The era of cheap and abundant energy will end some time this century, and the Western industrial civilization will likely begin a long, slow descent toward a resource-limited future, characterized by “involuntary simplicity.”
This is the picture being painted by University of Michigan environmental psychologist Raymond De Young, who states in a new paper that behavioral scientists should begin now to prepare the public for this “energy descent,” which he defines as a tightening of energy supplies accompanied by “a persistent stepwise downshift” to a new, reduced-consumption normal.
De Young describes the energy descent and the role of behavioral scientists in the November edition of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
By the end of the century, day-to-day activities will need to consume nearly an order of magnitude less energy and materials than currently used, said De Young, an associate professor of conservation behavior at U-M’s School of Natural Resources and Environment.
According to De Young, several Americans will likely be living in much smaller homes that contain far fewer consumer goods and modern conveniences. Air travel and automobile ownership may be unrealistic for many, due largely to declining availability of fuel. The days of cheap, reliable electricity from the grid may be gone, and reliance on locally grown foods will increase, he said.
“Frankly, it may not be possible for members of Western societies to maintain anything close to a contemporary life pattern while also living within this new biophysical context,” he said.
Though the resource-limited future will be more austere, it will be possible for people “to live well while they live within ecological limits,” De Young argues. In fact, the coming downshift may provide an opportunity for people to “reconnect with nature and other people in ways that provide durable well-being.”
Even though prices of gasoline have dropped below $3 a gallon in many parts of the country and domestic production of oil and natural gas is booming, when viewed from the perspective of a many-decades long transition, these are short-term trends, De Young said.
The planet’s carbon stores have always been limited, and continuous growth in the use of these resources is unsustainable. Even though fossil fuels will likely be extracted from the Earth’s crust for years to come, the amount available to society over any given time period will slowly decline he said.
The global production rate of liquid fossil fuels may soon begin, if it hasn’t already started, a drawn-out leveling and then a slow descent, with other fuels and materials soon to follow the same pattern, he said.
“Then industrial civilization, having already scoured the planet of new sources, will experience biophysical limits as a steady headwind against which it must labor,” De Young said. De Young means, by biophysical limits, the ability of nature, including the Earth’s ecosystems and its geological formations, to provide resources and services to humanity.
With the decreasing amount of energy available for all kinds of uses, including technological innovations, the opportunity to develop alternative energy sources to replace fossil fuels may slip away. As that opportunity diminishes, technology “may help ease a societal transition but will not eliminate the need for one, “ De Young said.
As people are forced to consume less of just about everything, daily life in Western industrial nations will repeatedly downshift into simpler forms, he said. Climate disruption and geopolitical instability will likely complicate the situation.
“A reduced-consumption existence may become commonplace not because conservation behavior was voluntarily chosen by the public or cleverly initiated by behavioral scientists but because there will be no other choice,” De Young said.
Having ignored many opportunities for voluntary simplicity, industrial society may now face involuntary simplicity, he said.
“This is not at all what the popular folk mythology of resource apocalypse predicts,” he said. “It lacks Hollywood’s sudden and catastrophic collapse motif. The change is more likely to emerge slowly over many decades — a persistent stepwise downshift to a new normal.”
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