I HAVE just started reading Robert Bryce’s “Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.”
He poses the belief that the key to a better life does not lie in the past. To illustrate.
He introduced me to “collapse anxiety,” a term coined by another author, Gregg Easterbrook. According to Easterbrook, collapse anxiety is “a widespread feeling that the prosperity of the United States and the European Union cannot really be enjoyed because the Western lifestyle may crash owing to economic breakdown, environmental damage, resource exhaustion…or some other imposed calamity.”
According to Bryce, collapse anxiety “pervades the rhetoric of many of the world’s most prominent environmentalists as well as some of the biggest environmental groups.”
This takes me back to the late night conversation I had with Philippine Press Institute executive director Ariel Sebellino and Esquire’s Gang Badoy in Hotel Alejandro, Tacloban.
Gang said she dislikes how these environmental groups discuss climate change by instilling fear in us about its effects. We all agreed the best way to discuss climate change is to instill love for Mother Nature and therefore take care of it.
Scenarios of these super typhoons and ice caps melting are indeed distressing.
“Big environmental groups like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and others raise hundreds of millions of dollars every year by instilling fear and proclaiming that we humans are headed for disaster,” Bryce added.
In Tacloban, apart from the United Nations, one will observe a plethora of non-governmental organizations undertaking “rehabilitation efforts” and education campaigns geared towards climate change.
They come from all over the world. And they come in big groups.
How do you find them?
You go to the most expensive restaurants in town and look for them in equally expensive resorts. That’s where they dine and live.
I’m not saying that all of them are there for the money. But let me assure you, from Gang’s personal experience, a lot of these groups have cashed in on Super Typhoon Haiyan.
But yes, a lot of them lot are the doomsayers.
“Given our myriad sins against the planet, we are surely going to pay. This dystopian outlook appeals to plenty of people. It seems they cannot be happy unless they are scared out of their minds,” Bryce writes.
The author also introduced to me the term “de-growth”.
“In the face of today’s environmental and economic challenges, doomsayers preach that the only way to stave off disaster for humans is to reverse course: to de-industrialize, re-localize, ban the use of modern energy sources, and foreswear prosperity,” the book’s synopsis reads.
But Bryce opposes this, arguing: “This pessimistic worldview ignores an undeniable truth: more people are living longer, healthier, freer, more peaceful lives than at any time in human history. Amidst all of the hand wringing over climate change, genetically modified foods, the latest Miley Cyrus video, and other alleged harbingers of our decline as a species, the plain reality is that things are getting better….”
This improving condition, he said, could be attributed to innovations which allow us to do more with less.
On the other hand, Bryce doesn’t discount the challenges human face and doesn’t claim technology will solve all ills.
“It won’t, and can’t, force humans to love one another or, heck, even to be polite while standing in a queue…I am leery of what my fellow Public Affairs author Evgeny Morozov rightly calls ‘solutionism’, the belief that all of our ills can be solved if only we have the right technology…” Bryce stressed.
However, he said technology is allowing more people to escape destitution and poverty.
“This book isn’t a blind celebration of technological advancement…But it does unashamedly celebrate business and entrepreneurs because they are driving the trend toward Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper,” Bryce said.
I’m only on to a few pages and already I am liking what I read. There is definitely nothing small about Bryce’s message.
Let you in on more next time.