"Through burning fossil fuels we are unlocking extremely dense forms of accumulated ancient sunlight. It may not seem like we have an almost completely "solar-powered" society today; but, we do if you count the ancient solar power stored in oil, natural gas and coal ... We are quickly drawing down the Earth's stored solar energy in the form of fossil fuels at a rate that is thought to be anywhere from 100,000 to 1 million times their rate of natural formation. For this reason fossil fuels are on any human time scale finite ... So much could be produced by the industrial infrastructure and delivered by the modern rationalized distribution network that customers needed to be prompted to buy not just necessities, but also what were formerly considered luxuries ... Enter the rationalization of consumption. In its simplest terms, it meant getting people to buy things which they didn't need or, at least, which they didn't yet know they needed. An entire profession emerged to engender want--engender it in a society in which fewer and fewer people were experiencing anything which could be characterized as genuine want. The solution was to invent wants and communicate them through the mass media to the consuming public in an effort to stimulate consumption. Most of these wants were linked to various forms of status seeking ... The puzzling thing about this process is that the resulting plenty does not seem to have increased human happiness commensurate with the increase in consumption. In fact, major measures of human well-being level off at about 100 gigajoules of energy consumption per person per year. For context, each American consumes about 330 gigajoules per year ... How much food can one person eat without becoming sick? How many cars can one human drive? How many homes can one person actually live in? ... Which brings me back to "Mad Men" the television series. This is a story about people who have everything materially, and yet they are miserable."

Zum Artikel von Kurt Cobb, erschienen auf Resource Insights (2. Juni 2013) »