You are currently browsing articles tagged growth.
Editor’s note: This is, of course, an incomplete list. Please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comment section below.
Mark Anielski, The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth (2007)
Sharon Astyk, Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front (2008)
John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet (2009)
Tags: activism, ecology, growth, power down, resources
And all of the crew they were brave men,
But the Captain he was braver.
He said ‘Never mind the ship me boys
There’s none of us here can save her.
Let her go down. Swim for your lives!
Swim for your children, swim for your wives
But let her go down.’
Knight, sung by Steeleye Span
This ship may not yet be going down, but it’s certainly heading straight for the rocks.
How do we change course? Or failing that, where are the lifeboats that can preserve us and carry us back to shore? In less nautical terms, these are the sorts of questions with which this issue of Briarpatch is concerned.
Illustration: Nick Craine
This essay is excerpted with permission from John Bellamy Foster’s The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet, Monthly Review Press, (2009).
Underlying the goal of ecological revolution is the premise that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis of such enormity that the planet’s entire web of life is threatened and with it the future of civilization.
This is no longer a controversial proposition. To be sure, there are different perceptions about the extent of the challenge that it raises. At one extreme, there are those who believe that since these are human problems arising from human causes they are easily solvable. All we need is ingenuity and the will to act. At the other extreme are those who believe the world ecology is deteriorating on a scale and with a rapidity beyond our means to control it, giving rise to gloomy forebodings.
Although polar opposites, these views nonetheless share a common basis. As Marxist economist Paul Sweezy observed, they each reflect “the belief that if present trends continue to operate, it is only a matter of time until the human species irredeemably fouls its own nest.”
Finnish summer: Birch trees through a sauna window
(Click an image to enlarge.)
Conventional wisdom tells us that because Finland is wealthy, its citizens have the necessary resources to take action on environmental issues - that prosperity and a healthier environment go hand in hand. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work this way.
The mercury hit 99oC. The steam hit my eyes and Uncle Reijo started talking about snow.
The European Union (E.U.), Uncle Reijo explained as we sat and sweated in a Finnish sauna, had recently devised a standardized set of planting guidelines for all 8.6 million of its farms, stretching from Portugal to Finland. Corn, the guidelines stipulated, was to be planted in early spring. A stubborn farmer he knew responded by planting a corn seed in the Finnish snow at the proper date, snapping a photo and sending it to the E.U.
We shared a laugh at the universal depths of bureaucratic myopia. In the silence that followed, I decided to try my one Finnish phrase.
Kylla, luonto on kaunis, I said, looking through the sauna window. Nature sure is beautiful. Uncle Reijo nodded.
Tags: ecology, economics, Finland, globalization, growth, Mongolia
Briarpatch: Any observations about the current state of the environmental movement?
Noam Chomsky: I don’t think there is an organized, centralized movement. There’s a general range of agreement, including from scientists, that the problem is extremely serious, and while there are a lot of uncertainties with regards to what could happen, there’s a consensus that the longer we wait, the greater the cost to future generations.
Some serious socio-economic changes have to be made. We’ve got this unsustainable way of life, particularly in the Western world, particularly in North America. The atomization of the population and the drive towards unwarranted consumerism and indebtedness have created very serious social, economic and cultural problems which have to be overcome. There are no structures around where people can integrate and begin to organize themselves; those have to be rebuilt anew. There are many people involved in environmental issues but they are very separate from one another. People in one corner of town don’t know what’s happening in the other corner, and that has to be overcome.
Tags: ecology, environment, growth, movement politics, social change, social movements
These are no ordinary times.
As humanity finds itself in the throes of twin crises - the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and an ecological crisis that could threaten the very viability of our civilization - more and more people are grappling with the realization that the human project has somehow gone dreadfully awry. Many now recognize that endless economic growth on a finite planet is a recipe for disaster, yet until recently there has been very little exploration of the alternatives to this growth-at-all-costs system.
For years, ecological economist Herman Daly and other pioneers in the field have been pointing out the many environmental and social problems associated with too much growth, but mainstream economists have largely ignored the message and charged ahead with more of the same.
Now, though, a new generation of economists and progressive thinkers is laying the foundations for an economic system that does not seek to sustain unlimited growth, but instead to maintain the health and genuine well-being of people and the environment. At this time of unprecedented and converging global crises, their message at last seems to be resonating.
Briarpatch spoke with six of these visionary thinkers to get their thoughts on the options and opportunities for building a truly sustainable economy. How did the growth mantra emerge as the predominant driver of economic policy today and why is it no longer a viable option? If not growth, what should be the objective of economic policy? How can we make the necessary transition and how can citizens take action to help chart a course to a saner, smaller future?
Tags: ecology, economics, growth, sustainability
A review of:
Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster
By Peter Victor
Edward Elgar, 2008
The world economic crisis has nations around the globe in panic mode, working feverishly to get their economies growing again. But as Peter Victor suggests in his book Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, citizens of the richer nations may actually be better off if they stop trying to grow their economies.
This idea is anathema to the majority of politicians, and to the public. Most of us now implicitly agree that we should not take actions that are “bad for the economy, bad for competitiveness, bad for trade: that is, bad for growth.” Victor, however, argues that economic growth in the rich nations should not and cannot continue.
Tags: ecology, economics, environment, growth
A review of:
Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
By E. F. Schumacher
Harper, 1989
The current state of human affairs, characterized by rising levels of joblessness, depleted natural resources and deep-rooted attitudes of indifference and powerlessness to do anything about it, would prove little surprise to E.F. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, a seminal text of ecological environmentalism first published in 1973. The book is a collection of essays that accurately predicts the consequences of Western consumption trends and offers a series of prescriptions, both in theory and in practice, to change our course.
Tags: ecology, economics, environment, growth
By Carol Goar
Toronto Star
December 08, 2008
Only once in modern history, as far as economist Peter Victor knows, has a financial crisis led to a reordering of society’s priorities and institutions. The Great Depression was like no other downturn.
But as this recession deepens, the York University professor is detecting a new openness to ideas that challenge mainstream thinking.
Victor, 62, has just published a book entitled Managing Without Growth - Slower by Design, not Disaster. It invites readers to contemplate a future in which they don’t work longer, spend more and accumulate more to keep the economy hurtling along.
Since his book’s release on Nov. 18, Victor has been inundated with requests to speak, invitations to participate in panel discussions and opportunities to appear at academic forums. “It’s quite encouraging. People come up to me at these events and say: ‘I’ve been thinking these sorts of things for a long time.’ ”
He never anticipated, when he started writing in 2006 that his book would come out during the worst market meltdown in 79 years. He never imagined that world leaders would be questioning some of the long-standing tenets of capitalism.
“It’s hard to say which way it will go,” Victor mused in an interview. “People are willing to consider new possibilities. The danger is that they’ll focus exclusively on the financial crisis and ignore the deeper crisis.”
The deeper crisis, in his view, is that the quest for rapid growth, which fuels Western economies, is on a collision course with the Earth’s biophysical limits. “If the financial system breaks down, we’ll suffer for a while, but we’ll get through it. If we succeed in destabilizing the climate, we may not be able to get through it.”
Victor, who teaches at York’s school of environmental studies, calls himself an ecological economist. He grew up in postwar England, earned his undergraduate economics degree at the University of Birmingham, then moved to Canada to continue his studies. He has an MA and a PhD from the University of British Columbia.
He is not a tree-hugger or an anti-car zealot. In fact, he doesn’t live much differently than his neighbours in Bloor West Village. But unlike most of them, he rejects the proposition that economic growth is essential to progress.
He began the book as an academic inquiry. His former thesis adviser, Gideon Rosenbluth, posed an intriguing question: What would happen if Canada deliberately slowed its growth rate to zero between 2010 and 2035. Would there be enough jobs? Would poverty go up? Would greenhouse gas emissions fall? Would governments be able to finance their operations?
Victor used the most sophisticated econometric tools available. (The book is loaded with charts, graphs and equations.) He tested numerous scenarios and methods of applying the brakes.
Not surprisingly, he concluded that the question had no single answer. It depended on a variety of factors ranging from population growth to tax policy.
But there were ways to achieve full employment, reduce poverty, cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep government finances in good shape without economic growth.
People would have to live differently - work less, buy less and pollute less. Values would have to change. The economy would have to fit within the biosphere.
Victor admits many readers will have trouble getting their heads around the idea of life without economic growth. It’s alien to everything they’ve been taught. “If I can at least get them to open their eyes to alternatives, I’ll think I’ve accomplished something.”
Victor’s daughter, Carmen, and her friend, Laura William, decided the book deserved a better launch than a low-key academic affair. So they organized it. They invited 450 guests to the Boiler House in the Distillery District.
Mayor David Miller spoke (he’s a neighbour). David Suzuki spoke (Victor is on the board of the David Suzuki Foundation). The place was so jammed that 150 people had to be turned away.
Something’s stirring. It’s not a groundswell. But a conversation is beginning about what recovery really means.
Carol Goar’s column appears in the Toronto Star Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Tags: alternatives, collapse, ecology, economics, environment, growth, money
