Whither the world

(This was published in the Cantley Echo, Quebec, December 2017.  Bilingue.)

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Ever since I was knee high to a fairy, the world has been going to the dogs.  My grandparents said so; my parents and parents-in-law said so, and now that I am a grandparent myself, so do I.

There are stories every day of progress and of disaster.

There is progress in the rising stock market averages.  There is progress in increasing life expectancy.  There is progress in medical advances of all kinds.  There is progress in the ease with which we live our lives.

And there is disaster in plastic pollution.  Coral reefs are dying.  Vast dead areas exist in our oceans and our lakes.  There is disaster in climate change.  We are in the middle of another extinction event.

The disasters are the result of our progress.  We are rapidly reaching the point where our economic systems are incompatible with our continued existence on this planet. 

We may already have reached the tipping point.  This year, Earth Overshoot Day as it is called, was on August 2nd.  By that date we had consumed the regeneration capacity of an entire year, and thus we are now burning our future.

Global climate records suggest that we are approaching a tipping point that will lead to irreversible changes in atmospheric and oceanic behaviours.  2016 was the warmest year on record; the Greenland ice cap is melting faster than ever before; the Antarctic ice shelves are rapidly disintegrating; and the North Pole may see an ice-free summer in the very near future.

This is an existential crisis that is basically ignored by both our media and our politicians.  They all want this issue to go away.

But unless we really are suicidal, we cannot let it go away.

The dilemma is that continued growth and our existence on this planet are incompatible. We can have continued existence, but we cannot have it and continued economic growth.

And nor can we have continued economic growth based on the consumption of fossil fuels.  Our current economy is in fact highly dependent on fossil fuels.  It is accordingly very difficult if not impossible to meet our Paris climate goals.

We like to think that an annual growth of a small percentage year over year, is a good thing, that if we can continue a small annual growth then our future will be assured.

But what does that mean?  One per cent a year sounds reasonable.  Not too small, not too big.  We can handle that.  At one per cent our economy will double in 70 years, your and my lifetimes.  At 2% it will double in 35 years, as it has in my adult life. 

Cantley in particular, has been growing at a remarkable pace. In the 2011 census figures, we grew by about 5% a year.  This implies a doubling in 14 years.  Before our babies have got to high school, the number of cars on Cantley roads, the amount of garbage we throw out, the cost of our fire and police services, the number of residents and homes in the city will all have doubled.  We do not have the capacity for this.

This is not a solution for the future of our children and grandchildren.

I love to see the glass half-full.  But I also think we have to be realistic about the predicament we have collectively put ourselves into.  The world is not just going to the dogs, it is going to hell in a hand basket.  We need to find a way of doing something about it.