There’s a good chance 2008 will go down in history as the year world oil production and consumption reached their zenith – at nearly 87 million barrels per day. If so, then the immediate cause – somewhat perversely –will not have been supply constraints, but rather demand destruction resulting from the combination of a severe price shock and a global recession.
Humanity is currently facing a myriad of serious developmental challenges, which some say threaten the future of our species and perhaps of the entire biosphere. These challenges include: extensive and rising poverty, inequality and unemployment; widespread crime and conflict; overpopulation and mass hunger; spreading epidemic diseases; social fragmentation; and fossil energy depletion, global warming and environmental degradation. Orthodox economic theories, and the policies derived therefrom, are evidently ill equipped to deal with these systemic challenges. In fact, the current globalised economic system – underpinned by neoliberal economic ideology – is arguably causing or exacerbating many of humanity’s ills.
Trained as a conventional economist at the universities of Cape Town and Cambridge, over the past several years I have awoken to the patent unsustainability of the global economic system and Western consumerist lifestyle. My research into the various aspects of this unsustainable growth path, which includes human over-population, environmental degradation, resource depletion and climate change, prompted me to become something of an activist. I have published a couple of dozen articles in newspapers and magazines, delivered papers at academic conferences and given presentations to a number of companies and community forums, all under the broad banner of sustainable development.