A drawn-out descent in both surplus energy and the availability of high-quality resources has begun (Bardi 2011, Herrington 2021, Morgan 2024, Murphy et al. 2021, Nebel et al. 2024, Turner 2014). Simultaneously, global heating is accelerating (Lamboll et al. 2023, IPCC 2021). The UN reports that we have breached thresholds where the predicted impacts of global heating become irreversible, and they expect more devastating impacts are imminent (IPCC 2023, 2022). These crises match the most extreme scenarios of our climate and energy models, and circumstances have begun overwhelming our ability to cope in the ways that we had planned.
Multiple cascading crises are causing floods, droughts, wildfires, extreme storms and heat waves, sea level rise, loss of biodiversity, crop failures and famines, and the mass migration of climate refugees (Jackson & Jensen 2022, Speth 2023). Most worrisome is rising food insecurity (Medhurst 2023) for as the saying goes, “When there is food on the table there are many problems. When there is no food on the table there is one problem.”
These issues are existential (Murphy 2024). Industrial civilization never could have green consumed its way to sustainability (Monbiot 2015). But having squandered decades by ignoring that fact, it now faces the issue of its very survival (Bradshaw et al. 2021, Bologna & Aquino 2020, Lenton et al. 2019, Seibert & Rees 2021). However, we must be very clear as to what is at risk; what is ending is not humanity, but modernity (Murphy et al. 2021).
Nonetheless, what we face will be hard to adapt to. Soon our behavior will change as we involuntarily accommodate an order-of-magnitude reduction in material and energy throughput (Trainer 2021), far more than was recently imagined. This is certainly not the future we were expecting nor the one for which we are preparing.
Global negotiations are responding to the climate crisis, yet there is a disturbing silence about declining surplus energy. Biophysical economics establishes that the economy is an energy system, not a financial system (Hall & Klitgaard 2011; Morgan 2024, 2022, 2020, 2016). But the relentless decline in surplus energy, the lifeblood of techno-industrial society, has only recently received attention (Daly & Farley 2010, Hall 2017, Jackson & Jackson 2021, Rye & Jackson 2018, Sherwood et al. 2020). We must focus on the latter issue but in a nuanced way. We must become familiar with the consequences of energy descent and global heating but we must not dwell on such issues. Instead, we must prepare for an inevitable transition to low-input patterns of living at individual, collective, and institutional levels. We must expect dramatic, ever increasing changes to everyday life. Our lives will be very different from conventional expectations. The underlying cause is that our social-economic systems require the impossible: perpetual material and energy growth on a finite planet (Murphy 2022, Rhodes 2021).
Localization is an affirmative response to this situation. It re-frames human enterprise into smaller communities which thrive without growth and within biophysical limits. This transition has begun, often hidden in plain sight. It will remain a hard process, but there is no other option left to us. However, this new reality can be framed as an opportunity to pursue behaviors that increase well-being (De Young 2019). We must shift toward tangible, pragmatic, small-scale initiatives aimed at increasing neighborhood resilience, with communities following Brooks’ (2019) advice to emphasize “…individualism less and relationalism more.”
The benefits embedded in localization
We might ask, if given the choice, why not wait until the last possible moment to change? One reason is to gain now, rather than later, the intrinsic satisfactions embedded in the process of localization. In short, why miss out on the intrinsic rewards hiding in plain sight. Thus, rather than being a dismal forecast, the lean times ahead may increase well-being not despite the needed frugality but perhaps because of it. This idea is not commonly appreciated – that an austere rather than affluent existence is better matched to the functional capabilities of the human mind. The fields of conservation and environmental psychology confirms this idea and Brooks (2016) offers a compelling historical example. These embedded benefits are foreshadowed below.
Outward benefits – Some view re-localization as protectionist. Wendell Berry (2001) agrees, saying “… that is exactly what it is. It is a protectionism that is just and sound, because it protects local producers and is the best assurance of adequate supplies to local consumers.” But Berry then makes a crucial distinction; a just protectionism is “… the best guarantee of giveable or marketable surpluses. This kind of protection is not ‘isolationism’.” The vision here is of a place well cared for, a community intact, and the individuals whole and well. These benefits are captured by the notion of well fed neighbors.
Inward benefits – Industrialization destroys the aesthetic quality of everyday life. As a remedy, Berry (1987) observes that non-industrial work quickens that quality, and cites Gill (1983) on the higher calling of manual work where “…every [one] is called to give love to the work of [their] hands. Every [one] is called to be an artist.” Berry’s writing offers small-scale agriculture as an example of artistic enterprise involving behavior focused on beauty, resourcefulness, and well-being. Perhaps, as we first restore and then maintain the planet, everyone will become an artist, an idea consistent with Seligman’s (1999) notion that authentic happiness comes from “living life as a work of art”.
The need for better narratives
We must create better stories about our future. We cannot survive the melodramatic binary-thinking that only sees our future as either continuous techno-industrial expansion (an impossibility) or as a rapid social and ecological collapse (an unlikelihood). There is a middle ground – localization – that portrays a less materialistic life in such a positive way that people crave the experience enough to seek it now, before circumstances force the issue. In fact, one form of localization, decentralism, has always been present alongside the centralizing tendencies of techno-industrial expansion (Sale 2017). Localization believes in the principle of subsidiarity; provisioning and decision-making should be decentralized to the lowest reasonable organizational level (Brooks 2018), that is, as close to affected peoples and their resources as is reasonable. This is an old idea and a revolutionary ideal (Berry 1996). One of the better examples is the affirmative story of low-input agrarian localism being told by Smaje (2020).
Responding to biophysical limits requires both new and old skills, behaviors, and goals. If we periodically reflect on both the immediate effects and longer-term impacts of our efforts, then while enduring lean times we may gain extraordinary benefits. There is beauty in simple behavioral routines; the term behavioral aesthetic captures both the ongoing process and the outcomes achieved. It is an art form at an everyday behavioral level. An ever repeating daily pattern focused on deriving well-being while responding to ever more difficult circumstances.
The emerging biophysical reality is harsh, particularly when we feel entitled to the comforts and conveniences afforded us by an techno-industrial society. Fortunately, humans evolved the innate inclination to envision alternative futures and to adapt their current behavior to those visions. We have a temperament for mutual aid and pragmatic responses, no matter how unrelenting the reality. A decent life on a good planet is still possible.
References
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Hall, C.A.S. (2017) The history, future, and implications of EROI for society. In: Energy Return on Investment: A Unifying Principle for Biology, Economics, and Sustainability. Springer, Cham, (pp. 145–169).
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Murphy, T. (2024) Metastatic modernity. Do the Math.
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Seligman, M.E.P. (1999) Speaking of education: Teaching positive psychology. The APA Monitor, 30: 42.
Speth, J. G. (2023) Through a glass, darkly. Resilience.org
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Raymond De Young, PhD.
School for Environment and Sustainability
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
October 18, 2024
