transport from regions where they are available. Obviously, efficient resource use is necessary from a purely economic point of view.


8. Aware consumption is the key to more efficient resource use
While Ulrich Witt in the observations summarised above discusses why demand for goods can exceed physical satiation limits, in the context of resource efficiency the question can be turned on its head: Is it possible to make consumption more resource-efficient by aiming for a more accurate correspondence between wants and the means employed to satisfy them?

In other words, should an ethical reading extend (1) only to the amounts of resources used in comparison to the amounts that can sustainably be extracted from nature, or (2) also to certain consumer behaviours or the consumption of certain goods. The present article focuses on the first option, as the second question goes beyond sustainable resource use and touches on personal or social systems of values. What we seek to do for resource use here, in contrast, is to provide an ethical reading that remains largely neutral vis-à-vis value systems and can therefore be integrated into the most diverse cultural contexts.

Ulrich Witt has provided a workable kit of terminological tools by distinguishing innate and acquired wants, direct and indirect inputs, and wants from the means used to satisfy them.

Witt says that the consumption of products, and with it the consumption of natural resources, can be increased beyond the physical saturation limit by linking acquired (or stimulated) wants with innate ones and increasing the variety of ever new consumer goods. Resource use not only occurs in the direct consumption of, for example, foodstuffs, but also in the production of appliances that provide services. The latter are durable goods that continue to exist after consumption, so that manufacturers continually have to stimulate demand, e.g. by adding functions, as can be seen in computer and entertainment technologies, or by producing goods with the kind of intentionally limited durability one is apt to suspect in some household appliances.

Such market-economy mechanisms deliberately decouple resource use from the material base of human wants, by extending material consumption beyond the physically determined need for materials.
But speaking of and criticising extravagance in this context would go beyond the purpose of ecological ethics. Ecological ethics does not object to products on the grounds that they are superfluous, but only if their production, use and disposal exceeds the natural limits of ecosystems. This is the criterion applied here.

Witt's conclusions however do point to a second lever for resource efficiency apart from the ecological optimisation of technological processes, and that is ecologically aware consumption. Let us begin by distinguishing needs that must necessarily be satisfied by material means (among them most innate needs) and needs that may be satisfied by alternative, immaterial means. This step would be previous to technological efforts for resource conservation, and its resource-saving effects are probably difficult to determine quantitatively. But an increase in quality of life may be counted on where compensatory consumption is replaced by consumption that more effectively meets the relevant need, or where the desire for intellectual stimulation is satisfied through social activities with interesting people rather than with devices (entertainment electronics) or substances (stimulants and drugs).

If at the cognitive level, e.g. through advertising, new acquired needs can be stimulated on the basis of existing innate needs, awareness-raising efforts may achieve a more aware way of dealing with needs and consumer goods.
That would, of course, mean crossing the border between the kind of ecological ethics described above (seeking to establish sustainable patterns of consumption) and a normative critique of consumption, an issue this article has been seeking to waive. But ecologically aware consumption as stipulated here does not reject consumption as such, as some ideological, religious or social movements do. There is no doubt that existing needs must be satisfied. But without wanting to sound patronising, we expect that an increased awareness of the impacts of their behaviour will convince individuals to favour immaterial goods. Previous to any technological measures, changed attitudes may increase resource efficiency. Compensatory consumption and consumption that does not actually satisfy the targeted needs would be reduced, and the same probably holds true for most natural material extraction.


9. Economic-administrative concepts form the global framework for resource efficiency and socio-ecological equity
We have seen to what high degree the existing economic structure of industrialised countries relies on ecologically unaware consumption. Ecology and economy, it would seem, are irreconcilable. But this apparent incompatibility is a constructed one, for every human – not only every economic- activity only has a future if it respects the ecological limits. At the same time, it is likely that only a targeted adjustment of economic structures can effectively change consumption patterns.

In this context F.J. Radermacher presented a concept combining eco-efficiency in the sense of Factor 4/10 with balancing measures. The goal is to achieve more equity, which he defines by measuring the lowest income available to a certain group (world population or national population) against the average income. While the global equity factor stands at 4 (i.e. the global average income is four times as high as the lowest), in European countries it is significantly below 2. Radermacher sets up Europe as a global model, for in the European Union, written law regulates the market economy, and in the process of EU enlargement development is supported by Co-Financing. The equity factor in the deregulated U.S. market, in contrast, is significantly higher than 2, though as a global standard Radermacher considers this figure not only acceptable but exemplary in view of the unequal starting positions of countries in the northern and southern parts of the globe.

For the future Radermacher assumes that the citizens of northern countries will want to keep increasing their standard of living while world population growth continues. He therefore accepts economic growth for both hemispheres as long as it is controlled by eco-efficiency and social inclusion.

Radermacher has devised the formula 10:4:34 to express his idea. A "double Factor 10" is to increase the gross global product by ten while improving eco-efficiency by the same factor to keep resource use and ecological impacts at today's level. Radermacher reckons with a time frame of 50 to 100 years. For the countries in the northern hemisphere the goal is for consumption to quadruple, while countries in the southern hemisphere are to increase consumption by a factor 34, so that in the end the equity factor would stand at 2, i.e. rich countries would still be twice as rich as poor countries. The model he proposes eliminates the cannibalistic features of growth, preventing adverse effects on Earth's ecological carrying capacity. Moreover, economic growth in the poorer countries would reduce population growth and significantly improve the per-capita-situation.

Implementing the programme, Radermacher points out, requires "refining and interlinking rules and regulations in such areas as WTO, ILO, UNEP, UNESCO to form a consistent Global Governance System." Radermacher explicitly endorses the market economy while calling for a global body of regulations to reconcile it with ecological and social requirements.

Radermacher's proposal certainly is abstract in the sense that Hukkinen has deplored in concepts for resource efficiency. It sets up theoretical calculations neither based on observable natural phenomena nor primarily intended to reform the way we use nature. Radermacher much rather seeks to influence the framework conditions of today's economic structure. But his essay also addresses the cultural and ethical framework within which such change occurs. To illustrate possible outcomes of uncontrolled economic growth, he cites social tension and conflicts that on the surface appear motivated by religion. "This is where, in the cultural realm, the roots of significant friction with the Islamic World lie. Religion does not cause problems, but frames the visible context of communication for more profoundly rooted issues, above all concerning equity and human dignity," and he points out that the same holds true for the Northern Ireland troubles.


10. In short: Environmental ethics relates to resource efficiency both in the lives of individuals and at community/society level
This chapter headline broadly sums up our argument, whose main points will be recapitulated below along the assumptions that formed the headlines of the different chapters:

1. The FACTOR FOUR concept as such has no ethical dimension
Resource efficiency as a category of economic and technological measurement is ethically neutral enough to be implemented in the context of different value systems. That makes it an ideal common denominator for global environmentalist efforts, which necessarily seek to integrate people with different cultural backgrounds and traditions.

2. But FACTOR FOUR is not implemented in an ethical vacuum
Resource efficiency in itself is no ethical value, but a means of achieving targets that, similar to ecological sustainability, find their reason in ethical considerations. That resources need to be protected can be claimed independent of values if the shared will to ensure human survival on Earth forms the basis for international cooperation. Apart from purely technical measures, changes in behaviour patterns can play a significant role and may (e.g. food and exercise) improve health.

3. Increased wealth as the goal of resource efficiency cannot be defined in exclusively economic terms
Beyond material possessions, we understand wealth to mean the immaterial aspects of life.

4. Economic activity, however, occurs at the interface of humans' ethical attitudes and the ecological contexts of nature
The economy is the domain that confronts humans with the natural basis of their existence. If human survival on Earth is to be ensured, economic activities will have to observe the natural limits.

5. Resource use is the starting point for environmentally responsible, ethical action
Resource use provides the key to realising the demands made by environmental ethics because, in contrast to the highly complex interrelations that make up ecosystems, it is a result of human action and lends itself to fairly straightforward observation – more straightforward than material flows in ecosystems, at all events.

6. Technology can influence resource use, but human wants form the basis for economic activities
The physical needs that determine consumption also define its limits. Consumption ends when a need is satisfied – unless secondary needs acquired in learning and conditioning processes intervene, where there is no natural limit to consumption. Consumption and resource use can be increased at will (depending on the consumers’ income), and in an economic system based on this mechanism, increase of resource use is inevitable.

7. Resource efficiency is both an ethical and an economic and technological necessity
In view of Earth's limited carrying capacity and the human right to satisfy needs, resource efficiency as demanded by environmental ethics must be targeted in sustainable economic activities and technologies.

8. Aware consumption is the key to more efficient resource use
To raise awareness, environmental ethics discusses needs and analyses how material or immaterial means can satisfy them.

9. Economic-administrative concepts form the global framework for resource efficiency and socio-ecological equity
Goals and objectives aiming for more equity in the distribution of material goods and social opportunities among the world’s population are initially expressed in comparatively abstract figures such as the equity factor and the formula 10:4:34. However, abstract concepts trigger concrete measures that influence international rules and regulations and technological processes. The overall aim is to provide human beings all over the world with consumer goods that do not exceed the limits of Earth's carrying capacity.


(This text is a work in progress, the preliminary result of an ongoing thought and discussion process.)

For questions or comments please contact:
Dr. phil. Markus Wischermann
wischermann@web.de