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| The World on Fire |
Introduction
Apparently scientists are “shocked” or “scared” at the ever increasing rate of climate change. This year alone we have seen huge forest fires, like in California or in Siberia, flash floods, like those in Germany, China, or in Tennessee. We have even seen powerful tornadoes in the Czech Republic. But I don’t see any reason to be “shocked” by all this. Perhaps “scared” but not “shocked”. It is not as if this hasn’t been predicted. Scientists have been warning that this would happen for decades. Even if things are happening faster than expected that should have been given as a possibility. The climate is, after all, a non-linear, chaotic system and such systems can suddenly flip from one state to another state. Such a change is called a phase shift.
Despite all the warnings and all the evidence we haven't actually done anything to prevent the current changes have we? I’m sure we are all buying “environmentally friendly” stuff. We are all using some kind of “bio fuel” and our government has made all kinds of environmental agreements and introduced schemes like carbon tax. Yet, all that hasn’t really done much has it? It’s like throwing a bucket of water of the fires in California or Siberia; pissing in the ocean. And just to add to the problem, we have been busy with climate change denial and other activities to counter any advance we might make.
What’s the Problem?
Is the problem too little carbon tax or what stuff we buy? I would say no. And if that is so, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we are not having much effect on preventing climate change. I would argue that the problem is to do with the way we do things in general; with our whole socioeconomic system.
Our socioeconomic system is a debt based money system that aims to grow exponentially with finite resources. This leads to an amazing advancement in human civilisation but it is also fundamentally unsustainable. We produce more and more stuff and in doing so produce more and more waste as goods are not made to last. We end up over exploiting the planets resources and creating the conditions for climate change as well as many other problems. So, if we really want to do something about climate change then we need to change our current socioeconomic system to something sustainable.
An Alternative?
There are probably many alternative socioeconomic systems to our current one. But I would propose one where we can maintain a high standard of living but one where we also balance our needs with those of the planet. We could do this given the huge waste we have in our current system. Think about cars, just as an example. Cars spend most of their time standing still in a car park or garage or just by the side of the road. Most of them are not actually doing something useful most of the time. Now imagine a system where cars are used for 80% of the time. We could do that if we shared cars. If I was to take my car to work in the morning I wouldn't just park it and leave it for the day until I need to drive home again. Instead, the car could be used by someone else to drive them to work or for other tasks. At the end of the the car would be ready and waiting to take me home again. So long as the car is there when I need it, does it matter if others also use it? If we had such a system we would need far less cars. If we had a system that minimised transport needs (by, for example, work from home) we could cut down the amount of cars even more. If we also made cars to last, we would not have to make so many new ones each year. If we did this for as many products as possible then we could drastically reduce our impact on the planet yet still maintain a high standard of living.
We can’t have such a system in our money based world, so I would propose a system without money. To do that we would still need some way to account for all the materials and energy we have in the system. We could do that by using exergy. Exergy is a measure of how useful the energy we have is (we can’t always use all the energy we have) but it can also be used to measure materials. If we use exergy we would have, what I would call, an energy accounting system. We could then allocate production capacity to people so they decide what gets produced or what services they can use. As the capacity to produce or consume a service will take energy and materials we can use exergy as a way to allocate these to the people.
But for such a system like that to work it will need experts to run it. The whole system is complex and is made of systems within systems. Just to understand how one part of it works can take many years of study or experience. So, we would need teams of experts from different disciplines to run the system, calculate out the exergy, allocate production capacity, and keep things running.
Such a system would also need to balance our needs with those of nature; it will be sustainable by design from the beginning. Again, we will need experts to design the system and the systems within the systems. Cars are just one example of that but cars are part of a transport system. If we think about how a transport system works and what it aims to do, we can start thinking about how to build such a system so it has minimum impact on nature. We wont have to worry about profit or cost, we just need to know if we have the energy and the resources to achieve the goal. But a transport system are part of cities as well, so we would have to think of transport within the context of cities and the other systems that make a city.
The system I propose is really about engineering society. It takes a scientific approach to what we do. Scientific because we need a good understanding of how nature works in order to balance our needs with those of the planet and still maintain a high standard of living. Science is demonstrably the best system for understanding the world. What I propose is engineering society as it is about applying science to society.
A Way Forward
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| The Bio Dome that EOS built |
I say “I propose” but this is not just my proposal. There are a number of groups around the world working on similar ideas. One of the more well known groups is the Venus Project in the US but the proposal I have just introduced here is put forward by a group called EOS, which is based in Sweden. The full proposal can be found here. But a summery is also presented here and here.
If we want a sustainable future, a future that balances our needs with those of the planet, a sustainable future, then we need to act ourselves. It is not going to build it self. We also ready have people acting. EOS has not only worked on a proposal but has started to test some of the ideas out. From simple projects like building a bio dome, EOS is now working on building a test community. But more needs to be done. More people and more finances (irritatingly for an organisation that wants a moneyless world).
