Inside Sustainability: Facts, Figures, Bullshit - Part I: Unemployment
_kt75 | reflections 01.1/2013

-- a _kt75 | reflection

 _download Paper: server 1 | server 2



Keywords Genuine sustainable development, sustainable employment, unemployment, unemployment rates, precarious job conditions.

Summary Facts and figures - that are vehicles typically used to promote, convey and enforce interests in a more or less reliable way. This series of _kt75 | reflections provides facts and figures on the facts and figures with a particular focus on ‘sustainable development’. Essentially, it aims to put facts and figures in a realistic and reliable context to each other and tries to interpret the rationale behind the facts and figures and the way they are supplied.
For demonstration purposes selected important facts and figures of four individual cases are surveyed:

_Part I - Unemployment: discussing exemplary the situation in Switzerland and Germany. 
_Part II – Alternative Energy: analysing the technical, environmental, economic and geo-political aspects of the so-called ‘energy turnaround’. 
_Part III – Turnover/Sales Figures: surveying the inherent sustainability using the example of car manufacturers.
_Part IV – Life Cycle Assessment: reflecting on it as an approach and as a business. 
_Part V – Roundup.

Part I of the recent issue of the _kt75 | reflections explains why the effective unemployment rate of Switzerland ranges in the order of 8-12% (rather than the officially communicated 3%) and that of Germany in the order of 14% instead of less than 6%. On this basis the paper discusses qualitatively and in detail the key obstacles that prevent ‘sustainable employment’ (like company internal subversions, bans on work, deliberate obstructions, etc.) and it presents straightforward ways how to provide for ‘sustainable employment’ in order to achieve genuine and comprehensive sustainable development.
Discussing the above four cases individually (Parts I – IV), summarising them in the final roundup (Part V) and concentrating on the insights gained in the past, this _kt75 | reflection hypothesises that the exclusively technology focused and quantity based approaches, as widely promoted today, to implement sustainable development have failed (key failure factors are, among others: the human himself, money and information [Scharnhorst, 2013]). Therefore, a well-balanced turnaround towards genuine and comprehensive sustainable development that takes qualitative and quantitative aspects as well as the technical, the environmental, the economic and the geo-political (societal) dimensions into account is proposed. Read the full paper...





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