Assumption 5: Abundance or Ecological Limits

Building on Assumption 4, and the reality of abundance and creativity in many realms in our shared lives, we need to consider the other side of the coin. In so many ways, we human beings have grown up experiencing areas of abundance that we take for granted. As a child, I knew without thinking about it that one could spit (or whatever) in the pool and the great volume of water would so dissolve it as to make it of no consequence to fellow swimmers, or even to me. An empty soft drink bottle could be tossed in the trash and it would disappear forever. I could drink tap water, or turn on the lawn sprinklers, and if I forgot to turn them off it was OK; water was clean and free. No one worried about it. One could read the newspaper every day, and then throw it away. It was trash.

In movies or on the TV, one sometimes saw clips of people in India bathing in the Ganges, or depositing the ashes of a newly cremated and consecrated corpse into the river. I wondered how close one was to the other, but the people there did not seem concerned. The Ganges flows endlessly, and all is carried away.

One seldom thought much about breathing, even when a relative's tobacco smoke involved us in the involuntary practice of sharing the smoke. The occasional bout of asthma was ascribed to allergies or childhood stress, and most people pretty much grew out of it eventually. If not, there were medicines available form the magical cornucopia that opened for us at the doctor's office.

Gasoline was never cheap at whatever age or time or country as one pulled up to the pump and filled up. Well, it was not free, and one needed to come up with gas money one way or the other, but it was seldom a big issue. One very seldom thought, "Oh, I can't take that trip; it's too expensive to buy the gas for it." As teens we often chipped in for gas money for whoever was driving us to the all-night party. But no one said, "I can't go, I don't have money for the gas." It was only slightly more expensive than tap water, which flowed endlessly and so reliably we never gave it a thought.

And new homes were built in tracts, by the hundreds--plenty of space for them, out on the edge of town, on those orange orchards that were purchased and converted to more useful (and lucrative) purposes. Rivers were dammed and diverted to provide the drinking water and lawn sprinkling that was required by the good life.

Agriculture, too, was a booming business. Labor-saving machinery extended and accelerated the human capability for tilling and harvesting, and the wonders of chemistry provided effective pesticides for protecting the crop. The government, too, made sure agriculture and petroleum extraction thrived, by providing subsidies out of tax revenues, so there was plenty of food, and gasoline.

Abundance--unquestioned, endless availability. Economic growth was good for everyone and supported by all. Progress is good, and it gets its proponents elected.

Fast-forward to the present: In riots protesting rising food prices in several countries in West Africa recently, several demonstrators were shot. In Australia, the protracted drought has severely reduced the harvest of foods. In some countries, farmers are starting to carry guns to protect the food on their fields from robbers.

The demand for foodstuffs has been increasing dramatically in high-population countries like India and China. The price of wheat and rice has recently increased dramatically. So many people have been buying up grains before the price goes up that stores like Costco are now limiting the number of sacks of rice one can buy. Oxfam America is warning of severe food shortages and the need to rescue people all over the world from hunger.

Are you sweating yet?

But don't worry; we are dealing with these problems. Or are we? We are certainly making progress on similar crisis issues like energy and climate-change. There is significant public support for reducing our petroleum dependence by using corn to produce ethanol. We can grow our own fuels, no? There are only a few problems with this quick fix: Ethanol production from corn uses more net energy and pumps more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than petroleum-based fuel. And the diversion of corn from food uses to fuel uses is increasing its price, and the price of other grains, on the world market. So we have a perfect, though tragic, example of a problem (food shortages) that is caused by a solution (switch to ethanol).

The cascading consequences that currently include food riots remind us of Assumption 2: People will come up with rational solutions that work. Under conditions of emerging crisis and stress, this becomes Reality 2: Unconscious Reactiveness, which ends up making things worse, and feeds the crisis conditions. This is a bad vicious circle.

In 1972, Donella Meadows and others published The Limits to Growth, which was variously welcomed, criticized or dismissed by various experts. It explored the possible interdependence among global variables such as: world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The authors suggested the possibility of a sustainable interaction pattern that could be achieved by altering growth trends among the five variables.

More than 35 years later, this kind of analysis is being given serious consideration by some. The possibility of moving toward an acknowledgment of ecological limits, and a collaborative, intentional self-control on a global scale provides a glimmer of hope for life on the planet.