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Look on the Bright Side
Posted Jun 5, 2009 by Richard Heinberg
Recently I've begun compiling a list of things to be cheerful about. Here are some items that should bring a smile to any environmentalist's lips:
| • | World energy consumption is declining. That's right: oil consumption is down, coal consumption is down, and the IEA is projecting world electricity consumption to decline by 3.5 percent this year. I'm sure it's possible to find a few countries where energy use is still growing, but for the US, China, and most of the European countries that is no longer the case. A small army of writers and activists, including me, has been arguing for years now that the world should voluntarily reduce its energy consumption, because current rates of use are unsustainable for various reasons including the fact that fossil fuels are depleting. Yes, we should build renewable energy capacity, but replacing the energy from fossil fuels will be an enormous job, and we can make that job less daunting by reducing our overall energy appetite. Done. |
| • | CO2 emissions are falling. This follows from the previous point. I'm still waiting for confirmation from direct NOAA measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, but it stands to reason that if world oil and coal consumption is declining, then carbon emissions must be doing so as well. The economic crisis has accomplished what the Kyoto Protocol couldn't. Hooray! |
| • | Consumption of goods is falling. Every environmentalist I know spends a good deal of her time railing both publicly and privately against consumerism. We in the industrialized countries use way too much stuff — because that stuff is made from depleting natural resources (both renewable and non-renewable) and the Earth is running out of fresh water, topsoil, lithium, indium, zinc, antimony...the list is long. Books have been written trying to convince people to simplify their lives and use less, films have been produced and shown on PBS, and support groups have formed to help families kick the habit, but still the consumer juggernaut has continued — until now. This particular dragon may not be slain, but it's cowering in its den. |
| • | Globalization is in reverse (global trade is shrinking). Back in the early 1990s, when globalization was a new word, an organization of brilliant activists formed the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) to educate the public about the costs and dangers of this accelerating trend. Corporations were off-shoring their production and pollution, ruining manufacturing communities in formerly industrial rich nations while ruthlessly exploiting cheap labor in less-industrialized poor countries. IFG was able to change the public discourse about globalization enough to stall the expansion of the World Trade Organization, but still world trade continued to mushroom. Not any more. China's and Japan's exports are way down, as is the US trade deficit. |
| • | The number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is falling. For decades the number of total miles traveled by all cars and trucks on US roads has relentlessly increased. This was a powerful argument for building more roads. People bought more cars and drove them further; trucks restocked factories and stores at an ever-growing pace; and delivery vans brought more packages to consumers who shopped from home. All of this driving entailed more tires, pavement, and fuel — and more environmental damage. Over the past few months the VMT number has declined substantially and continually, to a greater extent than has been the case since records started being kept. That's welcome news. |
| • | There are fewer cars on the road. People are junking old cars faster than new ones are being purchased. In the US, where there are now more cars on the road than there are licensed drivers, this represents an extraordinary shift in a very long-standing trend. In her wonderful book Divorce Your Car, Katie Alvord detailed the extraordinary environmental costs of widespread automobile use. Evidently her book didn't stem the tide: it was published in the year 2000, and millions of new cars hit the pavement in the following years. But now the world's auto manufacturers are desperately trying to steer clear of looming bankruptcy, simply because people aren't buying. In fact, in the first four months of 2009, more bicycles were sold in the US than cars and trucks put together (over 2.55 million bicycles were purchased, compared to fewer than 2.4 million cars and trucks). How utterly cool. |
| • | The world's over-leveraged, debt-based financial system is failing. Growth in consumption is killing the planet, but arguing against economic growth is made difficult by the fact that most of the world's currencies are essentially loaned into existence, and those loans must be repaid with interest. Thus if the economy isn't growing, and therefore if more loans aren't being made, thus causing more money to be created, the result will be a cascading series of defaults and foreclosures that will ruin the entire system. It's not a sustainable system given the fact that the world's resources (the ultimate basis for all economic activity) are finite; and, as the proponents of Ecological and Biophysical Economics have been saying for years, it's a system that needs to be replaced with one that can still function in a condition of steady or contracting consumption rates. While that sustainable alternative is not yet being discussed by government leaders, at least they are being forced to consider (if not yet publicly) the possibility that the existing system has serious problems and that it may need a thorough overhaul. That's a good thing. |
| • | Gardening is going gonzo. According to the New York Times ("College Interns Getting Back to Land," May 25) thousands of college students are doing summer internships on farms this year. Meanwhile seed companies are having a hard time keeping up with demand, as home gardeners put in an unusually high number of veggie gardens. Urban farmer Will Allen predicts that there will be 8 million new gardeners this year, and the number of new gardens is expected to increase 20 to 40 percent this season. Since world oil production has peaked, there is going to be less oil available in the future to fuel industrial agriculture, so we are going to need more gardens, more small farms, and more farmers. Never mind the motives of all these students and home gardeners — few of them have ever heard of Peak Oil, and many of the gardeners are probably just worried whether they can afford to keep the pantry full next winter; nevertheless, they're doing the right thing. And that's something to applaud. |
But wait, before our cheering becomes an uncontrollable frenzy, we should stop to remember that most of these developments are due to an economic crisis that is taking a huge toll. With the possible exception of the last item on the list (and maybe some of those bicycle purchases), we're not talking about voluntary behavior that's evidence of forethought and collective intelligence. Whatever gains in sustainability these trends signify have come at an enormous cost in terms of unemployment, homelessness, and lost retirement savings.
Take all this to its tragic extreme. What if a billion humans died over the course of, say, the next ten years from starvation or swine flu? That would take a lot of pressure off natural systems. There would be more space for other species to flourish, and consumption of natural resources (oil, coal, water, and so on) would decline dramatically, improving the economic prospects of the survivors. So from a certain perspective this unimaginable nightmare might be seen as a good thing — though hardly anyone who actually experienced it would likely see it that way.
Parenthetically, it's worth noting that this whole line of thought may be dangerous. Some free-market PR hack from the Cato Institute is likely reading along right now just as you are, trying out headlines for a press release. "Environmentalist delights in economic collapse!" might be a good one, or "Environmentalist wants billions of humans to die!" One way to avert that kind of backlash is to keep mum about the fact that economic contraction actually does have benefits, and so far most other environmental writers have been playing it safe in that regard. I've crossed the line here, so watch out. I might get us all in trouble.
Now back to our theme. At its core, the dilemma is this: We humans have overshot Earth's carrying capacity through overpopulation and over-consumption, and have created all sorts of other problems in doing so (such as climate change). But nature will take care of all these difficulties. Overpopulation will eventually be solved by starvation and disease. Over-consumption will be reined in by resource depletion and scarcity. Climate change will take longer to fix, maybe thousands or millions of years — assuming we don't turn Earth into Venus.
But nature's ways of solving our problems are not going to be pleasant. And so the enormous, overriding question confronting our species during the remainder of this century will be, Are we humans capable of getting out ahead of nature's checks so as to proactively rein in our population and consumption in ways we can live with?
Boil down all the environmental literature of the past century, and that's the essence of most of it. So far, that literature has not had its desired effect: our species has continued to expand both in numbers and in per-capita impact.
But the items outlined above suggest that we've turned a corner. It's no longer a matter of nature "eventually" providing checks on humanity's boisterous expansionism. That's starting to happen. And it's not yet due to climate change: yes, we are indeed seeing potentially catastrophic impacts in terms of melting glaciers and so on, but those by themselves have not tempered the economic juggernaut. Instead, it is resource depletion that has begun to slow the freight train of industrialism. Over the past two or three years, high energy prices burst the bubble of unsupportable property prices and pulled the rug out from beneath the teetering financial derivatives market.
That's what the whole Peak Oil discussion has really been about. It's an attempt to identify the key resource whose scarcity will tip the global economy from growth to contraction.
But wait: this essay was supposed to help us look on the bright side. The discussion's getting kind of dark here.
Okay, my point is this: we have reached the inevitable turning point. The growth trance that has gripped the world for the past several decades is in the process of ending. Even if we get short periods of economic growth, that growth will be in the context of a significantly contracted economy and will only be temporary in any case, as Peak Oil and other resource constraints will quickly damper increasing economic activity. Gradually, as "recovery" gets put off for another month, another year, another few years, people may begin to realize that the expansionary phase of the era of cheap energy is finished. There are of course no guarantees that the public and their business and political leaders will indeed finally "get it," because the urge to hang onto the growth illusion will be very strong indeed. But if the misery persists, there's at least a chance that understanding will finally dawn in the collective mind of our species — the understanding that we must get out ahead of nature's checks and deliberately reduce the scale of the human enterprise in ways that maximize the prospects of both present and future generations.
But all won't automatically come to that conclusion on their own. A fundamental change in our comprehension of the human condition will depend on more and more public intellectuals articulating the message of deliberate adaptation to limits, so that the general populace has the necessary conceptual tools with which to mentally process their new circumstances. We will also need far more people working on practical elements of the transition. Those will be ongoing needs — a growth opportunity, if you will pardon the irony, for smart and articulate young people interested in making a difference. And they'll be most successful if they find ways of framing needed behavior and attitudinal changes in ways that are attractive and inviting — as the Transition Initiatives so brilliantly do.
So in that sense, when I say "Look on the bright side," no irony or sarcasm is intended.
Photo: nicobobinus/flickr
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8 comments
Point of no return?
From: Praveen Kumar, Aug 11, 09 07:29 AM
But to me, it appears as if we are heading towards a point of no return! It is now the turn of the developing countries to contribute to the load on the ecosystem.
Some more 'bright side' points
From: Sunson, Jul 9, 09 01:52 AM
Of course, all assuming Earth doesn't turn into Venus :)
thanks
From: KO, Jun 20, 09 10:23 PM
Thanks Richard for your continuing thought bubbles provided here, pardon the pun. Very invigorating to read.
Here's my sexy "transition" oppty: I run a pedicab in a downtown uran core which is quite entertaining for passengers, and for me. I've lost count of the cool people and drunk bevvies of giggling women I've pedaled around. I even get a bit of exercise. It's not profitable currently...I'm just warming up. I don't mention gas or oil, even though that's a topic I've read about way too much since 2005 - so it's always top of mind.
A thought I had last week is this: given that women in the US obtained the right to vote after our fossil fueled economy was birthed and well past the crawling stage, I bet our falling FFs will lead us back to medieval traditions and customs. Back to overt patriarchy. No more women's rights. So in a sense, why would women want to "go green"? Men can pedal faster than women and there are social implications for that. Anyone can drive fast. Perhaps same goes for certain ethnic groups, regions, cities or economic classes.
Cars have had a certain democratizing effect, and kept women safe from predation. (I hate cars, but have to show their bright side too.)
Regarding collective hive intelligence in the US... people not having voted in large numbers in the US tells me that either we've had sufficient bread and circuses, or people inately know that voting hasn't mattered for a long time (maybe that is redundant). Your query about collectively reigning in our numbers before nature does it for us also reminds me of two things:
1) Matt Savinar's site slogan: "deal with reality or reality will deal with you"
2) this quotation I see often in TheOilDrum comments: "Are humans smarter than yeast?"
While to us intellectuals it may seem depressing that we cannot get our brethren/sistren to "wake up" and make changes, we do affect the outcome through our own preparations and with well presented education/outreach efforts we change a few people. You changed my perception of our world with your books. I'm sure something similar happened in Greece, Rome, the Soviet Union and Easter Island. There are always people who know the real deal. Whether they are out for themselves or altruistic reasons may be irrelevant. It's good enough that some people know--so others will learn.
I see us as a singular species like any other: riding the ebb and flow of our natural cycles. We see FFs and HFCS as artificial. Sure--but if it exists on this planet and we were able to make it, it can't be unnatural. We ourselves are natural. Anything we do therefore in a way is natural. (If something is possible, it's natural.)
Individuals are born and die. So do families, communities, nations, species. Rise and fall, this too is a natural rhythm. Plants go from seed to bloom to seed.
I've been super annoyed at aphids all up in my vegetable patch. (Have you been gardening at all?) But when I looked at a satellite map of SF today, I realized that the concrete peninsula when zoomed out looks just like the gray aphids on my green plant limbs, sucking them dry. Kinda gross! I realized that I needed to do some weeding, and it looked like I'd been mono-cropping because I hadn't. Do you sense a comparison here?
I doubt anyone believes humans will exist in 1 billion years. So maybe nothing we do now matters, except that in Gandhi's words "it is very important that we do it."
We can try our best but only really prep our own lifeboats, as Michael R or Dmitry O would say.
Thanks for your efforts. You deserve a medal!
Look Behind the Bright Side
From: Austrian, Jun 19, 09 04:26 AM
All over the world governments now spend billions and trillions of Dollars in order to re-boost economic growth out of recession, in such a way inflating the bubble of compound interest demanding debts. Compound interest essentially is creating exponential growth of money volume. Ultimately, money must be an exchange-mean for real values, therefore financial growth enforces economic growth or redistribution of income inevitably. Exponential growth is a characteristic of positive feedback-loop systems. Any control engineer is understanding the impossibility of keeping a positive feedback-loop process stable within given limits, overshot is inevitable. Therefore, this principle in technical applications only is useful for the acceleration of switching-processes. But in economy it’s considered an appropriate foundation of the world economic system! Regarding the limited resources of our planet this seems to be a structural defect of the world economic system and the true reason for consumerism, energy squandering and environmental devastation. Within the last 40 years the share of the pure financial trade (without any real goods involved) has been increased from 10 to about 99 percent of the total world trade. Can you imagine, that in future a sustainable development is possible without eliminating the growth pressure enforced by the financial system?
Can We?
From: Lilian Nattel, Jun 15, 09 09:41 AM
What you're saying makes enormous sense to me. Either we're going to make changes of our own volition or changes are going to happen to us and we have no say in how. Years ago, before I had kids, I had a nightmare where the earth got too overburdened and kind of shrugged, as if the crust of the earth rippled, to shrug off the burden. I have to say that at the time I was clearing out my filing cabinet and was too lazy to separate garbage from recycling. When I got up in the morning, I went through all the garbage bags and pulled out the paper. We're here now, getting up in the morning. We have a choice still.
The whole point of
From: Clive, Jun 10, 09 08:48 PM
The whole point of environmentalism isn't to encourage collapse, but to avoid it. What the growth-at-any-cost crowd doesn't realize is that if we don't take necessary measures, we will eventually hit the ultimate wall of resources and ecology. So it's ok to delight in an economic depression, because it decreases the probability of an ecological collapse.
An ecological collapse would doubtlessly take the economy down with it, along with civilization, science, and our comfy lifestyles. In the long run, we just want what's best for all life, including (and probably especially) humans. They may call us human haters, but that argument is exactly the same as the one the neo-Nazis are using when they claim that civil rights is an injustice to white people.
Need Steady State Economy & Non-corporate Retirement System(s)
From: Harel B (I'm loggedin why error:"belongs to registered user", Jun 9, 09 01:59 PM
I'm all for including and keeping in mind lists of what's positive. As for CO2, no need to wait, have a look at this latest estimate, as of May 2009.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_gl.png
Does this picture, does this graph, look like anything to celebrate? Nothing in that graph gives any reason to celebrate. We might need to content ourselves with "emissions are rising at a slower rate" and even that won't last much longer since natural feedbacks have already started: the oceans have already been measured by more than one study to be absorbing less CO2. There is evidence the biosphere is doing the same. This means that if that process is truly underway and continues, then even lower new emission by humans in any given year might still give rise to the same or higher total emissions into the atmosphere, as the "free ride" or "Subsidy" we have been getting from the oceans and biosphere gets smaller over time.
Really good news would be to see a country, state, or even county/region start a credible steady-state-economy that is self sufficient and truly steady state without need for growth. That would be a wonderful model which even while most likely imperfect, would be a very positive step to build upon.
Another project to start would be a retirement income or "Retirement security" system that is unplugged from Wall Street. It is sheer madness and sheer impossibility to try to create a sustainable steady state economy so long as our very livelihoods are so tightly linked to corporate profits growing and thus the economy growing every year; unless we unplug in this way, even the start of a "success" on our parts towards no growth would entail the collapse of our retirement savings and, very likely, the collapse of our efforts before they really get started as people press the panic button and stop motion in any direction that causes their life savings to be collapse towards zero. An outline of the beginnings of a project to accomplish this unplugging:
http://economicdemocracy.org/alternatives-to-wallst.html
Just a few downsides to
From: Anonymous, Jun 9, 09 06:14 AM
Just a few downsides to mention (hey, I'm at work, you expect me to be all cheery & stuff? :)
-CO2 emissions might be falling, but deforestation is resulting in less carbon being absorbed
-ocean acidification continues
-increasing methane releases in Siberia
-investments in more expensive reneable technologies may take a back seat to fossil fuels as result of economic pressure
Have a nice day!