How Much Is Enough

Live more simply so that others may simply live

To sustain a livable environment, all basic human needs must be met as sufficient steady state stocks of natural capital are maintained. Guaranteeing a basic income as the greed of the billionaire class is tamed are keys to avoiding biosphere collapse and the end of being.

Conspicuous over-consumption by some as others fester in abject poverty is killing us all as we liquidate our shared biological inheritance for throw-away consumer crap... This perilous state of global inequity begs the question how much is enough? - Dr. Glen Barry

Despite being more aware than many of the perilous ecological condition of the planet, like most I am drawn by the siren call of affluenza. The variety of consumer goods and their marketing are so pervasive that it is hard to not succumb to the illusion that material items equate with happiness and well-being.

And while I try hard to weigh the impacts of personal expenditures on the planet and its life, and whether the purchase of a particular item is necessary, it is just so damn difficult to resist the desire to meet everyday whims and consume more, and not feel somehow disadvantaged if more stuff cannot be had.

My unmet desires for electronics, a new wardrobe, and travel of course pale in importance to the billions who struggle to meet basic needs. The fact that one billion people live in abject poverty on less than $1.50 a day continues to stun me. Given the networked nature of the world it is very unlikely that a just, sustainable and livable Earth can long persist with such imbalances.

Being married to a Papua New Guinean, and having lived in this Pacific Island’s villages for many years, I understand that exclusion from the money economy does not mean that existence cannot be rich in community, experience, leisure and the wealth found in a well tilled garden. It is important to differentiate between self-sufficiency and dispossession in those that are materially poor.

But the truth remains that billions of people’s basic needs for medicine, food, comfort, and a few select luxuries continue to go unmet; as others slovenly conspicuously over-consume. Jet set celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio warn us climate is real as they gallivant around the world with pals in private yachts and jets spewing emissions for leisure, setting a bad example. Many of us in the developed world’s middle class live lives of consumption beyond the kings and queens of yesteryear, yet rarely is our desire for more satiated.

Earth is a finite place. There are only so many resources to be derived from the harvest of natural ecosystems. As natural capital has and continues to be drawn down by exponentially growing populations all wanting to consume more; a state of ecological overshoot has resulted whereby consumption is occurring at a rate beyond Earth’s ability to regenerate. We have gone from one to seven billion super-consumers in 130 years and we are liquidating Earth’s natural ecosystems to make consumer products that mostly end up in the landfill.

Regional scale ecological depletion is becoming the norm as arable land, fresh water, and clear skies have become scarce. Throughout the world suffering from emergent diseases, hunger, and a state of resource driven perma-war escalates as ecosystems collapse. Soon our one shared biosphere will collapse too if the status quo of inequity, war, and ecocide continue.

This environmental decline often impacts the poor more deeply who depend upon local resources for livelihoods. Yet middle-class opportunities for employment and consumption are also in decline. As I have noted on many occasion, natural ecosystem loss and abrupt climate change threaten to collapse our one shared biosphere in what can only be described as the end of being. Then even the rich will feel the pain of consumption of Earth’s life-support systems.

This perilous state of global inequity begs the question how much is enough?

A few hundred people have half the Earth’s wealth. Historically a CEO of a business would make a few dozen times as much as their workers. Now it is often several hundred times.

In a world that is collapsing into a state of perma-war and abject poverty, can we not pursue any limits at all upon personal wealth? No one is speaking of communism or even socialism here – those that work hard and are smarter deserve to have more. But at what point is it enough? And when do societal requirements for meeting basic human needs, while maintaining a habitable planet for all species, take precedence? We engage with these questions of inequity or we die.

One of the more interesting ideas gaining support across the political spectrum is the idea of replacing virtually all government programs with a guaranteed basic income sufficient to cover basic sustenance to every human being simply for being alive. Thus every human being’s basic human needs for shelter, food, clothing, and medicine would be realized. 

Those living on just such a basic income would not live a luxurious life, but abject human suffering would be banished. Huge government bureaucracies could be dismantled. Some could choose to live simple lives as students, artists, and musicians; while other work for extra consumption – but not without limit. And those working harder would have more, but not endless amounts that threaten the environment and others’ ability to persist.

So how much is enough? How about top executives making 40 times the amount of their average employee instead of 400 times, like they used to – if workers make $50,000 this still provides the boss with $2,000,000, more than enough to reward hard work. And every human being could have their average needs met with a basic income. This would be a start.

We have been conditioned since birth to consume at all costs, often haphazardly at the expense of the natural capital that sustains us. It will be very difficult to overcome the lure of mammon yet try we must. If the population can be stabilized and begin to be reduced, there is enough natural wealth for all to live decent lives with basic needs met and a variety of some, but not all, luxuries to match every taste.

Imagine a world where community, experience, regional travel, knowledge, and a life well lived are desired as much as ever more wealth at the expense of others and the Earth. The political will must be found to strongly tax the wealth of the billionaire class to meet the needs of the poor and our shared environment. 

There are other ways to live than a hell-bent rush to ecocide.

Until such time as we all in the middle and upper classes learn to live with a bit less, and to share with others, there is virtually no chance of a peaceful, sustainable, and just Earth continuing forever, or even much longer.

Environmental Collapse Fuels Resurgent Fascism of the #CreepyDonald Ilk

The biosphere is collapsing and dying as natural ecosystem loss, abrupt climate change, and grotesque inequity have so diminished natural capital that we find our well-being threatened by reduced material expectations, a state of perma-war, and escalating authoritarian fascism. Charlatan madman Donald Trump – aka #CreepyDonald – is a deranged, authoritarian wannabe-tyrant seeking to demagogue environmental collapse; and whose racist xenophobia, militant violence, and anti-science hate threaten America’s and the world’s final demise. It is the duty of every fair, decent, tolerant, freedom loving American to resist the rise of GOP authoritarian fascism and commit to peaceful, equitable, and ecologically sustainable advancement for all. 

It’s really quite simple: diminished economic prospects and social cohesion are the direct result of environmental decline. -- Dr. Glen Barry 

Earth Meanders, Deep Ecology Essay

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecointernet

July 23, 2016

Donald Trump is creepy

Human industrial growth has dismantled the ecological systems upon which healthy economies and societies are based.  Planetary ecological boundaries required for a habitable Earth have been surpassed as the human family finds itself in a state of ecological overshoot. Loss of natural ecosystems and a stable climate are already causing much conflict, suffering, and reduced opportunity for material advancement. Worsening environmental conditions threaten our liberty too as demagoguery flourishes.

Over the past 130 years the human population has grown from one to seven billion people, many of whom are living highly consumptive lifestyles, as others are mired in numbing abject poverty. This growth has come at the expense of destroying natural ecosystems. Massive economic expansion was easy when based upon liquidating ancient old-growth forests, bottom trawling bountiful oceans, and intensively over-exploiting soil. Now many of these natural resources are nearly exhausted.

Natural capital has perilously declined to such an extent that further widespread growth in material consumption is no longer possible. At least 90% of old growth forests and stocks of large ocean fish have already been harvested, and 50% of topsoil has eroded; as natural ecosystems that sustain life are destroyed for short-term profit. Abrupt climate change already routinely causes severe deprivation and dislocation.

CONVERGING GLOBAL CRISES THREATEN BIOSPHERE COLLAPSE

A number of other threats are converging, greatly diminishing the global condition, and imperiling progress on environmental sustainability. Grotesque inequity – whereby one billion people live on under $1.50 a day as similar numbers live opulent lifestyles – is the norm and worsening. As is often the case during hard times, many are returning to millennia old religious myths that teach that those who believe differently are bad and should be killed. Remote-control christian militarism and radical islamic terrorism are rife, as murder in the name of god is again in vogue.

A state of perma-war has arisen. Eternal tribal conflicts have been exacerbated by a scramble to exploit the last bits of natural capital; which incidentally power the biosphere, providing the ecosystem habitats which make Earth livable. Rather than thinking freely and coming together for global ecological sustainability and lasting human advancement, we seek to murder each other in the name of god and country, as in reality we pursue natural resources at advantageous terms.

These converging global mega-crises are compounded by outright ignorance and anti-intellectualism by those that should know better, but rather seek to enrich themselves based upon the suffering of others.

It’s really quite simple: diminished economic prospects and social cohesion are the direct result of environmental decline. The expectation in much of the world that each generation will be materially better off can no longer be sustained by plundering remaining resource-rich ecosystems. Sadly, such simple and unquestionable truths are opaque to the many people who have lost their ecology ethic, and live vacuous lives in pursuit of more stuff, or scramble daily just to survive.

Our one shared biosphere is threatened with imminent collapse and death, as together we are all faced with nothing less than the end of being. 

THE RISE AND FALL OF #CREEPYDONALD

Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist

Against such a backdrop of ecological, social, and economic decline; innumerable charlatan demagogues are rising, as is often the case when times are hard. Selling various brands of snake oil, they promise to make us safe, rich, and great again; if only they are given absolute power. While tyrannical forms of government are nothing new, and despite immeasurable human suffering during previous bouts of authoritarianism, our present condition of environmental scarcity has created the conditions for fascism’s resurgence.

Madman Donald Trump is the most obvious example of a deranged authoritarian, demagoguing reduced expectations brought about by environmental decline. Trump's scapegoating of the less fortunate, overt nationalism, racism and misogyny, and continuous threats of violence are classic fascism. Trump’s denial of incontrovertible climate change is ignorant and simply unforgivable charlatanism. His entire demeanor and agenda for America will worsen environmental decline and social discord. Mocking the disabled, saying he would date his own daughter, demeaning women and minorities, and Trump's supporters' Nazi salutes are downright creepy. Given Trump’s affection for derisive monikers, I have taken to calling him #CreepyDonald.

#CreepyDonald’s complete cluelessness regarding the root causes of decline indicate that he is really interested in absolute power, which once given, may never be able to be revoked. While concerns over security, jobs, and the deleterious impacts of uncontrolled mass migration are not without merit, the solutions are highly suspect. Trump’s agenda wastes time and diverts resources necessary to protect and restore nature to avoid biosphere collapse. Further division, conflict, and over-development are not the answer.

Mocking those with disabilities is creepy

In the rise of #CreepyDonald we are witnessing the fall of America as a free and great nation (albeit imperfect and always striving for self-improvement). #CreepyDonald’s authoritarian tyranny is neo-fascism and if he seizes power will result in the fall of tolerant and decent liberal democracy in America. Nothing less than centuries of social progress – such as mostly ending slavery and achieving racial and sexual equality – are threatened by fascism’s return.

No matter the threat; dark, violent authoritarian fascism of the sort espoused by #CreepyDonald and the GOP in America, and countless other neo-fascists globally, is never the answer. #CreepyDonald is unfit, unstable, and unacceptable; and his anti-science, anti-intellectualism ensures global unsustainability.  At this critical juncture in history, Donald Trump must not be allowed to seize power.

GREEN LIBERTY IS THE ANSWER

Continuous expectations that each generation will be better off materially are no longer possible unless we replenish natural capital through a sustained program of ecological protection and restoration. Equitable economic advancement depends upon achieving a steady state economy, as we remain free by firmly rejecting authoritarian fascism.

Ecologically sustainable economic advancement requires skill and knowledge, and profound empathy and sharing with the less fortunate. Building a just, verdant, and equitable world depends upon returning to the land to grow products and services of lasting benefit that meet basic needs from creative self-expression with our minds and bodies.

Humanity finds itself hurtling through space on a 3.5 billion year old organism – called Earth by some, Gaia by others – which is collapsing and dying. We will only survive and thrive by coming together in common purpose to sustain natural ecosystems, remain free, and more equitably share nature’s bounty. To start we must #DumpTrump and firmly destroy all other threats to our liberty and ecology.

The Sheer Terror of Looming Biosphere Collapse

Ecosystem loss is biosphere collapse

The global ecological system is collapsing and dying as humanity overruns natural ecosystems and the climate. We are entering an age of unrelenting violence and suffering, prior to biosphere collapse and the end of being, unless dramatic social change based upon a global ecology ethic arises quickly.


Humans evolved within a lush and vibrant Eden teaming with life, which until just a few generations ago provided for natural abundance and the prospect of perpetual human existence. We are one of many species utterly dependent upon natural ecosystems for all needs including air, water, food, and shelter.

The rise of ecological colonialism and the industrial revolution changed all that, as million year old naturally evolved ecosystems became fodder to be liquidated and consumed for accumulation of paper wealth. The disambiguation of buying our needs with money has led us to deny our ecological nature.

For two centuries humanity has waged an unrelenting war upon nature. Ecological habitats and their wildlife residents have been slaughtered incessantly. Entire species have been wiped out, as their members have been burnt, shot, tortured, and left to starve. Whole ecosystems have been dismantled to create consumer crap that is quickly thrown away.

Concurrently Western science has learned what indigenous peoples have long known, that we are but one species in a web of life. That all is one, intertwined in a miraculous system whereby life creates the conditions for life. And that as goes nature befalls us. Those in touch with nature realize ecology is the meaning of life. And that without ecology there can be no economy.

It has become increasingly obvious to experts and astute lay persons that the ecological fabric of being is fraying. We now know that ecological boundaries exist, and that the human endeavor has overshot them. Old-growth forests remain as tawdry remnants, soil has become lifeless and sterile, oceans are dying, and water and food are scarce for humanity and kindred species.

Ever expanding human numbers have lost sight of our place within ecology, and have little knowledge of the natural world. Instead well-being is defined by mobile apps and expensive play-things that soon grow old and are discarded. For many life is a vacuous search for status and stuff, utterly detached from the condition of natural capital that makes their and all life possible. And for the rest – the large percentage of people living in abject poverty – life is a squalid struggle to meet basic needs amidst Disneyfied conspicuous over-consumption by celebrities and bankers.

Long a war-prone species, humans have concurrent with ecocide nonetheless undergone remarkable social evolution whereby slavery’s prohibition, women’s rights, freedom of thought, and representative democracy – with some progress on racial equality – has largely been achieved. Nonetheless attempts last century to eliminate war have failed miserably. Over-populated inequity in an age of resource scarcity – stoked by grotesquely wasteful over-consumption by the few – fuels a rise of authoritarian fascism and conflict between the haves, have-lesses, and have-nots.

Few diagnose the state of perma-war waged by lone terrorists and drones as the result of environmental decline. Yet the coming anarchy can be seen all around us, by those who wish to see.

Streams of refugees flee collapsing ecosystems and abrupt climate change. Traditional food stocks from the oceans and forests are virtually exhausted. The act of saving seeds has become a radical act of resistance as all that is natural is commodified, homogenized, and toxified.

All around are well-meaning peoples pursuing pieces of the solution. Organic permaculture, ending fossil fuels, protecting and restoring natural ecosystems, consuming less, and more are occurring. But it is too little too late by orders of magnitude as the sheer inertia of ecocide found in mass conspicuous over-population and consumption prepares its final assault upon the natural world.

Already societies and economies are collapsing, from Syria to Haiti, and including the downturn in economic aspirations for the petty-bourgeoisie. The Earth’s capacity to provide for human well-being is collapsing. Every last natural ecosystem is to be mopped up for chopsticks and the last drop of oil. Not only will your children not have more than you have, they may die in an unimaginably horrendous ecological apocalypse.

Every month without the rise of ecologism, we fall deeper into nothingness, as the signs of sick ecosystems and dysfunctional climate are written off by the ecologically challenged. Soon as the pillages of war and ecocide come to your neighborhood you can expect to know hunger, disease, and the bad kind of anarchy.

Expect to face firsthand the terror of biosphere collapse – where your mothers and daughters are raped, along with your sons sold into the military and other forms of slavery, before they and you die like famished stray dogs on a dead Earth.

The global ecological system is collapsing and dying.

We are a clever species, with opposable thumbs and relatively large brains. Perhaps the Internet community and the sense of the human family it engenders can help us realize there is no god but Earth, that we are one people, and that we are one species of animals amongst many. And that we can choose to return to nature’s fold.

All that is green and natural must be protected in earnest and urgency with all our might or the biological foundation of being ends. Start with growing your food and restoring the land, reject personal cars and large families, and work outward to reconnect your community to its peaceful and healthy bioregion.

Otherwise the hairless ape show all intentions of pulling down the biosphere as we frantically seek more not understanding there is no more to be had. The sky is falling. The end of being looms.

The Pernicious Myth of Perpetual Economic Growth

Nothing grows forever. The myth the economy can is destroying the biosphere.

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 30^th 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.