Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
increased consumption, reduce financial instability, or curtail profound environmental impacts, in-
cluding climate change and loss of biodiversity and topsoil.
What will it take for the conservers, localizers, and de-growthers to win? They have a lot
stacked against them. The interests promoting a continuation of growth-as-usual are powerful and
have spent decades honing advertising and public relations messages whose proliferation is sub-
sidized by hundreds of billions of dollars annually. These interests have captured the allegiance of
nearly every elected official in the world. Most ordinary folks are easily swept along because they
want more and better jobs, cheaper gasoline, more flat-screen TVs, and all the other perks that come
with fossil-fueled economic expansion.
The main downside to growth-as-usual is that it is unsustainable: it is destined to end in resource
depletion, economic unraveling, and environmental catastrophe. The conservers, localizers, and de-
growthers must therefore hope that if the growth-as-usual bandwagon cannot be turned back with
persuasion, its inevitable crash will occur in increments, so that they can seize each step-down in
industrial output as an opportunity to demonstrate and promote the need for alternatives.
Advocates of the post-carbon crisis theory of change can point to several useful historic ex-
amples. One is the transformation of Cuba's food system during that country's “Special Period” in
the 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting disappearance of subsidized Soviet oil
shipments set the stage with a crisis. Several Cuban agronomists had previously advocated for more
localized and organic agriculture, to no avail, but when the country was suddenly threatened with
starvation, they were called upon to redesign the entire food system. The moral of the story: advoc-
ates of a post-carbon economy are likely to make limited headway during times of cheap energy
and rapid economic growth, yet when push comes to shove obstacles may disappear. The Cuban
example is encouraging, but it is often called into question on the grounds that what worked on an
island with an authoritarian government might not work so well in a large, pluralistic democracy
such as the United States.
Paul Gilding, in his topic
The Great Disruption
, proposes World War II as an illustration of
the crisis-led theory of change: “[O]n the objective facts, Hitler represented a clear and undeniable
threat long before action was taken to defeat him,” he writes. “Famously, Churchill and others had
long warned of this threat and been largely ignored or even ridiculed. Society remained in denial,
preferring not to recognize the threat. This was because denial avoided full acceptance and what
that meant—war and a strong change to the status quo. Yet once. . . denial ended, the response was
swift and dramatic. Things changed almost overnight. Without the benefit of a retrospective view,
it would be much harder to predict when exactly the denial of Hitler's threat would end. So it's also
hard to predict when the moment will come [when the need for action on climate change is finally
recognized], even though in hindsight it will be 'obvious.'”
Post-Fukushima Japan offers yet another example. In the wake of catastrophic nuclear plant
meltdowns, the Japanese people insisted that other reactors be idled; soon only two of the nation's
atomic power plants were operating. That left Japan with substantially less electricity than nor-
mal—enough of a shortfall that economic collapse could have resulted. Instead, businesses and
households slashed energy use, driven by a collective ethical imperative. Solar photovoltaic (PV)
systems have appeared on rooftops across the nation.
The Kansas town of Greensburg was flattened by a tornado in May 2007, but the resid-
ents—rather than drifting away or merely trying to rebuild what they had—decided instead to use
