Environment: Content from Across the ABC


Date/Time 14 Jul 2014 1:02:09pm
I remember looking at a sea of cars outside a supermarket one day and having one of those 'aha' moments. The simple act of obtaining food for survival was at the pinnacle of a massive industrial pyramid including: power stations and related infrastructure, oil rigs and refineries, factories, transport infrastructure all producing the components of those same systems and the food, supermarket and vehicles. It is almost as if someone said - okay, I want you to produce the most energy intensive system possible to provide for our daily requirements.

Humans don't need much: clean and healthy food and water, shelter, education, health care, meaningful or labour and some sort of real input into the decision making processes that manage our collective existence. After that come cultural activities, community, recreational opportunities etc. Along the way of seeking to improve our lot and satisfy these needs we found obtainable sunlight embedded in fossil fuels and a way of releasing that energy and became 'homo energeticus'.

For the last fifty or so years the early adopters of this lifestyle have been selling it to late or partial adopters and now countries such as China and India are about to replicate that model on vast scale. You are correct when you say that the way through this conundrum is to shift our self-identification from super energetic lifestyle to a more steady-state energetic lifestyle. But to do that means to challenge some of the deepest social structures/beliefs of global, industrial capitalism such as measuring the worth of a country or society by its economic growth and measuring the worth of a human being by their material possessions and wealth.

The steady-state energetic lifestyle mentioned does not involve a return to a stone age as some critics of ecological sustainability suggest - it involves asking ourselves what is important to us as human beings, what is superfluous and merely the result of the evolution of super energetic societies. Unfortunately the howling dogs of globalisation and endless unrestrained growth now patrol the forest of our collective consciousness and run to ground those who would even suggest that another way is possible.