Whichever way we look at it the world is steadfastly finite: there are clear limits in terms of the space and resources available. Unfortunately us humans have, until now, ignored this fundamental physical constraint and instead treated the Earth as if it was infinite. This may have been understandable at a time when people didn’t know if the world was flat or round and their nearest neighbours were a week away by horse and cart. Now we are part of a global village yet our activities, from continuing to inhabit every viable corner of the planet to plundering whatever materials it contains, would suggest we don’t even understand what that means. We continue to use both space and resource with abandon, like a hungry dog working out how to open the fridge when no one is home. Except the dog is pregnant, and no one is ever coming home.

What did they know about global warming?

In reality we have it a bit easier than the pregnant abandoned dog. We have brains that allow us to build shelter and sow seeds for food. But even our intellect and dexterity don’t change the fact that almost everything we see around us will eventually run out, unless we take away less than we leave in or find a renewable alternative. We simply cannot sustain an ever-increasing number of people with a fixed supply of land and non-renewable materials. It’s mathematically impossible.

Presuming we accept that the future survival of our species is a good thing we therefore have a responsibility to manage what we have available to us in order that future generations can make use of it so that they can, in turn, ensure that future future generations can use it and so on until the Earth is absorbed by the expanding Sun in about 500 billion years by which time we may have worked out how Dr Who does his thing and colonised other worlds. That’s pretty much the best case scenario. In the meantime we have to figure out how to avoid imploding like a water balloon meeting a bullet.

How long do we have to react?

We are at crunch time in 2009 because we now know not only that our activities are generally unsustainable (i.e. we collectively use far more energy and materials than we recover) but also that, for the very first time in human history, our actions are likely to cause irreversible damage to our environment within our lifetime. We can proudly proclaim that we are the first generation of humans to face the very real prospect of reaching old age faced with the certain knowledge that our behaviour and activities sped up the demise of our species. Of course our children won’t blame us individually, they won’t say “Daddy why did you stand by and let that happen” (unless we happen to be a world leader) but they will blame us collectively. We will die in the shame of having failed in the biggest task we faced.

It needn’t end that way. We may just manage to turn it around and collectively agree that we do need to change at least some of our ways if our children and grandchildren are to prosper and thrive on the Earth. We may enter an “age of sustainability” where a maximum impact quota system limits what people and businesses can get up to. Our leaders may step up to the task and provide solutions to our need for work, food and shelter and our desire for travel, entertainment and luxury without creating the ever-increasing problems associated with environmental damage. In Scotland the environment is at the top of the Scottish Government’s agenda, and long may it stay that way but that doesn’t mean we don’t face enormous challenges.

The difficulty with finding a workable solution to the problems of climate change and sustainability is that the successful choice is unlikely to be a single-faceted, big-ticket item. No single measure will create sustainability and solve the environmental problems we face. This presents a problem in itself because humans love simple solutions to difficult problems. Just look at the history of invention:

Some big-ticket solutions have been suggested, particularly with regards to the warming effects of climate change. For example Geoengineering which would involve inventing something to cool the planet to roughly the same degree as it is being warmed by our greenhouse gas emissions (predicted to be roughly 5 degrees over this century).

Volcano dust cools the earth. Fact.

How do you achieve this? One apparently workable solution among the suggestions offered is to simply reflect sunlight away from the Earth either by suspending mirrors in space or, more cheaply, by distributing sunlight repelling particles in the upper atmosphere (by plane). Great huh? Well it is an innovative, relatively simple solution and it is comparatively cheap but this article shows that there is a fairly major downside: reflecting sunlight would impact on the water-cycle of the earth and may make fresh water more scarce. This is because the water cycle is more readily affected by lack of sunlight than by rising temperatures. So you could effectively cool the Earth but make it drier. Then you would need another solution to combat the dryness. Then another to combat the side effects of that. And another and another. Before long the Earth would resemble a giant madcap laboratory where all our human constructions were maintained by one central computer to keep everything in check. A bit like an enormous life support machine. Don’t mention power cuts. Just imagine tabloid coverage of the “trillenium bug”!

Surely it is better for us to at least try and pursue a low-tech, low-energy, low waste solution whereby we minimise our impact at a personal, community, national and international level through agreements, regulations and general common sense? If each of us makes small reductions in our resource use each year we can become sustainable consumers which will result in a reduction in our waste output to landfill and the associated impacts on our environment which that entails. We could enter a virtuous rather than vicious circle, whereby we keep improving until we reach a balanced equilibrium. Is that possible?