Social Ingenuity - Inventions Technological Cleverness

It continues to happen. Even though we (must?) know there are cheaper, easier, more effective and more sustainable solutions by now. Barack's plan for energy transformation is innovative and brave. But I cannot help but put it in perspective.

We keep betting our current and future assets on finding ways to continue consuming energy in the quantities we do. Yet the real ingenuity is not technological.

Its right here and its right now and its the lowest hanging fruit of all. Its not using it up in the first place. Its negawatts v megawatts. Its legs, bicycles and public transit v. cars.

Its things money and technology cannot buy: A walk in the woods. A stroll by the lake. A chair on the porch. A cool drink of water. A lazy summer breeze. A cup of tea with a friend. Its things we hear, taste, smell, touch, do, make, write, speak, ourselves. Its game with the kids. Its philosophic conversations. All of these things are right here, right now, right in front of us. Its worthwhile not lifestyle.

This is not to say that industrial society does not need financial investment and technological innovation to achieve very desirable and needed efficiencies to reduce material and energy use and "throughput" to a more sustainable level. It only says, we need to question the rate of usage we currently take for granted. It says we need to question the assumed rate at which we consume that is currently the invisible foundation on which we think we need to surge forward with sophisticated and expensive technological innovation. It also says that questioning our assumptions ("the unexamined life is not worth living" remember?) about the amount of material it takes to be happy will create more "space" in which to transform our societies. We can lament the difficulties of getting political decision makers to create and implement public policies that are sustainable. And we should. But, in the mean time, we can see the possibilities right in front of us that are liberating in that they do not require any major political movement to implement on the personal, family or even community level.

In the the end, most of our engineering feats in modern society will lie rusted and idol as the primary fuel on which they were build will be spent and unacceptable to the assimilative capacity of nature.

Very little of what really matters requires big financial investment, scientific ingenuity, material or energy consumption. Its just you me and our skills and time that will secure a future.

The Economic Quantitative & The Ecologic Qualitative

The fundamental problem with environmental economics as a framework for analysis and advocacy for sustainability is that it is restricted to using quantitative methods to achieve an essentially qualitative goal. Sustainability lies on multi dimensional gradient and cannot be fully conceptualized, understood let alone actualized on a two dimensional plane.