By Dr. Glen Barry
The present human condition is predicated on one of the biggest lies ever – that the economy can grow indefinitely. In a self-serving logical contortion, economists in service to the oligarchy measure the well-being of a society by how fast it grows, with little regard to the state of natural capital, human inequities, the welfare of ecosystems and other species, or how widely happy people and society are. Natural capital is defined as Earth's stocks of natural assets including ecosystem services which make all life possible, which is unmeasured and thus undervalued by indexes of economic growth.
Growth based capitalism utterly fails to tie increases in economic
output with human and natural well-being. Militarism and gross conspicuous
consumption are equated with social expenditures to meet basic human needs.
Clearcutting old-growth forests for toilet paper is of equal worth as providing
homes and food for the poor. Ravaging Earth's last natural ecosystems for every
last drop of oil is deemed economically beneficial (despite being terribly
inefficient as externalities remain unpriced), while we are told restoring
natural ecosystems is unprofitable because of large discounting of future
benefits.
Living as if Earth's nature has no worth other than to be
liquidated for consumption degrades ourselves and ecosystems, and can only end
in utter ruin as first society, then the economy, and final the biosphere
collapses. It is blatantly obvious that infinite growth on a finite Earth is impossible.
Economic growth is worshipped as if it were holy and divine,
rather than acknowledging that growth can come at enormous economic, social,
and environmental costs. There is little understanding of ecological overshoot
and the limits to growth, as we seek ever more material possessions at the
expense of all else, systematically degrading not only our habitat, but also our
future resource base and development potential.
Growth appears to be benign and pleasant, iPhones and
foreign travel are intoxicating, yet perpetual economic expansion comes at an
unknown price whose deleterious impacts sneak up upon you. Such is the nature
of exponential growth. The exorbitant costs of an exponentially growing economy
are best illustrated by imagining a pond whereby the extent of lily-pad coverage
doubles in extent every day, on the 30th day fully covering the water.
On which day is the pond half covered? When is it a 10% covered? We shall
return to this question.
By equating growth with well-being, capitalism may well be
irredeemable. Its foundational idea of people coming together in markets to
exchange their surplus has been bastardized to suggest that creating something
of worth and selling it is the same as every manner of speculative financial trickery.
Yet for the exchange of surplus in markets to serve human and nature's
well-being, there are some basic out-right lies that need to be addressed now.
Firstly, growth cannot fully measure economic well-being; we
need a richer measure that determines the extent to which economic activity is sustainable
and widely beneficial. A much richer measure is the rate of economic growth per
unit of natural capital draw down (or even replenishment), and by the extent to
which economic advancement is equitably shared. Such a truly green economy is
said to be at a steady state, whereby both population and consumption are
stable at a sustainable level.
Given the current state of ecological overshoot – as
terrestrial ecosystems, climate, water, oceans and biodiversity are in crisis –
achieving a steady state would require decades of degrowth and redistribution
of wealth.
Other times and cultures pre-capitalism have understood the
need to build circular economies that sustain and regenerate natural capital.
Indigenous Amazonians invested in the future by planting islands of useful
species in the savannahs, which they returned to decades later for sustenance, leading
to present day ecosystems mistakenly called wilderness. The pioneer homesteader
culture of using animal manure to replenish soil on small holdings was
particularly efficient in terms of using waste to replenish the agricultural
system, albeit it was most often practiced on stolen land.
It is possible to live in a manner where the future is not
by design degraded by overusing natural capital. Imagine a world where
advancement is equated with maximizing the well-being of all humans, indeed all
life. Where there are guarantees that there will be more tomorrow than there is
today. Imagine an economy where growth means maximizing well-being for life;
that is efficient, equitably shared, and increases natural capital, rather than
simply economic throughput regardless of waste streams and diminishment of
future development potential.
I consider myself a deep ecologist, yet I have taken a job
on Wall Street. I have come to realize that environmentalism cannot seek the
necessary changes in isolation; we must engage with the means of production and
seek to advance a vision of sustainable development that regenerates natural
capital and meets all of humanities basic needs. This is not some communist
nirvana; it is a steady state economy where the economy doesn't needlessly pull
down the biosphere, yet those that are smart and hardworking have more, but not
ridiculously so.
It is basic systems biology 101 that perpetual growth is a
positive feedback that at some point must by definition destroy the underlying
system. In a very short period of a few centuries human industrial growth has
rapaciously stripped land, air, water, and oceans of their life-giving
ecosystems in the name of economic advancement. Modern day shaman called
economists chant meaningless mumbo-jumbo endorsing brazen stripping of natural
capital as necessary to feed ever growing human populations, while hundreds of
millions are stripped of their land, and natural ecosystems destroyed, for more
wealth by the already uber rich.
Asked to explain how the loss of ocean fisheries, fertile
soil, and wetlands will be handled as destroyed by industrial capitalism; we
are told with a great deal of earnestness that an invisible hand will guide
substitution. Yet ecologists know with certainty there are no substitutes for
water, soil, food, and air; and that a biosphere can never be engineered.
The industrial economic growth mirage is the greatest
economic bubble ever and can only end in wanton collapse of ecosystems and
eventually the biosphere. Before we get there we are set to endure brazen
authoritarian demagoguery that roles back centuries of human advancement, plays
us off against each, and falsely attributes economic decline to regulations
upon enterprise. We fail to understand the real source of economic decline is
the underlying resource scarcity found in an economic system devoid of ethics
and ecologism.
For any chance at redemption, capitalism must immediately
foreswear growth as the measure of economic well-being. And a price must
immediately be placed upon carbon and other externalities which are costs not
factored into production. This is not rocket science, it is Economics 101, yet
again and again assigning a price to ecological degradation is talked about
academically but not put in place practically. Even given these reforms, it is
questionable whether capitalism's gross objectification of people and nature
can be overcome, but without embracing the idea of a steady state and pricing
natural capital, capitalism is an assured death-wish.
Humanity has become little more than a yeast colony in a
petri dish gorging upon a limited resource base, which will ultimately collapse
when gone. We are so fucking stupid, how do we fail to recognize that we are
one with animals – who have mouths, and eyes, and reproductive organs, and feel
pain just like us – yet somehow we feel superior? How have we come to believe
that we are not of, and utterly dependent upon, nature? Why do we have to
needlessly destroy our habitat for sustenance?
Think of how to bridge the present environment and economic
divide, and work to make sustainability reality. It is crucial that green ideas
engage with and transform the means of production and change it from within, or
capitalism will have to be overthrown, a highly risky venture. If we don't want
humanity's last days to be spent in slavery and economic misery, we will price
environmental decline and measure economic growth by the amount of equitable
advancement per unit of natural capital. Otherwise we face biosphere collapse
and the end of being.
Note exponentially growing lily-pads doubling in extent
daily cover half cover of the pond on day 29, and cross the 10% threshold whereby
a problem may be identified on day 26. Exponential growth will bury you without
revealing itself until the very last minute, when it is too late to respond.
Such is the pernicious myth of perpetual economic growth.
