Ensuring Transparency by "Evolving" the Ideal World Design.
online: www.modelearth.org/princmodsus.html
There exist many notions of what a sustainable world should look like.
It would be possible to accommodate any (provably) sustainable life-styles of varying degree of complexity on Earth--all those could exist in the world without interfering with each other, and without interfering unduly with other life forms that share the Earth with humanity.
It would be possible to model this situation, perhaps not even needing any extensive computer modeling--"gedanken experiments" (note 1) might even be enough, at least at the start; computer modeling might perhaps be used for proving that the more complex sustainable life-styles would, indeed, be sustainable.
To ensure that any style of a sustainable living of any degree of complexity would really be, beyond any doubt, sustainable, the design of any of those should start from the simplest way of sustainable life possible--a hunter-gatherer community living side by side with all other forms of life without there being any need for any special "wild-life preserves", since it would be in humans' conscious interest to live in balance with their environment.
From there the model would follow the "evolution" of hunter-gatherer way of life to more complex sustainable life-styles, step by step, always plainly displaying that the design remains sustainable ecologically and socially.
Important:
It has to be noted that this "evolution" in model would not follow the real evolution of human society in which violence has been the mover and initiator of "progress". On the contrary--the evolution of sustainable life-styles in model, from the simplest to more complex, would be driven by considerations for the wellbeing of all in the system. In this way "sustainability" of the system at any stage of "evolution" would be assured.
I think that in this way it would impossible to introduce into the design any non-sustainable societal and technological elements.
Evolved thus, any way of sustainable living--from the simplest possible to the most conceivably complex ones--would demonstrably be transparently sustainable, i.e. truly sustainable, not only "sustainable" in name.
The younger a child to understand this process, the greater the chance of its being transparent and sustainable.
A design evolved in this way would allow anyone wishing so to live at any level of complexity of a sustainable life-style, since many people have different ideas involving the complexity of a sustainable life-style. No too complicated computer programs would be necessary to model a sustainable Earth in this way! All different sustainable life-styles would fit in as long as the "sustainability" in each case would be clearly provable on the basis of all known and pertinent data.
The overall global population size should be determined by what population of hunter-gatherer the Earth could support, even though any sustainable style of living would be possible, the global population should aways remain at the level of hunter-gatherer society (the simplest and, at the same time, sustainable way of living on Earth), so that if the more complex forms of sustainable living (that might even be more "efficient" at using land area for food production, perhaps) should fail, or become not attractive anymore, there would never be any overpopulation problem should everybody have to start living at (ultimately) the hunter-gatherer level again. The idea of any "expansion", or "growth" (of population, of economy) would be foreign in a sustainable world. In a sustainable world there would be no need for growing population; a growing population would be antithetical to common sense--no one would introduce such ideas into the design!
The design that would be based on the above stated principles would have the best chance to exist even if the human-made environmental damage would cause extreme environmental conditions--it would be better able to withstand changes that we even cannot foresee now.
Every viable community (note 2) in the whole world would have to be designed with taking its local conditions on mind, and with enough "buffering" around it to allow for any unforeseen expansions of its basic territory that might be necessary due to, perhaps, climatic changes, or just for extra measure to accommodate any unforeseeable exigencies. The "buffering" zone has to include more than enough space for all other species that we share the Earth with for them to be able to live without being discomforted by us in any way, of course.
The transition to a sustainable world could start immediately--just allow people to start living as hunter-gatherers in wild life refuges!
So far it has been advocated that indigenous people be allowed to live within wildlife refuges, but, eventually, even non-indigenous people should be allowed thus. There certainly would be many of those!
What is happening on Earth today could be seen, in terms of geological time, as a continuation of a stabilizing process that is aiming towards an equilibrium of a major disturbance that came, more likely than not, from the outside of the Earth system that caused the demise of the dinosaurs and made possible the ascend of humans.
The existence of humans and the disturbance of the Earth system caused by them is just a repercussion of this stabilizing process. Eventually a dynamic equilibrium is going to be achieved, unless other major disruption from outside of our eco-system occurs.
Humans, and countless other species, could ride out all the difficult times ahead of us much more smoothly, if it is recognized that the latest disturbance caused by humans is also fixable by humans themselves--we have all the knowledge and resources to make it happen. This is, though, only going to happen if we humans. collectively, are truly as intelligent as we believe ourselves to be.
Notes:
1 "gedanken experiment"
–noun (Physics)
thought experiment.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gedanken+experiment
2 "viable community"
is the smallest possible social unit. It is viable in the sense of being able to perpetuate itself indefinitely on its own, without needing, for its biological and cultural survival, any contact with any other members of its species outside itself.
The need for designing a sustainable world co-operatively is explained at "The Need for Designing the Future Collaboratively" (http://www.modelearth.org/intro.html).
