The Mound of Sound, who knows a great deal about the topic, offered the following response to my post on our hubris and our folly.
Thanks for posting that video, Lorne. Any species that cannot live in harmony with its environment, that even comes to dominate and overwhelm its environment is inherently parasitic and self-extinguishing. We've done this before on a smaller scale time and again. The Mayans, the Easter Islanders, the Mesopotamians - civilizations that come off the land, organize and rise to a peak before suddenly collapsing.
The seeds of our collapse are found in our inability to get beyond 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geopolitics. We're more afraid of abandoning our slavish pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth than the far worse outcome that's inevitable in our success. Where this ends is a matter of mathematical certainty. We're consuming Earth's resources at more than 1.5 times the planet's carrying capacity and our voraciousness is accelerating. It's a dependency more powerful than heroin or crystal meth and far more lethal. Like a chronic junkie we're prepared to live in our ever worsening filth. Rivers that no longer flow to the sea, freshwater no longer fit for human consumption, oceanic dead zones, fish stock collapses, a fouled atmosphere even to the polar regions where black soot darkens the ice caps, aquifers running on empty but, as this video shows, it doesn't matter when your reality is refreshed daily on some electronic screen.
We've been conditioned, Lorne, powerfully conditioned to be fearful and complacent and, especially, to recoil at the notion of change. We've become the vivisectionist's dog, lovingly licking the master's hand while the other hand holds the scalpel plunged into us.
Lorne, Mound has summed it up brilliantly. We are indeed on the path of self-destruction. It looks that it is an inevitable part of human nature. Sad.
ReplyDeleteWe do seem to be massively self-destructive, don't we, LD?
DeleteWe claim that we are acting rationally, Lorne. The truth, as Mound so eloquently makes clear, is that we are consumed by our own madness.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be our fatal flaw, doesn't it, Owen? I can't use the adjective tragic in the classical sense, since I am not too sure anymore that we have achieved a great height to fall from.
Delete.. as I was looking at NASA's 50th year photo celebration of spacewalks, I was was struck by the many background images of spaceship earth .. the tiny elegant ecoworld that Mound keeps defending ..
ReplyDeleteHis cause is my cause .. and must be our cause
Pictures of earth from space capture both the beauty and the fragility of a world we so frequently seem so heedless of, Salamander.
DeleteThis anti-growth movement is not unlike the 9/11 "truther" movement: it ignores as many facts as it misinterprets. People who champion it have zero idea of how the various proposed economic systems work and do not work (in theory and in practice.) They want to tear down what is a highly organic form that has developed over centuries and replace it with — what exactly? Like the truthers and intelligent designers, they don't have a comprehensive alternative theory, just misguided criticisms (and useless fatalism.)
ReplyDeleteFirst, let's put an end to economic growth. What happens? According to all historical examples, the economy goes into recession. What's worse, is that if action is not taken (fiscal or monetary) to kickstart the economy, it will fall into a deflationary spiral: shedding jobs and economic activity, as well as increasing debt burden, all in a vicious circle. (This is what happened during the Great Depression.)
Second, it's a fallacy that nothing in Nature grows indefinitely. Nature itself grows/develops indefinitely. Everything started off as a simple RNA self-replicating molecule 3.5-billion years ago that developed into all life on this planet, including us. Economic/GDP growth (all growth is exponential) means wealth creation. Wealth creation is a form of development. For example, if GDP doubles, the real amount (accounted for inflation) we can spend on healthcare, education and green infrastructure doubles. More wealth is the opposite of bad.
Third, whatever economic system we choose, we will have to put in place regulations so it develops towards full sustainability: complete reliance on renewable energy and recyclable materials. So whether we choose an alternative to "capitalism" — defined as the market economy, from the mixed-market system championed by social democrats and Greens, to the right-wing free-market ideology of Friedman that caused our present economic collapse — we will still need the same regulations put in place. So rejecting the market economy doesn't even begin to address the real challenges we face. Therefore it is pointless, poorly thought-out and reactionary.
Last, Thomas Piketty points out the one of the real problems which is the very opposite of what the anti-growthers posit. He combed through a century of economic data and found that when "r > g" — when the rate of return on investments is greater than the rate of GDP growth — this indicates an economy with towering levels of inequality in a state of instability and stagnation. So the reason the economy is in a state of collapse is because of 35 years of free-market reforms where only the top 20% benefitting from GDP and productivity growth (machines and energy doing more of the work.) Real incomes fell (and are still falling) for the bottom 80%. According to Keynes in the 1930s, we should have a 14-hour work week by now. What happened? Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher happened. Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien happened. Etc.
ReplyDeleteIn short, the real problems are: a) self-serving 19th-century free-market ideology that has never worked; b) towering levels in inequality that caused DETERIORATING economic growth and skyrocketing debt because of a distribution failure; and c) deregulation — free-trade globalization, for example, creates a regulatory race to the bottom when the very opposite is needed to prevent the collapse of our makeshift civilization (founded on genocidal colonialism over the past 500 years.) Real solutions will deal specifically with real problems.
Thank you for your insightful analysis, Ron.
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