Is “Sustainable development” a scam?

Rev. 2.0 – A work in progress

Massimo Zucchetti

Storia Futura dell’Energia, Politecnico di Torino, 2022

The hard core experts on climate change and energy, know that there's no such thing like
"sustainable development", i.e. the meaning that the US and the developed countries give to
this couple of unlucky words.

I am doing in my free time some unusual research, you see some of the results hereunder.
Let us discuss some figures.

Figure 1

In blue, you see the millions of "sustainable development" keywords that have been used in
scientific literature from 1900 until 2021 (source: googlescholar)

In red, you see - in the meantime - the yearly millions of Tons of GHG (GreenHouse Gases,
weighted with the CO2 equivalent method) that we have poured into the atmosphere: each
year (source IPCC).

Year after year. There has been a maximum of around 1 million papers per year coherent
with the "sustainable development" keyword, but in the meantime the only event to
temporarily halt the unstoppable emissions growth was the 2020 COVID pandemy (nobody
was bouncing around like crazy with airplanes and cars, industries drastically reduced their
energy demands, etc). In 2021, emissions have reached a new all-time record.

We did not need, however, millions of innocent victims of a terrible pandemy to learn this
lesson: talking about a generic "sustainable development" is so unuseful, nothing else than a
scam we rich people use to show that we care.

Is there a correlation between the two curves? That is just a joke, the curves might be in a
statistical correlation, but there is no *Immediate* cause-effect correlation.

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Figure 1 – Sustainable development and GHG emissions

Figure 2
It is even worse if we look at the new fashionable concept, Obama’s “Green Economy”. The
growth of this keyword is stronger in the last 15 years, so do the emissions.

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Figure 3

The decline of the “sustainability” illusion is evident if we look at the frequency of those
keywords. The peak of sustainability occurred - more or less - when the infamous “oil peak”
was due to occur, around 2013.

Sustainability and Seneca

Do you remember the Oil Peak? The Hubbard Curve? They were saying that World Oil Production
would peak in 2000 and decline following the Hubbard Curve.. This prediction in the late fifties
was partially confirmed by the peak in US oil production in 1970. However, in this century, oil
production even in the US has seen a big resurgence. (See Figure 4)

Moreover, since that was NOT happening at all in the world, and oil production kept growing,
they brought forward the "Seneca's Curve", i.e., rapid raise, peak and rapid downfall. (Figure 5)

Alas! That is NOT happening again. See Figures 4, 6, 7, 8

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Figure 4 – The resurgence of oil production in the US, it ain’t Hubbard.

Figure 5 – Seneca’s curve

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Figure 6 – According to some experts, the discovery of new fields and the use of
unconventional oils could permit a smooth increase in world oil production in the
next years. The numbers refer to millions of barrels per day.

Figure 7 – Other experts foresee a possible oil peak around 2035. That is not due to
depletion of reserves, but to the reduction of the demand following the G7 pledge to
end the fossil fuel era by 2100.

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Figure 8 – If we consider CONVENTIONAL crude oil only (that will become less and
less important in the future), then we could have had a world peak in 2005-2010.
Hubbert’s prediction was not completely wrong, just wrong time and wrong
quantities, and did not foresee the role of unconventional oil production. More
recent predictions foresee for conventional oil production a Seneca’s curve.

However, if you put on a graph the millions of papers (source googlescholar) that related to the
infamous keywords "Sustainability" and "Sustainable development", then: THERE YOU GO!

They are proudly following a Seneca's Curve. See figure 9.

Rich Countries' "Sustainable development" and "Sustainability" fakes, as we have shown in a

previous graph coming from my unconventional research funny activity, are just wishful thinking,
and they only contribute to increase GHG emissions, in the end.

Since some years, however, the "Sustainable development" fairy tale is being quickly abandoned
("A pretty face may last a year or two, but pretty soon they'll see what you can do" John Lennon,
How do you sleep, 1971). Other scam keywords are emerging: "Green economy" is still growing
in quotations, even if it is evident that no capitalist economy can be green, ever (Figure 2)

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Figure 9 – Seneca and Sustainability

Conclusions

Getting back to our question. The only way to make it -in the climate change battle - is to
quit most of our energy-hungry modern attitudes NOW. Like it was a pandemy, but with
everybody healthy and volunteering to abandon the worst aspects of “progress”.

No other way out. Talking about that, my friends, does not stop emissions: it does not even
reduce them. #climatechange #sustainabledevelopment #energy #ghgemissions