Chapter 19: Resource Management, Long-Term Sustainability, and the Environment

The imperatives imposed by the modern feudal socioeconomic paradigm lead to a runaway, escalating cycle of artificially-forced overproduction and over consumption devours and depletes natural resources, generates massive pollution and waste, and a preponderance of inferior quality products intended and designed to not last long, to not be easily serviceable, and to be frequently replaced. After all, if everybody has all the shoes they need and they last a lifetime, then how is a shoe company to maintain their profits? This spawns work environments driven by extreme pressure, long work hours and debilitating stress. This compromises our health, quality of life, and most likely our very survival as individuals and as a species. And it is almost entirely unnecessary.

This chapter was written when the Transition was imagined as a single, rapid, coordinated event. Passages from that original plan are kept for transparency in marked boxes; the current approach is gradual, voluntary and democratic (how the approach has evolved).

Let us call this the self-devouring cycle, because in our compulsion to pursue corporate profits, we must constantly consume natural resources faster and faster, to produce short-lived inferior products to sell faster and faster, driving employees under constant, unrelenting stress to keep stepping up production. Such an economy thrives by using up natural resources, spewing out expanding masses of waste and pollution, driving employees to the point of burnout in order to keep those same employees buying new products more and more often. Thus, we compulsively devour our resources including ourselves, trash our environment, and all to keep up profits and stock prices to keep the modern feudal lords getting richer and more powerful.

We, the modern serfs and peasants, literally carry the weight of the economic wealth and power pyramid of our society on our shoulders, and it is slowly but surely crushing the life out of us.

The new paradigm will completely change this. The new socioeconomic paradigm will be driven by maximizing human health, well-being, fulfillment, and ability to make one’s best contribution to the community while fulfilling one’s own dreams. Goods and services will be the best quality that the state of the art allows, will be designed to be robust and last long, will be easily serviceable and upgradeable to accommodate new technology, and will be designed to satisfy authentic needs and desires, not artificially-programmed ones. Once everybody’s needs are satisfied, production in any given industry will dial back to what’s needed to cover breakage, population growth, and eventual wear and tear. Typical work hours will settle down to probably less than half of what they are now. The typical citizen will have pride in workmanship alongside a lot more free time for creative, innovative, and educational pursuits. Depletion of natural resources will plummet, as will pollution and waste production. The best possible goods and services will be for everybody, not for just the ultra-wealthy. There will be no poor, no rich, no middle class.

Freed from having to focus most of our energy on coming up with enough carefully-scarcified currency to pay for literally everything, we will be free to focus on pursuing and fulfilling authentic, real needs and desires. We will do what actually needs to be done, not what has to be done to make the money to pay for what actually needs to be done. Our individual and societal quality of life will soar as never before. We will not, of course, be free of all problems and challenges; but we will be freed from the vast majority of unnecessary, arbitrary problems, stresses, and burdens. Artistic, scientific, and technological innovation will proliferate, the more so because all will have access to the education, training, equipment and other resources necessary to make such innovations. We can expect to enjoy a renaissance unparalleled in recorded history.

To further reinforce innovation, we will publicly celebrate and acknowledge artistic, scientific, technological and other innovations and those who bring them about. Not as permanent celebrities, but as heroes for long enough to feel the appreciation and validation of their community. A new universal social-media space will be created, which will form a forum for public discussion, collaboration, feedback, and information. Anybody will be able to post suggestions and feedback on existing goods and services or suggest ones that they think would be beneficial. Developers and producers will monitor such feedback and strive to implement the viable feedback and suggestions. Thus available goods and services will constantly adapt to the needs and desires of users. In addition, if you need something, in the absence of advertising, you’ll be able to find it on this central web space. Looking for a computer or roof tiles or a cardiologist? You will easily find it on the universal web site.

There will be no more phones with batteries that can’t be replaced without destroying the phone, no upgrades that slow down your device to make you buy a new one, no apps that stop working and hold your files hostage if you don’t pay a monthly fee. There will be no such thing as an “out of network” provider or a non-covered treatment. There will be no “bundles” – you will get exactly the channels you want. There will be no models that aren’t supported after a couple of months, and no hidden fine-print “gotcha” to worry about.

The unsustainable, cancer-like self-devouring cycle will die a well-deserved death. Broken or obsolete appliances and other products will no longer pile up higher day by day in ever-expanding landfills. The rivers we drink from will no longer be drained nearly dry by our voracious compulsive consumption, both literally and metaphorically. We will start to heal and become whole again, and hopefully so will the ecosystem.

We must act fast to bring about the Transition to the new paradigm. The more than eight billion of us, with our agriculture, industry, mining, pollution, clear-cutting, and such have become a threat to around a million animal and plant species, many within decades (IPBES, 2019). The global metastasis of this self-devouring cycle arising out of the dominant socioeconomic paradigm is responsible for that paleontologists are calling the “Holocene extinction event” or the “Sixth Mass Extinction.” This self-devouring cycle is literally killing off whole species at tens to hundreds of times the natural background rate (IPBES, 2019), putting us on course for the first mass extinction since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs (and a lot more), about sixty-six million years ago. When we were, as geneticists have determined we were at one time, approximately ten thousand hunter-gatherers, our impact was negligible. But what is negligible for a population of ten thousand hunter-gatherers is a critical emergency for a population of over eight billion of us, frantically consuming everything in sight, spewing waste and pollution including needlessly failed products, and doing little to nothing to mitigate the impact.

Picture all of the trees cut down to make cardboard for packaging for frequently-replaced inferior products. Picture the ever-expanding holes in the earth as mines voraciously churn up ore and other minerals to be used in products designed to fail after a year or two and be thrown away. Picture the more than a billion new smartphones shipped every year, each replaced within a few years – imagine a landfill just for all of the world’s discarded cell phones! Now add in cars, washing machines, toasters, clothes, shoes, toys, aluminum cans and plastic bottles, and everything that we use every day.

To make it real, imagine every discarded or broken product, every box and wrapper, every empty beer can, every piece of junk mail, every piece of unsolicited advertising that you’ve ever gotten rid of. Imagine that instead of throwing them in the trash, you tossed them into a room in your home, your basement, or into the nearest yard or street. Would there be any room for you or for normal activities of living? If you live in a studio apartment, you’d be crowded out very quickly. If you live in a mansion, it would take a lot longer, but it would happen. Consider that when billions of us toss things in the trash, we’re doing the same thing to the only planet we have to live on. That’s just the physical waste. Now consider the same mental exercise applied to the pollution, and to the consumption of resources. If you burned furniture and wood from your house to heat a kiln to produce pots to sell, then sooner or later you would be living out in the cold and have nothing left to burn. This is what we’re doing on a global scale. The self-devouring cycle is utterly destructive and unsustainable. It has no justification and no lasting upside. We devour in decades, resources that could have lasted centuries or more if wisely managed. Resources are finite. Space on our planet is finite. We simply cannot continue as we’ve been doing.

In the new paradigm, breakage and obsolescence will be a minute fraction of what they are now. Broken, obsolete or discarded items will be systematically recycled or repurposed, starting with what’s lying around now.

Surely even the modern feudal lords, the oligarchs of our society, must realize that the current pattern is not sustainable! Do not forget, however, that many of these people are caught in a compulsion that follows the pattern of a behavioural addiction, much like gambling, drug or video game addiction. They are driven to accumulate wealth, power, opulence and privilege. Like anyone caught in an addiction, they can devote their lives and energies to feeding it, even when it hurts or kills others or even themselves. Many are also convinced that there’s no jam that they can’t buy, bully, influence, bluster, bribe, or bull-in-the-china-shop their way out of. Left unaddressed, their compulsion has become a danger and a threat to all of us, including themselves. It has gotten to this point because most societies have failed to recognize it for what it is and to help those caught in it get free of it. Worse, most societies have actively encouraged and enabled it, holding it up to be emulated by all and treating those caught in it as success stories and role models. This cannot continue.

To call this an addiction is not an insult. Addiction is not a moral failing; it is a pattern that takes hold of people, and anyone can be caught in one. The relentless drive to accumulate ever more wealth, power and privilege, at almost any cost, including the extraordinary lengths some go to avoid taxes, hoard wealth and escape regulation, has all the hallmarks of a behavioural addiction, like gambling disorder or gaming disorder, both recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is not yet a recognised diagnosis. That is not evidence that it isn’t an addiction; it reflects a culture that admires this compulsion, holds it up to be emulated and defers to it, instead of questioning it. Gaming disorder itself was recognised only in 2019. Left unrecognised, this compulsion can dominate the lives of those caught in it and harm many others, as other addictions do. It is not true of every wealthy person, and it is not a reason for contempt. People caught in it deserve understanding and the chance to get free of it, which a society that no longer rewards it would finally give them.

A better way to see it: we are all on a plane whose flight plan points it toward a mountain, set by rules that reward flying faster and faster in that direction. We don’t need to fight the pilot; we need to change the flight plan, democratically, before it’s too late. Those now at the controls deserve the same care and respect as anyone else as they adjust to a world where no one holds that kind of power over others.

Some may still try to force the old way back, through intimidation, sabotage or violence. That cannot be allowed, and it need not be met with vigilante action. A society that has chosen the Transition democratically protects it the way any democracy protects itself: through lawful, accountable law enforcement and the courts, using only the minimum force necessary and the same rules that apply to everyone; and through institutions designed so that no one can again seize control of what everyone depends on (see Phase 7B and its safeguards).

In addition to the self-devouring cycle, overpopulation is itself the cause for major present and future problems. We can’t keep growing our numbers indefinitely – sooner or later we would become so numerous that it would be literally impossible to feed, house, or even find a place for everybody. That is a more complex issue, which will have to be addressed separately. We never want to get to a scenario similar to the cannibalistic survival strategy in Soylent Green.”

There is reason for hope, however, as recent census data shows that population is beginning to decline in a growing number of countries. This is due to slowing birth rates, not growing death rates. If this trend continues on its own, then we may eventually reach a stable, sustainable and balanced population with little growth or decline over time. Demographers attribute the decline mainly to falling child mortality, women’s education and access to contraception; by 2024, population had already peaked in 63 countries and areas (United Nations, 2024). There is some reason to suspect that living in a highly-dangerous environment with high mortality and scarcity of resources may intensify the reproductive imperative instinctively. In other words, the earlier and faster people are dying, the more important to replace them and more. Conversely, the safer, healthier, and more life-affirming the social and natural environment, the less urgent it is to keep the birth rate up and so the birth rate falls (see National Academy of Sciences, 1963; Pew Research Center, 2015). Hopefully this is encoded deep in our genes as a species. If not, then we will have to emphasize making conscious choices.

We would be wise to deal with overpopulation consciously and deliberately. If our growth reverses itself and stabilizes at a sustainable number, then we can relax on that issue. But if not, then it is a very sensitive and potentially controversial issue. Some people and countries would likely balk at the idea of reducing their birth rate, for cultural, religious, or nationalistic reasons. If action is needed, we must strive seriously to honor the good of all while respecting the rights of the individual, a very challenging undertaking! It must be undertaken with mutual respect and sensitivity.

This is separate from the issue of the socio-economic paradigm. Yet the modern feudalistic paradigm is likely to exacerbate overpopulation and resist reversing or stabilizing it. After all, a stable or shrinking population means reduced opportunities for profit, fewer workers to manufacture and fewer consumers to buy fewer goods and services.

There are only three ways to resolve overpopulation: reduce the birth rate, increase the death rate, or colonize other worlds. Obviously increasing the death rate is unacceptable. Colonizing other worlds is beyond our ability right now, above all because of immense physical and engineering obstacles, and partly because the feudal socio-economic lords and their corporations see interstellar travel and associated technology as not likely to be profitable quickly enough, and so have not rushed to fund research and development in that direction. Mars could possibly be terraformed; but the return on investment isn’t enough to motivate them. We will only ever know what may or may not be technologically possible, if we free ourselves of the constraints of profitability imposed by the current paradigm.

Education and open, mutually respectful local, national, and global dialog will be needed, if possible. We do not want to ever become so overpopulated that no conceivable socio-economic paradigm can prevent mass starvation, privation, and fighting over hopelessly insufficient food, water, and space. In the process, we need to be sensitive to the fact that this issue touches on some of our most basic instincts and the most private, intimate aspects of our lives. We will fare badly if we use draconian measures to combat overpopulation.

Having lots of children was important to survival when infant mortality was high and lifespan was short. At this time in history, infant mortality is dramatically lower and longevity is far longer than in previous eras. What was needed then for survival as humankind is not the same as what’s needed now. Some of the cultural beliefs and perceptions that served well for countless generations in the pre-technological past do not serve us well now. Cultural traditions, beliefs and attitudes are even more challenging to change than an individual’s habits; but some of them will have to, for our own good.

The current dominant socio-economic paradigm exacerbates the problem of overpopulation in a number of ways. One arises out of the economic imperative to keep profits growing. In order to do this, the “market” must continually grow, as must the workforce. The market and the workforce are, for the most part, the same people: the modern serfs and peasants.

In addition, the dysfunctional extreme form of “individualism” that usually germinates under this paradigm, keeps us isolated, alienated and each having to fend for ourselves. Any kind of vibrant, tightly-bound extended family or larger community is very much not reinforced. There are even laws that make it difficult or even illegal to form the kind of cohesive extended-family/tribal/clan communities that were the source of our resilience as a species. For a couple to have only one or two children can, for some, feel too isolated.

Of course, in the new paradigm, the re-formation of tight, cohesive extended families and communities will end this isolation and alienation. Where there’s a community of families and singles functioning as a tightly-integrated organism, children are welcome everywhere and are able to socialize with many peers. Parents will not feel isolated. You don’t need to have eight kids, when you have two who usually have five or six friends over.

The new paradigm will remove the arbitrary, artificial economic pressures and reinforcers that currently select against the formation of cohesive extended communities and for the isolation and alienation of the nuclear family. Our natural social nature will begin to reassert itself. Extended healthy interdependencies and symbiotic bonds will naturally form. The shift away from massive central energy, food and other vital production, and towards distributed, community-based modes of production, will also naturally reinforce and facilitate re-engagement among members of the community. The extinction of corporations and hierarchical command structures, and their replacement with peer-based co-ownership, co-decision-making, co-stakeholding models will re-empower and re-energize people in every sector. There will no longer be mutually-predatory groups who must gain at each other’s expense. Instead, there will be organic associations of people, working together, voluntarily and symbiotically, for the good of each and all. The current fragmentation will end. Humanity will knit itself back into the living tapestry that is our strongest trait.

The healthy interconnectedness that will arise in the new paradigm will bring about a vast reduction of unnecessary stress and alienation, and will bring a sense of peace, belonging, and safety that is currently missing. Yet as individuals, we will no longer have to constantly fight against a relentless, permanent implicit denial of our right to live, to occupy space, to eat, to study and everything else. We will be truly free to pursue our life, liberty and happiness with no barriers, tollbooths, shackles, or manacles to hold us back.

Frank, non-judgmental multidisciplinary sex education in middle and secondary school has been shown to reduce teen pregnancy (Kohler, Manhart and Lafferty, 2008), and with it the rate of unplanned or unwanted pregnancies and, for that matter, the number of abortions. Such curricula neither stigmatize sexuality, nor encourage premature exploration. The goal and result is that by the time adolescents become reproductively capable and interested in sex, they are well-informed and prepared to make wiser, better-considered decisions. Free and open access to all forms of birth control finish the picture. In such societies, as in modern Scandinavia for example, adolescents and young adults aren’t more sexually active than in more repressive or ambivalent cultures. They just make better choices with a higher rate of good outcomes. They understand the physiological, emotional, biological, and mental dimensions of their sexuality. They neither rush, nor hold back.

In such societies, there are few sexual taboos. Medical care is publicly funded. Maternity and paternity leave are acknowledged as a right. In the new paradigm, the entropic drag of currency barriers will be absent. All of us will have direct access to services and resources that we need, by default, just as all cells in our bodies have access to what they need.

In the absence of profit or profit motive in the new paradigm, we will be able to fully examine our technological developments to re-evaluate which technologies to prioritize and which to de-emphasize or abandon. Under the current paradigm, technologies prevail that make someone a lot of money. Other technologies, which may be as good or superior to them, but which aren’t as profitable, fall by the wayside. In the new paradigm, the criteria will be what is most beneficial. If a distributed network of diverse small to mid-scale energy generation facilities, primarily renewable and non-polluting, can do just as good a job or better of providing electricity than central, gargantuan facilities burning fossil fuels or damming major rivers, then we will be free to change our grid. Under the current grid, energy-producing corporations influence lawmakers to actively limit how much power a household or small business is permitted to generate (Energy and Policy Institute, 2013), simply because these corporations are unwilling to allow their profits to dip, even if it is universally beneficial to individuals, society, the environment, and long-term survival. In the new paradigm, that dysfunctional and irrational behavior will cease, once and for all.

As it is with electricity, so it is with food production and many other vital areas of our lives. While there will still be some goods and services requiring a centralized large facility, such facilities will be democratically co-managed and co-manned by all who are involved in the manufacturing or production process. Technologies will similarly be re-evaluated in terms of benefit to individual, society, and the environment.

If a product is being distributed, and later it’s discovered that it’s causing unforeseen harm, as has happened many times in human history, it will be withdrawn, recalled, and replaced with something safer or better. There will no longer be corporations who must maximize their bottom line, and who therefore suppress unfavorable information, pressure and manipulate lawmakers and politicians, and even re-market such flawed goods in places where their dangers aren’t known or acknowledged. Nothing will stand in the way of changing and correcting things that need changing or correcting.

The quality of goods and services will exceed anything currently available. The best of all former producer companies’ designs will be combined in all products. Universal form factors and standards will be developed, such that products will be built to be robust, durable, easily serviceable and upgradeable, user-customizable, and to meet the actual needs expressed by users. When a better kind of engine is perfected, you won’t need a new car. Unless there’s a valid technical reason to the contrary, you’ll be able to bring your car in to the supply center, where the old engine will be removed and the new one installed, and drive home. The old engine or its materials will be repurposed. They won’t end up in junkyards or landfills.

The underlying imperative to maximize profits, stock price and market share dominates all other considerations in the dominant paradigm. If that imperative conflicts with the safety and well-being of employees or the public, the imperative always drives decisions and behavior. This has led to some extremely serious consequences, such as the conspiracy, for which General Motors, Firestone, Standard Oil of California and others were convicted in 1949, to monopolize the sale of buses and supplies to the transit systems they had bought up in Los Angeles and dozens of other cities. Streetcars were already struggling against the private car, but these companies helped finish them off, and profited extravagantly from a metropolis made to depend on private cars, gasoline and all other related goods and services (Bianco, 1998). Then there was the case of infant formula, marketed aggressively in low-income countries where unsafe water made bottle-feeding dangerous for babies; the international boycott of Nestlé that followed led to the World Health Organization’s 1981 code restricting such marketing (Global Nonviolent Action Database; WHO, 1981). We see it in cell phones made with the battery hardwired in, making it impossible for the user to replace a battery that won’t hold a charge any more. It is expressed in the ever-escalating practice of changing models every few months and making sure not to support previous models, all of which have no user serviceable parts.

In the new paradigm after the Transition, all of these absurdities will evaporate.

Picture buildings designed and built to passively keep temperatures in a comfortable range without heating or air conditioning. The technology and materials already exist (Passive Solar Industries Council, NREL and Charles Eley Associates, "Passive Solar Design Strategies"). Imagine a distributed, diverse, robust power grid maintained mainly by everyday people instructed by technicians, with an attendant drop in pollution. Imagine how enriched we will be when we see multi-fuel cars, a shift towards sustainable energy sources, vastly improved air and water quality, steady declines in rates of cancer and many other conditions, the end of ads in all media including billboards, high-quality goods and services for everybody, tastier and more nutritious food, artistic media driven by artists rather than brokers and accountants, medicine available to all at the highest level of excellence. Imagine politicians who have no voices to hear or respond to, but the voices of all of the people, no lobbyists.

Imagine being able to easily service your own devices following simple instructions included in the manual – user-serviceable parts the new norm. Imagine extensive public transportation that goes everywhere, alongside a well-developed network of roads and trails for bicycle, foot, horse, and other small, low speed vehicles that also go everywhere, complete with all facilities needed to make it a viable and convenient option, with traditional roads much less crowded due to the abundance of comfortable, convenient alternatives. Imagine that you can pick up a new car at a nearby distribution center, to your specifications, with no financial transaction necessary. Imagine that your new car has all of the best features that the technology allows and is quick and easy to maintain and repair. These are but a few examples of how our lives will change radically for the better once the current dysfunctional paradigm is taken out of service and replaced with a new one designed to empower each and every one of us to thrive and be as safe as the physical universe allows.