Jeff wrote:
>On HOPE's link page i found a site i've visited
>before (http://www.newdream.org/) and explored it.
>The focus was still mainly within the culture,
>but it was by far the most interesting site.
Looking around as the new dream web site, I found this and thought others
might find interesting as well.
Eric Storm
*******************************************************************
Donella Meadows for The Valley News, December 14, 1996
The first commandment of economics is: Grow. Grow forever. Companies get
bigger. National economies need to swell by a certain percent each year.
People should want more, make more, earn more, spend more - ever more.
The first commandment of the Earth is: enough. Just so much and no more.
Just so much soil. Just so much water. Just so much sunshine. Everything
born of the Earth grows to its appropriate size and then stops. The planet
does not get bigger, it gets better. Its creatures learn, mature,
diversify, evolve, create amazing beauty and novelty and complexity, but
live within absolute limits.
Now, when there's an inconsistency between human economics and the laws of
planet Earth, which do you think is going to win?
Economics say: Compete. Only by pitting yourself against a worthy opponent
will you perform efficiently. The reward for successful competition will be
growth. You will eat up your opponents, one by one, and as you do, you will
gain the resources to do it some more.
The Earth says: Compete, yes, but keep your competition in bounds. Don't
annihilate. Take only what you need. Leave your competitor enough to live.
Wherever possible, don't compete, cooperate. Pollinate each other, create
shelter for each other, build firm structures that lift smaller species up
to the light. Pass around the nutrients, share the territory. Some kinds of
excellence rise out of the competition; other kinds rise out of
cooperation. You're not in a war, you're in a community.
Which of those mandates makes a world worth living in?
Economics says: Use it up fast. Don't bother to repair; the sooner
something wears out, the sooner you'll buy another. That makes the gross
national product go round. Throw things out when you get tired of them.
Throw them to a place where they become useless. Grab materials and energy
to make more. Shave the forests every 30 years. Get the oil out of the
ground and burn it now. Make jobs so people can earn money, so they can buy
more stuff and throw it out.
The Earth says: What's the hurry? Take your time building soils, forests,
coral reefs, mountains. Take centuries or millennia. When any part wears
out, don't discard it, turn it into food for something else. If it takes
hundreds of years to grow a forest, millions of years to compress oil,
maybe that's the rate at which they ought to be used.
Economics discounts the future. Ten years from now, $2 will be worth only
$1. You could invest that dollar at 7 percent and double it in 10 years. So
a resource 10 years from now is worth only half of what it's worth now.
Take it now. Turn it into dollars.
The Earth says: nonsense. Those invested dollars grow in value only if
something worth buying grows, too. The Earth and its treasures will not
double in 10 years. What will you spend your doubled dollars on if there is
less soil, less oil, dirtier water, fewer creatures, less beauty? The
Earth's rule is: Give to the future. Lay up a fraction of an inch of
topsoil each year. Give your all to nurture the young. Never take more in
your generation than you give back to the next.
The economic rule is: Do whatever makes sense in monetary terms.
The Earth says money measures nothing more than the relative power of some
humans over other humans, and that power is puny, compared with the powers
of the climate, the oceans, the uncounted multitudes of one-celled
organisms that created the atmosphere, that recycle the waste, that heave
lasted for 3 billion years. The fact that the economy, which has lasted for
maybe 200 years, puts zero value on these things means only that the
economy knows nothing about value ~ or about lasting.
Economics says: Worry, struggle, be dissatisfied. The permanent condition
of humankind is scarcity. The only way out of scarcity is to accumulate and
hoard, though that means, regrettably, that others will have less. Too bad,
but there is not enough to go around.
The Earth says: Rejoice! You have been born into a world of self
maintaining abundance and incredible beauty. Feel it, taste it, be amazed
by it. If you stop your struggle and lift your eyes long enough to see
Earth's wonders, to play and dance with the glories around you, you will
discover what you really need. It isn't much. There is enough. As long as
you control your numbers, there will be enough for everyone and for long as
you can imagine.
We don't get to choose which laws, those of the economy or those of the
Earth, will ultimately prevail. We can choose which ones we will personally
live under ~ and whether to make our economics law consistent with
planetary ones, or to find out what happens if we don't.
Donella Meadows lives in Plainfield and is an adjunct professor of
environmental studies at Dartmouth College.
