Re: [asa] A Sustainable Future and Exponential growth

Quoting Kenneth Piers <Pier@calvin.edu>:

> Still any biofuels project that is successful and that depends on arable land
> for growing its raw material is likely eventually to scale up to a level
> that it will begin competing for land currently being used for growing food
> crops, which again creates the moral issue of land for food or land for fuel.
> That is an issue where, it seems to me, Christians should be making a clear
> testimony.
> ken

While I entirely agree with David that population control (top-down) is not a
good answer, I yet am completely in agreement with you, Ken (& I don't think
David O. is entirely disagreeing) that we must be concerned about our living
standard footprint -- especially with respect to energy. (I'm a Wendell Berry
fan too, Ken.) I have trouble buying into the "technology will deliver us from
evil if only political & social situations allow it" vein of thought. And I
think it dangerous to appeal to the list of unfulfilled alarmist predictions,
lengthy though it may be. I may be able to get away with bolting across a
street ten times without looking both ways --but if I keep doing that the
writing is on the wall. Our petro-based food production rises and falls with
the supply of easy energy, and I think common sense will prevail about where
that leads us, whether it is a decade from now or a century. Either way we are
living irresponsibly.

Even though I have provoked laughter with the comment, posterity may well (if it
has the luxury of such reflection) look back and identify folks like the Amish
the “True masters of technology”. Far from being anti-technology, they rather
hold to the quaint notion that just because we can do it doesn’t mean we ought
to. While the rest of us run ahead pell-mell muttering about inevitability as
we go, they have the gall to ask “how would this affect our community and its
future?” ---and the answer to that question determines whether they will embrace
that technology in their community. Outsiders often confuse this with some
sort of misguided religious commandment –e.g. Amish must think telephones are
evil, therefore we can scoff at them as hypocrites since they will use the phone
booth down the block or at work. And so we miss the much more important point
of why the Amish think as they do in the first place. Most of us function as
the slaves of technology rather than its master. And a cruel master it can turn
out to be.

I can’t be proven, of course, and maybe some new technology like cold fusion
will end up delivering us from this crisis. But I’m afraid that what might
really happen is that we will be known as the generation(s) that squandered the
energy wealth of the past. And our present prosperity and ability to “feed the
world” from our eroding and petro-fertilizer-dependent fields will probably be
revealed as an illusory wealth.

--Merv

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Received on Mon May 19 15:27:33 2008