Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
that society.
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And so, as we have tapped fossil fuels to permit by far the highest energy flow rates
ever sustained by any human civilization, a few individuals have accumulated the biggest pots of
wealth the world has ever seen. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that it is precisely during this
recent, aberrant, high-energy historic interval that Social Darwinism and neoliberal economics have
arisen, with the latter coming to dominate economic and social policy worldwide.
The Leap
With release will come the opportunity for a collaborative evolutionary surge. Recall that in the re-
lease phase of the adaptive cycle there is expanded opportunity for novelty to succeed. Most people
these days tend to think of novelty in purely technological terms, and it's true that email and Twitter
can speed social change—for example, by helping organize an instant political rally. But spending
hours each day alone in front of a screen does not necessarily lead to collaborative behavior, and
it's just possible that we may not be able to count on our handheld devices continuing to function in
the context of global economic crisis, trade disruptions, and resource shortages. Therefore perhaps
it will be in our interactions within flesh-and-blood communities that our most decisive further in-
novations will arise.
The details are impossible to predict, but the general outline of our needed cooperative evolu-
tionary leap is clear: we must develop a heightened collective ability to conserve natural resources
while minimizing our human impacts on environmental systems. In some respects this might turn
out to be little more than an updating of traditional societies' methods of managing common grazing
or hunting lands. But today the stakes are far higher: the renewed commons must extend to include
all renewable and nonrenewable resources, and “management” must bring extraction and harvest
levels within the long-term ability of natural systems to recover and regenerate.
At the same time, with energy flows declining due to the depletion of fossil fuels, current levels
of economic inequality will become unsupportable. Adaptation will require us to find ways of lev-
eling the playing field peaceably.
Laying the groundwork for reorganization (following the release phase) will require building
resilience into all our social structures and infrastructures. In the decades ahead, we must develop
low-resource, low-energy ways of meeting human needs while nurturing an internalized imperative
to keep population levels within ecosystems' long-term carrying capacity.
There are those who say that we humans are too selfish and individualistic to make this kind
of evolutionary leap, and that even if it were possible there's simply too little time. If they're right,
then this may be the end of the line: we might soon wind up in the “unfit” bin of evolutionary his-
tory. But given our spectacular history of cooperative achievement and our ability to transform our
collective behavior rapidly via language (aided, for the time being, with instantaneous communica-
tions technology), it stands to reason that our species has at least a fair chance of making the cut.
To be sure, evolution will be driven by crisis. We will adapt by necessity. In this release phase
there will be enormous potential for violence. Remember, release is the phase of the cycle in which
capital is destroyed—and currently there are towering piles of human, built, and financial capital
waiting to topple. We have been set up to compete for shards and scraps. It's no wonder that so
many who sense the precariousness of our current situation have opted to become “preppers” and
survivalists. But things will go a lot better for us if, rather than stocking up on guns and canned
goods, we spend our time getting to know our neighbors, learning how to facilitate effective meet-
ings, or helping design resilient local food systems. Survival will depend on finding cooperative
