Pushing the Limits Interview with Thomas Homer-Dixon

“Usually, limits to growth means the economy grows, it creates problems, therefore we have to limit growth. I am saying the economy grows and it is running into a set of problems that will limit growth, regardless of whether we think those problems are bad or not…People are going to be outraged by this because there is the general assumption…(is) that the limits to growth debate is dead…I look at the rate at which the Greenland icecap is melting and I look at the trends in the price of energy and I say, no, it is not dead, it is right there in front of us.”

With one Governor General’s award under his belt for The Ingenuity Gap, Thomas Homer-Dixon set out to assess our political, social, economic and ecological systems, first to see what kind of trouble they are in, and then to determine how these complications may combine. The result: The Upside of Down, spelling out a concerning prognosis for our future.

JG:
Do you believe in ‘peak oil’?

THD:
I definitely think that we are going to get a peak in oil production in the next couple of decades. To deny that is really to deny common sense. Whether it is smooth or harsh is going to depend on what kinds of investments we make in innovation. At the moment we are not, especially in North America. We have to see this as a transition from essentially cheap energy to expensive energy. I don’t necessarily mean monetary cost. I mean how much energy it takes you to generate energy. We haven’t wrapped our head around exactly what that means. But there is no doubt that our technologies, our urban designs, our economic practices, the amount of trade we see within and between regions—all of these things are going to change dramatically as will our personal lifestyles, our leisure patterns and the kinds of employment that we have.

JG:
Can we rely on technology and efficiency to solve our energy challenges?

THD:
We have been making enormous strides in terms of efficiency of energy and materials. We have reduced the energy intensity of GDP dramatically, 30 or 40% in the last 20 or 30 years. But our absolute consumption of energy and materials has either stayed constant or gone up. Our overall economic growth is higher than the advances we are making in productivity. So I don’t see any prospect through technology alone or through efficiency alone reducing our energy and materials in any significant way. The techno-optimist line here is that we can get out of this situation just by being inventive. Instead, [the truth] drives you to confront the nature of our economy—the growth imperative, the consumption imperative. We don’t like to face these issues.

JG:
You say efficiency is not always a good idea. Why?

THD:
We run our economy and our society as if they are machines that we tweak to maximum productivity and efficiency and we can run them at peak output to maximize satisfaction of the system. But we are learning that most of the systems are not like that. You need to be prudent and you need to build in some capacity to deal with a system doing weird things sometimes. This is kind of a radical idea when you think about all of its implications for society. It means that we have to buy resilience by giving up a bit of efficiency. Nobody talks about resilience. Our political leaders don’t talk about resilience. People are talking constantly about increasing productivity, wealth and connectivity. All of which ultimately creates a more complex, more tightly coupled system that is increasingly vulnerable to certain types of failures, cascading failures. Well, if we are learning anything about the world, it is that we haven’t got a clue. I get this feeling in Washington sometimes; some powerful people don’t actually know what is going on and it’s a creepy realization.

JG:
What’s your position on geo-engineering to deal with climate change?

THD:
Initially I strongly disagreed with the suggestion that we should implement geo-engineering. But in the last two years, critical new evidence has come to light regarding the pace of climate change and the severity of its likely impacts, especially with regard to sea-level rise. So I’ve had to reconsider my position. I now expect that some form of geo-engineering will be a central focus of policy discussions within 10 years and will quite possibly be executed within 20 years. Geo-engineering is in no way a substitute for action now to reduce carbon emissions. But, while significant action regarding mitigation is still imperative, I’ve reluctantly concluded that over time geo-engineering will come to be seen as essential.

JG:
You raise the steady state economy, or an economy that neither grows nor shrinks, in your book. Is this something we should strive for?

THD:
I think it is something that we need to return to. I wrote a piece last year for the New York Times saying that the ‘limits to growth’ debate is coming back. I approach this topic a little differently. Usually, limits to growth means the economy grows, it creates problems, therefore we have to limit growth. I am saying the economy grows and it is running into a set of problems that will limit growth, regardless of whether we think those problems are bad or not. It is just a fact of life that the changing price of energy and climate change around the planet are both going to have such enormous economic costs that they are probably going to cap growth. People are going to be outraged by this because there is the general assumption among the cognoscenti especially within our economic and political elites that the limits to growth debate is dead, it’s over. I look at the rate at which the Greenland icecap is melting and I look at the trends in the price of energy and I say, no, it is not dead, it is right there in front of us.

Jordy Gold is a sustainability expert and columnist for Corporate Knights. You will find his work online at www.jordygold.com