Sustainability will not come without reductions in consumption

Posted on: May 14, 2009 7:39 AM, by coby

This week's Energy Grid question asks "Why does our energy system face security and environmental challenges?" It also takes a step back, seeking to first define what the terms "energy security" and "environmental sustainability" mean.

Let's take the easy one of terminology first. And let's be really lazy about it and just ask The Google. The third link looks good to me, and clicking over I find definitions for both terms on the one New Zeland governmental page (yet again, being lazy pays off in spades!).

Energy security: - Energy security has two key dimensions, reliability and resilience. Reliability means users are able to access the energy services they require, when they require them. Resilience is the ability of the system to cope with shocks and change.

So, in a nutshell, energy security is getting all the energy you want, when you want it. I don't have a problem with that definition, anyone else? Energy security is typically addressed from the point of view of nation states, especially in the current political dialogues in the US, so being more specific, energy security is the ability of a nation to reliably meet its energy demands in good times and in bad. Next:

Environmental sustainability: - A movement towards redesigning the ways society's needs and wants are met so that they can be accommodated within the long-term carrying capacity of the environment.

Ignoring that the definition is for a movement and the term is the quality that movement seeks, I think we can use this as well. It turns out, it is also about getting everything you want when you want it, but with the caveat that one must not degrade or deplete the environment in the process of said getting. Since energy is a requirement of much, if not most, of what society needs and wants, environmental sustainability and energy security end up becoming inextricably intertwined.

I am quite comfortable taking it as granted that the world today faces tremendous challenges with the gravest of consequences on both of these fronts. Demand for oil, global recession aside, does not stop rising, nor is it likely to in the current global economy. Global climate change, collapse of ocean fisheries, deforestation and dwindling water resources for hundreds of millions of people are a few of many other truly daunting challenges in the area of sustainablilty. No one can seriously argue about that, can they? (Accept on blogs of course!) So we can move on to the question of why, which is really rather simple.

Our energy system faces security and environmental challenges because we have created a social and economic paradigm based on over-consumption and a non-renewable energy. Energy security is impossible when it comes from fossil fuels that take hundreds of millions of years to form and are running out fast. Over-consumption is by definition unsustainable and what we consume comes out of the natural environment in some form, at some point, so eventually we will hit that wall hard (even harder than we already are).

Without firmly facing these two facts, I fail to see how we can arrive at any kind of long term solution. Thankfully, global climate change and the Iraq war have conspired to push sustainable energy into the realm of acceptable topics. (Let's not forget that discussion is a long way from action.) But even the refreshingly audacious Obama administration does not dare to suggest that the American life style (at least on the rich side of the street) must change. We can not all eat meat three times a day. We can not all own and drive every day a fancy SUV. We can't all eat fresh fruit that was grown thousands of miles away. What this really means is that even if technology pulls a desu ex machina out of a hat and we replace fossil fuels with abundant, cheap and unending alternatives, we are not nearly out of the woods.

Just as an eternally growing economy is a fantasy, so is continuing growth in our demands on the environment. The world needs a radically different economic approach and a redefinition of what a fulfilled life is all about.

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Thanks for your attention, I welcome comments and criticisms as I freely admit I made a few assertions and assumptions without substantiation and my essay meandered a bit. Don't hold back!

Tomado de: The Energy Grid