Market Regulation

Market Oriented Society

Summary

20 years after the universal agreement on the reduction of global green house gas emissions, the world temperature growth became close to flat due to the international cooperation. On the other hand, to answer the volatile commodity market in the beginning of the 2010s, world leaders had decided to establish universal legislation covering all aspects of free markets. And they made big accomplishments thorugh a series of actions such as standardization of the recycling process, ban of rain forest cutting and overfishing, taxes on carbon consumption, new investments on water projects in countries suffering drought and accelerating innovation of new crops with high yield. As a result, the natural resource (e.g. oil, water, food, forest etc) consumption became sustainable. Through market regulation the rise in temperature was stabilized to acceptable levels. Weather phenomenon still occured but the world was on the path to sustainable temperature reduction.

Description

2010

The world faced serious threat from global warming, which also had negative effects on the ecosystems and biodiversity. Natural resources were reaching or had already passed the peak and became more and more scarce. The world had begun to move on from the era of high resource prices. Growth in population and consumption per head through recent years put severe demands on the supply of commodities such as oil and food. People and countries were already aware of the situation and ready to resolve the problems through global cooperation instead of individual and less effective efforts.
To avoid the collapse of environment, world leading countries first reached an agreement on how to reduce green house gas effectively together and started to practice worldwide. Meanwhile, they decided to apply global regulations to preserve the resource and adjust the market. Regulations on most resources were established. The general atmosphere for people is that there is hope and potential to reverse negative trends. However, regulations were limited in their effectiveness. Atlantic Tuna received strong quotas and policing. The quotas were not set low enough and the decline in tuna stock continued.
New technologies with carbon-benefit features began to boom. Such as carbon-neutral cars and factory waste reduction. Goods began to be designed with future flexibility in mind – often modular and always easy to re-use or recycle. ICT continued to develop rapidly.

2020

World climate problem began to come under control. In the last decade, the emission of green house gas increased about 15%, and the average global temperature increased about 0.1 C. Both numbers are good indicators of slowing down global warming compared to IPCC projections in their original AR4 report. Global cooperation on sustainable development achievedinitial success. Countries share technologies to preserve nature resources and fight for the poverty. The economy is maintaining impressive rates of growth worldwide, and is more interdependent than ever before.
Due to the application of carbon consumption tax, business/companies had been forced to profit through a more carbon-efficient way. Instead of simply using less energy, the innovators asked: what do my customers really want, and how can I deliver this in the most cost-effective, low-carbon way? Companies had found ways of selling performance. Moreover, because of the fast development of ICT, much travel has been substituted with personal communication.
Business’ low-carbon and high energy-efficiency approach resulted in a slow consumption rate of traditional fossil fuel. And alternative energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal, began to be sively applied because of the maturity of the technology. China and India had successfully developed new cro which are able to produce a sufficient yield without carbon-intensive inputs such as fertilizers or weed-killers and they started to share the invention with other countries, such as African countries.
As people realize the impact of their consumption levels more regulation is emplaced and recovery of natural resources is achieved. The decline of tuna was delayed. As people realized efforts were insufficient governments enacted swift bans in order to spur recovery. Fisheries suffer for several years as they wait for the tuna stock to recover. Though recovery still occurs the depth of the decline and the slow recovery could have been avoided if fundamental consumption habits changed.
Technologies using alternative energies are beginning to mature and push the massive application of solar, wind and geothermal.

2030

The world temperature growth became close to flat. People shared an attitude of acting together in order to prevent a further drive towards ‘runaway’ climate change. And the world economy kept stable growth. New leadership in the global sustainable development emerged and our environment and the natural resources became more and more sustainable.
Due to business transformation and alternative energies application, fossil fuel consumptions are not as high as EIA expected in 2008. For example, oil consumption increases only 20%. Since the climate change effect is mitigated and the world’s efforts of building water projects and pollution management to preserve available freshwater, the total freshwater supply increases. The rainforest is able to be saved from massive felling. Production and consumption of key wood products and wood energy are diverted to trees which are planted specifically for commercial purposes. Global food prices are less volatile and tend to stabilize. Due to China and India’s new invention on new crops, worldwide hunger and poverty are reduced by 70%. It’s very likely that in the near future, farmers will produce enough grain for both food and biofuel.
China and India have become leaders of the developing world in the pursuit of a sustainable world. They continue to push for global cooperation in the future. Local and regional regulations are aligned with national and international regulations due to the strong top-down initiatives.

Technologies have a focus on meeting people’s underlying functional need with as much productive a use of energy and resources as possible. Electric engines and pumps were extraordinarily efficient and closer to ‘theoretical maximums’ than ever before. Energy came from a variety of sources, but the vast majority of generation provided no overall emission of carbon into the atmosphere – it is simply too expensive to do so. The cost of energy had inevitably been passed on to consumers and businesses.

Common characteristics

Lifestyle
Although most people in the world realized what is going on and would like to change the situation they live in, mostly in this scenario, people relied on government/regulation or technology to make the decisions and they just adjusted rather than actively fundamentally changed their lifestyle. For example, people had to decrease their resource consumption (e.g. tuna) somewhat simply because the price was too high or government restriction. Or people’s travels/transportations were reduced because of the ICT development. Moreover, new alternative energy applications let people live in a more energy-efficient and low-carbon way. This is not enough. Resources still become depleted and alternatives are sought. But the rates of consumtpion do not change. The consumption habits and production methods have not fundamentally changed. Continuous intensive education about sustainable development is still necessary to change people’s mindset and achieve ultimate sustainability in the long term.

Business
Business was trying everything to profit in a low-carbon way because carbon is one of the most important and expensive commodities in the world. Companies have rewritten their business models to meet underlying needs, often by selling services instead of products.

Cooperation
In order to fight against the global crisis of sustainability, the world unity was unprecedented. Developed countries would like to share technologies and experiences. New leaders from the developing countries emerged and had big influence in the sustainable development. The world economy is also more interdependent than ever before.

Environment
The climate was getting better. Global temperature growth slowed down and natural resource consumption was able to stay sustainable due to the universal legislation. And various pollutions were under control because of government and business efforts, as well as with new technologies’ help.

Key Uncertainties

The key uncertainty is the level of consumption. Market regulations focus purely on consumption and market oriented activities. These do not address fundamental paradigms regarding the production process or total life cycle of a product.