Contraction

ecoglobe _{Action and Contraction}

| contraction

The first thing we must do is think!
- always -
Don't take anything for granted!

Because you don't want a split brain!

Trying to move between business as usual and "green" family life is difficult.

How can you explain to wife and kids that your work earns money for house and studies, yet at the same time harming what we value most, our kids and a nice future?

The personal is political:
You can be proactive or let things happen. Both ways you are influencing your lives and the future of your kids.

There are many wizards around.
Some propound theories that are scientifically flawed - yet presented as "laws" or options.

The worst is the religion of continued growth - in all its shades, such as balanced, dematerialised, carbon-free, different, sustainable, green, etc. Some economists claim "services" can be immaterial, providing their own private definition as "proof".

Growth advocates still have to understand that growth requires stuff, simply because GDP growth equals money, which represents material, always.

On a finite and overloaded planet, growth is a suicidal policy!

make impossible promises, may persue personal interests> "Contraction" is a decrease in economic and industrial activity and a reversal of the demographic development - as opposed to expansion, also known as "growth".

Contraction is indispensable because we have overshot the earth's carrying capacity by far. We are severely out out balance with the rest of nature. The balances are maintained if a resource is not consumed at a higher rate than needed for regeneration.

If we don't stop growth and start reducing our resource consumption very soon, then scarce and depleted resources will throw humanity into a catastrophe.

Because no technology, money or creativity can recreate lost resources. We could suffer the fate of the reindeer after their introduction on St. Mathew Island: boom and crash.

Stopping growth - even if it seems "difficult", etc. - is a must. If we don't stop our expansion volutarily and in a planned way, resource scarcities will stop mankind - albeit in a horrible way, by decimating famines and resource wars.

We consume

renewables and

non-renewables.

Renewable resources are products made of plant and animal material.

Renewables are regenerated by the interactive functioning of nature.

Sustainability is a state of human affairs where we don't consume more renewables than nature can regenerate.

Non-renewables are finite resource stocks, such as fossil fuels, uranium, metals and minerals, soil fertility, fossil water, a normal climate, space, natural forests, etc., that are not renewed by nature in a human time scale. Once they are depleted they are gone forever.
No technology or ingenuity or money can recreate lost minerals and biodiversity.

Our human footprint consists of our annual consumption of renewables and non-renewables.
If our consumption of renewables is higher than their rate of regeneration, we will run out of food and fibre.
If our depletion rate of non-renewables is low in comparison to the available stocks, we can carry on for a relatively long period of time.

Sustainability refers to a level of human resource consumption that can be maintained for a very long time, theoretically forever. If our human footprint is too high it can not be sustained by the Earth for a long time.

Climate change is "only" one part of the general problem of the unsustainability of humanity's lifestyles.
It cannot be dealt with in isolation.
Nor can it be reduced on the "energy"question.

Climate change and its effects are a result of air pollution by greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide, methane, CFCs and water vapour). Climate change is under way and not stoppable. Carbon dioxide cannot be sequestered by human efforts, nor by nature within human time scales. (The Kyoto protocoll will not help since its mechanisms are technically not workable and its goals are far below the level that is required.)

Presently, our human footprint is too high, in almost all areas of resource consumption - i.e. our lifestyles.
It is not sure, however, in which area the depletion will first reach the critical point that may lead to a collapse of the human socio-economic structures. It could be lack of food, clean water, an illness, toxification and pollution, lack of fossil energy or something else.
Taking all environmental developments together - i.e. expansion of economic scale and consumption per capita, as well as population growth and the increasing speeds of resource depleten - we believe it is no longer a matter of the so-called "future generations".
It must be feared that not only our grandchildren or our children but even we ourselves may have to face the dire consequences of "overshoot", being total depletion, resource wars, collapse and die-off.

What is our human time scale?

How sustainable are our socio-economic ways of living? How long can we carry on "business as usual"?