Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet (47 page)

In part because of this barrage of scorn, questions about the continuation of economic growth in a finite world remain, largely, excluded from public discourse and policymaking. Galbraith foresaw in 1958 that the “gargantuan and growing appetite” he perceived in 1950s America would, in the long run, need to be curtailed. Instead, the appetite for ever more consumer goods has deepened in the first world, and its extension to sections of the new middle classes in China, India, and Latin America is celebrated as a boon for all. We continue, however, to face extreme versions of the problems set out forty years ago by the Meadows team: accelerating industrialization, continuing population growth, extensive malnutrition, the depletion of nonrenewable resources, and environmental decline.

If ongoing growth had provided security and a decent living for all, a more compelling case for the “progress” route could, perhaps, be made. As it is, prosperity is concentrated among a privileged minority and material security is confined to no more than half the world’s many people. In basing solutions to third world poverty on economic growth and the stimulation of a swelling consumer class, we are provoking a huge and ongoing increase in energy and resource consumption and a concomitant increase in all forms of pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions. Despite some attempts from some governments—and a global recession—these are increasing at an accelerating rate, and the human project pushes ever closer to what Johan Rockström and colleagues describe as the “planetary boundaries” and the danger of crossing tipping points, with unknowable consequences.
²⁷
Although climate often occupies center stage in the discussion of environmental crisis, it should not be thought that a transition to plentiful low-carbon energy alone, even if we could manage it, is all that is needed to redress the multiple crises.

Ecological economists continue with their work on the steady-state economy and are developing theories of what might be necessary to implement such an economic system (see the appendix). They are concerned about both ecological destruction and social injustice, and want to ameliorate both. Their contribution to the understanding of the perils of growth has been immense. Some socialists are also focused on these issues and, critical of the idea that a steady-state economy could come into being within capitalism, argue that the slowing, arrest, or reversal of growth will require a transition to some form of socialism. They criticize the ecological economists for believing that the current economic system could accommodate the drastic measures required to curtail growth. Both proposals—a transition to socialism or the taming of the capitalist economy—seem equally hard to imagine in the neoliberal era, but, to hijack Margaret Thatcher’s famous expression, “there is no alternative.”

Herman Daly’s 2008 ten-point program is an excellent example of the sweeping changes ecological economists consider necessary.
²⁸
Daly is no socialist, but most of the items on his agenda are totally unacceptable to corporate capitalism in the neoliberal world. His program includes ecological tax reform; limitations on unequal income distribution; the re-regulation of international commerce; the downgrading of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO; the abolition of fractional reserve banking;
²⁹
stabilization of the population; and the transfer of the remaining commons to public trust. Under the current economic system, there seems little to no chance that any of these measures would be adopted by governments that exist at the pleasure of market forces. As I have argued in detail, many of these precise measures have been resisted and blocked in the past, especially since the 1970s, while the conduct of the IMF, the development of the WTO, and the continuing pursuit of “free trade partnerships” such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership constitute conscious and ongoing boosts to the power of transnational corporations.

Daly also suggests that “instead of treating advertising as a tax-deductible cost of production we should tax it heavily as a public nuisance.” The removal of tax deductibility for advertising could be very beneficial in reducing consumer-driven growth; again, it is difficult to imagine actual legislation to this end, let alone punitive measures. The cultural change that Daly advocates is incompatible with the system of consumer capitalism in which we are enmeshed. Even if we argue that capitalism can survive without growth in material production, which I doubt, Daly’s reforms would not be welcomed. And yet they represent the barest of minimums that we need.

We confront a massively inconvenient truth, one that will not respond to changing light bulbs and other gestures of individual responsibility. Such actions won’t hurt, of course, but they won’t on their own alleviate the problems we face. Structural change is indispensable. We need a different kind of economy, one designed to meet needs rather than create them. To achieve such outcomes, we will need to disturb the business universe and the tales of progress and prosperity it feeds us, and substitute alternative visions and ideals.

We must also restore democratic norms to the conduct of elections in our plutocratic democracies, and reestablish the preeminence of our elected institutions, liberating them from the market’s “golden straitjacket.” Above all, we need to abandon the consumer path to human advancement and the reduction of our choices to monetary terms. The consumer template for the human future has outworn its usefulness. Stimulating consumption in the interests of growth and chasing economies of scale was, perhaps, suitable for the “empty world.” In the “full world” (and getting fuller) we need redistributive justice within and between countries and a plan for the first world to reduce its material demands to allow space for the rest of the world to reach material security.

It remains for others to invent pathways to solutions for these difficult problems. My object has been to illuminate the reasons for the ideological dominance of growth, and to foster an awareness of the actual realities—human and ecological—that contradict its confident discourse. Challenging the manufactured truths of think tanks and advancing a sense of reality in the public arena are the critical next steps.

Appendix: Selected Critics of Growth, 2013

Critics of growth, though far fewer than its admirers, are found throughout the world. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but aims to give the interested reader a guide to the scope of the field. Many mentioned here are allied with ecological economics or the geophysical sciences, and some, like myself, are people from a range of other disciplines who have found their arguments persuasive.

CASSE (US)
,
http://steadystate.org

About

The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) is based in the United States but has chapters worldwide. It’s first policy aim is stated as:

First and foremost, adopt the right macro-economic policy goal—a steady state economy that features sustainable scale, fair distribution of wealth, and efficient allocation of resources. A prerequisite to adopting this macro-economic policy goal is a cultural shift from the pursuit of lifestyles driven by endless economic expansion and unsustainable consumerism to lifestyles driven by the search for long-term prosperity and sustainable consumption that fulfils people’s needs.

Suggested Reading

CASSE provides an excellent reading list that encompasses classic ecological economics texts from the 1960s on and much of the current work worldwide, including that of Brian Czech, Rob Dietz, Richard Heinberg, and Tim Jackson. It is available at
http://steadystate.org/discover/reading-list
.

CASSE also cites Herman Daly’s 2008 paper for the Sustainable Development Commission, UK (April 24, 2008), “A Steady-State Economy.” This paper is an excellent summary of Daly’s steady-state economy and appears in the main reference list.

The first chapter of the following book is available online:

Dietz, Rob, and Dan O’Neill 2013.
Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources
. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
http://steadystate.org/discover/enough-is-enough
.

Two US contributions not listed by CASSE would be added to my “must-read” list:

Costanza, Robert, Gar Alperovitz, Herman Daly, et al. 2013. Building a sustainable and desirable economy-in-society-in-nature. In
State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
Washington, DC: Island Press.

Extended version available at United Nations Division for Sustainable Development:
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Building_a_Sustainable_and_Desirable_Economy-in-Society-in-Nature.pdf
.

Huesemann, Michael, and Joyce Huesemann. 2011.
Techno-fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment.
Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.

Peter Victor (Canada)

About

The Canadian economist Peter Victor is engaged in analysis of the issues involved in growth, slowing growth, and, possibly, reversing growth. Victor’s major book attempts a model of slowing growth in the Canadian economy. He is agnostic as to whether capitalism could accommodate a no-growth or degrowth economy, but he argues that “green growth” is not a feasible alternative.

Suggested Reading

Victor, Peter. 2008.
Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster.
Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Victor, Peter. 2010. Questioning economic growth.
Nature
468:370– 371.

Victor, Peter, and Gideon Rosenbluth. 2006. Managing without growth.
http://www.greenparty.ca/files/Peter_Victor-No_growth.pdf
.

Décroissance (Europe)
,
http://www.degrowth.org

About

In Europe, the
décroissance
(degrowth) movement has emerged in the past decade and has held conferences in Paris (2008), Barcelona (2010), and Venice (2012), as well as an American meeting in Montreal (2012). Serge Latouche, emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Paris-Sud, is prominent in the movement, as is journalist Hervé Kempf.

Suggested Reading

List of publications:
http://www.degrowth.org/publications
.

Kempf, Hervé. 2008.
How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth.
White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.

Latouche, Serge. 2006. The globe downshifted.
Le Monde Diplomatique
, January 13.
http://mondediplo.com/2006/01/13degrowth?var_recherche=Serge+Latouche
.

Latouche, Serge. 2007. De-growth: An electoral stake?
International Journal of Inclusive Democracy
3 (1) .
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol3/vol3_no1_Latouche_degrowth.htm
.

Latouche, Serge. 2010.
Farewell to Growth.
Cambridge: Polity Press.

Montreal conference papers:
http://www.montreal.degrowth.org/papers.html
.

Proceedings of the Paris conference:
http://events.it-sudparis.eu/degrowthconference/en/appel/Degrowth%20Conference%20-%20Proceedings.pdf
.

Proceedings of the Barcelona conference:
http://www.barcelona.degrowth.org/Proceedings-new.122.0.html
.

Attac

About

In Germany, Attac (originally founded in 1998 as the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens) is the organizational hub of the post-growth movement. Attac held a “Beyond Growth” conference in Berlin in 2011, opened by Vandana Shiva.

Suggested Reading

An account of the key themes of the Berlin Conference was written for FEASTA (Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability) by the English economist and community campaigner Brian Davey. It is available at
http://www.feasta.org/2011/06/10/what-could-a-post-growth-society-look-like-and-how-should-we-prepare-for-it
.

Degrowth (UK)

About

In the UK, the new economics foundation (nef) has been at work on similar issues since the 1980s—“a new model of wealth creation, based on equality, diversity and economic stability,” and on “economics as if people and the planet mattered.”

Suggested Reading

Jackson, Tim. 2009. Beyond the growth economy.
Journal of Industrial Ecology
13 (1): 487–490.
http://steadystate.org/wp-content/uploads/Jackson_2009_Beyond_the_Growth_Economy.pdf
.

See the main reference list for Jackson’s book,
Prosperity without Growth
.

Simms, Andrew, and Victoria Johnson. 2010.
Growth Isn’t Possible.
London: nef.
http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/growth-isnt-possible
.

Woodward, David, and Andrew Simms. 2006.
Growth Isn’t Working.
London: nef.
http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/growth-isnt-working
.

Australian Work

About

Richard Sanders, who was commissioned to write an appraisal of the growth problem for the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), is cautious about the feasibility of addressing headlong growth within a market framework: he holds that credit creation should be a power of the public sector, not private banks, and expresses doubts about the much-vaunted efficiency with which markets achieve resource allocation. He is equally adamant that “green growth” is a fable disconnected from reality. A very radical change is needed, in Sanders’s view.

Like other ecological economists, he stresses the destructive role of fractional reserve banking, where banks simply “create” money by lending it out and are unconstrained by the need to hold reserves that match the loans—or even come close to it. Money created in this way in the
virtual finance
sector is nevertheless a claim of real wealth, since it can be exchanged for real things. This system (which underpins the financialization described in chapter 6) and the debt it fosters are aspects of the pyramid scheme that relies on the assumption of growth continually compounding at the rate of interest.

Clive Hamilton’s early work focused on the addictive and disease-like manifestations of rampant consumption in first world societies and the ways in which it corrupts our social and political processes. More recent books venture into the politics of climate denial.