Nutrients, stripped from the soil by industrial agriculture, must be regathered into the component parts of soil in order to grow more food. Water, sucked from the land by waste and thirsty agriculture, must be rendered back to a geology that has enough time and integrity to purify it and settle it into water tables. Air and atmosphere, corrupted by the industrial exhaustion of mankind and the factories he's so cleverly designed to inhale natural resources and exhale filth, must be left unmolested long enough to regain its rightful place in the holistic equilibrium of earth's nature.

 

Industry, as we know it today, will no longer be a viable pursuit in a resource-starved world. When, by our industrial ambitions, we accelerate the entropy of nature and nature's resources beyond our human ability to restore, we will have reached peak industrialism, a point from which there is no industrial escape. Only nature and nature's God can remedy such negligence.

 

The question is not if man is moving toward peak industrialism. Our diminishing topsoil, oil reserves, and fresh water supply all point in unison toward this fact. Rather, the question is, "How much more of humanity must needlessly die before we mend our ways?" We cannot continue to exploit our basic resource pool for very much longer before we reach critical mass wherein all civility begins to self-destruct. At this stage of rampant want, rage will become the currency of change and destruction its byproduct. Then, ethics will be an issue that few feel they have the luxury to ponder.

 

If we wish to avoid this suck-mud morass of ethical deprivation, we must begin now to slow our pace, curb our appetites, and rein in our industrial and political ambitions. Life is not about how much you can get as much as it is about how much you can give. The legacy of getting often lasts only a moment or at best a lifetime. But the legacy of giving can last for generations. Too often, it has been in the pursuit of the former that we have been so quick to embrace industry. And, too often, it has been by neglect of the latter that we have failed to leave a worthy heritage to our children.

 

If we've gained the whole world only to leave to our children a more corrupt and irresolvable problem than we inherited from our parents, we have only bequeathed to them our legacy of judgment. It would be far better to bequeath to the next generation a legacy of redemption. But that legacy is available only to those that turn their backs on the material seductions of industry. We cannot continue to consume resources as if the future did not matter to our children. That decision (of how our children should live their future) is not our decision to make. To avoid the peak industrialism and the rampant destruction it inevitably brings, and to absolve our children from the bondage of our industrial debt, we must learn to live more conservative lifestyles.

 

Conservation is not the whole answer to the restoration of natural resources, but it is the physical foundation. Conservation is where restoration begins. Without conservation there can be no progress toward restoration. Conservation holds the line against further degradation. But for restoration to take place, we must first move into redemption.

 

Our redemption from peak industrialism does not begin with a set of laws that an alliance of governments enforces by mutual consent. Rather, redemption from peak industrialism begins with our individual choice not to support the infrastructure that makes exploitation more profitable than conservation. But until we have a tangible and significant revelation about the means and benevolent consequence of such choices (to exploit or conserve), we are unlikely to allow such choices into the radarscope of our consideration.

 

The unfortunate truth is that suffering hones our awareness to vital issues and makes us keen to seek solutions. Until we suffer pain, we are unlikely to change. But another unfortunate truth is, when in pain, that we often accept therapies that are not always cures. Unless we clearly understand what wholesomeness is, we are unlikely to recognize any progress toward it. Until we understand the processes that foster wholesomeness, we are unlikely to adopt them as a lifestyle. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to define a wholesome alternative to peak industrialism and not only to suggest actions toward it but also to identify landmarks we ought to see along the way.

 

To suggest an alternative to "peak industrialism", we must first define this term. A peak is the point from which regression is inevitable. Industrialism is the mechanization of manufacturing processes. Peak industrialism is the point from which the regression of mechanized manufacturing is inevitable. This point is reached when demand exceeds available resources. At this point, either industry must change to utilize alternative resources or demand must be reduced. Herein are our two alternatives -- resource diversification and demand reduction.

 

Demand reduction is resolved by stifling the demanders. It has been argued that this can be achieved by reducing the population either through war, birth control, or sterilization (all of which I oppose). But this is a temporary solution to an inevitably growing and pervasive problem. No matter how hard governments try, unless humankind suddenly learns to exercise self-control, our population is likely to be ever expanding. Demand can also be stifled through depression. But depression stifles economic growth (anathema to industrialists and none too popular with the general public either). The only other way to stifle the demanders is to inspire them toward love and holistic thinking. In other words, they must learn to become good neighbors. When so inspired, having understood the immediate, local, long-term, and long-range consequences of choice, there is some hope that they may choose more conservative if not more redemptive lifestyles.

 

Resource diversification is achieved by conservation and innovation. In the case of conservation, we are not diversifying our choice of resources so much as their use. Switching to an alternative resource when our preferred resource runs out is not conservation. Rather, we diversify our use of resources so as to waste nothing. There is much along these lines that we have neglected to even try but which our growing needs have forced to the brink of our consideration. The day will come when we will be forced to ask ourselves, "How can we waste nothing?" One way to waste less is to build better products based more on craftsmanship then on efficiency and cost. How much natural resource is locked up in poorly made products now buried in our local landfills? But conservation, whether by resource selection or use, is only half of resource diversification. The other half of the solution to this problem is innovation.

 

If we will take the time to consider our use of resources more carefully, I am confident that we will not only find that there are better ways to use the resources we know about but that there are also other, better resources that we can use to accomplish our same essential goals. These other, better resources, at the very least, would waste less and accomplish more. But at their best they would not only be conservative, they would be redemptive. As an example of what I mean, let us consider biological waste. There are forms of biological waste, when subjected to the appropriate natural processes, which can actually be used to build up the soil from which they were derived. This compost is a redemptive use of waste.

 

As long as the innovations that produce waste outstrip the innovations that manage it, we will continue our downward spiral of resource exploitation toward a hollow-sounding, bottom-of-the-barrel depletion. As with conservation, innovation has two sides. Not only must we pursue alternative technologies (for the industries we may insist are essential), but our waste management innovations must also become at least as profitable as those processes that produce our waste. In this vein, agrarianism, and the food it engenders, must become a central and inexorable byproduct of environmentally responsible industry. Since the world is as much our neighbor's as it is our own, only environmentally responsible industries should be eligible for Federal, State, and local tax breaks. Perhaps it is only when irresponsible industry, in this way, is forced to support its competition that such industry will mend its ways for the genuine benefit of mankind.

 

In a best-case scenario, consumers would boycott environmentally irresponsible industry. But where responsible industry is more costly than irresponsible industry, regardless of conscience, only those that can afford the better choice will make it. While I agree that righteousness is its own reward, it is a reward that some cultures and families lack the resources to even consider. In such circumstances, rewards for good behavior might go far toward inspiring change. But who can afford to offer such rewards?

 

To provide such rewards, governments would want to raise taxes, industry would seek tax breaks "to sustain the health of the economy", and the poor, most of whom are barely surviving as it is, certainly can't afford to reward themselves for good behavior. So, who does that leave? The middle class! But is it fair that the middle class should have to pay for industrial negligence so the poor can afford to make better choices? In my opinion, if anyone is taxed, industry should be taxed for its own negligence. Green rebates, funded from tax revenues collected from a product's environmentally irresponsible competition, could inspire consumer change. The major problem with such a scenario is that it would require the support of a regulatory agency to monitor the "greenness" of products and industries and another agency to regulate the regulators. And who wants to make big government bigger, or to limit industrial and economic profitability, or to add another tax to its middle class?

 

One final suggestion that has been gaining ground is, if an industry has been so foolish as to dive over the edge of peak industrialism, that the best thing that could happen to that industry and to the people it is increasingly prone to bankrupt, is to let it fail! A few such failures will force the public back into the accountability role they should have occupied from the beginning.

 

In summary, our catalog of alternatives to peak industrialism, at the very least, must include 'demand reduction' and 'resource diversification'. And the landmarks we should see along the way toward the development of more redemptive technology are as follows:

 

1) Informed choice

2) Promote more holistic and wholesome lifestyles

3) Restore neighborhoods and the wholesome autonomous local communities they inspire

4) Encourage the habitual practice of self-control for the sake of others

5) Exercise benevolence

6) Promote and manage the migration of resource dependence from one form of non-renewable resource to another only as a 'transitional step' toward sustainability

7) Universally promote wasting less in pursuit of wasting nothing

8) Waste management must become as profitable as those processes that produce waste

9) Pursue and reward the redemptive use of resources

10) Agrarianism must become the inexorable byproduct of all responsible industry

11) Only environmentally responsible industries should be eligible for tax breaks

12) Failure is the due reward of any industry that ignores peak industrialism

 

Though this is a working document and, therefore, presents an imperfect paradigm, my hope is that it will stir some thinking and dialogue about peak industrialism. More importantly, I hope it will inspire some solutions. Peak industrialism is every citizen's problem and until we all recognize it as such it is unlikely that our governments, or the industries they serve, will feel a compelling interest in pursuing change.