Pat Thomas Look beyond all the theatre of the US debt crisis, and there is opportunity in disguise, says Pat Thomas
Amidst all the hand-wringing about the US debt crisis, there’s been very little space given to whether the system that everyone is trying to prop up is actually worth saving. America, like most of the affluent West, is built on a foundation of infinite growth. And yet worshipping at this altar is a significant reason why the US has borrowed more than it can afford to repay, bringing the country to the brink of bankruptcy.
As Congress continues squabbling like over-tired sugar-saturated kindergarteners, Americans are rightfully afraid that the party really is over, that the ‘American way of life’ is dying, and that this death brings with it a future where an easy sense of entitlement and rampant consumerism and economy based on endless growth is over and where we will all need to apply more appropriate limits. This feels like death, and yet it is a basic tenet of life that something has to die before something else can be born.
The US debt crisis could actually be an opportunity disguised as a crisis. But sadly, there seems to be little enthusiasm for such revolutionary thought, let alone action, to reshape the economy. Instead the likely outcome is an anti-climactic compromise aimed at maintaining America’s triple A credit rating whatever the costs; one that will be used to ‘prove’ that the system works, but which in reality is propping up something that is morally wrong, culturally devastating, spiritually toxic and, of course, environmentally disastrous.
In contemplating this last point the immortal words of comedian Woody Allen, addressing a class of graduating students come to mind:
‘More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.’
It could be a prayer to almost any of the difficult choices we humans are currently faced with, but seems particularly pertinent to a debate about economic growth. For many economists the choice is simple: we grow or we die. And at first glance it would seem ridiculous to suggest that in pursuing perpetual growth we are in fact hastening the death of our species. And yet that is exactly what we are doing.
The promotion of a growth economy is predicated on many alleged benefits: greater longevity, better health, greater prosperity and more leisure time. Few of these stand up to closer scrutiny. We would, for instance, be hard pressed to show that longevity is a direct result of economic growth; though economic growth has certainly benefited from a longer-living, and thus longer-spending, population.
We may not be hit by plagues anymore (though as climate change bites even that may not be true for much longer); but we are suffering from more chronic diseases – many of which are environmentally mediated – than ever before and our longer-lived population requires much more healthcare – once again, a real boon for the economy. As for greater prosperity, according to the UN, 80 per cent of the world’s wealth is concentrated in 20 per cent of the population, and survey after survey shows that in order to maintain our precious standard of living we are all working longer hours than ever before. So much for leisure time.
The big picture of the consequences of economic growth and its view of the natural capital of the planet as a collection of resources to be exploited for the benefit of Homo economicus is pretty distressing. To be environmentally literate is to be acutely aware of the all-pervading and often malign influence of the growth economy:
- Our fossil fuel and mineral resources are rapidly depleting
- Personal and institutional debt is spiralling out of control
- The rates of ill health – both physical and mental – is rising
- Divisions between the rich and the poor are wider than ever before
- Our topsoil disappearing and with it the land’s ability to produce nutritious food
- Our fresh water supplies are drying up
- Clean air, untainted by pollution, is a now distant memory
- Fish stocks in our oceans are at critically low levels
- The population has increased beyond the point where the planet’s resources can support it
- And most humans in the developed world define themselves as consumers first, and people second.
Although it can be hard to accept the growth economy as anything but benign, the truth is that economic philosophy is dangerously out of sync with nature and with the human psyche and is doing untold damage to both. What is more, in a world where growth is the only goal, everything is open to exploitation.
The mantra of ‘growth’ has become a kind of mental monoculture. Many businesspeople and economists can’t see any other point of view and don’t really want to. And yet every argument that we make in favour of growth falls down at the feet of one simple fact: the resources upon which growth depend are running out. In fact the only thing we seem to have in abundance these days is people.
Indeed, in my lifetime the population of the planet has doubled and the current economic paradigm relies on there being an increasing number of people in the world, to buy an increasing amount of stuff. The belief system of economics also says that we need perpetual growth to produce full employment for all these people and thereby avoid economic collapse.
It’s a vicious circle the consequences of which have been population explosion and an ever-increasing draw on natural capital. With regard to raw materials, nature is a closed system. So the natural capital on which our economic system depends will always be limited.
There is only one Earth. At current rates of consumption, and with the population as it stands globally, there are about 1.9 hectares of productive area per person, but the average ecological footprint is already 2.3 hectares. So we currently require one and a half Earths to live sustainably. The largest footprint belongs to citizens of the United States, who use up 9.6 hectares each. Five Earths would be needed if everyone in the world today consumed at that level.
Currently people in China use somewhere around 1.4 hectares per person. However, if world population continues to grow unchecked, and if people in China and India start consuming at US levels, it is estimated that we would need 25 Earths to satiate everyone’s desires.
In essence, there are simply too many of us using too much, too fast. And yet economics continues to demand unlimited growth. The only logical conclusion of this is that an economic system based on growth in demand and consumption is one that is designed to fail and must eventually come to an end, either through human design – let’s be generous and call that ‘choice’ – or through natural disaster.
You won’t hear any politicians talking this way because the way we have allowed our economic system to become structured is such that any drop in demand triggers market panic and the political nightmare of mass unemployment. Instead we continue to prop up the existing system through drops in interest rates, massive increases in credit card debt and home loans, tax cuts, huge federal deficits, bond sales and public and private borrowing from other nations. In other words we arrived at a place where we simply shuffle money (and debt) around in order to maintain the illusion of growth.
As radical economist Herman Daly is so fond of reminding us “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
And in the midst of all this craziness, this belief in a growth economy makes serious efforts at energy conservation, protection of natural resources and limits to population growth increasingly problematical. And the problem is not merely technological; it is cultural in the deepest sense.
Starting two centuries ago, our species embarked on this path of unprecedented growth, founded on a temporary subsidy of cheap hydrocarbon energy. Climate change is a side effect of fossil fuel consumption, and can now be seen as the most critical symptom of our growth binge. But unless we address the core of the problem, other symptoms will soon overwhelm us, even if we manage technically to resolve the dilemma of carbon emissions.
Addressing the core of the problem means letting go of growth; it means engaging in a period of controlled societal contraction, characterised by a stable or declining population consuming at a per capita level far below that currently taken for granted in the industrialized world.
For anyone who understands the ABCs of ecology – that is relationships between population, resources, and the carrying capacity of the planet – nothing could be clearer.
And whilst some people propose sustainable growth this, of course, is something of an oxymoron. Even at a small rate of steady growth – say between 2 and 3 per cent a year – we will eventually see a doubling of the economy in around 25 years. The price of that growth is a doubling of our use of resources and a doubling of our waste and pollution. On this trajectory our economy could have quadrupled by 2050. Contrast this with the 2006 Stern Inquiry into the economics of climate change, which made it plain that by the middle of the century we must reduce CO2 emissions by up to 80 per cent, and even the comforting concept of sustainable growth becomes untenable.
However painful it is to imagine, and however difficult it is to implement, a new economic paradigm is urgently needed. And whilst detractors will say that this necessary restructuring will lead to the collapse of the economy, this is patently false. The economy, as most of us experience it, has nothing to do with economics. Economics is a philosophical structure that connects only intermittently and accidentally to the physical reality of the planet we inhabit and even less often to economics of everyday life which involve the mustering of wealth for human sustenance and well being.
This amazing miracle of a planet, the only home any of us will ever have, the only known place in the universe that can support life as we know it, is dying. And you may well ask: how did we get here? What choices did our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents make that led us to this point.
The answer is they chose to believe and participate in the ‘miracle’ of economic growth. The fact is, the economic system requires more than money and natural capital to prop it up. It also requires our cooperation. Ultimately it is not our money but our beliefs and expectations, our habits, memories and desires that give power the current economic system.
If we are going to save the planet then we need to abandon the fantasy of infinite growth and begin the real and valuable work of engaging with an economy that will genuinely benefit both people and planet.
© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.
Pat Thomas Scientists say that strip mining the moon will reward us with cheap energy. Pat Thomas sees the dark side of their moon madness.
What do you see when you look at the moon? The romantic sees an opportunity to steal a kiss and dance a little closer. An astrologer may see the symbolism of the Earth’s constant companion, the shadow to the Sun’s light, the yin to its yang. A woman might see the waxing and waning of her own physiological cycles. A biodynamic farmer might see a cue about when to plant, cultivate or harvest. A businessman may see a landscape to exploit for future profit and a scientist a novel energy source to be harvested.
Amongst all of these, it is the extraction of energy in the form of helium-3 (He-3) that seems to be attracting the greatest media interest at the moment. He-3 – an apparently ‘cleaner’ fuel for nuclear fusion reactors that is almost unavailable on Earth – is purportedly abundant in moon rocks.
As a result, more 40 years after the first moon landing, a second race for the moon is under way and the international competition is intense.
NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration sees American astronauts back on the moon in 2020 and permanently staffing a base there by 2024. The US space agency has neither announced nor denied plans to mine He-3, and according to a 2007 article in Technology Review it has nevertheless placed advocates of mining He-3 in influential positions.
Russia, China and India are now all part of the race to get hold of the moons He-3. So are Germany and Japan.
Reconquering the moon, of course, is a beginning rather than an end in itself. It is a gateway for the exploitation of resources on other planets, to help us continue fuel our lifestyles here on Earth.
According to a recent report in the Ecologist the surface of the moon is encrusted with many different kinds of high-energy particles. Many of these, including He-3, can be extracted through heating Moon rock and collecting the gas.
“Millions to hundreds of millions of tonnes, I should think, is readily accessible,” says Matthew Genge, lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College London, “You can strip mine the Moon and you can cook out the Helium-3.”
There is probably more than a little bluster in such plans and pronouncements. The timescales of this new frontier of exploration – about 20 years – is also telling. It’s amazing how many of these promised so called techno-fixes for our planet always seem to be achievable within that time scale of about 20 years: close enough to interest investors, far enough away to drop to the bottom of the priority pile of average citizens who are just trying to get by in the here and now.
Whenever a government or scientist says something like that it usually means they haven’t got a clue when or if it might happen at all.
And while it is not surprising that powerful nations are looking to exploit potential resources on the moon – it is disturbingly short-sighted. All around the world we witnessing angry protests over the convergence of crises we are facing in climate and the economy. At heart both of these problems is the thoughtless exploitation of our own world, and the belief that resources, be they animal, mineral or vegetable exist purely for human benefit and profit.
Most of our exploitation of the Earth has been able to advance on the premise that the damage is taking place far away, outside our usual borders and methods of accounting for ourselves, for example in developing countries and amongst people and cultures that we never have any contact with. Out of sight, out of mind.
If we feel entitled to be so careless with our own world, how much less cautious we will be with another one? What kind of stewards would we be for somewhere 384,000 km away?
The moon may well hold many mineral resources, but we still have to get there and back to make use of them.
Given that the earth’s mineral and petroleum resources are rapidly running out, that we have according to many analysts already passed reach peak oil (that is, the point when is production starts to irretrievably decline), how do these all-powerful government agencies propose to fuel the rockets which will fly to and from the moon, and the machinery that will need to function on the moon and on earth in order to exploit these resources? How much energy will it take to support, feed, shelter, and keep warm, the people who will have to perhaps live on the moon and oversee operations? How much energy will it take to process these resources – and what amount and kind of waste do they generate?
Does the moon need protection? Yes of course it does – from human stupidity which is already in evidence all around us on the Earth.
What is driving this particular boy’s own adventure into space is the desire to keep our current and very wasteful lifestyles afloat. To make sure we can keep all the lights on, whether we need them or not; to keep driving our cars less than a mile to the shops; and keep filling up our homes with useless crap that we don’t need and that we end up throwing out or trading in within a year.
Unless governments – and consumers – address this outrageous waste of modern life, and the way that our entire economic system thrives on that waste, there won’t be enough moons or planets to keep us going.
The most altruistic reasons are put forward for mining the moon – a sustainable future for all.
But lunar prospecting could cost as much as $20 billion over a decade.
Wouldn’t this money be better used as a contribution to helping wipe out debt and to even out the gaps between the haves and have nots here on earth? In 2009 Oxfam reported that the amount of money spent on bailing out banks globally – around $8.4 trillion – could end poverty around the globe for a half a century.
There is no indication that our financial institutions have learned anything from banking current crisis except that whenever they act irresponsibly the government (using taxpayers’ money) will be there to bail them out.
If world governments truly cared about providing for a sustainable future they would use the money to wipe out debt and to fund vibrant local (as opposed to global) economies in both the developed and especially the developing countries.
Instead of buying out of season ‘fair trade’ goods from countries where people are so busy feeding Western supermarkets that they can’t feed themselves, we should be funding greater self-sufficiency, especially when it comes to food, throughout the world.
The money we spend on trying to create a ‘lunar economy’, could be spent on returning the world to a solar economy – less dependent on oil and non-renewable resources and more dependent on solar and other renewable resources to help us fuel and feed ourselves. It could be spent on re-educating people in the concept of one planet living, helping them to feel valued for who they are rather than what they own and to reorder our economic goals along the lines of a steady state economy rather than one based on endless growth.
Mining the moon is seen in some political and scientific circles as visionary. But the vision is critically flawed. It’s being touted around in an effort to maintain business as usual and an arrogant sense of ‘no limits’, when deep change is what is really required.
From a symbolic, emotional and psychological point of view our emotional and psychological relationship with the moon is an ancient and valuable thing. In the current flurry of scientific can-do-ism it might at least be worth asking the question how might we fundamentally change that relationship when we turn the moon into a huge open cast mine?
Like all the wild places from which we draw inspiration and solace and a greater sense of our place in the vast universal scheme of things, the moon is valuable in and of itself. It feeds our spirits, inspires our stories, rules our tides, and lights our darkness. It deserves our protection.
© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.
