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Page added on January 30, 2013
Energy literacy: visualizing the impacts of unlimited growth
Humans have already amply demonstrated the resource limitations of unbridled economic growth by not anticipating and then not addressing the myriad critical environmental and resource problems we face today, Cobb writes.
It is hard to imagine a more unlikely vehicle for advancing energy literacy than a finely crafted large format picture book. Energy, after all, is invisible. We see its effects, but never the thing itself. And yet, Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth succeeds and succeeds profoundly for it puts on display those effects so compellingly that the reader cannot help but turn the pages to see more.
Taken with the eye of the fine art photographer, the book’s images project a disturbing beauty. They seduce the viewer with their attention to composition, color, light, and perspective. This impels us to enter into these images and contemplate rather than merely visually consume an exploding offshore oil platform; a desolated landscape strewn with derelict drilling rigs; a decapitated mountain; a pelican coated with oil; a coal strip mine seen from its bottom; and a tar sands mine seen from the sky. Once drawn in, the viewer cannot help but feel the immensity and drama of the energy issues we now face. And, once drawn in, the viewer wants more images that will somehow explain this immense drama and its significance for each of us.
Leafing through the pages, you will be astonished at each successive image. Eventually, you will reach a substantial block of text. By then you will be more than ready for some explanation to put into words what all these images taken together might mean.
The essays that follow are penned by noted writers such as poet, novelist and farmer Wendell Berry, climate change activist Bill McKibben, and peak oil author Richard Heinberg; by scientists such as climate scientistJames Hansen and sustainable agriculture researcher Wes Jackson; and by big-picture pragmatists such asPlan B author Lester Brown and energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins.
These and others take readers through the entire controversy surrounding energy starting with key energy concepts and then moving onto the waning of the fossil fuel age, alternative energy, climate change, energy conservation, and energy efficiency. Opposite these essays, many full-page images continually remind us of the colossal nature of the subject.
I feel comfortable revealing the overall conclusion of the book without issuing a spoiler alert for in order to understand this conclusion, you must understand everything that precedes it. Here it is: We must drastically reduce our use of energy over the coming decades if we expect human civilization and perhaps even humans to survive.
This conclusion runs so contrary to the conventional wisdom that those new to energy issues may conclude that it cannot be so. But I urge you to keep reading and contemplating the images. The book’s second section correctly characterizes our energy situation as a predicament. The dictionary defines predicament as a “a difficult, perplexing, or trying situation.” Frequently, it means a situation for which there is no response that restores the status quo ante. Problems have solutions; predicaments require coping mechanisms.
To disabuse readers of the solutions currently on offer—such as new unconventional sources of oil and natural gas, “clean” coal, nuclear power, massive hydropower dams, biofuels, and geoengineering of the climate—an entire section of essays explains why these are false solutions if by solutions people mean that we can go on with business-as-usual after implementing them.
As image upon image builds in your mind, you will begin to see that there are deeper concerns at stake, and the essayists help elucidate these: the rights and survival of other species; the voracious human appetite unleashed by modern global capitalism and its creed of perpetual growth; the nature of human happiness; and the importance of beauty. (The book, in fact, treats us to some images of unspoiled landscapes to remind us of the beauty we are losing.)
Economic growth has limits on a spherical planet. Those limits are already in evidence. What Energy does in a profound way is demonstrate that human beings are limited creatures, both in their understanding and their powers. We humans have already amply demonstrated that by not anticipating and then not addressing the myriad critical environmental and resource problems we face today.
What this book seems to ask then is whether accepting limits, ours and the Earth’s, can make us and our posterity better humans—or whether it is simply inevitable that our hubris borne of nothing other than a brief period of cheap, plentiful but finite energy will lead us to ruin.
History and science tells us that this era must end. How it will end is partly in our hands. Energy does make a few suggestions: conservation, distributed renewable energy, reinvigorated local economies, family planning, and a renewed emphasis on the intangible rewards of being human including the fellowship of others and our encounters with beauty.
Will we continue to accept the religion of unlimited economic growth—which must also be accompanied by unlimited growth in the production of energy and other resources—until a remorseless nature enforces its limits upon us?
Or will we accept those limits—now so painstakingly outlined to us by our own science—and seek out the happiness and beauty that comes from working in concert with others to transform our society into one that can sustain us—and sustain all the living things which make our lives possible and which have a claim on the biosphere that we can no longer afford to ignore?
9 Comments on "Energy literacy: visualizing the impacts of unlimited growth"
GregT on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 11:09 pm
We have already gone too far, the earth is diseased and will continue to be for centuries. Even then, it will never return back to the way that it was.
In order for change to take place, there needs to be a “critical mass” in human understanding. So far, any attempts at enlightenment have been crushed by corporate controlled media and greed. Economic growth is the mantra, and we are bombarded with it in every direction that we turn.
Our leaders and policy makers need to step up to the plate and tell us all the truth. That will not happen though, without mass denial, civil disobedience, and unrest.
Those of us that can see the big picture, should hope for economic collapse sooner than later. No, it will not be pretty, but it will be much better than than the alternative.
Plantagenet on Thu, 31st Jan 2013 12:05 am
If GregT wants an economic collapse, then he can go ahead and do it by himself. Go bankrupt yourself dude—knock yourself out.
For the rest of us, its time to take a deep breath and realize that our economy has got to change. The days of business as usual are over. The sooner we get rid of the incompetents in the Obama administration and their nutty bailouts of big banks and car companies and move on to fixing our economy and developing a new post-oil infrastructure that serves the rest of us the better.
BillT on Thu, 31st Jan 2013 12:43 am
Planet, he is correct. The sooner it happens, the better it will be for all of us in the future. And it IS going to happen. We are Wiley Coyote standing in mid air waiting to realize we have gone off the cliff and are about to fall and crash at the bottom.
The powers-that-be are going to keep it BAU as long as they can because they DO realize where we are and that there is little time left. The government is NOT going to change because the ones running it are NOT the people you elect and haven’t been for decades. It is the few hundred multi-billionaires that own anything of real value in the world.
If you don’t see that, try reading:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/who-runs-the-world-solid-proof-that-a-core-group-of-wealthy-elitists-is-pulling-the-strings
GregT on Thu, 31st Jan 2013 5:12 am
Plantagenet,
Economic growth in of itself, is a huge part of our problem. The system as it is cannot be fixed, and it is going to change, whether anyone wants it to, or not. When the economy goes into negative growth, and the financial system implodes, bankruptcy will be the very least of people’s concerns.
If you think that a post oil economy will even remotely resemble anything like what we have been accustomed to, you really need to take a closer look. After a massive population adjustment, food, shelter, and security, will be the new economy, just as it was for thousands of years.
Arthur on Thu, 31st Jan 2013 1:53 pm
Plant, it has nothing to do with Obama or whatever sock puppet is called to do the bidding of the real (zionist dominated) powers behind the scenes: media, Wallstreet, FED, CFR, thinktanks, etc. I hope that I am wrong, but my fear is that the empire will not die peacefully, like the Soviet empire, but will attempt the flight forward. The US rulers do not care anout the US, they want the world and are prepared to engage in ‘creative destruction’, as they call it. The difference between the USSR and the US is, that by 1981 most jews, the carriers of the real revolutionary zeal, had left the country for Israel or the US, because the Russians had become ‘antisemitic’, or in simple language, had enough of the atrocities under the early decades of bolshevism. But in 2013 the jews are still on top in the US and they will not let go that easy, these most tenacious people in world history. They will use the US population as canon fodder, as long as the population does not resist (hence the gun control battle, if you give in, you will be reduced to neo-Soviets). You should think about that if you find yourself deployed in Iran, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Taiwan, Philipines, Poland, or some Stan.
GregT on Thu, 31st Jan 2013 9:30 pm
Arthur,
I enjoy your political viewpoints, and I might add, I mostly agree with everything that you have said in this regard. You have obviously done your homework. In Canada, it is not acceptable to be antisemitic, so those of us that have an understanding, do not often have an opportunity to voice our thoughts.
“Sock puppet” LOL 🙂
Arthur on Thu, 31st Jan 2013 10:11 pm
I am not antisemitic (I like Kunstler.lol), but I do have problems with war mongers and tyrants. I am not advocating violence, but instead I do like the way Putin handled his ‘Final Solution Ultralight’ in that he put a few of the most dangerous olicharchs, like Khodorkovsky, in jail, slashed his corporate empire and made sure that a few others fled the country and had an intense discussion with yet a few others, until they got the message. I hope that happens in the US as well and avoid overzealous German solutions like in the thirties. If I were an American Putin (Jesse Ventura!) I would go after the perps of 9/11 (Olmert/Netanyahu, Silverstein, Zakheim, Zelikow, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kroll, Hauer and a few smaller types) and I would go after these neocons that were responsible for the Iraq war: Frum, Kristol, Kagan, Wolfowitz, Perle, Ledeen, Krauthammer and a few more. Next I would nationalise the media and, after an audit, the FED (the latter is the most important), abolish the CFR, AIPAC, JINSA, JWC, etc. Shake up Wallstreet: greatly simplify banking, forbid all these exotic ‘financial products’ that nobody understands, break up large banks like Goldman-Sachs. Not yet sure what to do with Holywood, maybe a quota system. In summary: break the back of institutional J-power, without a messy pogrom. That way you can leave the normal people alone.
Next address Israel: two state solution, borders imposed, no questions asked and garanteed by Russia, EU and US. Associate member of the EU (priviliged partnership) and in return hand over nukes to Brussels.
Last step: rewrite entire history of the 20th century.
GregT on Thu, 31st Jan 2013 10:53 pm
Sorry Arthur,
I did not mean to suggest that you were antisemitic, what I should have said, is that it is unacceptable in Canada to say anything at all negative about Jews. People here consider that to be antisemitic. Come to think about it, even saying the word “Jew” is considered by many to be antisemitic.
Cheers
Kenz300 on Fri, 1st Feb 2013 4:18 pm
The world adds 80 million more people to feed, clothe, house and provide energy for every year.
This population growth is not sustainable and is stressing the very systems we need to survive.