End of consumerism

It's not the end of the world, just the end of consumerism. We are about to wave goodbye to the dream of endless economic growth - always, every year, more stuff. However, we have enough already. We really do.

Dr Susan Krumdieck, an engineering professor at the University of Canterbury, addresses her audience with a smile. The message is radical, but she believes it will be good news once we have had time to get used to it.

A change is about to be forced on society because energy consumption pretty much is the economy. And we are about to run short of the cheap energy which has been driving the past century of unchecked economic expansion.

There is this myth going round, says Krumdieck, that with every decade we have grown wealthier because we have collectively become smarter and more productive. If everything is bigger, better, brighter, well, it has been earned.

Yet actually we have just been digging up and burning more fossil fuel. Graph the world's energy consumption against its gross domestic product (GDP) and the two lines track. So get down to the nitty gritty and this is what it has all been about. Converting oil or coal into shoes, hamburgers, cellphones and SUVs.

However, a reckoning is coming. The ecological limits on growth have come into view. Climate change and over- population. But peak oil most immediately.

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