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Can a dose of recession solve climate change?
Larry Elliott, The Guardian
Subverting the growth-at-all-costs model is appealing but not politically feasible
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… Is it, in fact, bad news that the world economy will no longer grow at its recent rate of 5% a year? And if the answer to that question is “no”, wouldn’t it be good news if this modest retrenchment was turned into a full-blown slump? Indeed, why stop there? Shouldn’t those who fear for the future of the planet pursue something akin to the Great Depression of the 1930s?
It’s an interesting thought. Logically, if the obsession with growth at all costs has increased emissions to the point where rising temperatures pose a threat to mankind’s existence (as many experts believe) then a prolonged period of slow or negative growth will limit the damage to the environment. At the very least, it would provide a breathing space to come up with an international agreement on how to tackle the problem.
There are many reasons why it is not quite as simple as that.
… Politically, recessions are not helpful to the cause of environmentalism. Climate change is replaced by concerns about unemployment and stimulating growth. To be fair, politicians respond to what they hear from voters: Gordon Brown’s survival as prime minister depends on how well his package of economic measures is received, not on what he does or doesn’t do to limit greenhouse gases.
Looking back, it is clear that every advance in the green movement has coincided with period of strong growth – the early 1970s, the late 1980s and the first half of the current decade. It was tough enough to get world leaders to make tackling climate change a priority when the world economy was experiencing its longest period of sustained growth: it will be mightily difficult to persuade them to take measures that might have a dampen growth while the dole queues are lengthening.
Those most likely to suffer are workers in the most marginal jobs and pensioners who will have to pay perhaps 20% of their income on energy bills.
Hence, recession does not offer even a temporary solution to the problem of climate change and it is a fantasy to imagine that it does.
(25 August 2008)
David Holmgren interview – transcripts now online
Jason Bradford, Reality Report via Global Public Media
The Reality Report interviews David Holmgren. David co-invented permaculture over 30 years ago and has been a practitioner and teacher ever since, both at his home in Australia and as a consultant around world. In 2002 he published the book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability that reviewed permaculture in the context of peak energy. More recently, David created a web site called Future Scenarios, see www.futurescenarios.org. This interview is based on that web site and was recorded on July 14, 2008.
The complete interview is nearly two hours long and is therefore broken into two segments. In this first installment, we discuss a broad view of history as related to ecology, energy and societal complexity. The development of permaculture in the context of 1970s economic woes is reviewed. ….
… [The] second installment covers four “energy descent” scenario groups that correspond to potential variation in the severity of both peak oil and climate change. Scenarios are also viewed as choices, with certain factors, such as social scale and resource availability, influencing the descent path.
Transcription have just been posted
Part 1
Part 2
Audio is also available:
Part 1
Part 2
(August 2008)
Kudos to transcriber Brian Magee.
Interview with William R. Catton, Jr. (author of “Overshoot”) (video)
Frank Rotering, Google Video
“This is an interview with William R. Catton, Jr., conducted on August 9, 2008 at his home near Tacoma, Washington, USA. Catton is the author of the seminal book, “Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change,” published in 1980. In the interview he outlines the major themes of his book: stealing from the future, exuberant growth, takeover and drawdown, industrialization, carrying capacity deficit, the absence of real villains, the bane of advertising, humankind’s true nature, ecological modesty, and the need for us to expect the worst. He also addresses the push to re-localize our economies, and outlines his current book project: “Humanity’s Impending Impasse.” He ends on a note of optimism, encouraging us to enjoy life despite the catastrophe he fears is coming.”
I am an independent economic thinker and the self-published author of “Needs and Limits: A New Economics for Sustainable Well-being”. Details are on my website – http://needsandlimits.org.
49-minutes
(24 August 2008)
UPDATE (Aug 27) Added text supplied by author.
President of National Academy of the Sciences: Energy Challenges (PDF)
Ralph J. Cicerone, National Academy of the Sciences
… Today I want to use the opportunity to draw your attention to a major issue of today, human demand for and usage of energy, a topic that has become progressively more serious, one that will take years to address and which requires scientifi c efforts of
many kinds.
… Now in 2008, we see that human demand and usage of energy is a pervasive issue. The issue has multiple dimensions and constraints. It is both national and worldwide. Enormous in scale, it will remain serious for the foreseeable future, and science and
engineering are essential for progress.
… My main points today are:
Our energy-intensive way of life, population growth and worldwide economic progress combine to create large and growing demand for energy.
Our options to meet this large demand with types of energy now available to us are seriously constrained.
We must assure access to energy and geopolitical security, overcome the fi nancial impact of high costs, deal with climate change, other environmental impacts, nuclear safety and wastes. There is no simple single solution and some attractive options are mutually incompatible.
The scale of human energy usage today is large and projections of future demands are even larger. Let me begin by outlining current energy usage in the United States…
(28 April 2008)
The 8-page PDF includes a good summary of the US energy crisis. However, the focus is entirely on energy sources – the words “conservation” and “efficiency” do not occur once in the text. Thus the most important strategies for dealing with energy are not even considered. Sadly, it reminds me of Jared Diamond’s point about societies with tunnel vision (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed ).
Recommended by master Master Gardener MB. -BA
