Growth As We Know It Is Not In The Future
– By Lisa Rutherford –
Over the past century, we have witnessed the most amazing growth ever experienced by humans. That has been driven by fossil fuels that have provided energy for manufacturing a mind-blowing number of products and the energy to move them across the planet.
Fossil fuels allowed the production and movement of goods while marketing and advertising efforts have created a consumer base that is growing rapidly and thereby using more resources and more fuel to create and move those goods purchased. Although fossil fuel production appears to be doing well now, depending on where that is occurring, it will come to an end either due to diminished resources or due to the cost of getting it since we’ve already developed the low-hanging fruit. As recently as October 5 it was reported that the West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil market is headed to $79, with $80 perhaps soon after and a floor level of $75. However, some are even predicting as high at $200 in the future, and every time the price of oil goes too high, the economy moves in the reverse. The cost of building nuclear energy facilities is already high and will continue to be in the future. There are no easy answers.
The cheap fossil fuels — that took many millions of years to develop — have allowed this unprecedented growth but will not last forever. In fact, The Economist reported in October that “The age of fossil-fuel abundance is dead” and that high prices are here to stay because of dwindling investment in oil, gas, and coal. These may just be predictions but if they come true it will change consumer habits. Increasing prices for fossil fuels will put pressure on the economy and encourage less consumption or more debt or both.
This means big changes are in our future and growth will change from the robust growth we’ve experienced. The questions are when will these changes hit us and what will the future look like? The need to prepare is clear.
“The Limits to Growth” back in 1972 warned of the future and our inability to keep up with overusing the Earth’s resources but most humans have paid no heed. It warned that the global economy was on an unsustainable track, and yet, here we are fifty years later and consumerism is more robust than ever with apparently no end in sight…yet. The limits-to-growth study was carried out by a group of MIT scientists who looked at population growth, resource depletion, effects of environmental degradation from that depletion, and pollution from industrial processes. We just recently witnessed another oil spill that will require huge amounts of money to deal with. Another important factor not taken into account in the MIT study was ‘debt.’
Climate change is putting pressure on the need to consume less. The House Committee on the Budget reported that over the three prior years, over $150 billion per year was spent dealing with disaster costs. Surely that will only increase with more extreme events.
At the beginning of the twentieth century – the beginning of the economic growth boom —“overproduction” was a problem. With cheap fossil fuels, there was the ability to make lots of goods at rates that people could not absorb. Advertising was one way of dealing with the issue —making people “think” they needed more stuff —and consumer credit, making it easier for people to go into debt with their purchases based on their “perceived” need. Debt has grown so much that we have reached or will soon reach our limits to growth.
We reached a turning point in the 1980s in this country due to globalization — and this point either has happened or is happening in other countries. Wages stagnated due to global competition but consumption still needed to grow because the economy had become dependent upon growth. Our economy is based on debt and we have made economic growth a requirement for our economy’s precarious “health.” Every year for the past thirty or forty years, debt has increased faster than GDP. The financial industry which handles debt has grown enormously because of this — faster than other aspects of the economy.
We are our own worst enemies. Peter Whybrow’s American Mania: When More Is Not Enough reveals that evolution equipped us to seek status and novelty and to engage in conspicuous consumption. But today, in a world of over-consumption, that keeps us locked into behaviors that actually undermine our survival prospects. And, Paul Ehrlich and Robert Ornstein in their New World New Mind assert that our human flight or fight brains are not up to dealing with these kinds of slowly developing dilemmas, which is rather depressing for any hope for change. But I still have greater hope for humans. I knew a family when I was young and TV was new who used to repeat when ads came on “we don’t need that” to teach the children and help reinforce good behaviors.
Within our brains, dopamine plays a key role in governing motivation and stimulating the senses of reward and pleasure. We may know intellectually that Earth simply can’t keep supplying us with ever-increasing flows of such goodies, but it’s hard to stop. We are addicted to the feeling that shopping and other consumption gives us. Our population of 8 billion on Earth is projected to grow to over 10 billion by the end of the century, a point at which many (not me!) alive today will still be alive to deal with those stresses.
Although things look to be robust, those who are willing to look closely are seeing the limits to growth. We need to build resiliency in our communities – the ability to withstand shocks and continue to function. We need redundancy in critical systems, dispersed-system control points — in other words, “localization.” The internet and FB have actually added to the problem due to the need for electricity 24-7. Power may not be universally available all the times in the future if our fossil fuel systems are not replaced by some other reliable energy. It’s understandable why we’ve moved to more centralized systems but that does not create resiliency in the long run.
For those who are interested, there is more information to help look forward and plan.
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