We’re taking the kids to see their favourite band: Muse are playing in Toronto tonight. I’m hoping they play my favourite track:

I find this song fascinating, partly because of the weird mix of progressive rock and dubstep. But more for the lyrics:

All natural and technological processes proceed in such a way that the availability of the remaining energy decreases. In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves an isolated system, the entropy of that system increases. Energy continuously flows from being concentrated to becoming dispersed, spread out, wasted and useless. New energy cannot be created and high grade energy is destroyed. An economy based on endless growth is unsustainable. The fundamental laws of thermodynamics will place fixed limits on technological innovation and human advancement. In an isolated system, the entropy can only increase. A species set on endless growth is unsustainable.

This summarizes, perhaps a little too succinctly, the core of the critique of our current economy, first articulated clearly in 1972 by the Club of Rome in the Limits to Growth Study. Unfortunately, that study was widely dismissed by economists and policymakers. As Jorgen Randers points out in a 2012 paper, the criticism of the Limits to Growth study was largely based on misunderstandings, and the key lessons are absolutely crucial to understanding the state of the global economy today, and the trends that are likely over the next few decades. In a nutshell, humans exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet sometime in the latter part of the 20th century. We’re now in the overshoot portion, where it’s only possible to feed the world and provide energy for economic growth by consuming irreplaceable resources and using up environmental capital. This cannot be sustained.

In general systems terms, there are three conditions for sustainability (I believe it was Herman Daly who first set them out in this way):

  1. We cannot use renewable resources faster than they can be replenished.
  2. We cannot generate wastes faster than they can be absorbed by the environment.
  3. We cannot use up any non-renewable resource.

We can and do violate all of these conditions all the time. Indeed, modern economic growth is based on systematically violating all three of them, but especially #3, as we rely on cheap fossil fuel energy. But any system that violates these rules cannot be sustained indefinitely, unless it is also able to import resources and export wastes to other (external) systems. The key problem for the 21st century is that we’re now violating all three conditions on a global scale, and there are no longer other systems that we can rely on to provide a cushion – the planet as a whole is an isolated system. There are really only two paths forward: either we figure out how to re-structure the global economy to meet Daly’s three conditions, or we face a global collapse (for an understanding of the latter, see GrahamTurner’s 2012 paper).

A species set on endless growth is unsustainable.

3 Comments

  1. This post, your words, and your selection of music make a compelling presentation. (I don’t call it an argument, because there is none that can face this )

    Thank you.

  2. Thanks for that! A new take on unsustainability – the musical presentation if not the words. Hearts and minds. Hearts and minds.

  3. Pingback: Climate Rocks | Serendipity

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