I recently participated in the "Climate 2009" event - an online conference hosted by a Hamburg/Germany based university and the World Meteorological Organization - one of the pre-curser events to the Copenhagen conference next month. Having been involved in climate change science and policy in the one or the other way over the last two decades I have gotten somewhat tired. The discussion strikes me as if a ship is sinking from overload, and the passengers and crews are discussing whether one form of weight pulls the ship down more than another. They stay within the system, that is. I raised a question: Is it possible to ever achieve a net reduction of energy related emissions within a framework of forced continuous exponential economic growth? Is it principally possible to find a way of de-coupling economic growth and energy/resource consumption with related emissions? As far as I can tell fundamental physical laws stand in the way of constant exponential economic growth. Unfortunately raising this question means to question one of the leading global dogmas: that growth is the savior. Economic - or rather fiscal - growth is practically divine. That question is not asked. One quickly is viewed as a nutty doomsday prophet or conspiracy theorist. On the other hand - when talking to economists, businessmen and scientists individually on a one by one base they usually quickly admit: it is impossible. Simply impossible. This means our entire beautiful globalized economic system is based upon either a big lie or a big mistake. And - everyone who thinks about it quickly realizes it. And: the proportion of the issue is so enormous that nobody has even the remotest clue what to do about it. "Recycle Aluminum" is not really an answer. As a result everyone just closes their eyes and moves on as before.
When younger I argued against children, against population growth, and now I, myself, have three daughters and cannot even plausibly argue along these lines. I also drive a relatively big car because my job (in solar energy R&D) requires me to travel, our family of 5 plus dog won't fit in a GEO Metro AND we live in the country. So it goes. And we try to recommend not using excess resources on an individual level, yet the economy as it is is entirely based upon just that: ever more consumption of everything!
Be that as it may: arguing against forced economic growth as the fundamental cause of our future demise nowadays is like standing as an attorney in front of the grand inquisitor of medieval times saying "Sir - I herewith plead not guilty for these women accused of witchery, because God as well as the Devil and their ilk are cultural inventions and do not really exist, hence, they cannot serve as arguments in court."
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