We’ve talked about the physical, financial, and mathematical limits to growth on Earth. You simply cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet, as you may have noticed. Shit falls apart. But what if we could go, as Buzz Lightyear says, to infinity and beyond? There’s no limits to space, right?
Well, that’s sort of the problem. Space is so unlimited that this is, in itself, a limiting factor. Just consider the scale involved.
Scale
Imagine that the Earth is a grain of sand on the bridge of your nose. The moon is a speck of dust in the middle of your eyelash. The sun is a grapefruit a bus-length away (12 meters). Mars is generally further away, about three bus-lengths, though it sometimes swings as close as a truck. Then remember you’re on a grain of sand trying to fart your way off and you’ll understand the scale of the problem.
The real problem is that growth is so intrinsic to industrial civilization that we make no attempt to understand anything else at all. Apocalyptic or cyclical civilizations had no problem understanding the concept of ‘NO’, but our civilization is founded on the myth of infinite growth. We cannot understand the concept of limits at all, even after we’ve hit them.
