The Transition Challenge

Thinking about how Salem will respond to the nascent "energy descent" --- the rapid decline in availability of cheap energy --- and the global need to radically reduce greenhouse emissions (which will further drive up the costs of energy and of moving people and goods around, driving limits on doing so), it becomes clear that these linked challenges will affect everything.

But, it's also helpful to remember that, past a certain point --- a point which most Salem folks are well past indeed --- material affluence is simply not that well correlated with happiness or fulfillment. Energy descent and the need to restrain emissions can actually create a paradox where the fact of doing the right thing for the future generations (a higher order satisfaction in Maslow's terminology, illustrated above) helps smooth out the bumps as we learn to use much less energy and to have much lower material flows (reduced affluence in the disposable-society mode -- our standard of consumption -- while enjoying more real affluence in the quality of life).