Our pursuit of constant growth can never be sustainable. Instead, we must deconstruct our consumer society to consume less and value more
Tuesday 20 August 2013 was Earth Overshoot Day, the day every year when humanity exceeds the yearly ecological limits of the planet, and starts to consume and pollute more than the Earth can endure.
Back in 1972, The Limits to Growth had warned that we would soon exceed the 'carrying capacity' of the planet, and by the mid-1980s the authors were proved right. Since that time, industrial civilization has been bankrupting future generations not just financially, but by stealing an unfair proportion of their resources.
Unless dramatic changes are made, within 20 years the global supply of oil, fresh water, food and many minerals will cease to meet demand. Yet even against this backdrop, I believe that we should cease our dangerous obsession with 'sustainability'.
Life is a physically consumptive process. It is therefore impossible to live sustainably, as by pursuing our continued existence we inevitably deny at least some resources to those to come. Granted, we can choose to go about our business more sustainably, and this is a laudable goal. But every time the dreaded 's' word is thrown into a policy or strategy, it helps to spread the propaganda that there is a means of continuing to live as we do now, but in a sustainable fashion.
Recycling and renewables: a false sense of reality?
Let's take two practical examples. Firstly, there is the idea that we can seek sustainability by recycling. Certainly putting things into reuse rather than landfill is a good idea. But sadly no technology exists that can efficiently turn discarded products into pristine raw materials.
All current recycling is at best downcycling, as high-quality metals and plastics are reclaimed in low-quality guises with a limited range of applications. We therefore need to seriously promote the solution of consuming far fewer things, rather than continuing to propagate the growing belief that mass consumerism can continue unabated providing that everything we throw away is magically recycled.
Just as recycling does not provide a sustainable means of consuming physical resources, there is also no renewable energy source to which we can transition. In fact, there is no such thing as renewable energy at all. All means of power generation consume non-replenishable resources. Wind turbines, for example, require towers, generators and sails to be constructed, while photovoltaic solar cells do not materialise out of thin air. All forms of alternative power generation also have a limited working life, as well as a relatively low net energy yield.
Back in the 1930s, the sweetest forms of petroleum gushed so freely from the ground that their energy return on investment (EROI) was roughly 100:1. This means that 100 units of energy were produced for each unit of resource consumed. Yet today petroleum extraction is usually a far more intensive process, and typically results in an EROI of between 40:1 and 20:1. The EROI for natural gas, and for unconventional oil obtained from shale or tar sands, is then well below 10:1. EROI values for wind power typically max out at 18:1, often far less, while photovoltaic solar has an EROI below 10:1, as do wave power and biofuels.
Due to falling EROI values, the cost of energy will keep increasing, while energy supply will continue to fall. There is simply no known energy source that can deliver anything like the EROI and hence the cheap and abundant energy that we have become addicted to. This is also hardly a surprise. Today we burn around one million years of stored photosynthesis annually, and yet hope to sustainably transition to a form of energy (such as wind or solar) that has to deliver its output in real-time. There really is only one option on the medium-term horizon, and that is for us all to use far less energy.
Fashionable but not feasible?
Sadly right now, sustainability has become a trendy obsession. Perhaps the only thing that most politicians, economists and many business leaders crave even more foolishly is constant economic growth. In plain survival terms, the latter is as ludicrous a proposition as the former. It is therefore not surprising that spin-doctors and marketeers have conflated the two concepts into the preposterous notion of "sustainable economic growth".
No natural system – from an amoeba to a civilisation – has ever managed to fight entropy and to sustain itself forever, let alone to grow indefinitely without hastening its inevitable demise. Indeed, in the biological world, constant growth is more normally a sign of obesity or cancer, rather than a healthy state of affairs.
Rather than striving toward sustainability, we would should start focusing on how we can least painfully deconstruct our consumer society and transition to a world in which we consume things less and value things more. To see how this may be achieved, we also only have to look back to the first half of last century.
Lessons from history
Only a few generations ago it was normal to purchase products intended to last a lifetime, and which were frequently repaired. In bizarre contrast, today it is not uncommon for people to still be paying for things that they have long since been discarded. The obsession with with mass disposability must be broken, and an age in which product repair is a common and natural activity must return. There are signs that this is starting to happen with an increasing number of people are joining 'hackerspaces' or 'fab labs', and in the process becoming part of the growing Maker Movement that seeks to fabricate and repair its own stuff. Even some corporates are getting in on the act. In October 2011, Apple made a patent application that included a variety of new designs for portable devices that would be easier to repair.
Another positive and possible strategy is localisation. For decades most economists have preached the benefits of globalisation, while ignoring its horrific impact on the environment and future generations. I am not suggesting that all forms of global trade should cease but we cannot go on wasting one seventh of the planet's resources on transportation.
We could purchase as much but consume far fewer resources by sourcing many basic goods – including food and clothing – on a far more local basis. Most economists may tell you that this is a lie. But should we really continue to trust those who still preach the benefits of the consumer society and the need for constant economic growth?
We live on a small planet whose resource envelope we have already significantly exceeded. Any suggestion it is possible to sustainably continue to live as we do today has to be a dangerous proposition. Even if we could tap the resources of the stars we could never build a world that is sustainable. Labelling our endeavours as such, and poisoning our minds with the folly of the sustainability concept, is a pursuit that we ought to seriously question.
Christopher Barnatt is an associate professor in Nottingham University Business School, and the author of nine books, including Seven Ways to Fix the World. He runs the website ExplainingTheFuture.com
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