Greensizing Part 3

The Down-side of Less Oil

Let's just take climate change and peak oil as givens. The first is a general consensus, and the second is hard to disbelieve when we're starting to use such incredibly expensive and toxic means of getting oil as fracking. Two ready conclusions come from these observations pretty quickly: we need to use less oil, and there's less oil to use. At least the two work together!

I have in the past argued that going green will stimulate the economy. It's going to take a lot of work to replace all those fossil fuel burning power plants and cars. Innovation and investment will be needed. Economies of scale will come into play and bring costs down. Some green movements--such as organic farming--will require more labor and create more jobs. This could be a great investment opportunity, getting in on the ground floor as these new industries take off! The expansion of green energy would more than offset the contraction of fossil fuels. Kind of like Trickle-down economics, we can Grow our way out of this crisis.

There is one inescapable conclusion about the fate of our economic system: infinite growth on a finite world is impossible. You can't argue this fact, the only question is when this point will come.

People love to say "wind power will never be able to meet all our energy needs." It is a very silly thing to say, because no one source of power has ever, since the discovery of fire, met all our energy needs. But if we are reaching peak oil, it is becoming apparent that no combination of energy sources will meet all our energy needs, let alone the continual increase required by Growth.

Rather than Grow our way out of this crisis, we will need to get smaller. In economics, getting smaller is called a "recession." Even when he have reduced ourselves to a "sustainable level," we won't be able to Grow again, and we may need to shrink further, as climate change and population growth continue. There is a fundamental conflict between a Capitalist economy and a Sustainable one.