Humanity may well be doomed, but not in the way ‘post-growth’ fatalists think

Before humans invented history, time was circular. The sun rose, then it set, then it rose again. Seasons of birth, growth and death repeated themselves each year and much of prehistoric human religion, from what we know, involved rituals to ensure that sunrise and rebirth would reoccur after sunset and death. Then, the idea of a single God overseeing a linear progression towards Judgment Day emerged. This is what we call history.

I thought of this peculiar shift in human perception recently when I read that scientists had published an essay in Royal Society Open Science hypothesising that all life in the universe is doomed either to burn out or adopt “homeostasis” – nonprogression.

The argument, advanced by Michael Wong and Stuart Bartlett, is that intelligent life and civilisation create exponential demands on energy systems, which will necessarily outrun our ability to innovate. Such a law of nature would, they claim, explain why aliens have never visited Earth.

It is an interesting thought experiment and of course no one can prove it wrong. But this theory ultimately shares the same fatalism as much of the environmentalist movement. It demands that humans abandon the hope of infinite expansion and advancement and instead make ourselves content with sustaining what we already have.

It is post-growth – a status our economy may have already inadvertently achieved. And it shares, in this respect, a prehistoric understanding of nature and humanity’s place in it.

If their theory is right, it seems to me that humanity is sure to burn out rather than go back to circularity. It was possible to believe that time was circular when history moved so slowly that nothing appeared to change from one generation to the next. But as soon as humans can see and smell the possibility of learning and doing more, that’s exactly what they do.

Unless, of course, we are all too addicted to our smartphones to care.

On the topic of human repetition, this week saw the publication of yet another study advocating the adoption of “universal basic income” (UBI) – paying everyone money to do nothing. The report, funded by the Wellcome Trust and written by several researchers and professors, is based on the premise that double the number of children in Britain live in poverty as did in 1977.

It is only in the small print that we learn that this refers to relative poverty – defined purely by comparison with the median. In absolute terms, child poverty is about 25 per cent – still far too high, but much lower than in 1977, when it was 80 per cent.

Forgive me, therefore, if I do not find it especially appealing to read that UBI “would take poverty levels back to, or just below the levels of the mid-1970s”. Such a claim strongly suggests, of course, that it would soon generate demand for another Thatcher-like figure to clean up the mess. Perhaps the Conservatives can get behind it after all.

This theory demands that humans abandon the hope of infinite expansion and advancement and instead make ourselves content with sustaining what we already have

Readers have been dutifully documenting the installation of silly cycling infrastructure on the Letters page, but I am willing to bet that few places in the UK can rival Park Lane in London.

Cycling there a few days ago, I noticed that I was on one of three bike lanes all running in parallel a few metres away from one other along the same route. There is one in the park, one just outside the park fence, and the latest addition, a two-way route taking up more than a whole lane that was once devoted to cars.

Altogether, Park Lane, which used to be a four-lane thoroughfare running right down the centre of town, has been reduced to just one lane for cars.

At busy times, the traffic is almost stationary. Much of the space for bikes, on the other hand, is empty.