The Future Is Not What It Used to Be: Climate Change and Energy Scarcity

Preface

Preface Our outlook on the future changes as time goes by, just as the horizon changes when we walk. Fifty years ago, people all over the world saw themselves moving toward different but equally prosperous visions of the future: capitalist progress and growth in the West, socialist progress and welfare in the East, and emancipatory progress and development in what we now term the Global South. In all of these twentieth-century visions, progress implied technological breakthroughs and cultural modernization , albeit partly overshadowed by the fear of overpopulation and the nightmare of a nuclear holocaust. Since then, the panorama has changed. Not only progress but also growth, welfare, and development have been part success and part failure, delivering some of the goods but not others, and creating their own problems on the way. But none of them has come to be replaced by an alternative beacon of hope, and so despite their failings they remain indispensable props in any positive vision of the future. The nuclear holocaust has fortunately not come to pass, and overpopulation has turned out somewhat less dramatic than anticipated. But there is a growing list of other concerns, ranging from biodiversity loss and water scarcity to global pandemics and financial meltdown. The future is not what it used to be. Today, humanity faces existential challenges that do not allow us to project past economic growth and technological progress into the future. This has implications for every single one of us. It also has serious implications for the entire fabric of industrial society, understood as the high-energy metabolic system that enabled the levels of progress, growth, welfare, and development achieved during the last couple of centuries or so. viii Preface Like the human organism, industrial society can be understood as a metabolic system because it converts inputs, such as energy and material resources, into outputs, such as goods and services, while also generating unintended side effects, such as waste heat and emissions. As a metabolic system, industrial society requires a variety of sources from which to obtain its inputs, and sinks for its unwanted side effects. Climate change and energy scarcity are widely recognized as the most immediate choke points, with fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions at the heart of the matter. Climate change constrains the ability of the atmosphere and oceans to absorb our emissions “at sink” without major damage to ecosystem stability and human welfare. We therefore face a tragic choice “at source.” Unless we manage to reduce the carbon intensity of the global economy, we will be forced to reduce our fossil fuel consumption, and thus stall industrial civilization, or to fry the planet, with equally dire consequences for our way of life. In the meantime, energy scarcity is also likely to result from another constraint at source: oil as the lifeblood of contemporary industrial society is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, with serious implications for the future affordability and availability of liquid fuels. This book takes a hard look at the prospect of our civilization coming to terms with these challenges. It precisely maps the contours of the current impasse as well as the social and political implications, and explains our manifest inability to adequately grasp and confront our predicament. Despite a healthy dose of realism, it also spells out what it would take to effectively tackle climate change and energy scarcity and thus confront the current sustainability crisis. As a starting point, we must acknowledge that nothing in history can last forever. This applies to industrial civilization even more than to any previous scheme of social order because industrial “business as usual” is notoriously premised on growing levels of material consumption. Industrial society is transitory for the simple reason that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. Climate change and energy scarcity are the most obvious cases in point. Not only is there an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, but there is also evidence to suggest that a steady decline of liquid fuel supply after a global peak in oil production (commonly referred to as peak oil) may result in serious shortages. To make a bad situation Preface ix worse, climate change and energy scarcity are profoundly intertwined. As already indicated, energy scarcity may result not only from peak oil but also from a desperate need to mitigate climate change. At some point it may become necessary to restrict the consumption of abundant highcarbon fuels such...