that dependency in absolute terms; ideally to increase per capita rates of employ-
ment and disposable income whilst reducingper capita levels of fossil energy
consumption relative to each unit of productive output. By identifying the more
profligate energy-using attitudes it becomes practical to target specific policy cor-
rections along the lines presented in box 3.6, resulting in reduced levels of energy
sequestration into projects, more benign technological applications in the home,
the workplace and in transportation, and improved energy management within
industry and on the farm; with, of course, a consequential slowdown in atmos-
pheric degradation.
Attention now shifts to the means for putting these principles into practice.
Aside from the usually out-of-mind eventual and inevitable state of entropic
disorder, reflection establishes that a unit of earth-bound fossil fuel can be used
only once during the course of modern human history. This is so because there is,
for practical purposes, one chance only to enjoy the finite quantity of energy stored
up as fossil energy ‘for us’ by nature. In short, modern life cannot realistically be
‘sustainable’ in a contemporary, dominantly urban, way. Lifestyles can of course
be modified to incorporate urban people within a more sustainable continuum, that
which involves the attainment of a better balance between resource management,
heritage conservation and communities of population. This implicates ‘progres-
sive change’.
Conservationwithdevelopment is presented throughout these pages as the
required improving vision, a multiple-belief activityinstituting progressive change
in the neomodern direction of a tolerable harmony. What has to be guarded
against is the uneven application of resource-conservation and discard-reduction
Charter for Conservation with Development 103Box 3.6 Continued
chemical farming practices (cutting back on the use of
herbicides, fungicides, pesticides), with a complexity
arising from the fact that exchanging the trail bike for
a horse, using sails for a fishing boat, and critical path
adherence in exotic forestry, are not all that work-
practical or cost-appealing. Nevertheless the ratio of
fossil-fuel calories sequestered into the production
of food calories and construction materials could be
(say) halved (less use of tractors and trucks),including
better storage and break-of-bulk patterning, and
includinga reduction in the mileage travelled for the
notional standard food-on-the-lips-morsel (posited as
3,000 km on average): achieved by the adoption of
a production-close-to-consumption policy. Improved
management and a rationalization of machine-driven
practices would produce both cost savings and energy
savings for individual primary production units.- It is with manufacturing industry that the proportion-
ally most impressive and easily fashioned reductions
in energy consumption, relative to output, can be
obtained. There are programming tactics for cutting
down on over-powering, over-lighting, and over-
heating. To the credit of most larger enterprises they
look to reduce these kinds of energy input, and to
design a reduction of waste heat, frictional inefficien-
cies and waste outputs. Savings in industry also arise
from two other seldom considered options:Firstthe
adoption of compacted production cycles (as with
efficient operation of plants either ‘full on’ or ‘full off’)
with production centred on spells of continuous
operation;Secondlya reduction in the number of per-
sonal worker start-up days (three-day working week?)
with longer hours per worker shift (12 hour aggre-
gate shifts?). These arrangements generate worth-
while savings in industry, and they also harbour
potential for both improved production and greater
employee and employer satisfaction – but watch out
for the twenty-first-century Luddites!