No Easy Answers: Facing Ecological Crises Honestly

“But we need to replace fanciful dreams of endless energy from renewables with full-cost accounting, which an increasing number of experts are taking seriously. There are destructive environmental and social consequences to constructing the infrastructure for that energy production.”

Editor’s note: This essay is adapted from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity, which was published by the University of Notre Dame Press last month.

Let us start with the easy part: Strategies for achieving a just and sustainable human presence on Earth must involve holding the wealthy and powerful accountable for damage done and moving toward a more equitable distribution of wealth and power.

Okay, maybe that is not so easy.

But sustainability also requires something much more difficult: a commitment to a global down-powering for affluent societies and an acceptance of limits on human population and consumption. If there is to be a decent human future—perhaps any human future at all—we have to reject the growth economy, including illusions about “green growth.”

Call it “degrowth” or “steady state economics” or “doughnut economics.” Advocates for different approaches will disagree about specifics of policy proposals, but there is growing awareness of the need to talk about limits. That starts with recognizing the necessity of transcending capitalism and the current politics designed to serve capitalists, in pursuit of an equitable distribution of wealth within planetary boundaries. Those of us living in the more affluent sectors of the world should not try to evade these moral assessments and political obligations.