The Machine That Made Too Much
From about 2000 BC until the dawn of the 18th century the quality of life for most people remained pretty much the same. Discounting artistic and cultural endeavors, about four millennia passed during which time we did not learn to do anything that was really new. Before that we had already figured out fire, language, cattle, the wheel, the plough and the sail. We had banks and governments, and mathematics and religion.
And then, in 1712, something radically new eventually did happen. A British engineer by the name of Thomas Newcomen built the first functional steam engine. The die was cast. Over the ensuing centuries this machine delivered plenty, much of it probably pointless, and unfailingly targeted on those who already had too much, rather than those who could have benefitted from the plethora of goods flowing out of the factories. Meanwhile fossil fuels, mass manufacturing, and more recently the imprudent capitalist notion of planned obsolescence, helped create all that we consider normal and obvious about our modern profligate world - from electricity, steel and public transport to global brands, shopping mania, and instant information. Suddenly a quantum leap in the standard of living was attainable within decades rather than millennia.
But the dawn of the industrial age also coincided with the genesis of an idea from which we are now finding it increasingly difficult to detach. Unrelenting economic growth. The impulse for growth is possibly innately human - the urge to procreate and proliferate an effective way of protecting the community against various perils, such as an attack from neighbouring tribes. Historically, numbers mattered.
Co-opting the notion of infinite growth as key to the expansion of industrial production in a finite world was always going to be problematic - at least without any kind of monitoring. Warning signs that continuous growth might not be such a great idea, became evident in the early years of the 20th century. Smog-enveloped cities, soil erosion, vanishing species, and poisoned rivers exposed the sinister face of industrial expansionism. Most of us did not connect these dots. War was a distraction and increasing prosperity was all that really mattered.
Nor did we listen. In 1972 a group of research scientists at MIT released a paper entitled Limits to Growth. A series of computer forecasts clearly indicated that unbridled economic growth and development must ultimately exhaust the planet’s finite resource base.
Consequences gradually became evident that were certainly never intended. Nor were any attempts made to rectify them. On the contrary, while corporate media ignored the most dire scenarios and the general public remained mostly oblivious to such warnings, groups with vested interests and deep pockets hastily commissioned their own research to challenge the MIT findings.
The West found itself locked-in to a “growth is good” mindset. We keenly exported this dogma to the developing world. Affluence was spreading. Except that a profound change had occurred. Once again, in spite of ominous warning signs, nobody really noticed that we were not getting any happier, that widespread corruption and malpractice corroded our trust in politics and big business, and that stress-related illnesses were skyrocketing. Nor, paradoxically, were we getting any wealthier overall, apart from a decade of rapid growth towards the latter part of the 20th century when mercantilism gave way to free trade. Today, even though productivity is growing rapidly in many countries, incomes per capita are falling – even for those with university degrees. So just what is going on?
It is useful to remember what Thomas Newcomen was doing when he helped launch the industrial era. He was burning coal to pump water out of a coal mine. This revolution, you see, was dependent upon the mining and burning of fossil fuels. Before coal, economic production was constrained by the need to produce food (for humans and farm animals) and timber (for building, heating and fuelling some industrial processes). In other words, the energy available for use depended on how much you could grow.
But fossil energies depend upon how much had grown centuries before - all those billions of tons of ancient biomass squashed by the weight of time until they had turned into strata and pools and seams of hydrocarbons.
Valuable and irreplaceable. The major oil companies report that they cannot find enough new wells most years to offset depletion in the old ones. Rumours circulate that the giant Saudi fields are dwindling faster than expected and, of course, this is reflected in the cost of oil. Each new year brings us closer to the bottom of the barrel – yet the demand from "developing" countries like China continues to soar. And in spite of all the talk concerning peak oil it is likely we will decide to leave the era of oil long before it leaves us.
Oil, though, is not the complete story. Given current rates of economic development the average Chinese citizen will be about as wealthy as those in the West by 2025 - five years sooner than expected given recent problems in the US and European economies. If they then consume meat, milk, and eggs at the rate we do, they will consume 160 million tons of wheat each year - more than half of the world's entire 2020 wheat harvest. They will get through 99 million barrels of oil a day, around 2 million more barrels than the entire world consumes now. They will use more steel than all the West combined, double the world's production of paper, and drive 1.1 billion cars - just a few million cars less than the current world total.
That is just China. By 2030, India’s population will be larger. Its economy is growing almost as fast as China’s now and its boom is likely to last much longer given its more youthful population. Then there is the rest of the world…
Trying to meet that kind of demand will stress the earth past several planetary limits in an almost endless number of ways. Let us take just one. When Thomas Newcomen fired up his pump on that morning in 1712, the atmosphere contained 275 parts per million of carbon dioxide. We have now exceeded 410 parts per million, a level higher than the earth has seen for many millions of years. And global heating has barely begun.
Obviously the machine has produced too much. We are at breaking point. But what if we find it just too difficult to break the habits of generations and insist on continuing with the paradigm of uninhibited economic expansion? It seems unthinkable that the entire world should aim for an economy structured like Japan, Germany or the US. But there are no easy solutions to that dilemma.
Many argue that this predicament is not as critical as we might imagine. Any number of economists will argue that no particular commodity matters all that much because when we run short of something it pays for someone to develop a substitute. In general this has proven true in our industrial past. Of course it is far from certain that the same precept can be applied to coal, oil, and natural gas. This time, there might be no easy replacement.
But I think these arguments actually miss a more fundamental point. The core problem is not the physical nature of industrial production. New materials, automation, and additive manufacturing, will allow us to produce goods much more efficiently, with far less energy consumed, and almost no waste. Innovations of a similar kind are also seen in agriculture where vertical farms, using far less water and land, can produce much higher yields than conventional farming.
Rather, it is the emotional expectations we set regarding the quality of life we crave, to which we believe we are entitled, and to which we will go to such lengths to achieve, that conceals the actual problem. Our compulsion to buy more and more stuff, in order to impress those we do not know, and probably would not like even if we did, on the basis that being cool, or fashionable, or wealthy, is the only true measure of our worth as individuals, is the real issue.
We have fabricated a world of self-absorption and intensifying narcissism. This is a world in which being noticed and appreciated by our peers is more important than ever before. It is a world of distorting mirrors, puffery, and enhanced selfies, where the glossy veneer, however crudely photoshopped, shows others who we aspire to become.
This schizophrenic state of mind, expressing the tension between everyday reality and an alternate fiction, has been manipulated and nurtured within an immersive environment of unremitting messaging. Aimed at our psychological vulnerability, and the need to belong, we are gently smothered in messages consistently crafted to imply we will not be happy, or as well-off as other people, until our cravings have been satiated. In this way the herd performances of the whole society have been contrived to submit to the requirements of the machine in its quest for unrelenting economic growth.
It is as though we are all riding on a giant Ferris wheel, a cycle of desire and consumption, that is accelerating but with nobody left on the ground to apply the brakes. In that regard we are dealing with three interwoven elements:
- Corporate incitement of a culture of excess, driven by the need for profits, where the constant demand for more and more stuff means supply will always lag behind our needs.
- If there is any hesitation in demand, advisers are on hand to devise strategies, like planned obsolescence, that reinstate the demand side, often with increased momentum.
- An inability to escape the psychological pressure for novelty, access, and possession of the latest gadgets or fashions, is now presenting as a mental health issue equivalent to gambling - although in this instance it is the whole society that feels the pain.
The remedy seemingly best suited to this problem - I am uncertain whether this is the only solution - is the standardization of principles taken from industrial ecology - closed loop systems popularly known today as the "circular" or "shared" economy. Here the notion is to explicitly shape attitudes where we attract kudos, and a strong sense of satisfaction, for (i) resisting purchasing new stuff whenever possible; (ii) reducing the amount of harmful, wasteful, and non-recyclable manufactures; (iii) reusing whatever goods we can so as to minimize waste; (iv) finding ways to repurpose some items; and (v) recycling as much as we can.
Such a provocative interruption to current and accelerating levels of production would be bound to unsettle the world of business, and threaten long-held axioms. Exercised on the fringes of society, such behaviours are relatively unremarkable and tend to go unnoticed.
But at scale, retaliation will be invited. I imagine many economists protesting, fearing that any threat to their ideology of growth would lead to civilization toppling. Industrialists will panic, blaming us for sabotaging progress or taking us back to the dark ages. Campaigns aimed at shaming us, and showing us the error of our ways, will be devised by marketing companies and aired around the clock.
Or perhaps not. It is extraordinary how so many conversations I have with a broad variety of ordinary people from different walks of life, return to an expression of anguish over our current predicament. I have so many wonderful friends working in energy companies who are struggling with the complex problems inherent in the transition from oil to renewable energy. Like me they have children and grandchildren and fear for their future if we fail to find adequate solutions to energy storage and the many barriers preventing renewables achieving effectiveness parity with fossil fuels. I regularly talk to executives in construction who lament the damage cement and concrete do to human health, others in snacks and beverages who are genuinely concerned about the sugar and salt in their products. Pilots and airline executives I know are praying for a rapid take-up in hydrogen as an aviation fuel. Most bankers I know are eager to serve society better and do not knowingly set out to deceive us. None of these are evil people, although a good number of them might be asleep at the wheel.
Acceptance and appreciation are wonderful feelings. None of us like to feel ostracized or shunned for the work we do, the products we help make, or the corporation for whom we work. I truly believe that each one of us does the best we can with the hand we are dealt, sometimes against great odds. In the end we are all members of a single human family, doing our utmost to fathom out what is happening to us, and what we can do better.
Perhaps finding acceptable ways of escaping the cycle of desire and consumption that has trapped us in a machine whose primary flaw was to make too much is the most significant step we can take along the path towards a more sustainable future.
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