Class 12: Post Carbon World
CofC
Fall 2011
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“But it’s not necessary, or probably even very useful, to design the
perfect size or shape of a community; it’s enough to say that , for
reasons of ecological sustainability and human satisfaction, our
systems and economies have gotten too large, and that we need to
start building them back down. What we need is a new trajectory,
toward the smaller and more local.”

Rethink our relationship to commodities, and community property

Local communication, local energy production, and renewed
economic production (and local currency??)

Decentralizing governance and minimizing econ interference and
subsidies

“could it be that this modernity, this hyper-individuality is a phase
through which humans need to pass before they can figure out its
limitations?”

Comparison of China (unfettered growth) with other
counter models.

Movement from rural spaces of relative autonomy to
urban shanty towns

Can the world live like Americans and be built on
China’s model for unfettered growth?

Europeans are more communitarian…use half US
energy, live smaller scales and are generally happier.

Move to local economies, with local communications,
and farmer’s markets

McKibben: Deep Economy

Problem: resource extraction/use, using nature as a limitless resource,
and externalizing waste and pollution  We have a “broken economic
compass” (market is chalk full of distortions and perverse incentives)

Result: leads to environmental degradation and depletion of resource
that ultimately negatively affects social/human systems

Solution: Reverse logic  Nature is scarce, people are abundant (away
from limitless nature and scarce labor)

How?: Change system of production to address productionconsumption cycle (away from cradle to grave) and address waste at all
stages of the process. Engage a “Whole Systems Approach.” Do this by
mimicking ecological system.

Result: “Abundance by design”  replenishing nature’s reserves
1. Increase resource productivity

 “radically reduce the throughput in the system”
 2. Biomimicry – mirror ecological systems in design


Change what is in the throughput (i.e. the materials themselves)
3. Shift away from production of goods to flow of
service and value (using #1 and #2)
 Key: synergistic incentives between production and
consumption (not perverse)
 Keep your stuff and sell the service

4. Reinvest in environment (natural capital streams)

Berkeley Lecture: Trade and Natural Capitalism

Roundtable Rocky Mtn Inst: Natural Capitalism

Visions of Sustainable Future (10m)

“The question of whether technology, politics
and economic muscle can sort out the
problem is the small question. The big
question is about sorting out the human
condition. It is the question of who we can
deepen our humanity to cope with possible
waves of war, famine, disease and refugees.”

Financial: short-term problems around money, credit
and institutions
 Impermanent and repairable (in a few years)
 Fisher: Don’t agree. It’s about power and increasing
marginalization of the middle.

Ecological: more permanent and irreparable.
 Daly: Biosphere is a subsystem of the economy now
 Climate Change
 Economics was developed for industrialization, not for the
damage to ecosystems, and certainly not for climate
destablization.
 Politics (democracy) doesn’t account future gens or species
▪ Fisher: Doesn’t account for disconnection of governance
Need transformation of governance – much like
that of 1776 – 1800
 We need “systemic calibration of governance
with how the world works as a physical system.”
 Need to:

 1. as matter of public policy, stablize emissions
 2. Pres Obama must launch a pub process to consider
long-term changes to systems of governance, law,
and politics.
▪ Rights: of people vs. Corps vs. nature
▪ Bully Pulpit: to “help build our civic intelligence…and extend
our notions of citizenship…to wider community”
1.
2.
3.
4.
Create a practical vision of post-carbon
prosperity
Develop the financial means to pay for the
transition
Actually building a new energy system
Structure private choices so that people
have a clear incentive to choose efficiency
and renewables and buy local