I for one keep trying to re-think how a consumer driven paradigm may co-exist with biodiversity--a paradigm that faces the rigorous demands of life with a quantitative growth mandate. How can the current very wasteful consumer lifestyle co-exist with sustainable living, and naturally integrative lifestyles that keep the boundaries between the urban, "the wild", and the rural porous and mutually enhancing?
In other words, there must be a way for our free-market system, not as an ideology but as a current pragmatic reality, to think "greener", "smarter", and drive consumers to make choices that not only prolong our species remarkable presence on this planet, but bolster the biodiversity that is necessary to maintain that presence along with the blooming, budding breadth of our entire Ecosystem.
I am giving up this search slowly, because I believe if you look at the nuts and bolts of consumer capitalism, you may find that intrinsic to its very existence is a mandate of endless "innovative"/quantitative (rather than merely intensive) growth---GROWTH THAT IS NO WAY SUSTAINABLE. Consumer capitalism can not continue wisely, because the "efficient allocation of resources" a free-market should naturally facilitate are efficiently destroying the very ground from which a market may flourish. From a Cost-Benefit Analysis, clearing a mountain top may be the best answer to efficiently maximizing the unit production of coal, for example. Yet, the externalities of long term degradation, poisioned water tables, and destruction of biodiversity, cannot be naturally "adjusted" by the market---simply because our rate of growth is outstripping our ability to adjust, manage, or replenish--and that is because whole sets of irrational and short-term drives are what "naturally" allocate resources. Capitalism is a snake eating its own tail.
Let me share with you a short paragraph from a recent article from an Econ Journal, "Real World Economics Review" :http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue53/whole53.pdf :
Under the headline “Economic Growth ‘Cannot Continue’” the BBC on January 28,
2010 summarized a report issued by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) which asserts
that “continuing economic growth is not possible if nations are to tackle climate change.” The
NEF says that “unprecedented and probably impossible” carbon reductions would be needed
to hold temperature rises below 2°C (3.6°F) without which we face catastrophic global
warming. “We urgently need to change our economy to live within its environmental budget,”
said NEF’s policy director Andrew Simms, adding that “There is no global, environmental
central bank to bail us out if we become ecologically bankrupt.”
1 In Growth Isn’t PossibleSimms and his co-author Victoria Johnson reviewed all the existing proposed models for
dealing with climate change and energy use including renewable, carbon capture and
storage, nuclear, and even geo-engineering, and concluded that these are “potentially
dangerous distractions from more human-scale solutions” and that there are “no magic
bullets” to save us. The report concludes that even if we were to rapidly transition to an
entirely clean energy -based economy, this would not suffice to save us because: “Globally,
we are consuming nature’s services – using resources and creating carbon emissions – 44
percent faster than nature can regenerate and reabsorb what we consume and the waste we
produce. In other words . . . if the whole world wished to consume at the same rate it would
require 3.4 planets like Earth.” Given these facts and trends, Simms and Johnson argue, we
have no choice but to bring average global growth to a halt (with sharp reductions in growth in
the industrialized countries balanced by accelerated growth in the developing countries to
approximate equity but tend toward stasis on balance) and to radically reconstruct the global
economy to conform to “environmental thresholds, which include biodiversity and the finite
availability of natural resources.” The authors conclude that “a new macro-economic model is
needed, one that allows the human population as a whole to thrive without having to rely on
ultimately impossible, endless increases in consumption” and they point to Herman Daly’s
idea of a “Steady-State Economy” as their model. For a reaction to this report, the BBC asked
Tom Clougherty, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think tank, for
his response. Clougherty remarked that the NEF’s report exhibited “a complete lack of
understanding of economics .
The point the author of the article goes on to make is that the competitve nature of capitalism, namely the call to produce ever more units of production because of an ensuing enhancement of divided labor, requires endless growth or it will result in pure stagnation. Unlike Professor of Economics, Herman Daly's model of a "steady-state" free-market with the Government stepping into to limit the throughput of major vital resources, while the market allocates the rest ala Adam Smith, this author believes free-market consumer capitalism does not allow for truly restrictive interventions or slow-down. Why? Simple, share-holder based Corporate enterprises can in no way "slow down" profits in the name of sustainable growth or prudent ecological choices, because it has profits and investment shares to maintain (a CEO will be booted if that profit and growth does not continue yearly, quarterly, or whatever). Think about it: would you want your pension investments to "slow down". We see right now what a belly-up consumer economy looks like: high unemployment, and loss all the way down.
Thus, a new mandate arises. I believe we are at the brink of a paradigm shift that must arise if our species is to survive--and I believe there is enough credible evidence to show that we have very little time, and a short, short window before we reach thresholds that simply leave our predictions dangerously moot.
We have to think outside consumer culture---not because it is "evil", but because we simply will not survive in any sort of pleasant manner on this planet much longer.
Here are some basic practical questions to address (or individual actions that may be taken in an everyday way), and in later postings we can sink our teeth into abstract macro-economic models:
(1) Can we really maintain consuming so many disposable items? We can only effectively recycle in balance with our environment. In other words we consume at a level that outstrips an ability for the environment to replenish itself. Recycling is fine, but reduction is the only real answer. In other words, we might begin giving up certain conveniences that will have a larger impact of destroying the possiblity of any future conveniences (i.e. conveniences whose full outcomes are species die-off).
IT CAN BE DONE. How? Just do it (as the maxim goes).
The can of soda--the disposable camera--the endlessly plastically packaged consumer products at the grocery store.
Do you remember when you washed a head of lettuce instead of buying plastically packaged lettuce? Do you remember when bags were not all made of plastic?
(2) Avoid--if you can---buying plastic of anysort (when at all possible). There are plenty of grocery stores where you can bring packs or satchels and fill them with rice, beans, pasta, cereals, flour, without having to purchase so many plastic packaged items.
(3) Next time you are at Starbucks and typing on your computer, sipping coffee, bring your own cup or ask them why they don't offer you "to stay" ceramic cups. We simply cannot keep up with all that must be recycled by endless lids and to-go products.
THEY ARE DESTROYING OUR ENVIRONMENT IN A VERY REAL AND VERY NON-ABSTRACT WAY.
--It is our built urban environment, that has kept us more and more separate from "the wild" and "the natural" that fogs our ability to see the depletion and destruction we are standing upon. However, smarter more integrative civil engineering can reduce that fog---we don't all have to become "tree-loving" nature people. We simply have to rethink how our activites relate to a broader natural and cultural context---maximizing structural and environment integrity (not just short-term financial investment gains). We have models of cities that better integrate "natural" and urban environments without resorting to sprawl.
(4) Pay attention to who you buy from. Huge industrial and agro-business that works from monocultures (like Tyson Chicken, Chiquita Bannanas, etc.) are doing more to deplete our water tables, destroy arable top-soils via over fertilization, and run-out smaller local and organic farmers. We know this---the facts are all there---we simply have to say no with our purchasing power.
Finally, we must re-think where a mandate of endless growth will lead us. The opposite is not stagnation. The opposite is a revaluation of our values, a world in which we foster attentive virtuosity rather than sporadic quicktime sound bites of consciousness and consumer saturation--where we dare to slow down and ask ourselves how our actions effect a larger whole--not for moral rightousness, but because diversity and ecological growth requires recognizing and maximizing (rather than depleting) our natural environments.
This is a mandate for a more creative future. A future not only based on immediate animal conveniences, but a recognized and evolved sense of interdependence.
Consumer capitalism will not bring us this future. Remember what has been in the past need not be in the future--we can evolve new forms of exchange and new types of markets---but we have to slow down and dare to ask, think, and sacrifice along the way. On the upbeat, not every "sacrifice" is a privation--rather every change of direction is an opportunity to create different types of relationships and relatedness to ourselves, our world, and eachother.
Best to You---K
