Summing It Up. Alternative Routes for the Way Forward

Abstract

What is our vision for the future? The analysis in this book strongly indicates that systemic change is inevitable and that the rising affluence (of some, but certainly not all) during the past century cannot be sustained. This understanding is not new. For most of the history of mankind, humans lived mainly on the annual solar energy input that powered the climate, hydrologic cycle, and ecosystems that determined their wealth. This allowed most humans to capture enough food and fiber to feed and clothe themselves, and to harvest a very small amount of the mineral wealth stored in the surface of the earth (metal ores, clay for pottery, and even a bit of fossil fuels) to construct various tools, weapons, and other kinds of artifacts and icons of civilization such as buildings, boats, public works projects, and works of art. But it did so for only a small number of humans compared to now. The global population grew from about four to six million people 10,000 years ago to about one billion in 1800. Practically everything done during that period was done with solar energy manifest in one form or another, including moving water, rain, wood, crops, fish and other seafood, as well as metal ores reflecting the work of people who mined them and combustible material used to process them. The unexploited state of these resources allowed earlier humans to exploit them with far less energy than currently needed, when stocks of soils, fish, metals and so on were much richer than is the case today.