A lot of people caught up in our once-through and dispose economy, and used to using fossil fuels, cant imagine doing things any other way. So they get involved in a spiral of hopelessness some of them call degrowth. Imagining that because of hard limitations on ecosystem services, the future will be devoid of economic growth, and the industrial civilization will come crashing down--and we must therefore all learn to get by with much, much, less. i.e. a future of poverty. Let me introduce you to a concept called dematerialization, meaning that we get more value with less stuff. Its already been happening for a long while now. But were still growing our population and resource use in absolute terms. So what weve done isnt nearly enough. What we need are fully *closed loop, cradle-to-cradle product cycles.* Where all waste becomes the vital input to other processes. Which starts with a revolution in design. It must and will happen. Especially when we are running out of alternatives. When people are used to doing things a certain way, they will continue until they just cant any more. Then when they start to run out of something, theyll find another way to get it, that they werent willing to consider before. Thats where we are on planet Earth. Its too bad, we could have saved a lot more of the ecosystem if we had acted sooner. But act we must, and act we will. So dont pay attention to the degrowth bullshit that keeps regurgitating in the alternative politics community like a character from a low-budget zombie movie. We are not living in a closed system. We have limitless energy input from the sun reaching us every day, and this is plenty to continue global economic growth indefinitely. Well stabilize the population around 9 billion. Well learn to recycle water and everything else. Well learn to run our civilization without any combustion of any fuel for primary energy anywhere in the world. (With the possible exception of renewable liquid fuel for air transport). And humanity will therefore survive.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 01:36:01 +0000