Deep economy: Localism, innovation and knowing what’s what

…I have no faith that people in the United States or elsewhere will voluntarily reduce their standards of living: indeed, outside of a few statistical outliers, like the Amish, I know of no evidence that anyone ever has, at least for very long. The way forward is not by going back to some earlier model of living which we believe to have less impact on the Earth, because people won’t accept it, and we need mass popular support for dramatic change if we are to avert catastrophe.

So, we must ask ourselves, How can we deliver the prosperity billions of people expect, while reducing the ecological footprint it exacts?


If increases in prosperity were tied purely and simply to growth in use of material resources and energy, we couldn’t. We couldn’t even keep up the lifestyle we’ve got. But they’re not. We know that, in fact, our existing systems for delivering material prosperity are abysmally inefficient, rotten with corruption and historical accidents and irrationality and bad design. As Bill McDonough says, the major product of our systems is waste.

We also know that it is within our capabilities to reduce that wastage, not only through more efficient products (the Japanese live almost as prosperously as North Americans, but they use a fraction of the resources to do it), but through redesigning the systems themselves.

Energy Bulletin