Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Thinking in terms of simplification, contraction, and decentralization is more accurate and help-
ful, and probably less scary, than contemplating collapse. It also opens avenues for foreseeing, re-
shaping, and even harnessing inevitable social processes so as to minimize hardship and maximize
possible benefits.
Why Contraction, Simplification, and Decentralization Are Inevitable
The premise that a simplification of global industrial civilization is soon inevitable is the summar-
ized conclusion of a robust discourse developed in scores of topics and hundreds of scientific papers
during the past four decades, drawing upon developments in the studies of ecology, the history of
civilizations, the economics of energy, and systems theory. This premise can be stated as follows:
• The dramatic increase in societal complexity seen during the past two centuries (measured, for
example, in a relentless trend toward urbanization and soaring volumes of trade) resulted primar-
ily from increasing rates of energy flow for manufacturing and transport. Fossil fuels provided
by far the biggest energy subsidy in human history, and were responsible for industrialization,
urbanization, and massive population growth.
• Today, as conventional fossil fuels rapidly deplete, world energy flows appear set to decline.
While there are enormous amounts of unconventional fossil fuels yet to be exploited, these will
soon be so costly to extract—in monetary, energy, and environmental terms—that continued
growth in
available
fossil energy supplies is unlikely; meanwhile alternative energy sources re-
main largely undeveloped and will require extraordinary levels of investment if they are to make
up for declines in fossil energy.
• Declining rates of energy flow and declining energy quality will have predictable direct effects:
higher real energy prices, the need for increased energy efficiency in all sectors of society, and an
ever-greater proportion of increasingly scarce investment capital being directed toward the en-
ergy sector.
• Some of the effects of declining energy will be nonlinear and unpredictable, and could lead to
a general collapse of civilization. Economic contraction will not be as gradual and orderly as
economic expansion has been. Such effects may include an uncontrollable and catastrophic un-
winding of the global system of credit, finance, and trade, or the dramatic expansion of warfare
as a result of heightened competition for energy resources or the protection of trade privileges.
• Large-scale trade requires money, and so economic growth has required an ongoing expansion of
currency, credit, and debt. It is possible, however, for credit and debt to expand
faster
than the
energy-fed “real” economy of manufacturing and trade; when this happens, the result is a credit/
debt bubble, which must eventually deflate—usually resulting in massive destruction of capital
and extreme economic distress. During the past few decades, the industrialized world has inflated
the largest credit/debt bubble in human history.
• As resource consumption has burgeoned during the past century, so have its environmental im-
pacts. Droughts and floods are becoming more frequent and intense, straining food systems while
also imposing direct monetary costs (many of which are ultimately borne by the insurance in-
dustry). These impacts—primarily arising from global climate change driven by our consump-
tion of fossil fuels—now threaten to undermine not only economic growth, but also the ecolo-
gical basis of civilization.
