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Immediate action is needed to save the long-term future

By John Avery - posted Monday, 18 February 2019


She concluded by saying that "since our leaders are behaving like children,we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago."

Institutional inertia

Our collective failure to respond adequately to the current crisis is very largely due to institutional inertia. Our financial system is deeply embedded and resistant to change. Our entire industrial infrastructure is based on fossil fuels; but if the future is to be saved, the use of fossil fuels must stop. International relations are still based based on the concept of absolutely sovereign nation states, even though this concept has become a dangerous anachronism in an era of instantaneous global communication and economic interdependence. Within nations, systems of law and education change very slowly,although present dangers demand rapid revolutions in outlook and lifestyle.

The failure of the recent climate conferences to produce strong final documents can be attributed to the fact that the nations attending the conferences felt themselves to be in competition with each other, when in fact they ought to have cooperated in response to a common danger. The heavy hand of the fossil fuel industry also made itself felt at the conferences.

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Until the development of coal-driven steam engines in the 19th century humans lived more or less in harmony with their environment. Then, fossil fuels, representing many millions of years of stored sunlight, were extracted and burned in two centuries, driving a frenzy of growth of population and industry that has lasted until the present. But today, the party is over. Coal, oil and gas are nearly exhausted, and what remains of them must be left in the ground to avoid existential threats to humans and the biosphere. Huge coal and oil corporations base the value of their stocks on ownership of the remaining resources that are still buried, and they can be counted on to use every trick, fair or unfair, to turn those resources into money.

In general corporations represent a strong force resisting change. By law,the directors of corporations are obliged to put the profits of stockholders above every other consideration. No room whatever is left for an ecological or social conscience. Increasingly, corporations have taken control of our mass media and our political system. They intervene in such a way as to make themselves richer, and thus to increase their control of the system.

Polite conversation and cultural inertia

Each day, the conventions of polite conversation contribute to our sense that everything is as it always was. Politeness requires that we do not talk about issues that might be contrary to another person's beliefs. Thus polite conversation is dominated by trivia, entertainment, sports, the weather, gossip, food, and so on, Worries about the the distant future, the danger of nuclear war, the danger of uncontrollable climate change, or the danger of widespread famine seldom appear in conversations at the dinner table, over coffee or at the pub. In conversations between polite people, we obtain the false impression that all is well with the world. But in fact, all is not well. We have to act promptly and adequately to save the future.

The situation is exactly the same in the mass media. The programs and articles are dominated by trivia and entertainment. Serious discussions of the sudden crisis which civilization now faces are almost entirely absent, because the focus is on popularity, ratings and the sale of advertising. As Niel Postman remarked, we are entertaining ourselves to death.

Further growth implies future collapse

We have to face the fact that endless economic growth on a finite planet is a logical impossibility, and that we have reached or passed the the sustainable limits to growth.

In today's world, we are pressing against the absolute limits of the earth's carrying capacity, and further growth carries with it the danger of future collapse. In the long run, neither the growth of industry nor that of population is sustainable; and we have now reached or exceeded the sustainable limits.

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The size of the human economy is, of course, the product of two factors:the total number of humans, and the consumption per capita. Let us first consider the problem of reducing the per-capita consumption in the industrialized countries. The whole structure of western society seems designed to push its citizens in the opposite direction, towards ever-increasing levels of consumption. The mass media hold before us continually the ideal of a personal utopia, filled with material goods.

Every young man in a modern industrial society feels that he is a failure unless he fights his way to the "top"; and in recent years, women too have been drawn into the competition. Of course, not everyone can reach the top;there would not be room for everyone; but society urges us all to try, and we feel a sense of failure if we do not reach the goal. Thus, modern life has become a competition of all against all for power and possessions.

When possessions are used for the purpose of social competition, demand has no natural upper limit; it is then limited only by the size of the human ego, which, as we know, is boundless. This would be all to the good if unlimited industrial growth were desirable; but today, when further industrial growth implies future collapse, western society urgently needs to find new values to replace our worship of power, our restless chase after excitement, and our admiration of excessive consumption.

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John Avery has written a new book about the steps needed to save the future for our children and grandchildren which can be downloaded from http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/future.pdf.



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About the Author

John Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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