Richard Heinberg on Optimism

“Optimism greased the wheels of commerce, with society operating as an optimism-generating machine. Of course, there was a downside to fossil-fueled, optimism-propelled growth. Exponentially increasing humanity’s resource extraction, industrial production, and waste dumping resulted in far more pollution of the environment.”

“Optimism was a self-reinforcing feedback: the system delivered more, people came to expect more, so the system was primed to deliver still more. The result was continued economic growth, with the global economy doubling in size every two or three decades. This always-accelerating conveyor belt of industrial production and disposal depended not just on the increased availability of energy and materials, but also on rising expectations.”