Paul Johnson has written a very thoughtful article on rubbish, entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics in The Spectator. The concept that the entire universe is moving from order to disorder is an aspect of physics that he would apply to society. It is a fact of nature that it is much easier to find ways to convert order into disorder than vice versa. The primary "rubbish" he speaks of in this article is the detritus of our consumerism. He sees a "scientific pantheism", secular in nature, but with a religious zeal in the attempts of the ecologically conscious to control the rubbish-y entropy of the products of man.

Rubbish as always been with us, and all of the natural world contributes to it. Somehow, man is expected to control this and especially his own contribution to the offending offal. Rubbish is natural, and Johnson suggests that the entire universe is a gigantic rubbish pit or incinerator. I garden, and maintain a compost pile. This is a type of recycling that I can understand - the conversion of trash into something useful. Some of what we are cycles through. The carbon dioxide animal life exhales is consumed by plant life, which exhales oxygen that we use. There are really all sorts of examples and one animal's waste is another man's manure for his rose bush. We expect to use rubbish, and yet there will always be more rubbish than can be used, and that leads to disorder. How do we, mankind, think that we can control this natural disorder?

Johnson's complaint is that "enthusiasts", his scientific pantheists, are going to make consumption a crime and even now cast it as a sin. Those who consume conspicuously are recognized as sinners. I think this entirely apropos and would suggest that the purchase of energy certificates or energy credits can be related to buying an indulgence, gaining dispensation from either past or prospective sins.

Man has always sought to create order and Locke, among others, writes of bringing order to nature as the most natural and desirable of man's activities. We convert the natural to our use, but in Locke's world what is cast off is profit. This would not be the way to see the world in the new order.

The essential complaint, however, is that this will limit human freedom. If this control of human consumption and consequent waste production comes from the government, he projects "an infinite number of laws ordering what we may produce, buy and use." and I think he may be right. If salvation comes by restricting economic expansion and limiting what we have previously known as "prosperity", then we are facing a new demand for an orderly universe in which the production of human rubbish is sin. In this new scientific religion, we are all sinners. Wherein is our salvation? Can the chaos of entropy be contained?