Nowadays, due to the increased awareness of our consumption of fossil fuels, their side effects and their impending scarcity, everyone wants to get away from them and focus on green technologies and a sustainable future.
It took persuasion and years of effort by innumerable people to even get the idea across that we are over-dependent on fossil fuels and we will have to wean away from them. But now that everyone is coming around, we come across the very practical difficulty of implementation. This is because technologies like wind, solar and tidal energy represent a very small part of energy production and to get anywhere near the current production levels, enormous investments will be required, and huge amounts of land will get used up. The latter may be mitigated somewhat by innovation so that our equipment becomes smaller and more efficient, but still there remains a long way to go.
Somehow we haven’t focused as much on the demand side of things as much as on the supply side. For if demands keeps increasing at the current pace (Long term, short term fluctuations d
o not count), no amount of green energy production will ever be able to match it.
Consider these representative graphs:
If demand keeps increasing as in the first scenario, it is highly improbable that supply will catch up with it.
Even in the second scenario, there is a huge gap between demand and supply, but the gap keeps getting smaller and smaller. The supply side is not burdened with too many expectations and looks like it will finally get there.
To ensure the second scenario takes place, we have to change our approach in how we produce things. The present business approach is to produce without giving much thought to the amount of resources used so long as it sells for a higher value than the cost of production. This approach entirely determines value creation in monetary terms forgetting that the environment often turns out to be a loser.
A better business approach would be to determine cost based on the actual amount of material and energy used and then trying to minimize the two things. This automatically takes care of the production cost too since less use of material and energy means less expenses. The product keeps selling for existing or lower prices but now the way to earn profits is to keep reducing the absolute resource consumption and thus the actual cost. Lets call this approach of using as few natural resources as possible, LessRes (for want of a better term)
When lessres is applied on a large scale and by many people, we start approaching the sustainable way of living, without sacrificing technological advancement and without putting too much pressure on the supply side. No matter which way we look at it, it makes sense because it respects the fundamental rule of resources being finite.
On the face of it, it looks easier said than done. After all, lessres is just common sense. We tend to think that cases where lessres can be used without giving up functionality are rare and present them themselves once-in-a-million times. But the real truth is that we never really think in the above common sense way. When the opportunity is there, we grab it, but how many times have we deliberately tried to create such opportunities?
Replacing vacuum tubes with semiconductor devices helped us save a lot of energy. Similarly, replacing traditional bulbs with LEDs will help us cut unnecessary wastage. Electricity is likely to prove much cheaper than petrol/diesel/gasoline while running cars. But such examples are few and far between. We only do this when a scientist accidentally discovers something miraculous or when we are pushed to the wall.
If lessres becomes a pervasive ideology and constantly excites us, and replacing the efficient with more efficient gives us a sense of purpose, sustainability will become very easy and feasible. We no longer will have to think about it as an elusive pipe dream which is good to hear and talk about but not possible in practice. The same innovative spirit that has driven us over thousands of years will also deliver us sustainability.
That is why it brings me immense delight when I hear people trying to fly in solar-powered planes (link [wired.com]), people creating battery swap stations for cars (link [terrapass.com]), companies adopting unified communications to curb travel costs(link [indiatimes.com]), Obama focusing on setting up a high speed rail network(link [nytimes.com]) and other initiatives. All these have the right end-goal in mind: getting the same standard of living while using less and less. Of course, some of these experiments may not work out but we will be better off eventually
The above is much more constructive than preparing for a hunter-gatherer style of living, fantasizing about going to back to farms or awaiting an apocalypse. But leaving the future to be solved by random innovation isn’t going to help either. Lessres should become a priority factor whenever we produce something. It should be given as much importance as mechanical, electrical, marketing and other aspects. Also, our problems are too big to be solved by a few people. Everyone should pitch in and provide their expertise and knowledge to help the cause of sustainability.
One effective way of implementing a new approach is to first make it systematic and to develop a set of concepts, techniques and thumb rules which can be easily applied. Once this framework is established, building and expanding on it becomes much easier. I will try to address this in the next few posts. Please pour in your comments too.
In conclusion, if we consciously think about and implement lessres (again, not at the expense of progress and advancement) rather than leaving it to luck and chance, we are much more likely to maintain a good standard of living in the future.
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