TwXLT "Consumption and Pessimistic Entropy" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 7

Funny....kind of... :)

The chapter titled “Consumption” in the Story of Stuff gives a detailed sense of just how much we shop, buy…consume.  In 2004 we spent more on watches, shoes and jewelry than for higher education ($100 billion vs. $99 billion).  In 2003 the United States and Europe spent $17 billion on pet food, yet we could end hunger and malnutrition for just $19 billion. The comparative lists go on and on.  We want a two or three car garage to use most of it for storage.  Leonard continues to describe how shopping is viewed as some sort of right, and to challenge our rate of consumption has led her to be labeled by some as “Marx in a ponytail” and for Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man, who lived in NYC experimenting with a minimal-consumption lifestyle, to receive hate mail even including the threat of death.  She also mentions one of my favorite books, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, and how he was called “unmanly” and “very wicked and heathenish”! (Leonard, 2010) What?! This blows my mind.  Who could insult this book and the way it leads you through the winding magic of nature?  It gives me peace I can only otherwise find out in, well, nature.

Fleissner and Hofkirchner’s paper titled “Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability” is quite a bit more dense, diving into the physics of sustainability and the contradictions therein. One concept in particular though seemed to resonate with me since I have pondered about on my own before, not knowing it had a name. Georgescu's Law states that “…in a system like the Earth (nearly no exchange of matter with the environment) mechanical work cannot proceed at a constant rate forever, or, there is a law of increasing material entropy. This means that it is not possible to get back all the dissipated matter of, for instance, tires worn out by friction.” (1997). 

This "disorder" makes sense to me.  Nature rules. 

This is very interesting to me, personally.  I would like to know exactly what he means by “get back”, but I would tend to agree with him on the basic (pessimistic?) concept.  I do not believe that people or the planet (in the future as far as we can see it) are capable of returning matter “back” to a natural state, near its source location, as a way to reverse our damage.  I do believe that if humans were to cease to exist the planet would eventually, probably, breakdown and recycle all our messes so that nature could thrive again.  But for the sake of our current reality (a world with humans) I would agree with Georgescu-Roegen: we are doing irreversible damage.  As I have said before, I’ve been told I may be a bit of a pessimist but I would rather make changes now than push our planet any further down a path of doom.  We know we cannot continue to function indefinitely like we are functioning now. Too many companies are using finite resources as if they were infinite.

I found an interesting review of Georgescu-Roegen that refers to him as a “genius pessimist and a philosopher of process”.  The author states that he was a complex character who believed in the inevitable running down of the economic process.  This is what I have always held true and believe to my core; if we are not living in harmony with nature, we are destined to fail.  How could anyone think that that a society that depends on nature, yet is built on the exploitation nature, could survive?  I learned that Georgescu-Roegen and I have our perceived pessimism in common and I gained respect for him because he did not just stay safely in one field.  Georgescu-Roegen was a mathematician and economist who dared to enter the field of physics, and then bring all three studies together.  That is incredible to me and I appreciate his efforts and contributions to the study of sustainability.  We need a wake up call.

Sources

Fleissner, P. & Hofkirchner, W. (1997). Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability. Implications and Applications of Bioeconomics. Retrieved from https://igw.tuwien.ac.at/igw/menschen/hofkirchner/papers/infoconcept/entropy/entropy.htm

Sers, M. (2017). Georgescu-Roegen: The genius pessimist and the philosopher of process. Economics for the Anthropocene. Retrieved on December 24, 2018 from

https://e4a-net.org/2017/03/29/georgescu-roegen-the-genius-pessimist-and-the-philosopher-of-process-by-martin-sers/

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change

Annie Leonard / Free Press (publication:2010-03-09)
Read "Consumption"