Motivation

By Abel Collins

Last week, I finished reading a book called Beyond the Limits written in 1990 by Meadows et al. For those unfamiliar with it, the book is a follow up to The Limits of Growth published in 1972. In both cases, the books detail exhaustive studies of the socio-economic and environmental states of the world to get an accurate picture of where humanity is headed. The scientists who conducted the studies and authored the books used systems analysis and a computer model named World3 to extrapolate potential futures for the human population and its quality of life.

The scary thing is that maintaining the status quo of the 1970s led inevitably to a population and standard of living collapse within this century, generally by about 2070. Even with the most optimistic assumptions, continuing the trends of exponential economic and population growth was certain to lead to a catastrophe due to a combination of overpopulation, resource depletion, and pollution.

The scarier thing is that it has now been forty years, and all we have done is accelerate. Economic growth and development has been the dominant force organizing the world for more than half a century. We even gave it a fancy name, globalization, though all it really amounts to is the increased utilization of our finite resources in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Likewise, the human population grows unabated.

According to the scientists’ models, the only way to avoid cataclysmic collapse is to embrace a sustainable model to replace the growth model. If we had embraced such a model in 1970, we could have achieved a stable population with a high standard of living by 2050. If we had made the change in 1995, we could have reached a slightly larger stable population with a lower standard of living. In the case of putting off the transition to a sustainable way of life until 2015, humanity faces a small population crash in the latter half of the twenty-first century followed by stable population with a significantly lower standard of living.

Here we are, five years from 2015. We are already seeing the telltale signs that we have overshot our limits and our destined for collapse. Peak oil is at hand, and other resources are being depleted just as quickly. Deserts are spreading. We are working harder and harder to feed the people of the world, and we are getting diminishing returns. Fisheries are being exhausted around the globe. Perhaps most importantly, clean water is becoming harder to come by. Add to these troubling symptoms the specter of climate change that already is happening faster than was foreseen and we face a terrible reality.

Here we are, five years from 2015, and from time to time I’m asked how or why I came to be an activist. I could speak to you of ideals that I have in plenty, but I don’t need to go that far. Rather, I reply snarkily, ‘wouldn’t you act if you saw that you were about to drive over a cliff?’ The truth is our culture is not sustainable. Exponential growth, economically or population wise, is not compatible with the finite nature of the world. Common sense, call it self-preservation, dictates that I act to change the course we are on. I am determined that it is possible, and I would encourage you to act with me. Let’s build a sustainable future.