If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
John D. Rockefeller
Humans need a goal, an overriding mission. A story that rules the stories. For many today, the narrative overlord is essentially that of growth. A fine master in our society. We are celebrated when we grow companies, buy houses, and consume beautiful food (and artistic lattes). Consumers, producers, suppliers, and demanders each are rewarded and defined by the increase of the verb that their nouns imply. But as Vaclav Smil convincingly (and lengthily) argues in his tome Growth, the velocity and acceleration need to start going down. De-growth, deceleration, stagnation, slowing down, doing less – all of these words have negative connotations and may even be sinful (see Biblical concerns with sloth).
Modifying our growth obsession is going to take more than finger-wagging from environmentalists, anti-capitalists, and Buddhists (though I don’t think the Buddha approved of the wagging of the finger). Society and its contented participants need an alternative narrative that celebrates the necessary, civilization-saving imperative of making less and consuming less. Ambitious strivers trying to make a dent in the universe can start to see reducing GDP as a memorable end in itself – an engineering, anthropological, and business project with fantastic rewards. Growth reduction lists might celebrate the entrepreneurs that have ungrown consumption or production patterns. Apps and retailers can help people buy less. Tax policies should reward consumers’ and companies’ reduced purchases, energy consumption, and contribution to GDP. Becoming a Rockefellerian titan of industry may involve the unmaking of industries going forward.
The techno-optimists should have their cake, but we won’t get to eat it if there’s not flour left by the time it’s finally ready to be made. Projects that reduce the water-intensity of agriculture, maximize the efficiency of renewable energy, and reduce the carbon footprint of smartphones are laudable and useful. But, we need to admit, will fall dramatically short of the changes needed to achieve an existence that squares with the realities of the earth’s carrying capacity. This is our space ship, and perhaps thinking about it a bit more like the brilliant engineer Devi in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora would do us all a bit of good (except for that part about programming a semi-authoritarian AI overlord). The journey is nowhere near over and we need to have enough resources to get the entire way. Humans have never been very good at thinking about keeping things going in perpetuity (mortality makes a species care a little bit less about the long future), but it’s time to figure it out.
Roman Ryan 