The Dilemmas of Energy.
1998 Series 1 Number 27 Page 7
This was a six-page essay by C.R. (Buzz) Nixon, who presented it to the Guelph-Wellington Men’s Club.
The essay was based on the problematique described by the Club of Rome has set out in an article by Bob Fletcher and a set of slides from Dr. Robert Hoffman showing the interconnection of many factors central to sustainability.
Essentially, “[w]e humans are taking more renewable resources from, and are injecting more wastes and pollutants back into, the planets ecosphere than it can sustain in the long term. That is, the current level of human activity is not sustainable.”
He identified two factors at work—human population and the amount of activity of each human—and said there is no good way to measure individual activity, so our per capita rate of energy use will have to serve as a proxy.
He then delves into energy use, and the resulting global warming and its effects. That is followed by an explanation of the political realities that are keeping us from dealing with our greenhouse gas emissions.
He posited that we will soon not have to worry about reducing our consumption of oil as our supplies will run out.
He concluded this way:
“If the consumption of energy is so central to our way of life in industrial societies and, at the same time, is the major physical factor contributing to the human destruction of the ecosphere, then surely, we should not be concern just with curtailing our [GHG] emissions, but [also] about reducing the actual consumption of energy in all forms. That could be achieved by some international system of periodic individually issued energy warrants, which would allow that person to consume a specified amount of energy. The warrants would be time-expired, and would be bought and sold on some form of exchange so that those who did not wish to consume their allocated quota of energy could sell their warrants to those who wanted to consume more than they were allocated. Such an international system would be in keeping with already established concept[s] of trading. Pollution rates it would obviate the problems that I have mentioned about the developed-underdeveloped country issue, the concern about energy for those at the bottom of the income scale, and would rely on the incentive-market-based scheme to achieve the required result.
I believe that sooner or later humanity is going to have to arrive at some scheme to establish an overall limit on energy consumption, [b]ut I doubt that a scheme such as I have mentioned is going to receive much support until things become much more severe as we struggled to have our way of life without destroying the suitability sustainability of the eco sphere.
[The suggestion that we could ration energy use is, I believe, essential. However, we must ensure that there is no black market and that the rich simply do not buy up the rations of the poor. That is essentially what now happens in our supposedly free markets. Ed.]
Leave a Reply