Our Place In Changing Times
Chapter One: The Mythos of Growth
I
Galileo Galilee stood before the Roman inquisitors and repeated his heretical pronouncement. Just as Copernicus had postulated, the Earth stood not at the center of the universe, but rather — along with the other planets of the Solar System — orbited the Sun. The unshakable divine wobbled, and one of the central tenets of the Scientific Revolution was born. Nothing was beyond question. Nothing too dear to lie beyond scrutiny.
But this new world did not spring forth fully formed as Athena from Zeus, and it did not happen overnight. Though Galileo’s beliefs would have a profound effect — even at the time — they would also face skepticism and resistance. And the following Scientific and Industrial Revolutions would occur alongside real revolutions: the tumultuous battle of ideas mirrored in the very fabric of society. Yet lasting change came nonetheless. Change in how we see and describe our place in the universe and change in how we live our very lives.
II
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne published The Population Bomb. The book laid out what they saw as the imminent catastrophe hanging over the world as an ever increasing population faced a global food supply strained to the breaking point. Their ideas were not particularly novel, having evolved from the work and fears of Thomas Malthus over a century before, but the sensationalist tone they took propelled the book to great success and helped cement fears of rampant overpopulation in the American psyche.
Those fears would only blossom over the next generation as they became ever more intwined with our dystopian fictions and the awareness over human induced climate change. And the global population did continue to grow at an unprecedented rate. Yet the most dire predictions the Ehrlichs set forth remained unrealized.
Instead, two things happened. The first was Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution. Borlaug was in fact hard at work while the Ehrlichs were publishing The Population Bomb, but his work would not gain global recognition before 1970 when he was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize. Borlaug’s development of hearty, high yield wheat crops and his championing of agricultural best practices helped Mexico, Pakistan, and India nearly double their wheat yields and set the stage for a new generation of global food security.
The second thing to happen was that Thomas Malthus turned out to be wrong. Here too, the changes that the Ehrlichs failed to anticipate — and that Malthus could not even fathom — had in fact already begun. In 1963, the global growth rate peaked at 2.2 percent and has declined steadily ever since. Although even at its current rate the total global population continues to grow, demographers now predict that somewhere around the year 2060 — after hitting 11 billion — the world’s population will in fact begin to decline.
Malthus predicted that the wealthier and more prosperous a society grew, the more it would expand to consume those resources. And while his theories had some basis in the realities of his time, post-industrial societies have been shown to behave in almost the opposite manner. With a century’s hindsight, we now see that prosperous societies in fact offer the luxury of fewer children and the resultant declines in population.
Firstly, in contemporary society there is a high correlation between the wealth of a nation and childhood mortality. As parents grow more certain that each child will mature to adulthood, and — in the most recent of years — as they grow less reliant on their own children for financial security later in life, there is less pressure to have larger families.
Additionally, wealthy contemporary societies have seen women entering the workforce in ever larger numbers and finding a greater voice in decision making at all levels, allowing them more control over family planning, and greater access to birth control. Even if those women do still choose to start families, they may do so later in life. So too have social norms changed to be more accepting of those who decide — singly, or as a couple — not to have children altogether.
Even in less wealthy nations, access to contraception and family planning have in many cases become central both to women’s empowerment and the alleviation of poverty. And the gap in childhood mortality between the wealthiest and the poorest nations is smaller than it has ever been, with the global average below 5 percent, and with no nation above the 15 percent that would have resulted from even the best medical care in 1800 when Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population.
Japan, large swaths of the European Union, and even China — a result of their state sponsored one-child program — are now facing the realities of populations in decline. Each nation will handle the resultant demographic shifts in their own way, whether by incentivizing higher birth rates, by liberalizing immigration, or some combination of the two. And all of these changes will effect not only the existing social order within national borders, but even how nations see themselves and interact on the global stage. Though mental paradigms shift slower than physical realities, demographic reckonings will alter all but our most fundamental understandings.
III
It is hard to overstate the mythos of growth in the modern mindset. Growth winds its way around our fictions and is the bedrock upon which the global economy stands. Star Wars, Star Trek, Dune, Foundation, and countless other cornerstones of Science Fiction all rest on the assured belief of our expansion out into the cosmos. These worlds, rooted just as ours in histories of colonialism and empire, rest on the twin unchanging assumptions of population growth and resource scarcity.
And just as we face seismic changes to population growth, so too are we finally coming to a point in time when the rules of scarcity seem less certain. Already, the global economy has begun the first of several shifts in this direction. Fueled by technological advances and the increasing threat posed by climate change, a fundamental shift towards renewable sources of energy is at hand.
Already, 2013 saw peak global coal consumption. And while this was in a large part driven not by an expansion in renewable resources, but rather through the increasing use of natural gas, it is no less a remarkable turning point. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, coal has been the backbone of modern economic activity. That this turning point will likely be followed by a peak in oil consumption at the middle of the century is just as profound.
The move to electric vehicles is ramping up quickly. By the end of the decade, a combination of advances in battery technology and increased regulation of CO2 emissions will likely shift the balance of new vehicle sales from combustion to electric. Of course not all progress will come so quickly. Air travel, the world’s fleet of cargo ships, and the remainder of heavy industry will all take significant time to transition away from fossil fuel usage. And there is a justifiable discussion as to whether these changes are happening quickly enough to mitigate the worst case scenarios of human induced climate change.
Nonetheless, these changes are coming, and with them will come enormous ramifications. Just as declining coal production has wounded already hard hit Appalachian communities that have historically relied on coal mines for their livelihood, even the threat of declining oil consumption is enough to create political and economic instabilities in countries heavily invested in oil production. From Saudi Arabia to Russia, Venezuela, and large sections of Canada and the United States, the changing face of global energy will leave behind an altered landscape.
But our changing relationship to petroleum also goes beyond its use as an energy resource. By the 1950’s, the plastic revolution had begun in earnest, and since then, the petrochemical industry has churned out enough synthetic material to blanket every corner of the Earth. For decades, the nascent environmental movement has tried to challenge this unchecked march, but their efforts have come up short. Partly this has been a result of few good material alternatives as versatile as plastic, and partly it has resulted from the concerted efforts of the industry itself.
There are finally signs that this balance of power might be changing. For one, as human induced climate change has moved to the forefront of our collective global consciousness, the environmental movement has blossomed into a true force for change, with significant financial backing and newly honed tactics. So too have the environmental impacts of the Technological Age become more visible. Microplastics and their adverse effects are better understood, and there is a greater awareness of the limitations — if not outright failures — of recycling.
Single use plastics are beginning to see bans around the world, the packaging industry is facing increased scrutiny, and designers are beginning to reinvest in natural, compostable materials for clothing, footwear, and a host of short-lifecycle consumables. Technological investments in material alternatives are also beginning to bear fruit.
Bio-degradable corn, sugarcane, and plant fiber based bio-plastics are starting to see wide adoption and there is every expectation that as manufacturing ramps up, prices will approach parity with existing plastics — especially as markets begin to set prices on manufacturing carbon costs as a means of reducing global CO2 emissions. Novel production methods in the textile industry could soon see both less resource-intensive fabric production, increasingly efficient garment recycling, and all new fabrication techniques such as the use of “brewed proteins” based on naturally occurring materials such as spider silk.
Other industries are taking up the challenge of material sustainability as well. In construction, timber is having a renaissance. Movements towards medium density urbanization and pre-fabricated construction provide an ideal canvas for the spread of cross-laminated timber (CLT), a bulked up super-plywood known for its versatility and durability.
These transitions will all take time and investment. They will face entrenched industries that have long gone unchallenged and will fight tooth and nail to protect their place in the market. Some of them will prove uneconomical. And even as progress is made in some areas, other areas will face stubborn challenges. Electronics, already one of the fastest growing sources of waste, will continue to balloon with a challenging influx of batteries and less efficient solar panel retirements in the years ahead. By their very nature, the size and material complexity of electronics make them particularly difficult to recycle. But even here, manufacturers such as Apple have committed to a future of recycling and sustainability, and end of life considerations are featuring as an increasingly important component of industrial design.
There is no silver bullet to achieve the elusive goal of a circular economy. Yet while it would be naive to celebrate a transformation in its infancy, so too is it foolish not to consider what the world might look like if we succeed. Our current global vision is predicated upon the assumption of growth: a growth tied to ever increasing populations, ever increasing productivity, and ever increasing consumption of resources. These curves are shifting in ways that are impossible to predict, but their shifts — even in part — have the power to remake nearly every aspect of our lives.
IV
We know how the story of Galileo ends. He was forced to recant his heretical observations and live out the rest of days under house arrest. Yet this did not stop the Earth from revolving around the Sun, and it did not stop the ensuing Scientific Revolution from further eroding the orthodoxies of the day.
How our story ends is unknowable. What we do know is that in our lifetimes we will come to face fundamental changes to our planet, our societies, and even the very stories about ourselves that we have long held true and immutable. Like in the time of Galileo, a great many people will find these changes to be difficult — not only as conceptual thought experiments but in their everyday struggles.
Looking to the past, the three wheels of climate, migration, and technological change have oft marked the end of an era. What has followed — political and economic instability, all consuming wars, the fall of empires — is the stuff of global nightmares. I do not believe the worst of these will come to pass. We are today more aware of the world around us than ever before: more aware of the impacts we have and our interconnection to each other. But make no mistake, we are living through a period of revolution the likes of which humanity has rarely encountered: a revolution on par with the Agricultural Revolution that for thousands of years has touched every element of society and reshaped the very land itself.
