Opinion: Why understanding limits is the key to humanity’s future

Recent news articles about a breakthrough in nuclear fusion research heralded the potential for “limitless” energy. Whenever I read that word limitless I wince. The promise of limitlessness is misleading and sometimes deadly. Limits exist everywhere in nature. They enable the functioning of systems at scales from the subatomic all the way up to galaxy clusters. If there is any physical thing that could credibly be claimed to be infinite, it is the universe itself. Everything else has boundaries. Limits and Indigenous Wisdom Ancient peoples confronted limits every day. In addition to personal limits on strength and endurance, there were also limits to environmental capacity. Overhunt game or overharvest wild plants this season and starvation could follow in the next. One solution was to move to new habitats. By migrating, people escaped the confines of familiar places, but the benefit was temporary. Human migration altered environments and reduced biodiversity. However, people who stayed in one place long enough learned the limits to their bioregion’s capacity for regeneration. Through a long series of tough lessons, they discovered how many plants of each kind they could harvest and how many of each kind of animal they could hunt. In short, they adopted a worldview and behaviors oriented toward successful adaptation to the finite. The Restless, Voracious Modern Mind That changed for some people, starting just a few thousand years ago. The development of mathematics provided a logical basis for the belief in infinity. It facilitated the expansion of trade. It also helped in the invention and refinement of technologies that assisted in the conquest of Indigenous peoples, allowing conquerors to overleap previous constraints on the scale and wealth of human societies. At the same time, agriculture enabled population growth, but it gradually robbed soils of nutrients. Sailing ships increased trade but building them led to the deforestation of whole continents. A reckoning with limits seemed to be in store. Then a miracle happened: People started using fossil fuels. Coal, oil and natural gas enabled the development of transport technologies that overcame prior limits to travel and trade, so products and resources that were abundant in one place… Read More
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