Andrew McAfee, researcher at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-founder and co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, the only way forward to save the planet is the one indicated by Jesse Ausubel, US environmental scientist director and senior associate of the Research Program for Human Environment of Rockefeller University, i.e. it is necessary "make nature useless".
We must work to deprive it of any value from an economic point of view in order to protect it from the "voracious attention of capitalism and being able to enjoy its true value".
We have depleted the planet beyond measure as we populated it, we adapted it to our needs. Now, according to McAfee, we have an opportunity to right that mistake, because we now have the tools, the ideas, the institutions needed to withdraw from much of the world, To get all the food we need from a tiny amount of land. We need to stop pumping poisons into the sky and oceans. Dig fewer mines and carve fewer mountains.
We must and can do it because we now have the tools, the technology to do it.
For most of human history, our prosperity has been closely linked to our ability to draw resources from the Earth. But now things have changed, or are changing. In recent years, the author points out, we have seen a different model emerge: “more with less”. And in the book McAfee describes in detail the methods of origin and development of this new model that started from the most technologically advanced countries.
The Industrial Age was characterized by astonishingly large and rapid improvements in the human condition; improvements which, however, have come at the expense of the planet.
Le twin forces of technological progress and capitalism, unleashed during the Industrial Age, seemed to push us in a very specific direction: "the growth of human population and consumption, and the concomitant degradation of the planet".
If, on the one hand, capitalism continued on its way, spreading like wildfire, technological progress has instead changed its skin.
We have invented the computer, the internet and a whole series of digital technologies that have allowed us to dematerialize consumption, thus allowing us, over time, to consume more and more by drawing less and less from the planet.
By Andrew McAfee technological progress, capitalism, an aware public opinion and a responsive government, or the "four horsemen of optimism”, are what a country needs to improve both the living conditions of its citizens and those of the environment.
He sees a slow but steady progress of all four, in all parts of the world, so that it is not necessary to make drastic and radical changes to societies and their respective economies, but simply to concentrate and implement the good that is already being done.
The author is aware of how easy it is to pass on the concept that it will be capitalism and technological progress that will allow us to lighten our footprint on the planet. We must abandon the idea that, as it grows, an economy is forced to consume more resources.
At the same time we must never forget the great mistakes made, In the case:
- Slavery.
- Child labor.
- Colonialism.
- Pollution.
- Decimation of various animal species.
Yet it is precisely by observing these large errors that an interesting pattern can be seen emerging, according to McAfee. As industrialized countries progressed and became progressively more prosperous, they began to treat people better, their own citizens, and to consume fewer resources or raw materials.
Jesse Ausubel, together with Iddo Wernick and Paul Wagoner, conducted a detailed study of the use of 100 raw materials in the US between 1900 and 2010. Before them, Chris Goodall had done similar work for the UK.
Of the 100 raw materials examined, 36 have reached their absolute peak use. In most cases, the use of these raw materials seems to be on the verge of decreasing.
Based on the data shown in the graphs, McAfee believes it can state that the extent of dematerialization in the United States is substantial. He is now able to create more "economy" starting from less metal. And that goes for many other resources. Only for building materials does the author consider the trend reversal to be negative, as those data are linked to the collapse of the sector largely due to the 2007 crisis.
Unfortunately, there are no equivalent studies that can allow a direct comparison with what happens in the rest of the world.
Data from the Eurostat agency show that, in recent years, countries such as Germany, France and Italy have seen their total consumption of metals, chemicals and fertilizers generally stable, if not declining.
Developing countries, especially the fastest growing ones such as India and China, probably have not yet reached the dematerialisation stage. However McAfee predicts that in the not too distant future (at least with respect to some resources) they too will start to get more for less.
Basically for the author, in the continuous attempt to use fewer and fewer resources, companies "thirsty for profit” can take four main routes:
- Use a smaller amount of a certain raw material.
- Replace one resource with another.
- Use fewer molecules by making better use of the materials they already have.
- Combine devices by multiplying their functions and saving resources and materials.
La combination of relentless innovation and contestable markets in which a large number of competitors seek to reduce expenses for materials has transported us into a post-peak era. And this is the road to continue taking, making nature more and more useless, from an economic point of view, in order to make it increasingly regain its rightful value.
Reference Bibliography
Andrew McAfee, More with less. The surprising story of how we learned to thrive using fewer resources, Egea UniBocconi, Milan, 2020. Translated from English by Giuseppe Maugeri. Original title: More from less. The surprising story of how we learned to thrive using fewer resources, Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, 2019.
