As a practicing permaculturalist it's important to share with you all, fulfilling one of the three principals of permaculture, care of people. So, enjoy the first post in the series, Limits to Growth.
In 1972, coincidentally the year of my
birth, a report was published by the Club of Rome titled “The Limits to Growth”
(Meadows et al, 1972). This report
presented some challenging scenarios regarding global sustainability, by using
computer modelling of five global economic subsystems, namely population, food
production, industrial production, pollution and consumption of non-renewable
natural resources.
The group modelled 12 scenarios of possible
futures from 1972-2100 and the main scientific conclusion from these scenarios
was that delays in global decision making would cause the human economy to
overshoot planetary limits before the growth in human ecological footprint
slowed. Human society would subsequently
be forced to reduce its rate of resource use and its rate of emissions, either
through managed decline or through collapse!
The only thing that couldn’t continue was human society remaining in unsustainable
territory, year-on-year, using more natural resources each year then nature can
replenish.
More specifically, the authors identified 6
Limits to Growth.
1.
The human ecological footprint grew rapidly from
1900 to 1972 because of population growth and environmental impact per
person. Growth in the amount of
resources consumed increased and the amount of pollution per person per year
followed and since the report this has not slowed down.
2.
The human ecological footprint cannot continue
to grow at the rate seen from 1900-1972, for more than a hundred years... why?
Well simply put, Earth is physically limited and humans cannot use more
physical resources and generate more emissions, than nature is capable of
supplying in a sustainable manner.
3.
It is possible (and I believe currently
happening) that human ecological footprint will (has) overshoot the sustainable
limits of Planet Earth. But debate and
disagreement will delay any meaningful action, all the time the overshoot
continues worsening the situation.
4.
Once sustainable limits have overshot,
contraction becomes unavoidable. We can
choose to manage this contraction with something like the Montreal Protocol of
1987 which eliminated ozone-destroying chemicals, but we’ve all witnessed the
ineffectiveness of our “leaders” to do anything about reducing CO2 emissions or
limiting the removal of ANY resource from the earth in anything like a
sustainable manner, so collapse is pretty much now guaranteed.
5.
Overshoot can be (could’ve been) avoided if
human society is forward looking and simply decides to act. We have NOT acted.
6.
It’s important to act as soon as possible – See
points 1 through 5!
Since 1972, the real world has followed the Business as Usual scenario of the 12 modelled, and the original authors warned that we would come screeching up against resource limits and start a major contraction, probably via collapse between 2010 and 2030.
I am as much to blame for the crappy world as anyone. We are akin to a Parasitoid in as much as we live on Planet Earth our host; we consume all her resources and ultimately leave her at the very least sterile, at the very worst dead.
It’s 2014 and for the past 10 years I have been, along with my family, trying to work out how we can tread lightly. How can we de-couple from the industrial world and act as ethical stewards using only what can be sustained of Planet Earth. It certainly isn’t easy and our actions are miniscule on a global scale, but a good example is all I can teach my girls.
La Fieffe is our attempt at remediation. It is our ‘triage tent’ where we can attempt to be the stewards that we ALL should be. We are doing all that we can with the resources that we can muster. Learning new skills, living in a sustainable and resilient fashion, and hopefully setting a good example to our friends, community and strangers who happen by! Come and see.
No comments:
Post a Comment