What is the right way to save the world?

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.
      from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Many people recognise that we have an ecological problem. Unfortunately for all of us, a lot of those people don’t do much to try to reduce their personal impact, instead limiting their actions to mouthing platitudes.

I have written extensively about this on this blog, and I have commented on the limitations of using economic incentives to encourage people away from engaging in carbon-emitting activities (I see this as a problem, because the most wealthy people, who have already emitted the most carbon, are those least affected by such economic costs). In other words, we need to work hard to ensure that a carbon tax is not a regressive tax. (I think the Australian Labor Party achieved this under Gillard, and that it’s a damn shame their law was repealed).

What I want to focus on here then, is the group of people who know that something needs to be done, and are prepared to make personal changes to help make it happen. I have the most respect for this group of people, because I think taking collective ownership of the problem is the only way to tackle it.

And it is a big problem. Dennis Meadows (one of the original members of the Club of Rome), in a recent interview, said that climate change is not the problem, it is the symptom, and that the problem is over-consumption (too many people, consuming too much). He said that if we can somehow “fix” climate change, but keep everything else the same, and continue growing then we’ll just encounter another symptom (eg. soil loss, ecological collapse, etc). I think this is a compelling argument.

But, as concerned citizens who want to do something active to help reduce our contribution to this problem, what should we do? Clearly over the next century or so, human life will be massively reorganised and entirely new ways of living will need to be invented. But how do we get there?

Should we stay in the city, where we remain largely reliant on industrial food/resource provisioning, where our ability to tap into natural energy flows is limited, where our ability to dispose of wastes is limited by local regulations, where houses and land are more expensive — requiring greater participation in the money economy? The benefits of doing this are that resources and knowledge can be more easily shared, and transport can be more active (less car travel). These are real and large benefits.

Alternatively, should we move to self-sufficient properties and create an independent lifestyle? In doing that we have more space and potentially more money (because land is cheaper in remote locations) so using fuel such as firewood is more feasible, and food production can be much less intensive. There is also less regulation, so more freedom to establish unconventional systems (eg. composting toilets), and opportunities to reestablish native bush. These are clear benefits, but the cost is expensive transport, and provisioning of services, both of which have environmental consequences.

Here are two big choices, but there are successively finer-grained choices all the way down.

Should we pursue a low impact, but low money lifestyle (the frugality approach), value conservation, but not invest particularly in renewable technologies?
Alternatively, should we pursue a high tech approach, investing heavily in renewables and/or batteries?
Should we invest in electric vehicles or try to minimise car use? Should we use taxis? Bicycles? Public transport on diesel buses?
Should we eat meat? Processed food? What about dairy? What about bought alcohol?
Should we buy computers? Phones? Paint? What’s worse — using petrol in an old car or electricity in a new one? Is it better to drive further to buy organic food or to buy non-organic food from the little old lady on the side of the road?

Given the greater efficiencies of collective infrastructure, is it better to focus on improving policy than personal investment (eg. is the embodied energy in rainwater tanks, batteries, cars better put towards shared infrastructure such as dams, grid-batteries or public transport?)

Clearly, when asking these questions, we need to look not only at the now, but how things might evolve as time passes. What effects will technology have? How will politics change? What about economic or demographic factors?

None of these questions have simple answers, and I believe that there is that there is no correct approach. There is no unified “green movement”, but I’m concerned that greenies are becoming divided into subgroups, each of which is firming its orthodoxy into, in some cases, dogma. This makes it harder for separate groups to work together, but it also makes it harder for individuals to explore new ideas and approaches to doing things.

We are likely to have more success, as a disparate group of people whose goal is to achieve something about ecological overshoot, if we are tolerant of different approaches and philosophies. We will work more cohesively as a group, but we will also be able to explore more ideas.

Western countries in 2117 will look very different to today. Many aspects of society will need to be reinvented to cope with ecological overshoot and resource scarcity (not to mention technological, geopolitical, economic and demographic change). We will need all the ideas we can get if we are to achieve this, and we can’t afford to dismiss any without consideration.