Karen, Eager as I normally am to join any criticism of economists, I am afraid that I find George Monbiot quite as fallacious as he says economists are. (re: "Our Quality of Life Peaked in 1974. It's All Downhill Now" -- article in The Guardian, 31 December) He joins the economists he condemns in not understanding what economics and economic growth is mainly about.
Monbiot says that growth cannot continue forever. Of course it can. If we run out of resources on earth then we can mine resources from asteroids and planets in space. There's no problem in principle. Economic growth depends on two factors that are streets ahead of all the others. One is access to energy. And, goodness knows there's plenty of that. The sun pours down thousands of time more energy every day than the energy that the whole of the world's economic system needs or could ever use. The other main factor of economic growth is innovation -- the continuing discovery of novelties, services, and efficiencies of production. So long as a proportion of the population have some degree of intelligence and imagination then we ought always to be able to innovate. I have some sympathy with Monbiot's jaundiced view of mankind. Like him, I believe that mankind is going downhill at present. I believe that the main reason for this has been the accidental discovery of so much oil and gas in the last century. This means that commuting is so cheap that our communities have now almost totally broken down. We have lost the basic structures around which human behaviour has developed for millions of years -- both genetically and culturally. We will have to return to a more communal way of life, sooner or later in order to regain real social security and enjoyment. But I fear that will not be possible until transportion and travelling are much more expensive again vis-à-vis other forms of energy use. Fortunately that ought to come about in 20/30/30 years so I don't believe that it's necessarily downhill forever. Keith Hudson At 14:47 24/02/03 -0800, you wrote: <<<< Carfree - Issue 30, February 24, 2003 @ http://www.carfree.com/cft/i030.html A Life of Increasing Expectations? Writing in a recent article in the Manchester (UK) Guardian, George Monbiot begins: "With the turning of every year, we expect our lives to improve. As long as the economy continues to grow, we imagine, the world will become a more congenial place in which to live. There is no basis for this belief. If we take into account such factors as pollution and the depletion of natural capital, we see that the quality of life peaked in the UK in 1974 and in the US in 1968, and has been falling ever since. We are going backwards." Balderdash? Or fact? The economists would argue that, at least among the richer classes, we are much better off now than 30 years ago. But is even this really true? How much of today's wealth has simply been borrowed from future generations? What is the future cost of burning so much fossil fuel today? How much will the resulting climate change cost generations not yet born? Are any of these costs included in the figures published by economists? What is the value, in today's money, of the species extinction that is anticipated to result from global warming (to say nothing of the species extinction that is on-going, often as a result of oil exploitation)? Monbiot continues: "Our economic system depends upon never-ending growth, yet we live in a world with finite resources. Our expectation of progress is, as a result, a delusion. This is the great heresy of our times, the fundamental truth which cannot be spoken. It is dismissed as furiously by those who possess power today - governments, business, the media - as the discovery that the earth orbits the sun was denounced by the late medieval church. Speak this truth in public and you are dismissed as a crank, a prig, a lunatic." While this is perhaps slightly overstating the case (no one has yet called me a crank, prig, or lunatic, at least not to my face), it is true that today's economics is founded on an obvious fallacy: growth can continue forever, and must, if national economies are to remain healthy. The opposite is true, but the economic systems we have in place do not accept this obvious limitation. Monbiot again: "Now, despite the endless denials, it is clear that the wall towards which we are accelerating is not very far away. Within five or 10 years, the global consumption of oil is likely to outstrip supply." He mentions the problems of ground-water and phosphate exhaustion that arise from "modern" farming methods, which, unlike traditional methods, cannot keep us fed indefinitely into the future. What is the value today of a starving child a century from now? Is this cost included in our economic calculations? The solution, according to Monbiot, is a system that shifts taxation from employment to environmental destruction, which could tax over-consumption right out of existence. This proposition directly supports the carfree city, as such cities would require less material to build and far less energy to operate. Monbiot closes more eloquently than I can: "Overturning this calculation is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. We need to reverse not only the fundamental presumptions of political and economic life, but also the polarity of our moral compass. Everything we thought was good - giving more exciting presents to our children, flying to a friend's wedding, even buying newspapers - turns out also to be bad. It is, perhaps, hardly surprising that so many deny the problem with such religious zeal. But to live in these times without striving to change them is like watching, with serenity, the oncoming truck in your path." "Our Quality of Life Peaked in 1974. It's All Downhill Now: We will pay the price for believing the world has infinite resources" Guardian 31 December 2002 >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
