| For some reason or another, this question often arises. The simple answer is that I live in a place called Dismal. Not a town, really, but a small area in the hills of Middle Tennessee, below the Cumberland Plateau. I have not found an accurate account of how it came to be called this, but I suspect it happened in February. It is actually rather lovely here most of the time. The more esoteric answer involves the history of economics, which is more or less affectionately known as "the dismal science". This title comes from the mid-19th century writings of historian and satirist Thomas Carlyle, initially in defense of slavery, and later in response to the principles put forth by Rev. Thomas Malthus. Malthus projected that the earth's population would soon outgrow its ability to feed itself, and proposed that unless some form of population control were instituted, the people of the world would eventually starve to death. But, as we can see today, despite the population explosion, that dismal fate was fortuitously averted. This salvation, however was not brought about by Malthus' population control, or by the reinstitution of slavery, as Carlyle advocated, nor by any other such draconian measures envisioned by those least in danger of starvation. Instead, the impetus came from Mexico nearly 100 years later. Mexico, like many other nations at the time, relied heavily on food imports, and made a formal request for help in improving the agricultural production of impoverished nations around the world. The economists of this next century were able to see that such self-sufficiency would serve to create a more stable global economy, and the technological advances that were financed in that era revolutionised agriculture worldwide. So, the world did not end up starving en masse, but many individual communities still do, while others consume without conscience, and our dependence upon the dwindling supplies of oil that fueled this technological revolution has brought us full circle to face yet another dismal future. But an energy crisis differs a bit from a food crisis in that, for the most part, using less energy is not going to kill you. New technology will, of course, bring about alternatives to fossil fuel, but there will never be the seemingly limitless supply we once counted on . So the key to success will lie as much in how we consume it, as in how we produce it. |
