Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The only effective way to control carbon emissions, as well as related problems of pollution and biodiversity loss, is to address “overshoot,” the unconstrained use of energy and material resources well beyond planetary limits, particularly in the richer parts of the world.
It’s past time to quit the cowboy economics, to hang up the hats and put away the spurs. To salvage both nature and humanity, pretty much everything about how we conduct human society must change. So what are you doing to help? I mean actually doing?
We get a startling overview of a self-directing complex system integrating economics and the physical world in Carey King’s recent book: The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth, and Policy.
Maybe we need to let go of the comforts of fashionable cynicism and find the courage to affirm such things again. Maybe a prayer for nonbelievers, to quote a line from the song, is what we need just now. We’ll just have to see.
The choice is that either we end up with unmanaged decline, which would be catastrophic, or a managed levelling out of our economies, shaped by a shift in social values and expectations.
We have to assume that we have reached the century of limits, and the current model is no good for us. We have to plan and try to redistribute while reducing our impact.
The “maximum power principle” may sound like the doctrine of an evil supervillain, but it actually applies to all living creatures. The principle states that biological systems organize to increase power whenever constraints allow.
That an economic activity has to be profitable is considered a truism, something taken for granted and not reflected upon. But what if the opposite is the case?
Society is producing too many elite people, and their decisions are causing extreme inequality, which is one of the key components of today’s sustainability crisis.
If we are serious about guaranteeing a decent future to our families and those who will come after us, we must change our societies at large.
In this aptly titled book, University of Texas research scientist Carey W. King argues that the modern-day global economy is a superorganism.
The message in this book is simple: There are hard physical limits to the growth of available energy to power our civilization and these will probably be seriously in effect by the end of the 21st century.
