Dr Mike Joy, widely known as NZ’s foremost freshwater ecology expert and advocate, wears the title of ‘Dr Doom’ defiantly.

He’s earned it, as evidenced by the presentation he made last week on the dire planetary state of affairs to a gathering hosted by local Forest & Bird, setting aside his normal focus on freshwater.

My impression was that even this audience of environmental ‘true believers’ was a bit shellshocked by the ‘big picture’ message he delivered.

Supported by a blizzard of charts and stats, Joy’s message was simple but profound – we are over-reaching biophysical limits of the planet in multiple interrelated ways, with over-use of energy as the prime driver of destruction.

And central to his proposition is that all current energy use contributes to the ruin – whether the source is fossil fuel or, as he sees it, so-called ‘green’ energy (solar, wind, biomass, etc).

Joy gave numerous examples (copper seems to be his favourite) of the true buried energy costs of producing everything from wind farm turbines to solar panels and storage batteries. 

In short, to use his analogy, we’re on the Titanic headed for the iceberg, however we fuel the ship.

The only answer is to radically de-energise our lifestyles – be that as individuals, households, organisations, businesses, nations. We no longer have the luxury of seeking to protect our current consumption by pursuing ‘cleaner’ energy … that’s “believing in the tooth fairy” as Joy puts it.

It’s energy demand (and consumption more broadly) that must be reversed, not supply increased. The challenge is behaviour change, not technological fixes.

The most hopeful example of how this might happen came from the audience, with someone noting the societal shift around smoking that has taken decades.

Raising the question, what society-wide shock would be grave enough to trigger a similar rejection of energy-intense lifestyles?

A pretty grim presentation. You can get a first-hand feel for Joy’s message in this article he’s just published courtesy of Newsroom, titled Our plan for the planet can’t be the lesser of two evils.

And for more from Dr Joy, this is his new book, The Fight for Freshwater: A Memoir.