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The Accelerating Vehicle

Take the metaphor of the car. At the beginning of the industrial era, the car suddenly appears. Only a few countries get in and drive off; they are then joined by others as the century proceeds. All the countries that have climbed on board – what we call industrial civilization – took a very particular route, one that we describe in this chapter. After a slow and gradual start, the car picks up speed at the end of the Second World War, and embarks on a breathtaking ascent called ‘the great acceleration’.1 Today, after some signs of overheating in the spluttering engine, the needle on the speedometer is starting to flicker. Will the needle continue to climb? Will it stabilize? Will it go back down?

A world of exponentials

Although we came across the idea at school, we are not accustomed to think in terms of ‘exponential growth’. Of course, we can see a curve that goes up, indicating a growth. But what a growth it is! While the human mind can easily imagine arithmetical growth, for example a hair that grows one centimetre a month, it struggles to imagine exponential growth.

If you fold a large piece of cloth in half, after four folds its thickness will measure about 1 cm. If you could fold it in two another twenty-nine times, its thickness would have grown to 5,400 kilometres, the distance between Paris and Dubai. A few more folds would be enough to exceed the distance between the Earth and the Moon. A gross domestic product (GDP) (for example, China’s) which is growing at 7 per cent a year represents an economic activity that doubles every ten years, and so quadruples in twenty years. After fifty years, we are dealing with a volume of 32 Chinese economies, i.e., at current values the equivalent of almost four additional world economies. Do you sincerely believe that this can be possible in the current state of our planet?

There are plenty of examples to describe the incredible behaviour of the exponential curve, from the water-lily equation, dear to Albert Jacquard,2 to the chessboard on which each successive square is filled with twice the number of grains of rice as the previous one,3 all showing the amazing and indeed counter-intuitive dynamic at work: when the effects of this growth become visible, it is often too late.

In mathematics, an exponential function goes all the way up to the sky. In the real world, on Earth, it hits a ceiling long before that. In ecology, this ceiling is called the capacity load of an ecosystem (denoted as K). There are usually three ways for a system to react to an exponential (see Figure 1.1). Take the classic example of an expanding population of rabbits in a meadow. Either the population gradually stabilizes before the ceiling, i.e., it does not grow any more, but finds a balance with its milieu (Figure 1.1a), or the population exceeds the maximum threshold that the meadow can support and then stabilizes in an oscillation that slightly damages the meadow (Figure 1.1b), or it breaks through the ceiling and continues to accelerate (overshooting), which leads to a collapse of the meadow, followed by that of the rabbit population (Figure 1.1c).4

Figure 1.1 Reaction of a living system to exponential growth (the continuous curve represents a population and the dotted curve represents the carrying capacity of the milieu)

Source: after Meadows et al., 2004.

These three theoretical diagrams can be used to illustrate three eras. So the first schema corresponds typically to the political ecology of the 1970s: we still had the time and opportunity to follow a path of ‘sustainable development’ (a ‘steady-state economy’). The second represents the ecology of the 1990s when, thanks to the concept of ecological footprint, we realized that the overall carrying capacity of the Earth had been exceeded.5 Since that period, every year, humankind as a whole has been ‘consuming more than one planet’ and ecosystems have become increasingly undermined. The last diagram represents the ecology of the 2010s: for the past twenty years, we have continued to accelerate quite knowingly, destroying the Earth system at an ever faster pace – the very system that welcomes and sustains us. Whatever the optimists may say, the time we are living is clearly marked by the spectre of a collapse.

Figure 1.2a The trajectory of the Anthropocene: a summary

Source: after Will Steffen et al., ‘The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration’, The Anthropocene Review, 2015: 1–18.

Total acceleration

We should by now realize that many of the parameters of our societies and of our impact on the planet are increasing at an exponential rate: population, GDP, water and energy consumption, the use of fertilizers, the production of engines and telephones, tourism, the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, the number of floods, the damage to ecosystems, the destruction of forests, the extinction rate of species, and so on. The list is endless. This overall picture7 (see Figure 1.2a and 1.2b), very familiar to scientists, has almost become the logo of the new geological period called the Anthropocene, a time when humans have become a force that upsets the major biogeochemical cycles of the Earth system.

Figure 1.2b The trajectory of the Anthropocene: a summary

What has happened? Why this dramatic increase? Some Anthropocene specialists date the beginning of this period to the middle of the nineteenth century and the Industrial Revolution when the use of coal and steam became widespread, giving rise to the railway boom of the 1840s, followed by the discovery of the first oil deposits. As early as 1907, the philosopher Henri Bergson, with extraordinary prophetic insight, wrote:

A century has elapsed since the invention of the steam-engine, and we are only just beginning to feel the depths of the shock it gave us. But the revolution it has effected in industry has nevertheless upset human relations altogether. New ideas are arising, new feelings are on the way to flower. In thousands of years, when, seen from the distance, only the broad lines of the present age will still be visible, our wars and our revolutions will count for little, even supposing they are remembered at all; but the steam-engine, and the procession of inventions of every kind that accompanied it, will perhaps be spoken of as we speak of the bronze or of the chipped stone of prehistoric times: it will serve to define an age.8

The age of heat engines and the technosciences replaced the age of agrarian and artisanal societies. The appearance of fast and cheap transportation opened up new routes for commerce, and shrank distances. In the industrialized world, the hellish rhythms of automatized production lines became widespread and, gradually, overall material comfort levels increased. Decisive progress in public hygiene, food and medicine increased lifespan and reduced mortality rates considerably. World population, which had doubled about every thousand years over the last eight millennia, doubled in just one century. From one billion people in 1830, it grew to two billion in 1930. Then things really speeded up: in only forty years, the population doubled again. Four billion in 1970. Seven billion today. In the space of a single lifetime, a person born in the 1930s saw the population increase from two billion to seven billion! During the twentieth century, energy consumption increased tenfold, the extraction of industrial minerals by a factor of 27, and that of building materials by a factor of 34.9 The scale and the speed of the changes we are triggering are unprecedented in history.

This huge acceleration can also be seen on the social level. The German philosopher and sociologist Hartmut Rosa describes three dimensions of this social acceleration.10 The first is technical acceleration: ‘the increase in travelling and communication speeds, indeed, lies behind that highly characteristic experience of our times, the “shrinking of space”: distances in space appear to be shrinking as we can cross them more quickly and easily’.11 The second is the acceleration in social change: our habits and our patterns of relationship are becoming transformed ever more quickly. For example, it is clear ‘that our neighbours move in and then move out ever more frequently, that our life partners (or partners for parts of our lives), as well as our jobs, have ever shorter “half-lives”, and that fashions, car models and musical styles succeed one another with increasing rapidity.’ We are witnessing a veritable ‘shrinking of the present’. The third acceleration is the acceleration in the rhythms of our lives: in reaction to technical and social acceleration, we try to live faster. We fill our timetables ever more efficiently; we strive to avoid ‘wasting’ this precious time and, strangely, the number of things we need (and want) to do seems to grow indefinitely. ‘The acute “shortage of time” has become a permanent state of modern societies.’12 The result? Happiness eludes us, we suffer burn-out, depression becomes endemic. And the height of progress is that this social acceleration that we relentlessly manufacture/suffer no longer aims to improve our standard of living, it just serves to maintain the status quo.

Where do the limits lie?

The essential question of our time is therefore to know where the ceiling is.13 Do we have the capacity to continue to accelerate? Is there a limit (or several limits) to our exponential growth? And, if so, how long do we still have before things collapse?

It may be simple or even simplistic, but the metaphor of the car has the advantage of clearly distinguishing between the different ‘problems’ (call them ‘crises’) that we face. It suggests that there are two types of limit, or more precisely that there are limits on the one hand and boundaries on the other. The former cannot be crossed because they come up against the laws of thermodynamics: that’s the problem of the fuel tank. The second can be crossed but they are no less insidious because they are invisible, and we realize that we are crossing them only when it is too late. This is the problem of speed and keeping the vehicle on course.

The limits of our civilization are imposed by the quantities of so-called ‘stock’ resources, which are by definition nonrenewable (fossil fuels and ores), and ‘flow’ resources (water, wood, food, etc.): these are renewable but we are exhausting them far too quickly for them to have time to regenerate. However much the engine may gain in efficiency, there will always come a time when it can no longer work for lack of fuel (see chapter 2).

The boundaries of our civilization represent thresholds that cannot be crossed on pain of destabilizing and destroying the systems that keep it alive: for example, the climate, the major cycles of the Earth system, and ecosystems (which include all non-human living things). If the vehicle goes too fast, we can no longer perceive the details of the road, and this increases the risk of an accident (see chapter 3). We will try to see what happens when, without warning, the car leaves the route laid out and enters an uncertain and perilous world.

These crises are of profoundly different natures, but they all have the same common denominator: the car’s acceleration. In addition, each of the limits and boundaries is all by itself capable of seriously destabilizing civilization. The problem, in our case, is that we are running up against several limits simultaneously and we have already crossed several boundaries!

As for the car itself, it has of course improved over the decades. It has become far more spacious, modern and comfortable, but at what a price! Not only is it impossible to slow down or turn – the accelerator pedal is glued to the floor and the steering wheel has got stuck (see chapter 4) – but, more embarrassingly, the driver’s seat has become extremely fragile (see chapter 5).

The car is our society, our thermo-industrial civilization. We’ve climbed aboard and set off, our satnavs set for a sunny destination. No stop-offs are planned. Sitting comfortably in the passenger seat, we forget about speed, we ignore the living creatures we run over, the tremendous energy being expended and the amount of exhaust we are leaving behind us. As you well know, once you’re on the motorway, all that matters is the arrival time, the temperature of the air conditioning and the quality of the radio programme ….

Notes

  1. 1. Will Steffen et al., ‘The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The great acceleration’, The Anthropocene Review 2: 81–98.
  2. 2. Albert Jacquard is a geneticist, essayist and humanist. See Albert Jacquard, L’Équation du nénuphar: les plaisirs de la science (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1998).
  3. 3. The interested reader can find a series of highly instructive examples of the way an exponential behaves in ch. 2 of Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972).
  4. 4. C. Hui, ‘Carrying capacity, population equilibrium, and environment’s maximal load’, Ecological Modelling 192, 2006: 317–20.
  5. 5. Mathis Wackernagel and William E. Rees, ‘Perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital: Economics from an ecological footprint perspective’, Ecological Economics 20(1), 1997: 3–24.
  6. 6. Donella Meadows et al., Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004).
  7. 7. As presented by Will Steffen et al., ‘The Anthropocene: Are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature?’, AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 36(8), 2007: 614–21.
  8. 8. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (London: Macmillan & Co., 1922), pp. 145–6.
  9. 9. Fridolin Krausmann et al., ‘Growth in global materials use, GDP and population during the 20th century’, Ecological Economics 68(10), 2009: 2696–705.
  10. 10. Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, trans. Jonathan Trejo-Mathys (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
  11. 11. Hartmut Rosa, ‘Accélération et dépression. Réflexions sur le rapport au temps de notre époque’, Rhizome 43, 2012: 4–13.
  12. 12. Rosa, ‘Accélération et dépression’.
  13. 13. This is the question which the think tank known as the Club of Rome asked the team comprised of Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers and William W. Behrens III to consider. Their report was published in 1972 as ‘Limits to growth’. See also Serge Latouche, L’øge des limites (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2013).