The Gold It's In The...

This week I seek to highlight a few interesting points I have found in the literature I have come across recently. A favourite fact used in the scientific community to raise awareness of our overconsumption is the comparison of the US’ consumption; if today’s population of 7 billion (maintaining the status quo) lived an equivalent style to the average US citizen, we would need almost 5 Earths to live the “American Dream” (Ehrlich and Ehrlich). This slightly over-generalises what the average American’s lifestyle is like, as there is enormous disparity and inequality, which Marxist critique would suggest that the capitalist (overconsumption by the rich – Ehrlich and Ehrlich) class accounts for the vast majority of this consumption. 
             

An additional 2.5bn would require at least 6. The claim is often made we will expand our carrying capacity with technology, but even the plough, historically a great innovation, even appears to be reducing our carrying capacity – corporate monoculture industry(Ehrlich and Ehrlich). In my next post I will discuss this market-fundamentlist techno-optimism in the works of Huesemann & Huesemann’s “Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment”, and “Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis” by Angus & Butler.

Where Zubrin was correct was in that the past 200 years of growth quality of life has improved, but is this due to population growth itself? Would we not have had innovation without more people? Technological innovation can also reduce, not just add, to carrying capacity (nuclear weapons, biological warfare, plastics being linked to cancer etc).

This is not to refute the enormous benefits of what our technological advances have given to us. Technology has brought us healthier and longer life expectancy, reduced infant mortality rates (all contributing factors to our growing population). Accelerated modes of transport and improved communication systems, allowing for an increasingly interconnected and accessible planet. We have delved into the oceans depths, peered into the distant void of space, and landed a probe on a comet requiring 12 years of careful, concise work. The internet has spread information globally, accessible to many (sadly not all), and helped groups transcend borders (activists, movements, campaigns etc). For those of us embedded in a technological world, the marvels and advances are a blessing that has made our lives very much safer and securer on the whole.

We must therefore carefully look at the marriage of neoliberalist-agenda and technological optimism, its contribution to the environmental crisis, and how we can look to alternatives to change this economics-fundamentalist paradigm - next time. 

                     

“Regardless of one's estimate of civilization's potential longevity, the time to start restructuring the international system is right now. If people do not do that, nature will restructure civilization for us” ~ Ehrlich and Ehrlich

https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/tag/techno-fix-why-technology-wont-save-us-or-the-environment/ ~ An interesting article