A dispiriting affliction that often results in listlessness and apathy, if not caught quickly, usually by sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears, it can spread quickly, sometimes disabling whole families and communities.
But when I read Wes' commencement address two months later, reprinted as an article titled "The Next 49 Years" in the Institute’s quarterly Land Report, I understood his comment to be less a call to arms than a meditation on our moment in time.
"In painting you this bleak picture, I hope you understand that I am honoring you as adults," he told the students. "You were born on the up slope of energy and economic growth, but much of your life is likely to be on the down slope in the use of renewable energy."
That’s because we’re depleting the "five pools of carbon" - soil, wood, coal, oil, and natural gas - at an unsustainable rate, Wes writes. We’ve burned up, for instance, half the planet’s known reserves of oil - 1 trillion barrels - in less than a century. Technology is not likely to ride to the rescue either. Energy, after all, cannot be created or destroyed - according to the First Law of Thermodynamics - just transformed. So, when sources of energy-rich carbon go into decline, as they will, we either we find a suitable replacement - and we haven’t yet - or society goes into decline too. On this point, Wes is not sanguine.
"Down-powering won’t be easy. It will require sacrifice," he goes on to say. "Realize that [us old farts] won’t be around to experience the consequences of reduced energy and climate
In January, 2008, I had a chance to query Wes once more on this topic, this time publicly as part of The Quivira Coalition’s Annual Conference. "What," I asked him, "did living at the most important moment in human history actually mean?"
"It means we have to practice restraint," he replied. "That’s not something humans do very well, of course. But it’s something we’ve got to learn or things will get much worse."
Restraint.
Good luck. Two generations ago, during an era of privation and global conflict, restraint was not only possible but often well-practiced. Gas rationing. Victory Gardens. Meat twice a week. Prudence and frugality ruled. But everything changed after World War II, as we know. The arrow of Progress tipped upward dramatically. We were encouraged at all levels to be unrestrained in all that we did, whether it was how far we traveled, how much we ate, what we built, or where we sprawled. "Just Do It" was the unofficial motto of my generation, courtesy of an ad agency.
Progress, we were instructed, had no limits and no consequences. Enjoy the party - there won’t be a Hangover. As a result, excess was hard-wired into our culture, which is why I’m not hugely optimistic about the chances of restraining ourselves now, at this crucial moment in history. Hopeful, yes - because we’ve got to restrain our appetites sooner or later - but optimistic, no.
Instead, I’ve had another "r-word" on my mind: resilience. For a while, I wasn’t sure what the word meant exactly. All I knew
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