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Melbourne shoot.jpg Kajan Kort

The Ice-cream-flavor dilemma

The more choices there are, the harder it is to choose. Does this sound familiar to you? I have the hardest time choosing when standing in front of 40+ ice cream flavors. But this is a metaphor for something I see as a very important constraint in sustainable development.

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Being in the luxurious position to have the possibility of choosing between different (equally priced) alternatives is not always easy. For example: choosing a beer or an icecream when staring at a menu of over 40 types puts me in an awkward position. This is a methaphor for what is happening in the energy sector at the moment. There are many posibillities and many choices to be made.

But the metaphor ends when the consequences of the choices differ from the amount of hapiness you get eating an ice cream to the amount of pollution you cause to your environment. Nowadays there is a choice between a variety of ways you treat your environment. In the future this number of choices will be reduced, it may be because of unavoidable price steering or resource depletion. And this doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.

In my previous columns I've written about the overpopulation of the earth an about the depenency of undesirability. About the Circle of life and about the popularity of off-grid electricty systems. In most of these themes there is a certain freedom of choice, and this is exactly where most of the discussions within sustainability are about. In my eyes this focus of discussion is relevant for the time we live in right now. But in the future you can't chose anymore to go with your diesel truck to the supermarket 2 km down the road. This is because there won't be diesel available. In the future you can't buy cheap meat in the stores anymore. Because cheap meat will not exist anymore. In the future you can't buy fruits and vegatables from New Zealand in the stores in the Netherlands. Because this is ridiculously energy intensive and will not be economically feasible anymore. For this future projection it is irrelevant when this will happen. But it will happen.

This mechanism will only cause people to forcely chose for the more sustainable options. Because sustainable options are the only ones that will last. Eventually.

(ps. in this column I completely neglect all irreversible accumulative damage on environment caused by the actions/choices of the human population)