My EnergyUtopia
As pointed out in last Thursday's The Statesman, while debates over energy technology are important, of equal importance is consumption patterns in wealthy nations and decisions in developing nations about how to make growth sustainable.
Given that reducing energy consumption is inevitable in the West, let me, a person born, raised, acculturated and educated there, drift away to a world without my beloved DVD player, without my imported brewed coffee, without my new sports utility vehicle (built for 7 but with just me at the wheel and six lonely seats).
In this world I find myself traveling to work atop some kind of human-powered two-wheeled machine. The streets are constantly filled with people.
They are all either walking or cycling or in their wheelchairs - yes there is some engineless technology in use - but fortunately the whole place seems to have been designed according to some minimalist scheme, as if accommodating gas guzzlers was never part of the plan.
So everyone can travel as far and as fast as they can peddle or push and I see nary an accident during my whole commute.
A man and a woman are playing chess and debating politics, but I hear not a word of Kyoto or international protocols, not a hint on 25-tonne bombs falling on far-off lands. It turns out that they are talking about where to get the best haircut.
"How can you talk of such trivia when there are important decisions to be made?” I ask them. “What about unemployment? War and peace? Healthcare? Poverty alleviation? How to meet our energy needs?”
“All those things are taken care of,” says the man. “Starting with the last one you mentioned.
“It's a funny thing about cutting back on consumption – it’s like dominos. Without all that burning of fuels and whatnot, the air gets cleaner, people get healthier.
“Then you focus more of your effort on health care instead of sick care – you think about how we can all live healthy lifestyles the whole way through.
“Plus it’s a lot easier to exercise without so many cars in the way. And between war and peace, peace is the obvious choice, once you stop fighting over resources.
“No one has to borrow money to buy oil anymore, or pay interest on those loans, or meet the demands of someone else to get that loan in the first place.”
“But what about the economy?” I ask. “How can it function without fuel?”
The woman answers, “There’s no lack of fuel, my friend, where have you been? Ever since people stopped focusing on getting places, consuming things, controlling things, we have been fueled by our bodies and our imaginations.
“The economy has never been better because we are investing in people instead of things. Instead of spending half our government budget on healthcare, we can use it to nurture and care for everyone even if they aren’t sick.
“Without having to invest so much money in gadgets, doohickeys and whatnots, we have enough money to focus on things that matter in life: healthy food, housing, clothing.”
“But how do you keep your house cool without oil or gas or hydro?!” I was astounded.
“In a well-designed house of an appropriate size, with plenty of trees, you can minimize the amount of energy you need to keep cool using renewable energies, as long as you aren’t wasting your efforts shipping cattle from Canada to Argentina to Japan. And if it gets too hot, you just take your clothes off.”
Okay, the vision gets a little hazy there. It’s all so hard to imagine isn’t it?
That’s because we’re so far away from that kind of world, that kind of thinking, right now. As the world stands, we’ve got too much consumption in one part and too few resources allocated to the rest.
But I believe it’s likely that we’ll get there, the easy way (by choosing to change) or the hard way (by adjusting to an energy crisis that makes the 1970s look like luxury jet ride).
The longer we sit around waiting for protocol-signing politicians to take us there, the more likely it is that we’ll get there the hard way.
Government has an important role in any change. So does business. So does civil society including community-based organisations, charities, religious groups, and schools at all levels. And so does the 'person on the street.’
It’s a long road from here to a sustainable, healthy world, but you know what they say about a journey of 6 billion people. It starts with you.
