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Apr
15
2010
The Age of Abundance
The last three centuries Age of Abundance of exponential growth have taught us that technology is a progressive, one way street. As John Michael Greer points out in the logic-of-abundance.html this assumption is based on the unique and never repeatable hyper-abundance of the geological bonanza that are fossil-fuels. Our economies have been flooded with once unimaginable amounts of cheap and highly concentrated energy. This surplus of energy allowed all manner of inventions which finally made it possible for us to walk on the moon. Peak-oil and other natural resources are fast closing this door to us.
The scale and urgency of the challenges we face are truly vast as illustrated by Professor Tim Jackson in New Scientist magazine. The Ehrlich IPAT equation[i] shows that even to reach what many say is the far too high level of 450ppm CO2 by 2050, with 2-3% developed world and 5-10% developing world growth, we would need energy-efficiencies eleven times great as we have been able to gain so far. To do this and solve global poverty we would need to reach 2% of the very best-practice EU levels of carbon content per unit economic output. To reach the far safer 350ppm carbon intensity of the global economy would need to fall by 95% by 2050 (compared to 2002) or 6.3%/yr, an almost five-fold increase in the yearly average between 1965 and 2002. However, 2000-2007 the carbon intensity of the economy effectively flat-lined. Given this, in order to achieve a 350ppm target, nef estimate that the annual fall in the carbon intensity of the economy would need to improve by more than 200-fold. For each year that the target was missed, the necessary improvements would grow higher still.
And yet, neither relative nor absolute decoupling between growth and environmental impacts are occurring. Even now, at the height of the Age of Abundance, we are unable to create a technological solution to the dilemma of growth. How much harder (impossible) will this be once peak oil hits?
We are now entering a new age in which the abundancy of the human spirit, not physical matter, will need to be our guiding-light. As Jackson says, ‘the transition to a sustainable society cannot hope to proceed without the emergence or re-emergence of some kinds of meaning structures that lie outside the consumer realm’.
Whilst technology cannot alone save us, a change in the way we live and the way we see ourselves can bring about the change needed. Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri said in the Times in October 2008: ‘The meltdown in the economy is a harsh metaphor of the meltdown of some of our value systems. Individualism has been raised almost to a religion, appearance made more important than substance. The only hope lies in a fundamental re-examination of the values that we have lived by in the past 30 years’.
Vaclav Havel has stated beautifully the fundamental shift that is needed: ‘What could change the direction of today’s civilization? It is my deep conviction that the only option is a change in the sphere of the spirit, in the sphere of human conscience. It’s not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. We must develop a new understanding of the true purpose of our existence on this Earth. Only by making such a fundamental shift will we be able to create new models of behaviour and a new set of values for the planet’.
[i] I = PAT, impact (I) of human activity on the planet is the product of three factors: the size of the population (P), its level of affluence (A) expressed as income per person, and a technology factor (T), which is a measure of the impact on the planet associated with each dollar we spend.