-Caveat Lector-
WHEN GROWTH STOPS -- SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, PT. 6
Here we wrap up our discussion of sustainable development, based
on the excellent book BEYOND GROWTH by Herman Daly.[1]
Sustainable development means, first, setting physical limits on
the "throughput" of the human economy. Throughput means all the
materials and energy flowing through the economy -- all the
things we make and use, and all the energy required to do so.
Another phrase for "throughput" is "total consumption," which is
total human population multiplied by per-capita consumption.
The total throughput of the human economy must be kept small
enough to avoid exceeding two physical limits of the ecosystem:
its capacity to regenerate itself, and its capacity to absorb
our wastes. Each year now, scientists report new evidence that
the human economy has exceeded both of these ecosystem limits.
For example, nature creates (regenerates) new topsoil each year,
but in much of the world (particularly in the U.S.) humans are
destroying topsoil faster than nature can create it.[2] Loss of
topsoil reduces our future farming capacity in a fundamental
way. Topsoil destroyed today is topsoil taken from our children
and grandchildren.
Pesticides provide an example of humans producing wastes faster
than nature can absorb them. If nature could absorb pesticide
residues as fast as humans created them, then there would be no
buildup of toxic residues. But there has been a measurable
buildup of pesticides at the north and south poles, at the
bottom of the deepest oceans, in the drinking water of much of
the midwestern U.S., and in the breast milk of women worldwide.
We have clearly exceeded nature's capacity to absorb pesticide
wastes, thus denying our children their rightful share of
nature's detoxification capacity.
In sum, there really are "limits to growth" and we have already
exceeded some of those limits. This means that, at some point,
continued economic growth (growth of throughout) will create
bads faster than it creates goods (an economist would say
"marginal costs will exceed marginal benefits"). Daly (pg. 40)
argues, for example, that the U.S. chemical industry may have
already passed the point at which its toxic discharges are
costing society more than the benefits provided by its products.
If this were the case, then society would receive net benefits
by shrinking the chemical industry instead of promoting its
growth.
Unfortunately, we have no way of measuring whether our economy
has passed the point at which costs have begun to exceed
benefits because, in our national accounting system (in which we
measure "gross domestic product"), we count all production of
goods and services as "goods." In tallying up gross domestic
product (GDP) we never subtract any bads. Chemicals are counted
as goods and the products they allow us to make are counted as
goods. This makes sense. But when our chemical factories
produce chemical waste dumps that must be cleaned up at huge
public expense, those costs are counted as "goods" too, instead
of being subtracted as bads. If a few hundred or a few thousand
children get cancer from exposure to chemical wastes, their
hospitalization, their radiation treatments, their chemotherapy,
and their funeral expenses are all counted as "goods" in our
total GDP. If their parents sue, all the resulting court
expenses are counted as goods, not bads. In sum, the nation's
brightest economists maintain our national accounting system
with a calculator that has a plus key but no minus key.[3]
Therefore we have no way of knowing whether the costs of
economic growth have exceeded the benefits. The nation's
economists (and politicians and business leaders) simply assume
that if GDP is rising, our standard of living is rising too.
But, as the song goes, it ain't necessarily so. (For substantial
evidence on this point, see REHW #516.)
Historically, growth is an aberration; a steady state economy is
the norm. Only during the past 500 years has growth begun to
seem like the normal condition for human economies. The
physical limits to growth (which we are now perceiving because
we have exceeded some of them) require us to return to the
steady state sooner or later. If we do so by choice, we may be
able to guide the process and achieve a steady-state economy
with a reasonable approximation of the "good life" for most
people, world without end.[4] On the other hand, if we continue
to blindly accept the ideology that growth is good, then natural
limits will reduce our numbers with an ecological meat axe and
the suffering will be immense.
Why do we have so much trouble imagining a no-growth economy?
Daly believes there is one central reason: because a
steady-state economy, one that is no longer physically growing,
will force us to confront the problem of inequality, which is
another name for the problem of poverty. So long as the total
economic pie is growing we can say, "The poor will be lifted out
of poverty by growth, so we need not take any special steps to
alleviate their condition -- in fact we hardly need to think
about them at all because the market will take care of them."
In a steady-state economy, we will have to decide what is a fair
distribution of the benefits of the economy because, in the
steady state, as the rich get richer the poor must get poorer.
In this situation, the only way to make sure that a fair share
is available for everyone (whatever society decides "a fair
share" means) is to set a limit on how much the powerful and the
predatory can take for themselves. Daly says simply, "In a
steady state, if the rich get richer the poor must get poorer,
not only relatively but absolutely. If the total [throughput of
the economy] is limited there must be a maximum limit on
individual income."
Daly believes this is the key reason why we refuse to confront
limits to growth: we cling to the path of unsustainable growth
so that we will not have to think about limiting inequality.
(pg. 215)
Daly argues that establishing the principle of limited
inequality is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for
achieving a modern steady state. He argues that the precise
range of inequality that we allow is not as important as
establishing the principle that inequality should be limited.
If inequality is to be limited, this implies that there will be
a maximum allowable income and a minimum income. (These
standards would have to be developed within each society because
needs are culturally determined.) Daly argues (pg. 210) that
the minimum income "would be some culturally defined amount
sufficient for food, clothing, shelter, and basic health and
education." The maximum income might be four times as great as
the minimum (which is what Plato advocated), or it could be 10
or 20 times as great. The exact number isn't terribly
important. The point is that there must be a limit on
inequality -- the precise limit can be worked out in practice.
(The overarching goal would be to provide sufficient incentive
so that all necessary jobs are filled voluntarily by qualified
people.)
Daly argues that limiting inequality (in a steady-state economy)
is a way to achieve 3 things:
1) It is a way to keep the rich from leaning too heavily on the
poor;
2) It is a way to keep the present generation from leaning too
heavily on future generations;
3) It is a way to prevent humans from "leaning too heavily on
other creatures whose habitats must disappear as we convert more
and more of the finite ecosystem into a source for raw
materials, a sink for waste, or living space for humans and
warehouses for our artifacts."
In addition to the matter of fairness (the meaning of which each
society or culture must decide for itself), in a steady-state
economy we would need to limit inequality for another reason as
well: to limit total human consumption, which is total
population multiplied by per-capita consumption. It is total
human consumption that stresses the ecosystem.
Because total consumption has two parts (human numbers and
per-capita consumption), to limit total consumption, we would
need to limit inequality AND limit total human numbers. In a
steady-state economy (one whose total size is established by the
Earth's limits), the more people there are, the lower their
average standard of living must be. Controlling growth requires
us to limit both human consumption AND human population. Both
limits are ESSENTIAL if we aim to control the total size
(throughput) of the global economy.
In recent decades we have invented several technological fixes
aimed at circumventing the natural limits of ecosystems, so that
growth can continue. The "green revolution" tried to speed up
the growth rates of the edible portions of wheat and rice
plants[5] -- but these changes were achieved at the expense of
stability, resilience and resistance to disease. The latest
technical fix is genetically engineered crops. The hidden costs
of this latest agricultural gimmick have yet to be measured, but
we can be sure that they will become apparent as time passes.
Daly says, "It is for now certainly better for us to slow down
our own biological growth rate than to attempt to speed up the
growth rates of all the species we depend upon." (pg. 85)
It seems logical that we in the northern hemisphere must
confront (and achieve) the limits to growth first be-
Individual countries will find it more difficult to limit their
consumption as the "free trade" ideology is imposed on them by
powerful traders like the U.S. "Free trade" hides the
ecological costs of consumption. If Americans are doing the
consuming but the related ecological limits are being exceeded
in Mexico or in Indonesia, Americans can feel no incentive to
reduce their consumption. Free trade even makes it difficult to
keep relevant accounts because benefits are being enjoyed in one
locale while costs are being created in another, thousands of
miles apart.
There is considerable evidence that free trade doctrines are
increasing inequalities within and between countries. As Herman
Daly says (pg. 156), free trade will bring with it "a further
writing off of the laboring class in this country, an increasing
disdain toward uneducated and rural people by the corporate and
university elite, and an increasing devotion by the former to
the one thing about themselves that at least vaguely concerns
the latter -- their growing arsenal of guns."
Within countries, great inequality creates civil conflict.
Between countries, in a full world, high rates of consumption
create international conflict. To the extent that free trade
makes nations less able to control their rates of consumption,
to that degree it will promote war within and between countries.
To promote peace, nations need to become more self-sufficient
and to consume less.
We have said before and we say again: We know of only one
organization committed to tackling every part of the
"sustainable development" problem: Sustainable America. We urge
all our readers to join and support Sustainable America. This
is important. Please do it. Telephone (212) 269-9550; fax
(212) 269-9557; or www.sanetwork.org.
Happy new year!
==========
[1] Herman E. Daly, BEYOND GROWTH (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
ISBN 0-8070-4708-2.
[2] Gary Hardner, SHRINKING FIELDS: CROPLAND LOSS IN A WORLD OF
EIGHT BILLION (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1996).
ISBN 1-878071-33-5. Worldwatch can be reached at 1776
Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20036-1904. Telephone:
(202) 452-1992; fax: (202) 296-7365.
[3] Lincoln Anderson, "Gross Domestic Product," in David R.
Henderson, editor, THE FORTUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ECONOMICS (New
York: Warner Books, 1993), pgs. 203-207. ISBN 0-446-51637-6.
[4] Daly (cited above in note 1) never precisely defines the
"good life" but on pg. 14 he says, "...most would agree with
[British economist Thomas] Malthus that it should be such as to
permit one to have a glass of wine and a piece of meat with
one's dinner. Even if one is a teetotaler or a vegetarian that
level of affluence is desirable, and would serve by itself to
rule out populations at or above today's level."
[5] Vandana Shiva, STAYING ALIVE; WOMEN, ECOLOGY, AND
DEVELOPMENT (London, England, and Atlantic Highlands, New
Jersey, USA: Zed Books, 1989). ISBN 0-86232-823-3.
Descriptor terms: sustsinable development; herman daly; economy;
inequality; poverty; growth; free trade;
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