The Fallacy of Growth in a Finite World

I originally posted this a few days ago on my Campanastan blog. However, given that I've been discussing growth and water supply in the Colorado River basin (1 August 2010, 2 August 2010, and 4 August 2010) I thought this might be worthwhile to WaterWired readers. It's not a real technical article, which some may find disconcerting. The comments are worth reading.

The 1 August 2010 print edition of The Oregonian carried an Op-Ed by Jack Hart, The Fallacy of Growth in a Finite World. In it, Hart, who's a former managing editor of The Oregonian, questions the premise that continued economic growth is always good.  

Hart asks some good questions: Do we really need to keep growing? Is 'sustainable growth' - the mantra of many today - an oxymoron? Can we really have a good life with a steady-state economy? Does consumption make us happy?

Hart believes continued growth is a drug:

But growth is also an addiction. And, like most addictions, it threatens to destroy us. Not only does it clog our freeways, but it also paves farmland, wipes out open spaces, saddles taxpayers with ruinous development costs and crushes the quality of life that attracted us to our communities in the first place. Growth sucks irreplaceable resources out of the earth. It dumps poisonous pollution into our environment. It crowds out the planet's other species and utterly fails to deliver the human happiness it promises.

Strong words indeed.

Hart mentions 'steady-state economics' a concept the believes we can have prosperity without growth, He mentions some proponents: Herman Daly, who coined the term, Bill McKibben; the New Economics Foundation ; the New Economics Institute; and the Center for the Advancement of the Steady-State Economy.

He concludes:

Some worried academics and environmentalists think steady state is not enough. Three hundred of them met this spring for the first North American "de-growth" conference in Vancouver, B.C. The tenor of the conference, as one observer summarized it, was that "if everyone consumed even as much as Europeans, much less North Americans, it would take three to eight planet Earths to do it. Billions want more, and we still want more. A collision of unimaginable proportions is coming."

Despite the alarms, even the de-growth people seem to realize that practical solutions for heading off that collision don't include economic collapse, joblessness and the kind of chaos that would keep us from solving the very problems that got us into this fix. Millions of Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and no politician will get far arguing that we ought to keep it that way.

But maybe it's possible to get growth under control while keeping families fed and communities intact. The goal of steady-state economics is, after all, reasonable incomes for all human beings in a more humane society that preserves the planet and promotes human happiness. That's a tall order. But we've satisfied tall orders before.

We can start on this one by questioning our near-universal assumption that growth is always good. And the next time a candidate promises unending growth, it wouldn't hurt if somebody in the audience asked, "What for?"

After all, as Edward Abbey long ago pointed out, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Give it a read, and check out the comments.

"The increase of wealth is not boundless. The end of growth leads to a stationary state." -- John Stuart Mill, from the column

"In war, there is no substitute for victory; in peace, there is no substitute for growth." --Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), from the column

Comments

[Tim]

I wonder if Mill cited any historical examples where the end of growth led to a stationary state. Seems like it usually leads to (or results from) collapse and/or revolution.

It's encouraging to see thinkers trying to work out what a steady-state economy would look like. With economists and financiers talking about "the new normal" and various other gloomy forecasts, it seems we may have unwillingly entered a prolonged period of nongrowth. If we can adapt to that - if it indeed becomes "normal" - perhaps there is a chance for a soft landing and a (relatively) steady-state economy. That would be a remarkable achievement, given the unanimous adherence of global political leadership to the growth paradigm.

[PAUL F MILLER]

In the last ten years whenever I see or hear the word ... growth ... I feel a bit like the character Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) in the movie ... The Exorcist ... seeing my head spinning around in manner similar to her movie character.

Growth ... is one of those words we allow the journalist/“spinmasters” to utilize in whatever manner they choose, pro or con, without definition.

I wonder how many prior to Malthus thought about any of the implications associated with unrestricted procreation. Doubtless there were some whose names and ideas have escaped historical notice.

It certainly appears from the evidence thus far made available to us that procreation/growth has been indelibly inserted into mankind’s DNA irrespective of his place of origin, color of skin or presumed “station” in life in the society into which he/she was born.

Loosing this ability to procreate would be, I believe, akin to “phantom” pain felt by those who have had a limb amputated or severed as a result of an accident or incident of war.

Contemporary Americans do not have any formal training or education in critical thinking/evaluation especially over the past 50 years as our political leaders and policy makers have chosen to produce an American populous educated and trained to unabashedly serve “royalty” ... the true owners of the “military-industrial-congressional-corporate-complex” ... that 5% of our citizenry which controls more than 90% of our nation’s wealth thereby amassing and exercising an inordinate degree of power utilized to increase their wealth while decreasing our$.

Unrestricted ... growth ... is mandatory in an economy such as contemporary America where the prevailing mantra is ... “greed is good” ... without growth American corporate-interest$ would be competing for an increased share in collapsing markets, not the classic picture of prosperity one gets at the Harvard/Stanford type business schools.

Markets, prosperity, growth are inexorably linked in our prevailing business paradigm altering this just a little bit causes upheavals with potentially devastating consequence$.

Like it or not ... the spectrum of the tuning fork to which we resonate has been quite successfully injected and now resonates with just the slightest nudge from those hand “ping” these forks.

The implications of ... growth ... require and demand thoughtful, critical, serious, decisive measured, contemplative, reflective and introspective consideration. In contemporary America “we” do not choose to allow or permit space for such consideration to occur.

Moreover those manipulating the turning forks are careful not to allow the necessary “quiet-space-down-time” for such consideration to occur.

But here’s the kicker ... even when “quiet-space-down-time” is allowed, most Americans FREAK-OUT as alone time and/or silence is not part of our prevailing environment. Being unaccustomed we willingly allow ourselves to be manipulated to receive whatever the prevailing tuning-fork currently resonates and gleefully follow this ‘pied-piper’ ...

So until “we” individually and collectively have a change of heart and choose to think for ourselves and critically ... unrestricted growth ... will remain a mantra we willingly follow.

[David Zetland]

1) Growth is not necessary for prosperity: http://aguanomics.com/2009/04/over-capitalization-and-sustainability.html

2) GDP measures of growth/output are useless

3) It's not good for us: http://aguanomics.com/2008/07/growth-cult.html