Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
tory fully occupied. If every crisis is an opportunity, then this is the biggest opportunity humanity
has ever seen.
Making the best of the circumstances that life sends our way is perhaps the most important atti-
tude and skill that we can hope to develop. The circumstance that life is currently serving up is one
of fundamentally changed economic conditions. As this decade and this century wear on, average
Americans will have fewer material goods and will be less mobile. In a few years we will look back
on late 20th-century America as a time and place of advertising-stoked consumption that was com-
pletely out of proportion to what Nature can sustainably provide. I suspect we will think of those
times—with a combination of longing and regret—as a lost golden age of abundance, but also an
era of foolishness and greed that put the entire world at risk.
Making the best of our new circumstances will mean finding happiness in designing higher-
quality products that can be reused, repaired, and recycled almost endlessly and finding fulfillment
in human relationships and cultural activities rather than mindless shopping. Fortunately, we know
from recent cross-cultural psychological studies that there is little correlation between levels of con-
sumption and levels of happiness. That tells us that life can in fact be better without fossil fuels.
So whether we view these as hard times or as times of great possibility is really a matter of per-
spective. I would emphasize the latter. This is a time of unprecedented opportunity for service to
one's community. It's a time when it will be possible to truly change the world, because the world
has to change anyway. It is a time when you can make a difference by helping to shape this needed
and inevitable change.
As I travel, I meet young people in every part of this country who are taking up the challenge
of building a post-petroleum future: a 25-year-old farmer in New Jersey who plows with horses
and uses no chemicals; the operator of a biodiesel co-op in Northampton, Massachusetts; a solar
installer in Oakland, California. The energy transition will require new thinking in every field you
can imagine, from fine arts to banking. Companies everywhere are hiring sustainability officers to
help guide them through the challenges and opportunities. At the same time, many young people
are joining energy and climate activist initiatives like
350.org
and the Transition movement.
So here is my message to you in a nutshell. Fossil fuels made it possible to build the world you
lived in as a child and later as a student all through your school years. Now it's up to you to imagine
and build the world after fossil fuels. This is the challenge and opportunity of your lifetimes. I wish
you good cheer and good luck as you make the most of it.
— MAY 2011
