Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Because Positive Money are so selective in both their characterisation of the springs of capitalist accumulation and in their analysis of the impact of economic activity on the ecosystem, they end up proposing a scheme that at best will have little positive impact and could actually make matters worse.
Mann’s story-telling skills shine when he’s narrating the life and times of Borlaug, Vogt and the colourful characters they worked with. When The Wizard and the Prophet embarks on a 200-page tour of today’s many global ecology challenges, Mann’s discursions are fascinating but the quality is uneven.
Imagine a country that met the basic needs of its citizens – one where everyone could expect to live a long, healthy, happy and prosperous life. Now imagine that same country was able to do this while using natural resources at a level that would be sustainable even if every other country in the world did the same. Such a country does not exist.
Most of us try to fit new facts into established mental models, only occasionally testing our original assumptions, if ever. Can anyone’s mental models cope with the increasing complexities and myriad interconnections of our globalized economic, political and social system?
This ideology of human supremacy leads us to believe that our species’ cleverness allows us to ignore the limits placed on all life forms by the larger living world, of which we are but one component.
Is continued growth and an industrial economy actually desirable and, a separate and different question, is this growth sustainable? Can growth continue? In the 1970s growing uneasiness about the ecologically destructive effects of the growth economy led a few economists and scientists who were sceptical that growth could continue for ever to look into this matter in more depth.
I suggest we join Morin and Pogany in renouncing the irrational exuberance that expects irresistible progress and economic growth extending to infinity. To break out of this cognitive prison habit may be very challenging indeed. However, at some point there will be no choice. It’s time to stop digging that hole that we think is taking us up the mountain
Post-purchase dissonance is an expression psychologists use to describe the disappointment we sometimes feel on realizing that our latest consumer purchase does not fulfil the promise we bought it on. At first sight it’s a curious anomaly. On deeper reflection, it turns out to be the structural basis for the entire edifice. The engine of consumer society is discontentment. This is more than a rhetorical claim.
Thanks to modern science and technology—satellites and computers—we have days of warning before a hurricane hits. Science and technology have also enabled us to forecast “storms” of another kind. Using computers and data about population, energy, pollution, natural resources, and economic trends, it’s possible to generate scenarios for the future of industrial civilization.
Continued exponential economic growth is impossible, but the S-curve of slowing growth followed by a steady state is not the only other alternative. If the goal is maintaining GDP at the highest possible level, then the S-curve is the best case scenario, but in today’s world that isn’t necessarily desirable or even possible.
‘Overshoot’ is when a species uses resources faster than can be replenished. We’re already there. And show no signs of changing. Humans have a virtually unlimited capacity for self-delusion, even when self-preservation is at stake.
Richard Heinberg joins Juliet Jacobs at BFM radio to discuss realistic avenues for transitioning to renewable energy, the environmental implications of economic growth, and how we can build more resiliency into the sustainability movement.
