Readers letters
I think that the IMechE is wrong to embrace nuclear power as an option for sorting out our energy difficulties. It just replaces one set of problems with another. I think it was Henry Ford who said "whether you think you can, or whether you think you can't - you're right": while we continue to think that the only way forward is to include nuclear power, we will not seriously consider a rather more sustainable future without it. And I think it was Ove Arup who said something like "unless you aim for the impossible, you'll never achieve what is possible". Don't get hung up on jobs and share prices - these will sort themselves out. They're not the bigger picture.
Pretty much all the talk about sustainability seems to me to be rather narrowly anthropocentric – focused on maintaining the Earth and all its life as resources for us, so we can retain our lifestyles, rather than as an entity and as living things that have a right to exist whether humans are here or not.
‘Growth’, it seems to be, is almost universally referred to as if it were a good thing. The only good thing. And that if our economies don’t grow, then that’s bad. Some people talk about ‘sustainable growth’. This is an oxymoron. There is finite space, and there are finite resources – it is simply impossible for us to continue to grow indefinitely.
And this, I think, is the central problem. Actually, we need less, not more. And this won’t come about without a profound change in human outlook.
As a race, we need to become more humble. The volcano in Iceland, floods in Pakistan, various earthquakes, tsunamis and cyclones ought to remind us how puny we are, but we don’t listen. There are parts of the world where, frankly, humans shouldn’t live. What gives us the right to assume that the Earth and all its glorious diversity are there simply to provide us with a comfortable living environment?
While we continue to separate ourselves from production and waste disposal, we will continue to consume more – of all things – and we will be in an ever-increasing spiral of struggling to keep up with demand. This is a big part of the problem with remote means of generating/producing power, water, clothes, food, actually anything.
As long as we can flick a switch and the lights come on, as long as water flows readily from our taps, we’ll keep using them more. As long as we can throw away our rubbish, whether we think it’s going to be recycled/re-used/recovered in whatever way or not, and have no further part in what happens to it, we’ll continue to keep buying things and throwing them away. As long as the shelves are full at the supermarket, we’ll continue to eat more.
Unless we re-establish our individual connections with production, consumption and the associated waste, and hence have more direct involvement with the consequences, we will continue to live out of kilter with the Earth.
I don’t have the solutions. And I’m not sure that retention of our current economic system is compatible with the changes that will be needed. But I am an inveterate optimist, and so I’m hopeful that we’ll all be OK...
John Davys, Hove, East Sussex