Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021a

D.6 Too Smart to Succeed? 408
Can it work? Can humans create the institutions <strong>and</strong> uncorrupted
global authority to regulate the entire biosphere—or at least the human
interface—to prevent unsustainable disruption to the rest? Is human
nature compatible with such schemes? Do we have the discipline to deny
ourselves easily reached resources for the good of the whole? Individual
desires for “more” may always work to subvert sustainable practices.
Individual lifetimes are so very short compared to the necessarily longterm
considerations of success that it will be very hard to universally
accept seemingly artificial restrictions generation after generation. Also
unclear is whether it is possible to maintain a technological society
preserving knowledge <strong>and</strong> history while living on the annual renewable
resources of the planet. We simply have no guiding precedent for that
mode of human existence.
It is therefore an open question whether a technological society is even
compatible with planetary limits. Are modern humans just a passing
phase whose creations will crumble into oblivion in a geological blink,
or can we stick it out in something other than a primitive state? We again
have no evidence 59 one way or another. The current state of apparent
success cannot be taken as a meaningful proof-of-concept, because it
was achieved at the expense of finite resources in a shockingly short
time: an extravagant party funded by the great one-time inheritance.
The aftermath is only beginning to appear.
59: See Sec. 18.4 (p. 312) on the Fermi paradox
for a worrisome—albeit inconclusive—
lack of evidence of success in the universe.
We have a choice: work toward success—hoping <strong>and</strong> assuming that it
is indeed possible; or acquiesce to failure. It seems that if we are not
wise enough to know whether long-term success is even possible, the
responsible course of action would be to assume that we can succeed,
<strong>and</strong> do what we can to maximize our chances of arriving there. When
should we start? Again—without knowing any better—the sooner we
start, the more likely we are to succeed. Any delay is another way of
driving ourselves toward a more likely failure.
D.6 Too Smart to Succeed?
This section pairs nicely with Section D.5, taking a slightly different
perspective on the prospect of future success.
Evolution works incrementally by r<strong>and</strong>om experimentation: mutations
that either confer advantages or disadvantages to the organism. Advantages
are then naturally selected to propagate to future generations, 60
while disadvantages are phased out by failure of afflicted organisms in
competition for resources <strong>and</strong> mates. Evolution is slow, <strong>and</strong> hard to spot
from one generation to the next. When a common ancestor of the hippo
evolved into whales, the nose did not suddenly disappear from the face
to end up behind the head as a blow-hole, but took a tortuously long
adaptive route to its present configuration.
60: After all, advantages make survival <strong>and</strong>
procreation more likely.
© 2021 T. W. Murphy, Jr.; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Lic.;
Freely available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions.