You see, the real problem with violins is one of scale. If there were only a few thousand violinists in the world, making and playing fiddles would have negligible environmental impact. But multiply these activities by tens of millions and the results are deforestation and species extinctions.

Yes, efforts are being made to make violin playing more sustainable. Brazil is protecting its remaining pernambuco forests, and many bow makers seek out “sustainably harvested” wood. Bow makers are also replacing elephant ivory with steer bone or synthetic materials, and the shafts of many bows are now made from carbon fiber. Tortoiseshell and whalebone are off limits for new bows, and synthetic replacements for these materials are available. One company offers to recycle the silver in old violin strings. All of this helps. But if the number of violinists continues to increase, these gains will sooner or later be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the demand for everything from glue to rosin.

Violin playing is a fairly specialized, unusual activity. But the basic problem I’ve outlined is endemic to just about every human pursuit, from eating breakfast in the morning to watching television before bedtime. In the quest to make human society sustainable, the problem of scale crops up absolutely everywhere. We can make a particular activity more energy-efficient and benign (for example, we can increase the fuel economy of our cars), but the improvement tends to be overwhelmed by changes in scale (economic expansion and population growth lead to an increase in the number of cars on the road, and to the size of the average vehicle, and hence to higher total fuel consumption).

Almost nobody likes to hear about the role of scale in our global environmental crisis. That’s because if growth is our problem, then the only real solution is to shrink the economy and reduce population. Back in the 1970s, many environmentalists recommended exactly that remedy, but then came the Reagan backlash—a political juggernaut promising endless economic expansion if only we allowed markets to work freely. Many environmentalists recalibrated their message, and the “bright green” movement was born, claiming that efficiency improvements would enable humans to eat their cake (grow the economy) and have it too (protect the planet for the sake of future generations).

Yet here we are, decades after the eclipse of old-style, conservation-centered environmentalism, and despite all sorts of recycling programs, environmental regulations, and energy efficiency improvements, the global ecosystem is approaching collapse at ever-greater speed.

Population has grown from 4.4 billion in 1980 to 7.1 billion in 2013. Per capita consumption of energy has grown from less than 70 gigajoules to nearly 80 GJ per year. Total energy use has expanded from 300 exajoules to 550 EJ annually. We’ve used all that energy to extract raw materials (timber, fish, minerals), to expand food production (converting forests to farmland or rangeland, using immense amounts of freshwater for irrigation, applying fertilizers and pesticides). And we see the results: the world’s oceans are dying; species are going extinct at a thousand times the natural rate; and the global climate is careening toward chaos as multiple self-reinforcing feedback processes (including polar melting and methane release) kick into gear.

The environmental movement has responded to that last development by adopting a laser-like focus on reducing carbon emissions. Which is certainly understandable, since global warming constitutes the most pervasive and potentially deadly ecological threat in all of human history. But the proponents of “green growth,” who tend to dominate environmental discussions (sometimes explicitly but more often implicitly), tell us the solution is simply to switch energy sources and trade carbon credits; if we do those simple and easy things, we can continue to expand population and per-capita consumption with no worries.

In reality, entirely switching our energy sources will not be easy, as I have explained in a lengthy recent essay. And while climate change is the mega-crisis of our time, carbon is not our only nemesis. If global warming threatens to undermine civilization, so do topsoil, freshwater, and mineral depletion. These may just take a little longer.

The math of compound growth leads to absurdities (one human for every square meter of land surface by the year 2750 at our current rate of population increase) and to tragedy. If confronted by this simple math, bright greens will say, “Well yes, ultimately there are limits to population and consumption growth. But we just have to grow some more now, in order to deal with the problem of economic inequality and to make sure we don’t trample on people’s reproductive rights; later, once everyone in the world has enough, we’ll talk about leveling off. For now, substitution and efficiency will take care of all our environmental problems.”

Maybe the bright greens (or should I say, pseudo-greens?) are right in saying that “less” is a message that just doesn’t sell. But offering comforting non-solutions to our collective predicament accomplishes nothing. Maybe the de-growth prescription is destined to fail at altering civilization’s overall trajectory and it is too late to avoid a serious collision with natural limits. Why, then, continue talking about those limits and advocating human self-restraint? I can think of two good reasons. The first is, limits are real. When we decline to talk about what is real simply because it’s uncomfortable to do so, we seal our own fate. I, for one, refuse to drink that particular batch of Kool-Aid. The second and more important reason: If we can’t entirely avoid the collision, let us at least learn from it—and let’s do so as quickly as possible.

All traditional indigenous human societies eventually learned self-restraint, if they stayed in one place long enough. They discovered through trial and error that exceeding their land’s carrying capacity resulted in dire consequences. That’s why traditional peoples appear to us moderns as intuitive ecologists: having been hammered repeatedly by resource depletion, habitat destruction, overpopulation, and resulting famines, they eventually realized that the only way to avoid getting hammered yet again was to respect nature’s limits by restraining reproduction and protecting other forms of life. We’ve forgotten that lesson, because our civilization was built by people who successfully conquered, colonized, then moved elsewhere to do the same thing yet again; and because we are enjoying a one-time gift of fossil fuels that empower us to do things no previous society ever dreamed of. We’ve come to believe in our own omnipotence, exceptionalism, and invincibility. But we’ve now run out of new places to conquer, and the best of the fossil fuels are used up.

As we collide with Earth’s limits, many people’s first reflex response will be to try to find someone to blame. The result could be wars and witch-hunts. But social and international conflict will only deepen our misery. One thing that could help would be the widely disseminated knowledge that our predicament is mostly the result of increasing human numbers and increasing appetites confronting disappearing resources, and that only cooperative self-limitation will avert a fight to the bitter end. We can learn; history shows that. But in this instance we need to learn fast.

So I keep plugging away with the same old message in as many different ways as I can, updating it as events unfold. And I play my violin—with a carbon fiber bow.

6 Comments on "Heinberg: Only Less Will Do"

Davy on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 6:50 am 



Heinber points to the trap we are in. Heinberg mentions scaling issues and he mentions less. We can’t scale anything up to solve our predicaments. No green, brown, nor rainbow plan. All mainstream plans are plan B’s for a BAU alternative. I say BAU alternative because no one wants to have lower complexity. It seems everyone rejects primitive with less. Do you want to live like a destitute Afghani? No. We all want BAU but a good comfortable BAU. OH, sure we can do away with the Florida vacation or the new car every other year but real sacrifice? No.

If we do less with less, which we will be forced into regardless of what we choose, BAU dies. The trap surrounds us anyway we look. Degrowth BAU dies, continue growth BAU dies, with no plans of any color scaling to a BAU alternative BAU dies. This is the paradigm shift of a new age in its simplest form. This is the inflection from growth to descent.

The population issue is something we don’t want to acknowledge nor can we effectively mitigate at any level. It is a foundational predicament. It is truly beyond the scope of anything but Nature hands. Population will prevent any alternative BAU plan from working. Population overshoot causes all the worst symptoms of BAU failures. Conflicts, failed states, pollution, food insecurity and resources scarcity as a shortish list of a longish one.

BAU refuses to debate less with less. BAU chooses to instead do more with less. This is a feel good deception of the mind. It is clear we will maximize pleasure elsewhere from sacrifice. Burn less fuel pay for that vacation type thing typical of modern life. In most cases anymore efficiency increases have hit diminishing returns. Do hybrid vehicles really reduce overall consumption? What about embedded resources and cost in construction? What about the waste stream? What about the alternative spending on other consumables? So many so called efficiency claims are not savings. So many today are sales gimmicks.

I say no rainbow plan for a BAU alternative but there are rainbow plans to adjust and mitigate a fall. We can reject denial and face a crisis now personally and in our locals. We can begin mitigation with a rainbow of actions based upon a global of locals. These locals will have to relocalize with a loss of vital support from the global that all locals have been conditioned to. Many will not make it and many will be reorganized into new locals. Many locals will be deserted and turn into ghost towns of the Wild West.

Heinberg points to our predicament of less as the only answer. This is not an answer for BAU it is an answer to reject denial. The fundamental denial we are in today is accepting less with less. Let me explain less with less this is having less and doing less. This is not more with less although within less with less we have that opportunity. This is less with less at our fundamental living arrangement. We will be poorer and have less to work with within that poor state. Reject denial and embrace less are the key to survival.

This is paradoxical in a sense because in most cases less means more danger of failure. Yet, it is the embracing of less that rejects denial there will be more. You can wait for BAU to have less with less and that gets transferred to your local or you can start now adjusting your lifestyles and attitudes to less with less. When less with less comes you will have some experience and training. You will have begun adjustment.

Continue in the exceptionalist BAUtopian mentality of more with less (efficiency) through technology and substitution and suffer the consequences. You will soon be cold and hungry. You may be anyway but you have a chance if you reject denial and prep for less. Or as I have said before you still have time to have one last road trip of a BAU fun run with a Thelma and Louise off the cliff in that glorious last thrill of BAU.

paulo1 on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 8:09 am 



Terrific article and comment.

This will be made clear with continuing drought and groundwater depeletion in the sw US.

Yesterday, my wife commented that she was worried that ‘they’ will come for our water….’they’ being sw Americans. I replied that until that happened California would actually instigate real rationing and conservation measures, (instead of the pleas for ‘voluntary’ reductions), and the mindset will be one that most Australians take for granted…..no car washing, grey water recycling, never let a tap run, hand-watering, etc.

I use California as an example as I believe Mr. Heinberg lives there.

People will not NOT wake up until major cities are evacuated or destroyed by climate events/change.

Meanwhile, on rural Vancouver Island, our snowpack is at 47% of normal, the ski hills did not open this year except for a week or two, and Western Forest Products is over harvesting for their ‘investors’, (all of us, my pension plan, included).

Plantagenet on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 4:11 pm 



Richard Heinberg has convinced himself that using a carbon fiber bow on his violin has a smaller carbon footprint then using a wood bow.

For heaven’s sakes—if Heinberg really wants to reduce his carbon footprint let him stop traveling everywhere by airplane and stop driving his car and stop buying food at the grocery and stop buying clothes with cotton grown in Egypt and India and stop buy computers made in China and stop drinking coffee with beans from Africa etc. etc. etc.

Go Speed Racer. on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 8:19 pm 



The answer is to use less toilet paper. Think of all the trees chopped down for rolls of toilet paper. From now on, only use corn cobs and pit toilets. If at night, only lit by candle.

Go Speed Racer. on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 8:20 pm 



How do I get rid of the stupid cartoon figure. Who hacked and broke this website?

Makati1 on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 9:10 pm 



Go Speed, yes, I got one also. Stupid looking trash I guess some call it ‘art’.

Again, Heinberg is spot on. But it is not the millions of violins being made but the billions of Iphones and other really high tech trash made to throw away in a year or two when the techies come out with a new case color or shape or unused ap, that is the real waste.

Violins do not need external energy, other than that of the player, and can be used after the collapse, for entertainment when nothing electronic works anymore. Think of all of the lost ‘selfies’ and cat antics videos gone in the blink of an eye … lol.

I keep telling my kids to print out anything they really want to save, as those electronic sparks encased in plastic will be gone someday. I have 100+ year old pictures in my albums of great grand parents, family, and places I have been, that are almost as good as when they were new. I have nothing of value in electronic ‘storage’. Nothing.