Dave Gardner | SHIFT magazine
Downshifting the Herd
As our civilization proceeds down the slope of the post-peak-oil curve, global trade will become more and more expensive, so our economies will naturally localize. The energy-efficiency benefits of localized economies are obvious to us, but there are also social, and even psychosocial, benefits that aren’t often contemplated.
Growth Fairy Tales
Every night while you’re asleep, fairies enter your bedroom, put earphones on your head, and play a special endless-loop soundtrack. All night long, you hear, “Growth is good, growth is wonderful, growth is the path to prosperity, growth is success, there is a pot of gold at the end of the growth rainbow….”
Innovate our Way out of This Mess? Don’t Bet on It!
When you take a really honest look at the track record of technology and innovation, it is sobering. It’s very difficult to get it all right when there are over 7 billion of us doing it. Add to that aspiring to be materially richer year after year, and we have a recipe for large-scale disaster. When you fully consider the track record, betting on innovation to keep the party going is about as rational as investing all your retirement savings on a lottery ticket.
In truth we need to remove technology from our definition of progress. We need progress of another sort – progress in thought and perspective. Smart grids, smart cars, smart growth, and 8K televisions are not going to advance human civilization.