ecological economics - beyond growth - why our economy is killing the planet - new scientist 18 oct...

8/14/2019 Ecological Economics - Beyond Growth - Why Our Economy is Killing the Planet - New Scientist 18 Oct 2008

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40 | NewScientist | 18 October 2008 www.newscientist.co

OpinionBeyond growth

THE graphs climbing across these pages

are a stark reminder of the crisis facingour planet. Consumption of resources is risingrapidly, biodiversity is plummeting and justabout every measure shows humans affectingEarth on a vast scale. Most of us accept the needfor a more sustainable way to live, by reducingcarbon emissions, developing renewabletechnology and increasing energy efficiency.

But are these efforts to save the planetdoomed? A growing band of experts are lookingat figures like these and arguing that personalcarbon virtue and collective environmentalismare futile as long as our economic system isbuilt on the assumption of growth. The

science tells us that if we are serious aboutsaving Earth, we must reshape our economy.This, of course, is economic heresy. Growth

to most economists is as essential as the air webreathe: it is, they claim, the only force capableof lifting the poor out of poverty, feeding the

worlds growing population, meeting the cost

of rising public spending and stimulatingtechnological development not to mentionfunding increasingly expensive lifestyles.They see no limits to that growth, ever.

In recent weeks it has become clear justhow terrified governments are of anythingthat threatens growth, as they pour billionsof public money into a failing financial systemAmid the confusion, any challenge to thegrowth dogma needs to be looked at verycarefully. This one is built on a long-standingquestion: how do we square Earths finiteresources with the fact that as the economygrows, the amount of natural resources

needed to sustain that activity must grow tooIt has taken all of human history for theeconomy to reach its current size. On currentform it will take just two decades to double.

In this special issue,New Scientistbringstogether key thinkers from politics, economic

Why our economyis killing the planetand what we can do about it


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SCRATCH the surface of free-marketcapitalism and you discover something

close to visceral fear. Recent events provide agood example: the US treasurys extraordinary$800 billion rescue package was an enormouscomfort blanket designed to restore

confidence in the ailing financial markets.By forcing the taxpayer to pick up the toxicdebts that plunged the system into crisis, itaims to protect our ability to go on behavingsimilarly in the future. This is a short-termand deeply regressive solution, but economicgrowth must be protected at all costs.

As economics commissioner on theUKs Sustainable Development Commission,I found this response depressingly familiar.At the launch last year of our RedefiningProsperity project (which attempts to instilsome environmental and social caution intothe relentless pursuit of economic growth), aUK treasury official stood up and accused mycolleagues and I of wanting to go back andlive in caves. After a recent meeting convenedto explore how the UK treasurys financialpolicies might be made more sustainable,

a high-ranking official was heard to mutter:Well, that is all very interesting, perhapsnow we can get back to the real job ofgrowing the economy.

The message from all this is clear: anyalternative to growth remains unthinkable,

even 40 years after the American ecologistsPaul Ehrlich and John Holdren made someblindingly obvious points about thearithmetic of relentless consumption.

The Ehrlich equation,I=PAT, says simplythat the impact (I) of human activity on theplanet is the product of three factors: the sizeof the population (P), its level of affluence (A)expressed as income per person, and atechnology factor (T), which is a measureof the impact on the planet associated witheach dollar we spend.

Take climate change, for example. Theglobal population is just under 7 billion andthe average level of affluence is around $8000per person. TheTfactor is just over 0.5 tonnesof carbon dioxide per thousand dollars ofGDP in other words, every $1000 worth ofgoods and services produced using todaystechnology releases 0.5 tonnes of CO

2into

the atmosphere. So todays global CO2

emissions work out at 7 billion 8 0.5 =28 billion tonnes per year.

The Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC) has stated that to stabilisegreenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere at areasonably safe 450 parts per million, we needto reduce annual global CO

2emissions to less

than 5 billion tonnes by 2050. With a global

population of 9 billion thought inevitable bythe middle of this century, that works out atan average carbon footprint of less than0.6 tonnes per person considerably lowerthan in India today. The conventional view isthat we will achieve this by increasing energyefficiency and developing green technologywithout economic growth taking a serioushit. Can this really work?

With todays global income, achievingthe necessary carbon footprint would meangetting the Tfactor for CO

2down to 0.1 tonnes

of CO2

per thousand US dollars a fivefoldimprovement. While that is no walk in thepark, it is probably doable with state-of-the-artechnology and a robust policy commitment.There is one big thing missing from thispicture, however: economic growth. Factor

We can rely on renewable technologies to help usavert climate change without sacrifices to our lifestyles,

right? Not according to sustainable developmentadviser Tim Jackson, who reckons our leaders arejust too chicken to tell us the truth

What politicians

dare not say

ProfileTim Jackson is professor of sustainable developmentat the University of Surrey, UK. His research focuses onunderstanding the social, psychological and structuraldimensions of sustainable living. He is also a member ofthe Sustainable Development Commission, which advisesthe UK government.


Artist Barbara Kruger getsto the root of the problemin her 1987 artwork

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it in, and the idea that technological ingenuitycan save us from climate disaster looks anawful lot more challenging.

First, let us suppose that the worldeconomy carries on as usual. GDP per capitawill grow at a steady 2 or 3 per cent per yearin developed countries, while the rest of theworld tries to catch up China and Indialeaping ahead at 5 to 10 per cent per year, atleast for a while, with Africa languishing in thedoldrums for decades to come. In this (deeplyinequitable) world, to meet the IPCC target wewould have to push the carbon content ofconsumption down to less than 0.03 tonnesfor every thousand US dollars spent adaunting 11-fold reduction on the currentwestern European average.

Now, lets suppose we are serious about

eradicating global poverty. Imagine a worldwhose 9 billion people can all aspire to a levelof income compatible with a 2.5 per centgrowth in European income between now and2050. In this scenario, the carbon content ofeconomic output must be reduced to just 2 percent of the best currently achieved anywherein the European Union.

In short, if we insist on growing theeconomy endlessly, then we will have toreduce the carbon intensity of our spending toa tiny fraction of what it is now. If growth is tocontinue beyond 2050, so must improvementsin efficiency. Growth at 2.5 per cent per yearfrom 2050 to the end of the century wouldmore than triple the global economy beyondthe 2050 level, requiring almost completedecarbonisation of every last dollar.

The potential for technologicalimprovements, renewable energy, carbonsequestration and, ultimately perhaps,a hydrogen-based economy has not beenexhausted. But what politicians will notadmit is that we have no idea if such a radicaltransformation is even possible, or if so whatit would look like. Where will the investmentand resources come from? Where will thewastes and the emissions go? What mightit feel like to live in a world with 10 times asmuch economic activity as we have today?

Instead, they bombard us with advertscajoling us to insulate our homes, turn downour thermostats, drive a little less, walk a littlemore. The one piece of advice you will not seeon a government list is buy less stuff.Buying an energy-efficient TV is to be

applauded; not buying one at all is a crimeagainst society. Agreeing reluctantly toadvertising standards is the sign of a maturesociety; banning advertising altogether (evento children) is condemned as culturejamming. Consuming less may be thesingle biggest thing you can do to save carbon

emissions, and yet no one dares to mention it.Because if we did, it would threaten economicgrowth, the very thing that is causing theproblem in the first place.

Visceral fear is not without foundation. Ifwe do not go out shopping, then factories stopproducing, and if factories stop producingthen people get laid off. If people get laid off,then they do not have any money. And ifthey dont have any money they cannot goshopping. A falling economy has no money inthe public purse and no way to service publicdebt. It struggles to maintain competitivenessand it puts peoples jobs at risk. A governmentthat fails to respond appropriately will soonfind itself out of office.

This is the logic of free-market capitalism:the economy must grow continuously orface an unpalatable collapse. With theenvironmental situation reaching crisis point,however, it is time to stop pretending thatmindlessly chasing economic growth iscompatible with sustainability. We needsomething more robust than a comfort blanketto protect us from the damage we are wreakingon the planet. Figuring out an alternative tothis doomed model is now a priority beforea global recession, an unstable climate, or acombination of the two forces itself upon us.

A UK treasury officialaccused me of wantingto go back to cave living

www.newscientist.com 18 October 2008 | NewScientist | 43

BORISROESSLER/DPA/CORBIS


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Is anything more important than the environment?

I cant imagine anything more important thanair, water, soil, energy and biodiversity. Theseare the things that keep us alive.

So why do we put the economy first, and use

it to define progress?

You would have thought that our first prioritywould be to ask what the ecologists are findingout, because we have to live within theconditions and principles they define. Instead,weve elevated the economy above ecology.

After all, ecology and economics have thesame root eco, from the Greek oikos,for home. Ecology is the study of home,economics is the management of home,and of course, our home is the biosphere.

How do the economists answer you?

They believe humans are so creative andproductive that the skys the limit, that if werun out of resources, well find substitutes. Ifthe substitutes run out, well go to the moon,mine asteroids or harvest sunlight in spaceand microwave it to Earth. They think thewhole universe is there as a potential resource.

Isnt space a potential resource?

The option of going into space allows you topretend that technology will get our asses outof any problem so we dont have to worry,

which is just not true. Limitless resources area fools dream that we can never achieve. Thereality is we are biological beings dependenton the biosphere. What kind of intelligentcreature, knowing that these are our cruciallimitations, would act as if we can use Earthas a garbage can and not pay a price for that?

Has any human society ever lived sustainably?

When we were hunter-gatherers we had avery small ecological footprint because allwe had was what we could carry from one

place to another. But as technology increased,we began to live in large aggregates of villages,and people started to use more than thesurroundings could supply. As a result,civilisations collapsed again and again, asJared Diamond described in Collapse. Inthe past, though, when conditions got moredifficult, people were able to move. Thats whywe spread out from Africa. Well, we filled theworld up. Now were the most numerousmammal on the planet and causing anunprecedented extinction crisis. Our futureis very much at stake.

So what can we do now?

We cant go back to scrounging a living off theland we wouldnt be able to do it. Also, theland wouldnt be able to tolerate that kind ofassault from so many people. For example,85 per cent of Canadians live in large cities.Were stuck with those urban places, so theyhave to be made much more benign in termsof energy and resource throughput. Wevenever had to do this in our history.

Will we need to lower our standard of living?

Yes, if you determine your standard of livingby how much money youve got or whatmaterial goods you have. But if you judge

standard of living by quality of life, by yourrelationships with other people and yourcommunity, then I say that truly sustainablecommunities offer a far preferable way to live

What would a sustainable society look like to you?

First, we must acknowledge that we areanimals. If you give a speech to children inNorth America and say: Dont forget thatwere animals, their parents get very angryand reply: Dont call my daughter an animalwere human beings. We like to think of

ourselves as elevated above other creatures.But the human body evolved to be active, sodenying we are biological creatures has takenus in the opposite direction: we stuff ourselvewith more than we need, sit on our asses anddrive 10 blocks instead of walking! Sustainableliving would be much healthier: we would goout and walk around because there would beshops, musicians and people out on the streetthat wed want to meet. Thats what communityis all about.

Plus we have to stop this crazy stuff wherecellphones are turning over every six to eightmonths, where people rush to get the latestiPod, and then it all goes into landfill.

What about population growth?

Were way overpopulated. But its not just afunction of numbers, it also has to do with pecapita consumption. The industrialised worldhas only 20 per cent of Earths population butuses more than 80 per cent of the resourcesand produces more than 80 per cent of thetoxic waste. I asked a top ecologist at HarvardUniversity how many humans Earth couldsustainably support, and he said 200 millionif you want to live like North Americans. Evenif you only look at industrialised countries,there are way too many of us. When I say this,

What makes us fool ourselves that things have never been better? Why do we fail tolive within the constraints that our planet and biology have set for us, when future

generations will pay the price? As Canadian campaigner and activist David Suzukitells Jo Marchant,those are the questions that keep him awake nights

We should act likethe animals we are

ProfileDavid Suzuki received a PhD in zoology from the Universityof Chicago. He hosts CBCs long-running science showThe Nature of Things, syndicated in more than 40 countries.He co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990, towork to find ways for society to live in balance with thenatural world that sustains us. Visit www.davidsuzuki.org.


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people get angry. They say the stores arefilled with food, were living longer than ever,were better off. Well, the reason we have theillusion that everything is OK is because wereusing up what our children and grandchildrenshould expect to inherit.

How do you hope to persuade governments and

businesses to make fundamental changes?

When you talk to politicians, theyre justfocused on the next election. When you talkto business people, theyre just focused on thequarterly report. At the Suzuki Foundation wesay to them, lets look ahead a generation. Letsimagine a Canada where the air is clean, andfewer than 15 per cent of kids develop asthma.

Lets imagine a Canada covered in forest wecan log forever because were doing it the rightway; a Canada where you can drink water fromany river or lake, or catch a fish and eat itwithout worrying about what chemicals are init. When you define a vision for the future thatway, everybody agrees. Thats very powerfulbecause youve done two things: were nolonger fighting because were all on the same

side, and weve got a target.

Can you achieve that target?

We have divided foundation activities intonine areas, such as energy, waste, water andfood, with targets we believe are achievable in25 years. We call it sustainability within ageneration. And our parliament just passeda bill mandating that government activitiesbe filtered through the lens of sustainabilitywithin a generation. Im very proud of that.

We also ought to be pulling back on taxeson good things that we want to encourage,and tax the hell out of bad things. We payCAN$99 a tonne to put garbage into a landfillbut we dont pay to put pollutants into the air!Our corporate community screams and yellsat the very suggestion of a carbon tax but Imsure one is coming, its only a matter of time.

Youre clearly very passionate about this.

I have grandchildren. Anybody thats notpassionate about this doesnt give a shitabout their grandchildren. Im 72. I wouldlove to be retired and doing some paintingand the other things that Ive left off doingall these years, but I dont ever want mygrandchild to look at me and say: Grandpa,you could have done more.

Limitless resources are

a fools dream that we

can never achieve



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HERE is a salutary tale about the WorldBank. The first draft of its 1992 World

Development Report, dedicated to sustainabledevelopment, contained a diagram labelledthe relation of the economy to theenvironment. It showed a rectangle labelledeconomy, with an arrow entering it labelledinputs and an arrow exiting it labelledoutputs. That was it.

It was my job, as senior economist in thebanks environment department, to reviewthe draft and offer suggestions. I said drawingsuch a picture was a great idea, but it reallyhad to include the environment. As drawn, the

Economists are still failing to grasp the simple messagethat Earths resources are finite, says ecological economistHerman Daly. Until they do, we will never switch to asustainable economy and avoid the ultimate crash

On a roadto disaster


economy was receiving inputs from nowhereand expelling outputs back to nowhere.

I suggested we draw a big circle aroundthe economy and label it ecosystem. Thenit would be clear that the inputs representedresources taken from the ecosystem, and theoutputs represented waste returned to it aspollution. This would allow us to raisefundamental questions, such as how bigthe economy can get before it overwhelmsthe total system.

When the second draft came back, a largeunlabelled rectangle had been drawn aroundthe original figure, like a picture frame.

I complained that it changed nothing. In thethird draft, the diagram was gone. The ideathat economic growth should be constrainedby the environment was too much for the

World Bank in 1992, and still is today. The banrecognised that something must be wrongwith that diagram but better to omit it thandeal with the inconvenient questions it raised

That was when I realised that economistshave not grasped a simple fact that toscientists is obvious: the size of the Earthas a whole is fixed. Neither the surface northe mass of the planet is growing or shrinkingThe same is true for energy budgets: theamount absorbed by the Earth is equal tothe amount it radiates. The overall size ofthe system the amount of water, land, air,minerals and other resources present onthe planet we live on is fixed.

The most important change on Earth inrecent times has been the enormous growthof the economy, which has taken over anever greater share of the planets resources.In my lifetime, world population has tripled,while the numbers of livestock, cars, housesand refrigerators have increased by vastlymore. In fact, our economy is now reachingthe point where it is outstripping Earthsability to sustain it. Resources are running outand waste sinks are becoming full. Theremaining natural world can no longersupport the existing economy, much less onethat continues to expand.

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The economy is like a hungry, growingorganism. It consumes low-entropy naturalresources such as trees, fish and coal, producesenergy and useful goods from them, and spitsout high-entropy waste such as carbon dioxide,mine slag and dirty water. Mainstreameconomists are mostly concerned withthe organisms circulatory system, howthe energy and resources can be efficientlyallocated, while tending to ignore its digestivesystem. As my experience with the diagramshowed, the sources of the resources that theorganism consumes and the sinks into whichit deposits waste are ignored. Effectively,economists are assuming they are infinite.

Because of this, they recognise no limits onthe capacity for economic growth. In a reportpublished earlier this year, the Commission

on Growth and Development reviewed theexperience and policies of 13 countries,including Botswana, Brazil, China and Japan,which since the 1950s have grown at anaverage annual rate of 7 per cent or more for25 years or longer. The commission suggeststhat this is an example the rest of the worldshould follow. If the global economy wereto grow this fast, however, then in 25 years itwould have increased to five times its presentsize. They dont say what would happen afterthat; presumably we should simply aim todo the same again.

Generally, when the cost of an activity

starts to outweigh any benefits, we stop doingit. Buying one ice cream makes sense if itbrings us pleasure and satisfies our hunger.Once we have eaten two or three, however, wedo not buy more because, despite the pleasanttaste, we start feeling sick. This off switch isnot working for the economy as a whole,though, because our national accounts do notseparate the costs of economic activity fromthe benefits. Instead, both are countedtowards a countrys GDP. We count as desirablegrowth both the beneficial activity that causespollution and the costly activity of cleaning upthe pollution, for example. And when cuttingdown trees and selling the lumber boosts GDP,we subtract nothing for the loss of forests.

The scale of the global economy isapproaching the limits of what our planetcan cope with. As the oceans are emptied

of fish, forests shrink from logging and levelsof pollutants and greenhouse gases in theatmosphere rise, the environmental andsocial costs of further growth are likely tointensify until we reach a point at which theprice we pay for each unit of extra growthbecomes greater than the benefits we gain.

In fact, there is evidence that we havepassed this point, at least in well-off countriessuch as the US and UK. Since our GDPaccounts cannot reveal whether this hashappened or not, scholars have devisedways to track other potential indicatorssuch as health, well-being and the state ofour environment. These include the Indexof Sustainable Economic Welfare, the GenuineProgress Indicator, the Ecological Footprint,and the Happy Planet Index. They have found

that as GDP goes up, these other measures arelevelling off and even declining. Economicgrowth may already be making us poorerrather than richer.

As long as our economic system is basedon chasing economic growth above all else, weare heading for environmental, and economic,disaster. To avoid this fate, we must switch ourfocus from quantitative growth to qualitative

development, and set strict limits on the rateat which we consume the Earths resources.In such a steady-state economy, the value ofgoods produced can still increase, for examplethrough technological innovation or betterdistribution, but the physical scale of oureconomy must be kept at a level the planetis able to sustain. Can we transform oureconomy from a forward-moving aeroplaneto a hovering helicopter without crashing?After 200 years in a growth economy, it ishard to imagine what a steady-state economymight look like, but it does not have to meanfreezing in the dark under a communisttyranny (see page 52). Most of the changescould be applied gradually, in mid-air.

The idea of moving to a steady-stateeconomy will appear radical to many, perhapspolitically impossible. But the alternative, amacro-economy that is structurally requiredto grow in scale beyond the biophysical limitsof the Earth, is an absurdity, and heading forthe ultimate crash. Before we reach thatradical physical limit, we are alreadyencountering the economic limit at whichbenefits of extra growth are increasinglyoutweighed by the costs.

When the cost of anactivity outweighs the

benefit, we should stop


Booklist

Want to read more?

COMMON WEALTH: ECONOMICS FOR A CROWDED PLANET

by Jeffrey Sachs, Allen Lane/Penguin, 22/$27.95Global problems need global solutions,says Sachs in this ambitious call for a neweconomic paradigm. Hugely authoritativeand bursting with energy.

ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTby Herman E. Daly, Edward Elgar, 25/$45This clear-thinking set of Dalys academicessays also includes his heartfelt speeches tothe World Bank. A masterclass in sustainableeconomics from the founder of the field.

THE DOMINANT ANIMAL

by Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Island Press, $35Devotees of the Ehrlichs will be familiarwith their eco-message, but it feels morepressing than ever. This marvellouscompendium should be required reading.

THE BRIDGE AT THE END OF THE WORLDby James Gustave Speth, Yale University Press, 16/$28A massive plea for junking capitalismas we know it, from one of the worldsbest-placed environmental policy-makers.A must-read.

EARTH IN THE BALANCE

by Al Gore, Earthscan, 9.99A passionate and intelligent discussionof the environmental crisis we face. Firstpublished in 1992, it was rereleased afterthe success ofAn Inconvenient Truth andresonates even more strongly today.

THE SHADOWS OF CONSUMPTIONby Peter Dauvergne, MIT Press, 16.95/$24.95Iconic case studies of unsustainableconsumption focused on cars, fuel, meat,refrigerators and one of the most emotiveenvironmental causes, seal hunting.

HOW THE RICH ARE DESTROYING THE EARTH

by Herv Kempf, Chelsea Green, 7.95/$12.95Refreshingly, this slim, searing, openlypolitical essay on environmental degradationpoints the finger of blame at the left forignoring ecology, as well as the rich.

DO GOOD LIVES HAVE TO COST THE EARTH?edited by Andrew Simms and Joe Smith, Constable, 7.99Twenty-three inspiring essays on how wecan have our ecological cake and eat it, too.

To read longer reviews of these books and others,go to www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion

ProfileHerman Daly is one of the founders of the field ofecological economics, which argues that the scale ofthe economy must be kept within sustainable limits.He was senior economist in the World Banks environmentdepartment from 1988 to 1994, and is now professorof ecological economics at the University of Maryland.


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From the Supreme Court to the White House, Gus Spethhelped shape US environmental policy. But, as he tells Liz Else,

green values stand no chance against market capitalism

When did you first realise that the environmentwas in trouble?

I was 12. There was a lake in the mountainsof North Carolina where I used to go withmy grandparents. We arrived one summerand found that a tannery had dumped itswaste into a river that flowed into the lake.The whole thing stank to high heaven andfrothed around the edges. Ill never forget it.

But you read law not science?

Yes, but then in the late 1960s when I wasfinishing law school a group of us got togetherand created what became the Natural

Resources Defense Council. This was a publicinterest, non-profit environmental law firm.Its still doing fabulously today.

What kind of cases did you take?

The US had just passed the NationalEnvironmental Policy Act, which meant allfederal projects had to have an environmentalimpact statement. We used it to challenge aseries of destructive federal projects, from waterprojects to offshore drilling. I even helped totrip up the fast breeder reactor project.

Were you able to continue that work when you

joined Jimmy Carters administration in 1977?

I was principal environmental adviser at theWhite House, and we were trying to undo a lotof destructive water development projects.But Im most proud of the fact that we pushed

the global warming issue hard, starting in1979. Carter took it very seriously and I thinkhe would have done something had he stayedin office. I have a copy of a news story in TheNew York Times in which I called for cappingcarbon dioxide concentrations at 50 per centabove pre-industrial levels. Were likely to flyright past that number shortly.

You later headed the UN Development Programme.

Wasnt that a big change from the environment?

We were mainly concerned about worldpoverty, but the environment was central tothat, in terms of conserving the resources

people depend on. Our mantra becamesustainable human development.

After decades of work on the environment, youve

painted a bleak picture in your latest book. Why?

I was trying to get to grips with a paradox:the environmental community is stronger,better funded and more sophisticated thanever, so why is the environment goingdownhill so far that we face the prospectof a ruined planet?

What do you think?

My conclusion is that were trying to doenvironmental policy and activism within asystem that is simply too powerful. Its todayscapitalism, with its overwhelming commitmentto growth at all costs, its devolution oftremendous power into the corporate sector,and its blind faith in a market riddled withexternalities. And it is also our own patheticcapitulation to consumerism. Even as theenvironmental community swims morestrongly against the current, the current getsever stronger and more treacherous, soenvironmentalism slips under. The onlysolution is to get out of the water, take a hardlook at whats going on and figure what needsto be done to change todays capitalism.

Can we can really reform capitalism?

Only if the issues Ive dwelled on in The BridgeAt The Edge Of The World become a subject ofwidespread discussion. The environmentalcommunity, at least in the US, is weak when itcomes to talking about lifestyle changes, abouconsumption, and it is reluctant to challengegrowth or the power of corporations. A lot of thbig issues have political immunity. We need anew political movement in the US to drive this

What should a movement like this be aiming for?

The economy we have now is an inherentlyrapacious and ruthless system. It is up tocitizens to inject values that reflect humanaspirations rather than just making money.But groups, whether theyre concernedabout social issues, social justice, theenvironment or effective politics, are failingbecause theyre not working together. I wantto see them join into one hopefully powerfulpolitical force.

We have enough

money, were justspending it poorly

Swimmingupstream

ProfileJames Gustave Speth, dean of the school of forestry andenvironmental studies at Yale University, co-founded theNatural Resources Defense Council, advised Jimmy Carter,and headed the UN Development Programme. His latestbook is The Bridge At The Edge of the World: Capitalism, theenvironment, and crossing from crisis to sustainability.


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Are there recent models of this coming together?

The US civil rights movement of the 1960s.People would have to be willing to take thosekinds of risks.

How do you sell capitalism without growth?

The US has been growing between 3 and3.5 per cent a year for a long time. Is theresome growth dividend thats being put intobetter social conditions and services? No.Is it being spent protecting our environment?No. Its a snare and a delusion. We have enoughmoney, we are just spending it poorly. Toinvoke growth as a solution creates barriersto dealing with the real problems.

What things do need to grow?

In the US we have huge social needs to meet,sustainable industries to create, technologiesto grow, decent healthcare to create. We needto focus on those things and not sacrificethem to growing the aggregate economy.Im not advocating state socialism, but Iam advocating a non-socialist alternative totodays capitalism. If we took one-tenth of 1 percent of what we spend on trying to prop upthe current system, and put it into exploringthe future, wed be making good progress.


Arguing that economic growth is the only way to make poorpeople richer is misguided, says analystAndrew Simms

Trickle-down myth

THE last line of defence for advocates ofindefinite global economic growth is that

it is needed to eradicate poverty. This argumentis at best disingenuous. By any reasonableassessment it is claiming the impossible.

Heres why. During the 1980s, for every$100 added to the value of the global economy,

around $2.20 found its way to those livingbelow the World Banks absolute povertyline. During the 1990s, that share shrankto just 60 cents. This inequity in incomedistribution more like a flood up than atrickle down means that for the poor to getslightly less poor, the rich have to get verymuch richer. It would take around $166 worthof global growth to generate $1 extra forpeople living on below $1 a day.

Fair enough, you might think, its worth it.But consider the resources it would require. Themeasure known as the ecological footprintcompares what we harvest from the biosphere,

and return to it as waste, with the biospheresability to absorb this and regenerate. It revealswhether we are living within our means oreating into our ecological capital.

Humanity has been overshooting thebiospheres capacity to sustain our activitiesevery year since the mid-1980s, and each yearwe do it sooner. In 2008, we had consumedthe ration for the year by 23 September, fivedays earlier than the previous year. It wouldtake at least three Earths to sustain us ifeveryone had the lifestyle of people in theUK; five if we all lived like Americans.

Perversely, under the current economicsystem, reducing poverty by a tiny amountwill necessitate huge extra consumption bythose who are already rich. To get the poorestonto an income of just $3 per day wouldrequire an impossible 15 planets worth ofbiocapacity. In other words, we will havemade Earth uninhabitable long beforepoverty is eradicated. If we are serious about

helping the poor rather than the rich,we need a new development model.

Lets say we want an economy that givesus long, satisfied lives, within the tolerancelevels of supporting ecosystems. Progressthen requires maximising the efficiency withwhich an economy converts natural resources

such as fossil fuels into desirable humanoutcomes. At the New Economics Foundation,we compare the ecological footprint with lifeexpectancy and satisfaction, to see how welldifferent nations are doing. By this measure,middle-income developing countries andespecially small island states score best,while developed nations lag behind. Per unitof carbon, Europe delivers less well-being forits citizens now than it did in 1961. AcrossEurope, however, people report comparablelevels of well-being whether they consume alot or a little. In the UK, for example, peopleare just as satisfied whether their lifestyles

would require eight planets to sustain or justone. This is a message of hope: good livesdont have to cost the earth.

But we have to overcome knee-jerk rejectionof the R word redistribution. With globalgrowth constrained by the need to limit carbonemissions (remember that the poorest will bethe first and worst victims of climate change),redistribution becomes the only viable routeto poverty reduction. Given the triple crunchof the credit crisis, high oil prices and climatechange, industrialised economies needradical, practical plans to address all theseissues at once. Susan George discusses oneapproach on page 50. Another is the GreenNew Deal, launched last month. It calls forcapital controls and tax reforms to stabilisethe economy and raise funds for a massiveand quick environmental transformation,creating thousands of jobs while narrowingthe gap between rich and poor.

It took just days for governments in theUK and US to abandon decades of economicdoctrine to try to rescue the reckless financialsystem from complete meltdown. Why shouldit take longer to introduce a plan to stop theplanet crunch brought on by an equallyreckless and even more dangerous obsessionwith growth?

ProfileAndrew Simms is policy director of the New EconomicsFoundation in London, UK. He is co-editor ofDo Good LivesHave to Cost the Earth?(Constable 2008).


11/15

OUR poor battered world is beset bymultiple crises. There is mass poverty,

and growing inequality within and betweenrich and poor countries. The financial disasterwhich began with sub-prime mortgages hasspread inexorably throughout the US andelsewhere, threatening to plunge the globaleconomy into a prolonged period of stagnationas severe as the Depression. Most ominous ofall, climate change and species destruction areaccelerating faster than most scientists, muchless governments, thought possible.

These crises feed back into and intensifyeach other. After years of irresponsibleinnovation, huge financial institutionsare bailed out by the public purse and topmanagement takes the money and runs,while millions lower down lose their jobsand often their homes. Seeing the housingballoon shrivel, speculators stampede intocommodities markets, spurring the rise

of food and energy prices. Dramaticallyhigher prices for staples plunge another150 million people globally into destitution.Resource-poor communities grab what theycan, fell trees, kill animals and over-exploitthe little land they have, but the rich causefar greater damage with their dinosaur-likeecological footprints.

Piously pretending to reduce its carbondioxide emissions, the US devotes more thana third of its corn and soya land to agri-fuels,pushing food prices further skyward. Globalwarming and the fury of the storms it provokeshit the poor and the poorer regions of Earthhardest, just as the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC) long foresaw.

So is there an escape route? Yes, but not theone well-meaning environmentalists havelong advocated. Sorry, but we cant save theplanet even if we halve our energy use bytomorrow. Im not suggesting that individuals

should not make every change they can, butthey should not harbour any illusions thatpersonal behaviour, however carbon-virtuoucan do the trick. The worst offenders will notdesist and voluntary measures are ineffectiveScale is the problem, and our task is topromote a quantitative and qualitative leap inthe scale of environmental action, recognisingthat big can be not just beautiful but crucial ifwe hope to avert the worst.

Is such a leap possible? Is the planetsalvageable as long as international capitalismprevails, with its focus on growth and profitsat all costs, predatory resource capture andfootloose finance? As a wise man said: Allfor ourselves and nothing for other peopleseems, in every age of the world, to have beenthe vile maxim of the masters of mankind.That was Adam Smith in the Wealth ofNations, not Karl Marx.

If Smith was right and our masters

Susan George is known for hercritiques of corporate-driven

globalisation and hard-hitting bookson hunger, development and debt.Now, she argues, we can borrowlessons from the early 1940s totransform our shattered economiesand halt runaway climate changebefore its too late

We mustthink big


Beyond growth


12/15

continue to display both greed and avarice,must we organise world revolution beforewe can hope to save Earth? Is there a singlepoint of attack? If so, please tell me the nameof the tsar and the address of the WinterPalace. Its not to be found on Wall Street,which not only survived 9/11 but seems tohave captured the US government, despitea radical winnowing of the major firms. Norwould anyone welcome the political systemsthat shrouded those vast areas whererevolution did occur. Somehow, though,because our present system seems bent oncatastrophe, we need a third way betweenred-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism and aworldwide uprising as unlikely as it is utopian.

There is a historical precedent. When theAllies faced fascism in the second world war, it

was as dire a foe for them as climate change isfor us. The US had not yet fully emerged fromthe Depression, but it had in Franklin D.Roosevelt a president who understood whatwas required. Under his guidance, the economywas shifted to a war footing in an amazinglyshort time. My native city, Akron, Ohio, therubber capital of the world, switched toproducing tyres and equipment for the armyand air force. Every other industrial centrealso switched to meet military needs. Chiefexecutives became prestigious dollar-a-yearmen, paid that symbolic sum by the treasuryfor meeting government quantity and

quality targets. Many framed the cheque likea badge of honour.Yes, there were still worker-management

conflicts, but on the whole it was a time ofopportunity, especially for women andminorities. Workers were well paid, everyonepitched in, victory gardens were cultivated,children used their allowances to buy warstamps, petrol was rationed. The country hadnever been so united before or since. The warpulled the country out of the Depression atlast. It was Keynesian economics, named afterBritish economist John Maynard Keynes.

A similar effort is required to fightenvironmental meltdown and it would be lessdifficult than it sounds. The political point isthat ecological Keynesianism is a win-winscenario that could provide something foreveryone. People are generally way ahead ofgovernments in recognising danger, and they

tend to build coalitions to convince politiciansthey will vote for whoever takes a specificcrisis as seriously as they do. Politicianscan win on a Keynesian environmentalprogramme because now, as then, it promisesa society of highly skilled, highly paid qualityjobs and renewed export opportunities.

But where is the money to come from forthis? The world is actually awash with money,the problem is getting at it. According toUS financial services giant Merrill Lynch,10 million people worldwide are sitting on$40 trillion of investable cash. Banks mustbe told that in exchange for the bailouts theymust devote X per cent of their loan portfoliosto environment-friendly products andprocesses at below-market interest rates.They can make up the difference by lending

to big greenhouse polluters at 10 per cent.

Stringent standards for new buildings haveto become the norm, while older ones can beretrofitted on easy terms; families andlandlords can be offered financial incentivesfor installing green roofs and solar panels and sell excess energy to the grid. Research

can be oriented towards alternative energiesand strong, ultra-light materials for aircraftand vehicles. Technically speaking, we alreadyknow how to do these things, although someclean solutions are still more costly than dirtyones. Mass-produced, that could change.

The environmental crisis provides an idealopportunity to get the global financial systemunder control. Taxing international currencytransactions and other market operationsneeds only political determination and somesoftware. Debt cancellation for poor countriespromised by the G8 for a decade must happen,with the requirement they contribute to theglobal effort through reforestation, soilconservation, and the like. Tax havens wouldhave to go. Half of all world trade currentlypasses through them; they allow rich peopleand corporations to stash trillions in assetsthat could provide governments with at least$250 billion a year in tax revenues.

What about reluctant or hostile executives?Lets create an ultra-exclusive Order of CarbonConquerors or Eco Heroes, give them shinygreen-gold silk rosettes for their buttonholes,banners for their energy neutral homes, andfanions for their efficient, lightweight cars.We could even pay them $1 a year. Wouldntthat be nicer than another war?

ProfileSusan George is chair of the board of the TransnationalInstitute, an Amsterdam-based international networkof activist-scholars who provide critical analyses of globalproblems (www.tni.org). Her most recent book isHijacking America(Polity).

Politically, ecologicalKeynesianism is a

win-win scenario


Buy less stuff. And join andsupport Friends of the Earth.Herman Daly, ecological economist,University of Maryland, College Park, US

Vote. Or better yet, get involvedin politics at any level and advocategreen economics.Julia Marton-Lefvre, director general of theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature

In a speech in April 1967,

Martin Luther King called on theUS to shift from a thing-orientedsociety to a person-oriented society.It is a message that resonates withtodays challenges.John Beddington, chief scientific adviserto the UK government

Go outside much more and connectwith the environment, and cut yourpersonal consumption of meat in half.Gus Speth, dean of the school of forestry and

environmental studies at Yale University

Pick an aspect of the crisis you areinterested in, join an organisation thattries to do something about it andbuild alliances with others.Susan George, chair of the board, Transnational Institute

Buy strategically: products thatnot only do their job more sustainably,but send market signals back through

the economy.

Alex Steffen, executive director, Worldchanging.com

Sign up to take monthly actions atonehundredmonths.org, do a simplesurvey at happyplanetindex.org andjoin a Transition Town initiative.Andrew Simms, policy director,New Economics Foundation

For more advice, please visitwww.newscientist.com/channel/opinion

Want to do your bit?

Take action


13/15

ITS 2020, and we are a decade into ahuge experiment in which we are tryingto convert our country to a sustainable orsteady-state economy. We have two guidingprinciples: we dont use natural resourcesfaster than they can be replenished by theplanet, and we dont deposit wastes fasterthan they can be absorbed.

In our society, scientists set the rules. Theywork out what levels of consumption and

emission are sustainable and if theyre notsure they work out a cautious estimate. Thenits up to the economists to work out how toachieve those limits, and how to encourageinnovation so we extract as much as possiblefrom every scrap of natural resource we use.

They are using two main mechanismsfor doing this. The first is a cap-and-tradesystem, under which companies can buy andsell emissions permits. This is working wellfor reducing carbon emissions, for example.The second is to change what we tax. We aregradually abolishing income tax (a verypopular decision!) to encourage people to addas much value as possible to the resources theywork with. Instead we are taxing resources atthe point at which they are removed from thebiosphere: oil as it is pumped from the ground,for example, or fish as they are scooped fromthe sea. This raises the price of those resources,and encourages people to use them sparingly.All that excess supermarket packagingdisappeared overnight.

An incidental benefit of this tax systemis that its easy to enforce. Cheats can nolonger dodge taxes by hiding their income.Unfortunately it is also regressive: poorer peopleend up paying a higher proportion of theirincomes on goods than the rich do. We offset

this by using some of the proceeds to fundbenefits programmes and projects for them.

Without economic growth to raiseincomes, we have to tackle povertydifferently. We are gradually redistributingresources by setting upper limits for incomeinequality. It was tricky deciding what thepermitted range of incomes should be one that rewards real differences andcontributions rather than just multiplying

privilege. Plato thought it was a factor of 4.Universities, civil services and the militaryhave always seemed to manage witha factor of 10 to 20, but in the US corporatesector before we began this experiment itwas over 500. As a first step, we are aimingto lower the overall range to a factor of 100,so if the lowest salary in a company is$10,000, the highest for a top manager is$1 million. Eventually, we may try to bringthis down to a factor of 30.

So what about growth? It is still allowed,but only as long as it doesnt breach the limitsset by ecologists. Interest rates have thereforefallen very low, although not to zero. Thoughthe rate of physical throughput of resourcesis limited, increases in efficiency anddevelopments in technology are allowing usto get more and more out of the resources wehave. This increases the value of the economy.

When we began this transition, forexample, we introduced a carbon tax whichmade petrol-fuelled travel prohibitivelyexpensive. That limited car journeys, butalso triggered huge investments in publictransport, as well as in the technologyrequired to run vehicles on renewable energy.That research has paid off, so cars arebecoming much more affordable. Another

How we kicked ouraddiction to growthThe transition to a sustainable society will throw up massivechallenges. How will we make a living? And what will happen to allthose bankers? Heres a vision of what a steady state economy mightbe like 10 years after it gets under way


Beyond growth

thriving area of research is virtual reality: airtravel is much more restricted now, but we cavisit exotic locations at the flick of a switch.

There is disagreement over how mucheconomic growth we will ultimately beable to achieve. Some optimists thinktechnology will allow huge amounts ofgrowth without increasing our impacton the planet. Others point out thateven sectors of the economy generally

thought to be purely qualitative,such as information technology,actually involve significant use of


14/15

physical resources the raw materialsrequired to make computers and monitors,for instance. Even people working in IT spendmost of their income on physical goods suchas cars, houses and holidays. Besides, for thegrowth we do achieve to benefit the poor, theyare going to need clothing, shelter and food,not electronic music and internet recipes.

Another area that has changed hugely isfinance. Our steady-state economy cantsupport the enormous superstructure offinance that used to be built around

expectations of future growth.Investment is mainly forreplacement and qualitativeimprovement, and theenormous pyramid of debt

that was previously balanced

on top of our economy hasshrunk. We are gradually raising

the percentage of money deposited thatbanks are required to keep in reserve. As

a result, commercial lending isdeclining banks get their income by

financial intermediation and servicecharges instead and we are

moving to a culture in which youhave to save money before you

can lend or invest it.We are also producing

different kinds of goods.Now that we are paying the

environmental costs ofwhat we use, naturalresources are expensive.So making short-lived,disposable goods no

longer makes economicsense. Today, we only make

what we need, and productsare built to last so no more fun

consumer tech that has to be updated everysix months. And were developing new modelsof ownership: rather than buying a car orcarpet, you are likely to lease it from an ownerwho is responsible for maintaining it, and whowill recycle it at the end of its useful life.

This means that maintenance and repair as opposed to production are much moreimportant sources of employment than everbefore. So are science and technology. We haveall kinds of opportunities there, from thegovernment-funded ecologists and scientistsworking on values for concepts such ascarrying capacity (the number of peopleEarth can sustain) or modelling the effects ofrising sea levels, to the entrepreneursdeveloping renewable technologies. Withoutas much economic growth as before, we cantmaintain full employment but then, our oldgrowth economy wasnt so good at doing that

either. Instead, people work part time,generally as a co-owner of a business ratherthan as an employee. The whole pace of life ismore relaxed. Incomes are lower but we arerich in something that many of us had neverexperienced before: time.

Completely free trade isnt feasible anymore, of course, because we have to countmany costs to the environment and the futurethat foreign firms in growth economies areallowed to ignore. So we allow regulatedinternational trade under rules thatcompensate for those differences. As thenumber of countries committing tosustainability increases, however, wereforming a rapidly expanding club withinwhich we can trade freely. Eventually we hopethat club will encompass the whole world.

One of the toughest issues, politically, has

been population. We know that we will have tostabilise our population and that includesimmigration rates as well as birth rate. Werenot quite there yet, but we are moving in thatdirection. This will push up the average ageof the population, putting pressure on the

pensions system, but our economists arebusy working out what contributions willbe needed to make it sustainable.

How is all this affecting our quality of life?The outlook here is pretty good. Before westarted our experiment, psychologists andeconomists had found that the correlationbetween absolute income and happinessextends only to a certain threshold. Oncebasic needs are satisfied, only relativeincome how well off we are compared toour peers influences how happy people saythey are. This held for comparisons betweenrich and poor countries at a given time, andin comparing a single country before and aftera significant growth in income. Fortunately,then, abandoning economic growth has notmeant a decline in total happiness.

Ten years down the line, the sacrifices wehave made have been less onerous than wefeared they might be. We have escaped thedoomed model of economic growth, andno one is worse off. Its even possible that wehave all become a little bit happier, and itsgood to know that now our grandchildrenhave a chance of a better life too.

This scenario is based on a discussion withHerman Daly (see profile page 47)

Making short-lived,disposable goods nolonger makes sense


AUDEVAN

RYN


15/15

BACK in the 1970s, few people listenedto scientists warnings about global

warming. Even fewer heeded calls to curbeconomic growth so we could protect theenvironment. Today, these ideas are startingto be appreciated. We are hearing ever moreabout the contradiction between hanging onto a habitable planet and the expansionarydemands of the global market.

Yet as Tim Jackson outlines (see page 42),people and their governments whichcontinue to urge the growth agenda in Canute-like defiance of the rising waters and ragingheats they have been told will ensue are stilllargely in denial about this conflict. A keyfactor in this is the widespread presumptionthat becoming more sustainable willinevitably make our lives worse, which leadsto green campaigners being dismissed asregressive killjoys bent on returning us to aprimitive existence. Perhaps to counter thisidea, those who take global warming seriouslytend to focus on technical fixes that mightallow us to continue with our current ways.

It doesnt help that virtually allrepresentations of pleasure and the life weshould aspire to come from advertising, with

its incessant message that our happiness isdependent on consuming ever more stuff.We hear little about the joys of escaping thestress, congestion, ill-health, noise and wastethat come with our high standard of living.

In fact, there is plenty of evidence that thework-dominated and materially encumberedaffluence of today is not giving us enjoyablelives, and that switching to a more sustainablesociety in which we work and produce lesswould actually make us happier. For example,rates of occupational ill-health and depressionhave been shown to be linked to the numberof hours we work, and once a certain level ofincome is reached further wealth does notcorrelate with increased happiness.

The absurdity of our situation is illustrated

by the way our economy profits from sellingback to us the pleasures that we have lostthrough overwork: the leisure and touristcompanies that sell us quality time; thecatering services that provide homecooking; the dating and care agencies thatsee to personal relations; the gyms wherepeople pay to walk on treadmills because thecar culture has made it unsafe or unpleasantto walk outside. As the economy continues toexpand, consumer culture becomes ever morreliant on our willingness to accept this.

A growing number of people are startingto realise that there may be more to life thanworking to spend. Troubled by the negativeimpacts of a high-stress lifestyle, they aresimplifying their lives and rethinking theirvalues and desires. If we were to shift en mass

to a less work-intensive economy, it wouldreduce the rate at which people, goods andinformation had to be delivered, cuttingboth resource use and carbon emissions.

Rather than entailing any sacrifice toour lifestyles, this would bring huge benefits.People would reclaim time for personal andfamily life. They would commute less andenjoy healthier modes of travelling such aswalking, cycling and boating. Supermarketshopping would cede to a resurgence in localstores, making town centres more individualand boosting local communities. All thiswould transform urban and rural living, and

provide more tranquil space for reflection, aswell as opportunities for sensual experiencenow denied by harried travel and work routineThese revised ideas of the good life might alsinspire less-developed countries to reconsidethe conventions and goals of development,enabling them to avoid some of the lessdesirable consequences of the current model.

Of course, we would have to sacrifice someconveniences and pleasures: creature comfortsuch as regular steaks, hot tubs, luxurycosmetics and easy foreign travel. But constancomfort can dull as well as gratify appetites,and human ingenuity will surely contrive arange of more eco-friendly excitements.

Shifting to a steady-state economy isa daunting prospect. Yet as Herman Dalyoutlines on page 46, it is unrealistic to supposethat we can continue with current rates ofexpansion in production, work and materialconsumption over the next few decades, letalone into the next century.

In a climate of financial turmoil andextensive cynicism about governmentcommitments on global warming, morehonesty about this might win cooperation andrespect from the electorate especially ifpoliticians start to focus on the fulfilments ofliving in a sustainable society.

ProfileKate Soper is based at London Metropolitan University. Shespecialises in the theory of needs and consumption, andenvironmental philosophy. Soper is the author ofWhat isNature? Culture, politics and the non-human (Blackwell,1995) and has recently completed a research project onalternative hedonism (www.consume.bbk.ac.uk).

The good lifeBreaking our dependence on profits and growth would makeour lives better, not worse, says philosopher Kate Soper

Beyond growth

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