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| Pope Francis - he has spoken out about untrammelled growth. |
Humans are a plague on the earth and one of their constructs
further worsens their presence.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being human rather it
is our behaviour in that we have colonized most every available space,
domineering earth’s resources, almost to the total exclusion of other species.
The dilemma of our untamed tumour-like growth – population
numbers are rising exponentially; energy use is surging; debt, both private and
public, has exploded; our consumption of food, and the chemicals needed to
produce them, is alarming; species are become extinct at an unprecedented rate
- is evidence of our wilful denial of
earth’s finitude.
Concerns about blindly pursing growth were raised by Pope
Francis in his first papal exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel”.
He said, “While
the earnings of the minority are growing exponentially, so, too, is the gap
separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few.
“The imbalance is
the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace
and financial speculation…. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often
virtual, which relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules…. “The thirst for
power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour
everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile,
like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market,
which become the only rule”, the Pope said.
Freeing people
from doing things to simply survive and so being able to make things they could
profit from was a spin-off of the agricultural revolution.
That revolution
brought a security guarantee and being released from the need to find food
every day, people could then spend time producing a “luxury”, trade it
profitably and then enhance their lives.
The idea of
profit was born and further enriched by the discovery and understanding of
fossil fuels and with that trade and consumption became an entrenched way of
life.
There was
however, as with everything, an unintended consequence.
In our rush to
build and boost profits, we were blind, wilfully or otherwise, to those effects,
with few ever talking about finite resources or the additional complication of
greenhouse gases that were changing, quickly, the human-friendly climate.
The profits grew,
the resources became even more finite, and the human-friendly atmosphere
worsened and the troubles described by the Pope became more ingrained.
The surplus of
energy that first arose from the agricultural revolution that was small by
today’s standards, but sufficient to allow people to engage in non-subsistence
activities.
That new and
“free” energy distorted and disrupted our values, disconnecting us from the
balance we had long lived within and extinguished our understanding of how to
live a worthwhile, resilient and sustainable life using less exogenous energy.
