Category Archives: Economy

May 6, 2013 · 5:35 am

If Norway Can Prosper with a Stable Population, Why Can’t Australia? by Charles Berger

Melbourne city sprawl.

Melbourne city sprawl.

The projection that Australia’s population will grow to 36 million by 2050, contained in the 2010 Intergenerational Report, was received very differently by Australian governments and the community.

Many Australians are deeply uncomfortable with rapid population growth. A  recent poll found that 48% of Australians thought such growth would be bad for Australia, while only 24% thought it would be good. They intuit, perhaps, that governments might not be up to the task of providing sustainable water, energy and transport infrastructure for rapidly growing cities.

The Government’s stance has vacillated between claiming that such rapid population growth is inevitable on the one hand, and assuring us that it is good for Australia on the other.

The claim of inevitability is disingenuous and easily dismissed. While some degree of growth is inevitable over the next few decades, both the pace of growth and the ultimate trajectory are well within the government’s power to influence. Migration is the largest determinant of long-term population growth for Australia, and different migration levels mean the difference between population stabilization and ongoing rapid growth.

More interesting, and more forthright, is the claim that rapid population growth is in Australia’s best interest. Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has been the government’s most vocal proponent of the “Big Australia” preference. In a recent piece, Tanner asked “Do we want lower productivity and less economic growth?”, implying that lower population growth could only damage our economy.

Is there good evidence for or against a link between population growth and economic prosperity? Tanner unfortunately offered none in support of his argument for rapid growth. One’s view on the question depends largely on an assessment of so-called “economies of scale” and “dis-economies of scale”. Economies of scale are things that get better the more of us there are—greater diversity of restaurants is an example that rings true for me. Diseconomies of scale are things that get harder the more of us there are. For example, water supply tends to get more expensive per unit as population increases, as increasing supply requires resorting to progressively more distant and difficult to access sources. A desalination plant is more expensive than extraction from local wells, for example. Congestion is another diseconomy of scale, and greenhouse pollution is rapidly emerging as another.

Economic modeling conducted for the Intergenerational Report concluded that lower population growth would mean lower per-capita GDP for Australia, among other ills. But a closer look reveals some flaws. For one, the modeling excluded any environmental parameters, such as the potential impact of a larger population on greenhouse pollution, water use, and congestion. The omission seems all the more glaring when you consider that climate change was identified as one of the two most important intergenerational challenges facing Australia today. In effect, the Intergenerational Report included many potential economies of scale, while excluding the most important dis-economies of scale. The result tells us more about the modeler than about what is likely to happen in the real world.

The most considered and balanced treatment of this issue in recent times is the final report of the National Population Council, an official Commonwealth body, released in 1991. Although nearly two decades old now, its analysis remains compelling and relevant. It is not, I should stress, an “anti-growth” document.

On the link between population and economy, the Council found that the jury was still out: “because of our limited present direct knowledge of economies and dis-economies of scale, it is not possible to state … that population growth per se enhances or reduces the productivity basis for economic progress.”

Unfortunately, our knowledge of economies and diseconomies of scale is no better today than it was back then. This leaves Tanner’s claim that we’d be less prosperous if we don’t grow our population on a pretty shaky theoretical base.

But enough of economic models, what about the real world? The Intergenerational Report discusses just two examples: Italy and Japan. Both nations have experienced very low fertility levels, rapidly ageing populations, and slow economic growth in recent decades. On the basis of these two countries, the Intergenerational Report concludes, “A key lesson from the international experience is that countries with low population growth or declining populations such as Japan and Italy face lower potential rates of economic growth than countries with relatively healthier population growth.”

But why focus on those two countries? A broader look across the OECD shows that rapid population growth is neither necessary nor sufficient to achieve solid per capita GDP growth. (I leave aside here the question of whether per capita GDP growth is a useful goal to strive for, except to say that Joseph Stiglitz and many other mainstream economists have cast doubt on the wisdom of an excessive focus on GDP.) In fact, no fewer than 11 OECD nations achieved faster per-capita economic growth than Australia from 1997-2007, despite slower population growth or even in some cases no population growth or a slight decline.

Clearly enough, experience shows us that rapid population growth is no guarantee of economic prosperity, and conversely a stable population does not doom a country to economic failure.

The real puzzle here is why the Intergenerational Report discusses only the two worst performing countries among OECD nations on this issue, rather than looking at some of the success stories. Norway looks like an interesting case—thriving economy, despite an ageing population and much lower population growth than Australia. Or how about Slovakia, with a stable and ageing population and a booming economy? The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Finland … with so many intriguing examples of countries with stable or low-growth populations that somehow continue to enjoy vibrant economies, it’s a pity the report didn’t take a more lateral approach.

As for the significant environmental, planning and social challenges of population growth, the report acknowledges them but plays them down in a single line of optimism: “The risks in these areas are manageable provided governments take early action to plan for future needs.” Sure, but that’s a pretty big proviso. It’s a bit like saying I can win a marathon, provided I run really fast: technically true, but it really begs the question of how.

Lindsay Tanner similarly suggests that we focus on better planning and less profligacy, rather than worrying about population. One can hardly argue against better planning and lower ecological footprints; they are desperately needed. What is beyond me is how he can be so sanguine about our ability to achieve those ambitious goals, in the face of all evidence that we’re nowhere close to the trajectories required even to reduce the ecological footprint of the present population.

Population growth and wildlife come into conflict.

Population growth and wildlife come into conflict.

The truth is we are struggling just to catch up with the huge backlog of infrastructure, social and environmental investments for our 22 million people, let alone the 36 million we will have if current migration trends continue.

A better approach, again, is that provided by the National Population Council in 1991. It stated: “Solutions should not be assumed for population-related problems through other policies, unless the institutional and other mechanisms required to effectively implement those solutions are in place”.

The assumption that the impacts of population growth will be defrayed by technological and planning improvements is the opposite of a precautionary approach. It is fine to hope for the best possible outcome, but reckless to pursue policies that will increase our population on the expectation that the best possible outcome will occur. And even more reckless in the face of the facts are that Australia’s per-capita greenhouse pollution continues to increase year on year, our cities continue to push beyond urban growth boundaries, and few of the policies or practices that would signal a transition to a genuinely sustainable lifestyle are in place.

In the end we as a nation have options about our future population. The Intergenerational Report and the government treat us as if we have none, confronting us with a false choice between rapid population growth or economic calamity. The truth is that we can care for an ageing population, enjoy economic prosperity and work towards ecological sustainability without rapid population growth. How? Just ask the Norwegians. Or the Slovaks. Or the Dutch. Or …

Charles Berger is director of strategic ideas at the Australian Conservation Foundation. This commentary was first posted February 22, 2010.

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Filed under Ecological Footprint, Economy, Family Planning, Growth, Immigration, Leadership, Population, Wildlife

April 16, 2013 · 5:48 am

The Great Transition: Building a Wind-Centered Economy by Lester R. Brown

As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about pollution and climate instability cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new world energy economy is emerging.

As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about pollution and climate instability cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new world energy economy is emerging.

The great energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy is under way. As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about pollution and climate instability cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new world energy economy is emerging. The old energy economy, fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced with an economy powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy.

The Earth’s renewable energy resources are vast and available to be tapped through visionary initiatives. Our civilization needs to embrace renewable energy on a scale and at a pace we’ve never seen before.

We inherited our current fossil fuel-based world energy economy from another era. The 19th century was the century of coal, and oil took the lead during the 20th century. Today, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)—the principal climate-altering greenhouse gas—come largely from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal, mainly used for electricity generation, accounts for 44% of global fossil-fuel CO2 emissions. Oil, used primarily for transportation, accounts for 36%. Natural gas, used for electricity and heating, accounts for the remaining 20%. It is time to design a carbon- and pollution-free energy economy for the 21st century.

Some trends are already moving in the right direction. The burning of coal, for example, is declining in many countries. In the United States (the #2 coal consumer after China) coal use dropped 14% from 2007 to 2011 as dozens of coal plants were closed. This trend is expected to continue, due in part to widespread opposition to coal now being organized by the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

Oil is used to produce just 5% of the world’s electricity generation and is becoming ever more costly. Because oil is used mainly for transport, we can phase it out by electrifying the transport system. Plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars can run largely on clean electricity. Wind-generated electricity to operate cars could cost the equivalent of 80-cent-per gallon gasoline.

As oil reserves are being depleted, the world has been turning its attention to plant-based energy sources. Their potential use is limited, though, because plants typically convert less than 1% of solar energy into biomass.

Crops can be used to produce automotive fuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel. Investments in U.S. corn-based ethanol distilleries became hugely profitable when oil prices jumped above $60 a barrel following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The investment frenzy that followed was also fueled by government mandates and subsidies. In 2011, the world produced 23 billion gallons of fuel ethanol and nearly 6 billion gallons of biodiesel.

But the more research that’s done on liquid biofuels, the less attractive they become. Every acre planted in corn for ethanol means pressure for another acre to be cleared elsewhere for crop production. Clearing land in the tropics for biofuel crops can increase greenhouse gas emissions instead of reducing them. Energy crops cannot compete with land-efficient wind power.

The scientific community is challenging the natural gas industry’s claim that its product is fairly climate-benign. Natural gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking (a much-touted key to expanding production) is even more climate-disruptive than coal because of methane gas leakage. (Methane is a potent contributor to climate change.)

The last half of the twentieth century brought us nuclear power, once widely touted as the electricity source of the future. Although nuclear reactors supply 13% of the world’s electricity, nuclear power’s limited role in our future has been clear for some time. It is simply too expensive.

Countries around the world are richly endowed with renewable energy, in some cases enough to easily double their current electrical generating capacities. A revamped clean energy economy will harness more energy from the wind and sun, and from within the Earth itself. Climate-disrupting fossil fuels will fade into the past as countries turn to clean, climate-stabilizing, non-depletable sources of energy. The growth in the use of solar cells that convert sunlight into electricity can only be described as explosive, expanding by 74% in 2011. Early photovoltaic (PV) installations were all small-scale—mostly on residential rooftops. That’s changing as more utility-scale PV projects are being launched. The United States, for example, has under construction and development more than 100 utility scale projects. Solar-generated electricity is particularly attractive in desert regions such as the U.S. Southwest because peak generation meshes nicely with peak air conditioning use.

The world’s current 70,000 megawatts of photovoltaic installations can, when operating at peak power, match the output of 70 nuclear power plants. With PV installations climbing and with costs continuing to fall, cumulative PV generating capacity could surpass 1 million megawatts in 2020. (Current world electricity generating capacity from all sources is 5 million megawatts.) Installing solar panels for individual homes in the villages of developing countries is now often cheaper than it is to supply them with electricity by building a central power plant and a grid.

The heat that comes from within the Earth—geothermal energy—can be used for heating or converted into steam to generate electricity. Many countries have enough harnessable geothermal energy to satisfy all of their electricity needs. Despite this abundance, the geothermal energy capacity installed as of 2012 is only enough to provide electricity for some 10 million homes worldwide.

Roughly half of the world’s 11,000 megawatts of installed geothermal generating capacity is concentrated in the United States and the Philippines. Altogether, 24 countries now convert geothermal energy into electricity. The United States, with 130 confirmed geothermal plants under construction or in development, will be bringing at least 1,000 megawatts of generating capacity online in the near term. Worldwide, this accelerating pace could yield 200,000 megawatts of generating capacity by 2020.

Each alternative energy source—whether solar, geothermal, or wind—has a major role to play, but it is wind that is on its way to becoming the foundation of the new energy economy.

In the race to transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and avoid runaway climate change, wind has opened a wide lead on both solar and geothermal energy. Solar panels, with a capacity totaling 70,000 megawatts, and geothermal power plants, with a capacity of some 11,000 megawatts, are generating electricity around the world. The total capacity for the world’s wind farms, now generating power in about 80 countries, is near 240,000 megawatts. China and the United States are in the lead.

In the race to transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and avoidrunaway climate change, wind has opened a wide lead on both solar and geothermal energy.

In the race to transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and avoid
runaway climate change, wind has opened a wide lead on both solar and geothermal energy.

Over the past decade, world wind electric generating capacity grew at nearly 30% per year, its increase driven by its many attractive features and by public policies supporting its expansion. Wind is abundant, carbon-free and nondepletable. It uses no water, no fuel, and little land. Wind is also locally available, scales up easily, and can be brought online quickly. No other energy source can match this combination of features.

One reason wind power is so popular is that it has a small footprint. Although a wind farm can cover many square miles, turbines occupy only 1% of that area. Compared with other renewable sources of energy, wind energy yield per acre is off the charts. For example, a farmer in northern Iowa could plant an acre in corn that yields enough grain to produce roughly $1,000 worth of fuel-grade ethanol per year, or he could use that same acre to site a turbine producing $300,000 worth of electricity each year.

Because turbines take up only 1% of the land covered by a wind farm, ranchers and farmers can, in effect, double-crop their land, simultaneously harvesting electricity while producing cattle, wheat or corn. With no investment on their part, farmers and ranchers can receive $3,000 to $10,000 a year in royalties for each wind turbine on their land. For thousands of ranchers on the U.S. Great Plains, wind royalties will one day dwarf their earnings from cattle sales.

Wind is also abundant. In the United States, three wind-rich states—North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas—have enough harnessable wind energy to easily satisfy national electricity needs. Another attraction of wind energy is that it is not depletable. The amount of wind energy used today has no effect on the amount available tomorrow.

Unlike coal, gas, and nuclear power plants, wind farms do not require water for cooling. As wind backs out coal and natural gas in power generation, water will be freed up for irrigation and other needs.

Perhaps wind’s strongest attraction is that there is no fuel cost. After the wind farm is completed, the electricity flows with no monthly fuel bill. And while it may take a decade to build a nuclear power plant, the construction time for the typical wind farm is one year.

Future wind complexes in the Great Plains, in the North Sea, off the coast of China or the eastern coast of the United States may have generating capacity measured in the tens of thousands of megawatts. Planning and investment in wind projects is occurring on a scale not previously seen in the traditional energy sector.

One of the obvious downsides of wind is its variability. But as wind farms multiply, this becomes less of an issue. Because no two farms have identical wind profiles, each farm added to a grid reduces variability. A Stanford University research team has pointed out that with thousands of wind farms and a national grid in a country such as the United States, wind becomes a remarkably stable source of electricity.

In more densely populated areas, there is often local opposition to wind power— the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) response. But in the vast ranching and farming regions of the United States, wind is immensely popular for economic reasons. For ranchers in the Great Plains, farmers in the Midwest or dairy farmers in upstate New York, there is a PIMBY (“put it in my backyard”) response.

Farmers and ranchers welcome the additional income from having wind turbines on their land. Rural communities compete for wind farm investments and the additional tax revenue to support their schools and roads.

One of the keys to developing wind resources is building the transmission lines to link wind-rich regions with population centers. Perhaps the most exciting grid project under consideration is the ‘Tres Amigas’ electricity hub, a grid interconnection center to be built in eastern New Mexico. It will link the three U.S. electricity grids—the Eastern, Western, and Texas grids. ‘Tres Amigas’ is a landmark in the evolution of the new energy economy. With high-voltage lines linking the three grids where they are close to each other, electricity can be moved from one part of the United States to another as conditions warrant. By matching surpluses with deficits over a broader area, electricity wastage and consumer rates can both be reduced. Other long distance transmission lines are under construction or in the planning stages.

We know that rapid growth in wind generation is possible. U.S. wind generating capacity expanded by 45% in 2007 and 50% in 2008. If we expanded world wind generation during this decade at 40% per year, the 238,000 megawatts of generating capacity at the end of 2011 would expand to nearly 5 million megawatts in 2020. Combined with an ambitious solar and geothermal expansion, along with new hydro projects in the pipeline, this would total 7.5 million megawatts of renewable generating capacity, enabling us to back out all of the coal and oil and most of the natural gas now used to generate electricity.

In addition to the shift to renewable sources of energy, there are two other critical components of this climate stabilization plan: rapidly increasing the energy efficiency of industry, appliances, and lighting, and restructuring the transportation sector, electrifying it as much as possible while ramping up public transit, biking and walking. (With this latter component, we would be able to back out much of the oil used for transportation.)

This energy restructuring would require roughly 300,000 wind turbines per year over the next decade. Can we produce those? For sure. Keep in mind that the world today is producing some 70 million cars, trucks, and buses each year. Many of the wind turbines needed to back out fossil fuels in electricity generation worldwide could be produced in currently idled automobile assembly plants in the United States alone. The plants would, of course, need to be modified to shift from automobiles to wind turbines, but it is entirely doable. In World War II, Chrysler went from making cars to tanks in a matter of months. If we could do that then, we and the rest of the world can certainly build the 300,000 wind turbines per year we now need to build the new energy economy and stabilize the climate.

For the first time since the Industrial Revolution began, we have an opportunity to invest in alternative sources of energy that can last as long as the Earth itself. The choice is ours. We can stay with business as usual, or we can move the world onto a path of sustained progress. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on Earth for all generations to come.

The Washington Post has called Lester R. Brown “one of the world’s most influential thinkers.” He started his career as a farmer, growing tomatoes in New Jersey with his brother. After earning a degree in Agricultural Science from Rutgers University, he spent six months in rural India, an experience that changed his life and career. Brown founded the WorldWatch Institute and then the Earth Policy Institute, where he now serves as President. The purpose of the Earth Policy Institute is to provide a vision of an environmentally sustainable economy, a roadmap of how to get from here to there—as well as an ongoing assessment of progress. Brown has authored many books. His most recent is Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. It is available online at www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep  and at booksellers. Supporting data, endnotes, and additional resources are available for free downloading.

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Filed under Climate, Economy, Energy, Environment, Growth, Natural Resources, Sustainability

April 9, 2013 · 5:42 am

Have You Had Enough? by Suzanne York

The book contains an actual blueprint of policies that could create a sustainable economy.

The book contains an actual blueprint of policies that could create a sustainable economy.

A Plan for a Sustainable Economy

“Here’s the deal: forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.”  ~ Paul Hawken

This quote by Paul Hawken epitomizes the ideas and initiatives reflected in the new book Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, which lays out a path for overcoming so-called impossibilities in our world. The book constructs a realistic and actionable plan that should guide all of us as we confront increasingly dire and critical issues facing the planet. There will always be naysayers yelling out “impossible!”, but clearly we are way past listening to them.

The basic question that Enough is Enough asks is how we can transition from a global economic system dependent upon unsustainable and endless growth to a steady-state economy. According to authors Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill, the purpose of the book is to show “how to establish a prosperous yet non-growing economy.”

A steady-state economy is defined as an economy which “aims for stable or mildly fluctuating levels in population and consumption of energy and material.” Even Adam Smith realized there were limits to economic growth. He predicted that eventually natural resources would become more scarce, population growth would depress wages, and division of labor would approach the limits of its effectiveness.

For some people, a steady-state economy is a radical idea. For others, it makes perfect sense in a world of finite resources with gross inequalities and a lot people stuck in the daily grind and not so happy, despite the latest got-to-have-it technology.

Enough is Enough actually builds the groundwork for moving towards a society that lives within its means and focuses on the things people want—happiness, well-being, economic security, food security, good health, clean environment, strong communities, and so on. Perhaps most importantly, it does so in a straightforward and reader-friendly manner.

The book contains an actual blueprint of policies that could create a sustainable economy. Proposed solutions include: establishing more worker-owned companies, prohibiting banks from issuing money as debt (essentially preventing banks from creating money “out of thin air”), local currencies, and work-time reduction (to help reduce unemployment and improve citizen well-being).

Dietz and O’Neill believe the following policy directions would serve as pillars of a steady-state economy:

  • Limit the use of materials and energy to sustainable levels;
  • Stabilize population through compassionate and non-coercive means;
  • Achieve a fair distribution of income and wealth;
  • Reform monetary and financial systems for stability;
  • Change the way we measure progress;
  • Secure meaningful jobs and full employment;
  • Reconfigure the way businesses create value.

Enough is Enough also positively and pro-actively deals with the often taboo subject of population growth. Just as with the economy, a steady population is needed in a world of finite resources. Most importantly, Dietz and O’Neill recognize that “hidden in population numbers are real people”, something that often gets lost in the discussion of a world of 7 billion people, and likely to grow to between 8 to 10 billion by 2050. Unless compassionate, non-coercive policies are devised, any population policy will ultimately not work. Successful policies include actions such as educating girls, empowering women, and providing family planning services.

The two authors bravely wade into the immigration debate, also a tumultuous issue. They are in favor of honoring current U.S. immigration policy of accepting refugees and reuniting families. As for admitting workers with specific skills to fill jobs (also U.S policy), they suggest that the U.S and other wealthy countries are tapping the best educated and skilled foreign workers, which results in a “brain drain” for the developing countries from which these workers mainly come. Developed countries want top talent to spur more economic growth. Yet in doing so, the wealthy (and high-consuming) countries increase population growth to the detriment of less wealthy nations.

It’s a sensitive subject, yet if you look past the emotional arguments around immigration, as the authors do, you’ll see that their position is one where, in their words, “Instead of recruiting educated and entrepreneurial people from abroad, wealthy nations should cultivate talent at home and encourage nations abroad to retain their most capable workers.” In a sense, it’s localizing the workforce, for the good of societies in both developed and developing countries.

The world is facing many critical issues, yet for the most part stubbornly continues with business as usual, to the detriment of society and the planet. Enough is Enough effectively tackles issues too many people want to ignore. Moreover, it not only provides fodder for lively discussions, but practical ideas for achieving a sustainable economy and healthy communities.

Suzanne York is a senior writer with the Institute for Population Studies.

Source: PopulationGrowth.org < http://populationgrowth.org/have-you-had-enough-a-plan-for-a-sustainable-economy/> January 18, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

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Filed under Economy, Growth, Population, Sustainability

April 2, 2013 · 6:00 am

What is the Limiting Factor by Herman Daly

"Somehow, we have come to think the whole purpose of the economy is to grow, yet growth is not a goal or purpose. The pursuit of endless growth is suicidal." ~ David Suzuki

“Somehow, we have come to think the whole purpose of the economy is to grow, yet growth is not a goal or purpose. The pursuit of endless growth is suicidal.” ~ David Suzuki

Problems can be solved, but first they have to be recognized and then recognized as urgent. Then comes the more difficult process of changing our mindset and our expectations.

In yesteryear’s empty world, capital was the limiting factor in economic growth. But we now live in a full world.

Consider: What limits the annual fish catch—fishing boats (capital) or remaining fish in the sea (natural resources)? Clearly the latter. What limits barrels of crude oil extracted—drilling rigs and pumps (capital), or remaining accessible deposits of petroleum—or capacity of the atmosphere to absorb the CO2 from burning petroleum (both natural resources)? What limits production of cut timber—number of chain saws and lumber mills, or standing forests and their rate of growth? What limits irrigated agriculture—pumps and sprinklers, or aquifer recharge rates and river flow volumes? That should be enough to at least suggest that we live in a natural resource-constrained world, not a capital-constrained world.

Economic logic says to invest in and economize on the limiting factor. Economic logic has not changed; what has changed is the limiting factor. It is now natural resources, not capital, that we must economize on and invest in. Economists have not recognized this fundamental shift in the pattern of scarcity. Nobel Laureate in chemistry and underground economist, Frederick Soddy, predicted the shift eighty years ago. He argued that mankind ultimately lives on current sunshine, captured with the aid of plants, soil, and water. This fundamental permanent basis for life is temporarily supplemented by the release of trapped sunshine of Paleozoic summers that is being rapidly depleted to fuel what he called “the flamboyant age.” So addicted are we to this short-run subsidy that our technocrats advocate shutting out some of the incoming solar energy to make more thermal room for burning fossil fuels! These educated cretins are also busy chemically degrading the topsoil and polluting the water, while tinkering with the genetic basis of plants, all toward the purpose of maximizing short-run growth. As Wes Jackson says, agricultural plants now have genes selected by the Chicago Board of Trade, not by fitness to the ecosystem of surrounding organisms and geography.

What has kept economists from recognizing Soddy’s insight? An animus against dependence on nature, and a devotion to dominance. This basic attitude has been served by a theoretical commitment to substitutability and a neglect of complementarity by today’s neoclassical economists. In the absence of complementarity there can be no limiting factor—if capital and natural resources are substitutes in production then neither can be limiting—if one is in short supply you just substitute the other and continue producing. If they are complements both are necessary and the one in short supply is limiting.

Economists used to believe that capital was the limiting factor. Therefore they implicitly must have believed in complementarity between capital and natural resources back in the empty-world economy. But when resources became limiting in the new full-world economy, rather than recognizing the shift in the pattern of scarcity and the new limiting factor, they abandoned the whole idea of limiting factor by emphasizing substitutability to the exclusion of complementarity. The new reason for emphasizing capital over natural resources is the claim that capital is a near perfect substitute for resources.

William Nordhaus and James Tobin were quite explicit (“Is Growth Obsolete?,” 1972, NBER, Economic Growth, New York: Columbia University Press): “The prevailing standard model of growth assumes that there are no limits on the feasibility of expanding the supplies of nonhuman agents of production. It is basically a two-factor model in which production depends only on labor and reproducible capital.  Land and resources, the third member of the classical triad, have generally been dropped… the tacit justification has been that reproducible capital is a near perfect substitute for land and other exhaustible resources.”

The claim that capital is a near perfect substitute for natural resources is absurd. For one thing substitution is reversible. If capital is a near perfect substitute for resources, then resources are a near perfect substitute for capital—so why then did we ever bother to accumulate capital in the first place if nature already endowed us with a near perfect substitute?

It is not for nothing that our system is called “capitalism” rather than “natural resource-ism.” It is ideologically inconvenient for capitalism if capital is no longer the limiting factor. But that inconvenience has been met by claiming that capital is a good substitute for natural resources. Ever true to its basic animus of denying any fundamental dependence on nature, neoclassical economics saw only two alternatives—either nature is not scarce and capital is limiting, or nature’s scarcity doesn’t matter because manmade capital is a near perfect substitute for natural resources. In either case man is in control of nature, thanks to capital, and that is the main thing. Never mind that manmade capital is itself made from natural resources.

The absurdity of the claim that capital and natural resources are good substitutes has been further demonstrated by Georgescu-Roegen in his fund-flow theory of production. It recognizes that factors of production are of two qualitatively different kinds: (1) resource flows that are physically transformed into flows of product and waste; and (2) capital and labor funds, the agents or instruments of transformation that are not themselves physically embodied in the product. If one finds a machine screw or a piece of a worker’s finger in one’s can of soup, that is reason for a lawsuit, not confirmation of the metaphysical notion that capital and labor are somehow “embodied” in the product!

Further, capital is current surplus production exchanged for a lien against future production—physically it is made from natural resources. It is not easy to substitute away from natural resources when the presumed substitute is itself made from natural resources.

Curing Poverty?

It is now generally recognized, even by economists, that there is far too much debt worldwide, both public and private. The reason so much debt was incurred is that we have had absurdly unrealistic expectations about the efficacy of capital to produce the real growth needed to redeem the debt that is “capital” by another name. In other words the debt that piled up in failed attempts to make wealth grow as fast as debt is evidence of the reality of limits to growth. But instead of being seen as such, it is taken as the main reason to attempt still more growth by issuing more debt, and by shifting bad debts from the balance sheet of private banks to that of the public treasury, in effect monetizing them.

The wishful thought leading to such unfounded growth expectations was the belief that by growth we would cure poverty without the need to share. As the poor got richer, the rich could get still richer! Few expected that aggregate growth itself would become uneconomic, would begin to cost us more than it was worth at the margin, making us collectively poorer, not richer. But it did. In spite of that, our economists, bankers, and politicians still have unrealistic expectations about growth. Like the losing gambler they try to get even by betting double or nothing on more growth.

The Steady-State Economy

Could we not take a short time-out from growth roulette to reconsider the steady-state economy? After all, the idea is deeply rooted in classical economics, as well as in physics and biology. Perpetual motion and infinite growth are not reasonable premises on which to base economic policy.

At some level many people surely know this. Why then do we keep growth as the top national priority?

First, we are misled because our measure of growth, GDP, counts all “economic activity” thereby conflating costs and benefits, rather than comparing them at the margin.

Second, the cumulative net benefit of past growth is a maximum at precisely the point where further growth becomes uneconomic (where declining marginal benefit equals increasing marginal cost), and past experience ceases to be a good guide to the future in this respect.

Third, because even though the benefits of further growth are now less than the costs, our decision-making elites have figured out how to keep the dwindling extra benefits for themselves, while “sharing” the exploding extra costs with the poor, the future, and other species. The elite-owned media, the corporate-funded think tanks, the kept economists of high academia, and the World Bank—not to mention Goldman Sacks and Wall Street—all sing hymns to growth in perfect unison, and bamboozle average citizens.

What is going to happen?

Herman E. Daly is one of the world’s foremost ecological economists. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland, School of Public Policy. From 1988 to 1994 he was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank. His interest in economic development, population, resources, and environment has resulted in over a hundred articles in professional journals and anthologies, as well as numerous books, including Toward a Steady-State Economy. He is co-author with theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. of For the Common Good  which received the 1991 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas for Improving World Order. Over his career, Herman has taken a courageous stance, swimming upstream against the currents of conventional economic thought. Source: Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) < http://steadystate.org/what-is-the-limiting-factor/>

“Somehow, we have come to think the whole purpose of the economy is to grow, yet growth is not a goal or purpose. The pursuit of endless growth is suicidal.”

~ David Suzuki

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March 1, 2013 · 6:00 am

Experts Fear Collapse of Global Civilization by Stephen Leahy

"Television after the Collapse" photo by Robbt/Flickr/cc

“Television after the Collapse” photo by Robbt/Flickr/cc

“Environmental problems have contributed to numerous collapses of civilizations in the past. Now, for the first time, a global collapse appears likely. Overpopulation, overconsumption by the rich and poor choices of technologies are major drivers; dramatic cultural change provides the main hope of averting calamity.”  ~ Paul & Anne Ehrlich

Experts on the health of our planet are terrified of the future. They can clearly see the coming collapse of global civilization from an array of interconnected environmental problems. “We’re all scared,” said Paul Ehrlich, president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. “But we must tell the truth about what’s happening and challenge people to do something to prevent it,” Ehrlich told IPS.

Global collapse of human civilization seems likely, write Ehrlich and his partner Anne Ehrlich in the prestigious science journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society.  This collapse will take the form of a “…gradual breakdown because famines, epidemics and resource shortages cause a disintegration of central control within nations, in concert with disruptions of trade and conflicts over increasingly scarce necessities”, they write.

Already two billion people are near starvation today. Food production is humanity’s biggest industry and is already being affected by climate and other environmental problems. “No civilization can avoid collapse if it fails to feed its population,” the authors say.

Escalating climate disruption, ocean acidification, oceanic dead zones, depletion of groundwater and extinctions of plants and animals are the main drivers of the coming collapse, they write in their peer-reviewed article “Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?” published this week.

Dozens of earth systems experts were consulted in writing the 10-page paper that contains over 160 references. “We talked to many of the world’s leading experts to reflect what is really happening,” said Ehrlich, who is an eminent biologist and winner of many scientific awards.

Our reality is that current overconsumption of natural resources and the resulting damage to life-sustaining services nature provides means we need another half of a planet to keeping going. And that’s if all seven billion remain at their current living standards, the Ehrlichs write.

"The Earth is One ~ The World Not Yet" photo from NASA

“The Earth is One ~ The World Not Yet” photo from NASA

If everyone lived like a U.S. citizen, another four or five planets would be needed.

Global population is projected to increase by 2.5 billion by 2050. It doesn’t take an expert to conclude that collapse of civilization will be unavoidable without major changes. “We’re facing a future where billions will likely die, and yet little is being done to avoid certain disaster,” he said. “Policy makers and the public aren’t terrified about this because they don’t have the information or the knowledge about how our planet functions,” he said.

Last March, the world’s scientific community provided the first-ever “state of the planet” assessment at the Planet Under Pressure conference in London. More than 3,000 experts concluded humanity is facing a “planetary emergency” and there was no time to lose in making large-scale changes.

In 2010, a coalition of the national scientific bodies and international scientific unions from 141 countries warned that “the continued functioning of the Earth system as we know it is at risk”. “The situation is absolutely desperate and yet there’s nothing on the front pages or on the agenda of world leaders,” said Pat Mooney, head of the international environmental organization ETC Group. “The lack of attention is a tragedy,” Mooney told IPS.

Solutions exist and are briefly outlined in the Ehrlich paper. However, these require sweeping changes. All nations need to do everything they can to reduce their emissions due to fossil fuels regardless of actions or lack of them by any other country, Ehrlich said.

Protection of the Earth’s biodiversity must take center stage in all policy and economic decisions. Water and energy systems must be re-engineered. Agriculture must shift from fossil-fuel intensive industrial monocultures to ecologically-based systems of food production. Resilience and flexibility will be essential for civilization to survive.

A key element in meeting this unprecedented challenge is “…to see ourselves as utterly embedded in Nature and not somehow separate from those precious systems that sustain all life”, writes England’s Prince Charles commenting on the Ehrlich’s paper.

“To continue with ‘business as usual’ is an act of suicide on a gargantuan scale,” Prince Charles concluded.

Stephen Leahy is the senior science and environment correspondent for Inter Press Service News, the world’s largest not-for-profit news agency. Source: IPS News agency, January 11, 2013. <http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/01/experts-fear-collapse-of-global-civilisation/>

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February 21, 2013 · 6:00 am

Nature’s Capital by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales

While it is certainly welcome that so much attention has been devoted over recent years to the challenges posed by climate change, it seems to me that this particular focus has somewhat overshadowed what could prove to be an even greater threat to our well-being—namely the unprecedented degradation of the Earth’s living fabric of species and ecosystems.

Deforestation, collapsing fish stocks, the decline of pollinators, a rash of animal and plant extinctions and the loss of soils are among a whole host of worrying trends that confirm how we are overwhelming Nature’s capacity to supply our ever-increasing demands and to sustain human civilization in the long term.

I have found it increasingly breathtaking that even though so much scientific evidence now abounds on the decline of so many natural systems, it still seems possible to write off these symptoms as simply the inevitable consequences of development, in the belief that we can somehow balance the destruction against the benefits of carrying on with “business-as-usual”. We may have convinced ourselves in the past that we could think this way, but not now. The idea that we can endlessly exploit natural systems in order to sustain economic growth has run its course and is no longer a viable option. We cannot go on as we have done; we have to turn the tide.

For a system to be “sustainable” it must be, by definition, capable of enduring without failure. So, it is a simple test. Does the way we treat Nature guarantee its endurance without failure?  From all the evidence we have, the answer is fast becoming a resounding “no”. In so many realms, by definition, Nature’s life-support systems will plainly not endure indefinitely. Whether it be the air we breathe, the water that feeds our farming, the forests that absorb carbon, or the reefs that protect our coasts, natural systems in all their diverse forms are suffering corrosive destruction, and this will inevitably have a damaging effect on our economic wellbeing, let alone our health, wherever we are in the world. This is the clear message that has come through from a number of recent expert studies, and yet it remains a notion that is evidently still not taking root in the collective view of our place in the world.

This is why for so long I have been at pains to explain how this rather fundamental predicament arises. In large measure it is due to what I would call a “crisis of perception”. It is not so much clever policies nor innovative technologies that we lack; it is more a question of us forgetting the simple fact that we and our economies are a much a part of Nature as the trees and the birds. Just as they are, we are also Nature. It is a mistake, therefore, to put any distance between us and the rest of Nature’s systems. By degrading natural systems, we effectively reduce our own prospects for continued development and long term security.

As the shifts in climatic conditions begin to bite and as critical resources become scarce, the reason why we must attempt to reverse Nature’s decline can be summed up in one word: resilience.  Time and again experience from around the world confirms that Nature provides us with what are often the cheapest and most effective ways of coping with the challenges we face, from water scarcity to the impact of extreme weather events. The more healthy Nature is, the more likely we will be able to cope with the testing circumstances that lie ahead. This is why things like preserving forests and putting the health of the soil at the very heart of our approach are absolutely critical.

All this leads me to conclude that we have to see ecology and economy as two sides of the same coin, and urgently so. The world desperately needs a more integrated view of Nature and how her needs are incorporated into our thinking about development and economics. By properly valuing Nature’s “capital”, it should surely not be beyond the wit of man (and economists!) to establish an innovative market for the “public utilities” provided by ecosystem services? It is a fact that we can no longer ignore: a secure and prosperous future for humanity can only be guaranteed by a much more harmonious coexistence with the rest of Nature’s complex and miraculous system.

Source: Dimensions magazine, International Human Dimensions on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), January 14, 2013.

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February 17, 2013 · 6:01 am

Albemarle County, Virginia: New Report Quantifies the Fiscal Costs of Population Growth

"Smart growth" strategies... are "doomed to fail."

“Smart growth” strategies… are “doomed to fail.”

A new report produced for Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population says that continued population growth in Charlottesville and Albemarle County would only increase the fiscal challenges faced by local government.

It also argues that “smart growth” strategies and economic development efforts to recruit even targeted industries are “doomed to fail” in a fiscal analysis that examines the full cost-benefits.

“I think we have long used a drug that we thought would cure our ills, and the drug is growth,” said Jack Marshall, ASAP’s president.  “This drug has side effects and its probably not a drug that is appropriate for most communities in America.  It’s time to reconsider that drug’s claims for what it can do.”

Using publicly available government data for the fiscal years between 2006 and 2009, the study examines the fiscal costs and benefits of population growth in the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Various land use categories – like residential, commercial, industrial and agriculture – were examined to determine if they pay their own way for the public services required. The report concludes, “few land uses pay their way … because new area residents require services that increase local government costs at a level greater than the additional local revenue they contribute.”

“Growth will not pay for itself, but to remain prosperous and have opportunities for your citizens, and to sustain a healthy community you already have, you actually don’t need it,” said ASAP board member David Shreve.  “This does not mean that all growth must end, nor does it mean, as we have been criticized, that we need to build a moat.” Shreve, who holds a doctorate in economic history, served as the report’s editor and adviser.

Neil Williamson, president of the business advocacy group the Free Enterprise Forum, said the report misses the mark. “While seemingly accurate in its limited financial analysis, [the report] fails to recognize the indirect, but calculable, economic benefits of population expansion,” Williamson said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow.  “The Free Enterprise Forum is concerned the report is flawed in design and unfairly prejudiced in its analysis and conclusions.”

“The report fails to calculate the considerable value of population to economic vitality,” Williamson counters.  “It is established that ‘Retail follows Rooftops’ and revenue (and jobs) follows retail.  One need only look to Greene County [where] the retail sales tax local option has increased exponentially since the establishment of the retail centers.”

Craig Evans was the project manager and principal author for the study.  Evans is a former member of ASAP’s board of directors and he serves as a member of Albemarle County’s Fiscal Impact Advisory Committee. “If you look at a land use in isolation, like commercial and industrial, they pay their way [so you think] let’s attract more,” Evans said.  “What happens is that as you attract more commercial and industrial uses, you inevitably attract more people.”

The report says that for every dollar in revenue generated, residential housing for those additional people has costs of $1.41 in Albemarle and $1.37 in Charlottesville.  The costs of public education are a large factor.

Last April, the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development published a Target Industry Study to help local governments focus their economic development strategies.  Albemarle decided to focus on attracting and growing the following industries: bioscience and medical devices, business and financial services, information technology/defense and security, and agribusiness.

“The targets were identified for the region and individual localities based on many factors, including the skill sets and experience of our existing workforce,” said TJPED’s president Helen Cauthen in an email.  “Our strategies around the target industries will be very focused on strengthening and retaining existing businesses in those sectors, which will provide job stability and security as well as career ladder employment opportunities for current citizens.”

ASAP’s leaders say this economic development initiative is one of their greatest concerns.  They prefer a focus on supporting existing small businesses and question whether the current population can or will fill the new jobs being targeted for creation.

“The Target Industry Study suggests we forge ahead and hire outside folks, not the underemployed,” Marshall said.  “We say wait a minute, it won’t work. … Continued growth exerts fiscal demands on local government and we have to deal with that some way.”

Shreve was asked how a community might close the fiscal gap identified in the report. “There are two legitimate ways, first improve the tax structure to get more money out of the community’s income to fund services,” said Shreve.  “The second way is to increase state and federal aid.” The report recommends more “progressive and responsive” tax structures. “We could move to a local income tax piggybacked on a state income tax,” Shreve gave as one example, a suggestion that would require action by the General Assembly.

Evans moved to the community in 2007 from South Florida and he acknowledges he fits the profile of a newcomer who wants to close the gates on others.  Evans said that in an ideal cost-accounting system, the existing population would pay to get community infrastructure caught up, then newcomers would have to pay for the new services they demand.

The study says recruiting more wealthy residents to help pay down the fiscal gap is unrealistic since it would require an average home price of $2.7 million for the next 2,000 homes in Albemarle to raise enough tax revenue to address even existing deficits.

“Development is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, development has a cost,” Evans said.  “The question has to be how much do we want to grow and as we grow how are we going to pay for it?”

Both Marshall and Evans hope the study will spark a deeper conversation among local officials as they update the city and county Comprehensive Plans. “A smart community doesn’t ignore these issues,” Marshall said.  “We should talk openly about them and make reasonable decisions.  We should talk about a vision that makes sense, then figure out what steps to take.”A 5-page Executive Summary of the study is available at

A 5-page Executive Summary of the study is available at <http://www.asapnow.org/2013%20Executive%20Summary%20Fiscal%20Costs%20of%20Growth.pdf> , and the full report is at <http://www.asapnow.org/2013%20ReportASAP%20version.pdf>

Source: http://www.cvilletomorrow.org/news/article/13784-costs_of_growth/

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December 6, 2012 · 6:00 am

New Study Confirms: Women Use Contraception to Better Achieve their Life Goals by Guttmacher Institute

“Women value the ability to plan their childbearing, and view doing so as critical to being able to achieve their life goals.”

New evidence confirms what most people already believe: Women use contraception because it allows them to better care for themselves and their families, complete their education and achieve economic security, according to Reasons for Using Contraception: Perspectives of U.S. Women Seeking Care at Specialized Family Planning Clinics, by Jennifer Frost and Laura Lindberg of the Guttmacher Institute.

“Women value the ability to plan their childbearing, and view doing so as critical to being able to achieve their life goals,” says study author Laura Lindberg. “They need continued access to a wide range of contraceptives so they can plan their families and determine when they are ready to have children.”

Few studies in the United States have asked women directly why they use contraception and what benefits they expect or have achieved from its use. To fill this gap, the authors surveyed 2,094 women receiving services at 22 family planning clinics nationwide.

The majority of participants reported that contraception has had a significant impact on their lives, allowing them to take better care of themselves or their families (63%), support themselves financially (56%), complete their education (51%), or keep or get a job (50%).

When asked why they are seeking contraceptive services now, women expressed concerns about the consequences of an unintended pregnancy on their families’ and their own lives. The single most frequently cited reason for using contraception was that women could not afford to take care of a baby at that time (65%). Nearly one in four women reported that they or their partners were unemployed, which was a very important reason for their contraceptive use. Among women with children, nearly all reported that their desire to care for their current children was a reason for contraceptive use.

Many women reported interrelated reasons for using contraception, suggesting that the complexities of women’s lives influence their decision to use contraception and their choice of method. Other reasons for using contraception, reported by a majority of respondents, include not being ready to have children (63%), feeling that using birth control gives them better control over their lives (60%) and wanting to wait until their lives are more stable to have a baby (60%).

These findings point to the critical role of contraception in the lives of women and their families, and further documents the value of ensuring women’s continued and increased access to a full range of contraceptive services and methods.

“Notably, the reasons women give for using contraception are similar to the reasons they give for seeking an abortion,” according to Lawrence B. Finer, author of a previous Guttmacher study on that topic. “This means we should see access to abortion in the broader context of women’s lives and their efforts to avoid unplanned childbearing, in light of its potential consequences for them and their families.”

Source: Guttmacher Institute, September 25, 2012.  The full report is available at: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/j.contraception.2012.08.012.pdf 

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September 19, 2012 · 6:00 am

The Next President’s Inaugural Speech (If Only…) by Brent Blackwelder

“We will take up the challenge of leadership so that we can once again pursue the noble vision of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Once upon a time the United States was a global pioneer of democracy and justice. The founders of this great nation articulated a noble vision of inalienable rights – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Times have changed. We have emerged from this presidential campaign with an ignoble vision of alienating wrongs – venom, vitriol, and the pursuit of pettiness. The campaign, including my campaign, dodged the most important issue of our era: coming to grips with the ecological reality confronting life on this planet. Today I pledge to make our nation once again the leader in solving economic, environmental, and social crises.

We have built a global economy that refuses to recognize ecological limits to growth. Repeated financial collapses, mushrooming corruption, and rampant speculation have characterized the last twenty years. We will blaze a new trail over the next twenty years; we will take bold steps to confront the failed global economy. Better late than never, we will face the issues of climate change and population growth that we have been avoiding for political expedience.

Modern industrial societies, with the United States leading the way, are emitting so much pollution that we have endangered the stability of earth’s climate and jeopardized the survival of over one quarter of the planet’s species. Our global population of over seven billion needs access to goods and services, but almost a billion are already struggling to obtain the bare necessities. Our civilization is using natural resources much faster than the earth can regenerate them. Scientists explain that we would need one and a half earths to keep consuming at our current rate. We can do better.

Our goal is to create a true-cost economy, a sustainable economy that gives everyone a fair chance. No more cheater economics and no more casino economics. We will put the cheaters in jail and close down the Wall Street casinos.

We will challenge the zealous pursuit of economic growth as the solution to the all problems. Much of our so-called economic growth has cost us far more than it has been worth. We have ruthless growth that benefits a few at the top but does nothing for most Americans. We have futureless growth that destroys resources, such as water and farmland, that will be needed by our children and grandchildren. Our economy should line up with our family values. We tell our children to save for the future. We don’t tell them to outspend their peers and judge the quality of their lives based on quarterly financial reports.

We will fund family planning so that the 250 million women worldwide who want such services can get them. All U.S. foreign aid will be screened to ensure that women will be better off as a result of the assistance.

While America has been sleeping, other nations have stepped into leadership roles:

  • Iceland has become the leader in empowerment of women; women hold the majority of jobs in university education and have nearly half the seats in parliament.
  • Bhutan has become the leader in measuring progress; this small Himalayan nation has committed itself to maximizing gross national happiness rather than gross national product.
  • Costa Rica and Sweden are leading the way in climate stabilization by instituting carbon taxes.
  • Germany, a nation with unexceptional wind and solar potential, has became the world’s largest generator of electricity in both categories.
  • Several European nations are taking the lead on jobs, shifting to shorter work weeks to relieve unemployment and enable citizens to spend time as they choose.

It’s encouraging to see other nations stepping up, but the United States need to get in the game. We can no longer stand still and watch other nations pass by on the way to a sustainable twenty-first-century economy.

Instead of rehashing the vicious debate over the deficit, I will move to implement a Robin Hood tax of just half of one percent on financial transactions. This simple and fair tax would yield billions in revenue and prevent Wall Street gamblers from playing with our money. We can haveprosperity without growth.

We will adopt a four-day work week. There is no winner in a rat race. We will share the work, so that everyone can have a job, and we will trade the high productivity of our workers for a time dividend – meaning more time spent with our families and less time spent at the office.

Instead of fighting wars over oil, our military will prevent wars by helping to engineer the transition to clean energy. The military is already far ahead of the public and politicians in recognizing the threat of climate disruption. For example, the U.S. Army is working to get its bases off the electric grid and onto renewable energy. We will accelerate efforts like these and apply them across the nation.

We have only to look at the history of our nation to find inspirational leadership. The United States led in stewardship of the land with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first, in 1872. Faced with mounting pollution in the 1960s, we responded to the challenge. Congress launched the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, and assumed global leadership in reducing pollution by passing clean air and water laws. Other countries replicated our laws.

Now, even though most citizens are aware of profound economic and environmental problems at home and abroad, the United States has been a drag, not a leader. Instead of excuses and gridlock, we will take responsibility for our actions. My administration will put aside pessimistic notions of what we can’t do and focus on what we can do.

I am not proposing an unachievable agenda for the American people, but rather a solid plan to build on our past triumphs and cooperate with today’s leading countries, regions, cities, and towns that have begun the quest for an economy with a future. We will systematically transform the United States from the biggest consumer to the biggest conserver. We will take up the challenge of leadership so that we can once again pursue the noble vision of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thanks to Brent Blackwater of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy for the following piece of creative writing, which is the inaugural address we certainly won’t be hearing in January 2013. 

Note: Blackwater recently retired as the president of Friends of the Earth and has testified in front of the U.S. Congress more than 100 times.  He is a founder of American Rivers and helped expand the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System from eight rivers in 1973 to over 250 today. He has initiated campaigns to reform the World Bank and succeeded in getting Congress to enact a series of significant reforms directing the Bank to pay more attention to the environment. He graduated summa cum laude from Duke University and received an M.A. in mathematics from Yale, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Maryland.

See: http://steadystate.org/presidents-inaugural-speech/

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August 17, 2012 · 8:00 am

On Population, U.S. Remains in Full Denial Mode by Craig Gurian

How dense can we get? U.S. crowd by S. Anderson/Flickr/cc

Of all the fantasies indulged in by a society speeding toward self-destruction, none is as consequential as the idea that continuing growth—both in size of population and size of economy—has a happy-ever-after ending. Yet, when overpopulation is discussed at all, it is discussed as a problem limited to the developing world. Indeed, a growing chorus of “pro-natalist” or population growth ideologues insists that, in the U.S. and other parts of the developed world, population stability or decline represents a demographic crisis that needs to be reversed.

In order to ignore the patently obvious fact that unlimited population growth is neither environmentally or socially sustainable, one would have to be prepared to explain how a resource-gobbling U.S. of 500 million or 700 million people would work. (If you’re not prepared to do so, you’ve already accepted the reality that some limits exist and that the only question is what those limits should be.) If, though, you really believe that predictions of overpopulation-induced catastrophe have been overblown, there are still two critical questions to be addressed, both of which are currently verboten as a matter of public debate.

First, even if ever-increasing population were survivable, is it really desirable? Second, are we really so inflexible that we can’t figure out any adaptations (beyond permanent crowding and permanent austerity for most citizens, that is) to enable a society that is becoming older to be economically and socially robust?

In fact, more isn’t better, and there are both market-driven and state-driven alternatives to be pursued.

Smaller has its advantages

In a well-reported and chilling article on Nigeria’s population explosion two weeks ago, Elisabeth Rosenthal quoted a Nigerian demographer: “If you don’t take care of population, schools can’t cope, hospitals can’t cope, there’s not enough housing—there’s nothing you can do to have economic development.”

U.S. society doesn’t face imminent collapse, but aren’t many similar considerations at play? For example, due to rapid growth, demands on infrastructure—transportation, water, schools—have already reached or passed a breaking point in some parts of the U.S. As anyone who is old enough to recall the 1960s or 1970s can attest, there just aren’t spots available like there used to be. Spots in schools that used to be merely competitive are now virtually impossible to get into. Spots in secure, well-paying jobs are no longer available except to an increasingly small minority.

The population of the U.S.—currently estimated at 313 million—was 179 million in 1960 and 203 million in 1970. Does anyone think those were periods when the country was “too small” or economically weak?

Adapting to the demographic shift

Most of the hysteria that is generated against consideration of the advantages of stable or falling populations concerns the phenomenon of aging populations. As people live longer, a greater percentage of the population is older, and there are, relatively speaking, fewer young “productive workers” to support everyone else. Just this month, the cries of alarm have included one op-ed piece asserting that, “Population decline poses a danger to the developed world,” and another describing Japan’s declining population as creating “grim consequences for an already-stagnant economy and an already-strained safety net.”

(Japan, by the way, is the poster child for those who want to sell the idea that only a growing country can be prosperous. Conveniently left out of the picture is Germany, whose economy is currently the envy of Europe, and whose demographics include a fertility rate of 1.4 children per mother, one of the lowest in the world; a death rate that, since the 1970s has continuously exceeded the birth rate; and a population projected to shrink to 65 or 70 million from the current 82 million.)

If one steps back from the panic, what comes most clearly into focus is the fact that the pro-natalists’ assumptions proceed from the basic premise that all economies and all societies always need to be organized in the same way. Once one begins to imagine alternatives, a future where fewer people are forced to engage in fierce, dog-eat-dog competition becomes very desirable indeed.

The pro-natalist concern, in truth, is not that there won’t be sufficient young people to do the work, or that “there are just some jobs that Americans won’t do.” Rather, it is that with labor in greater demand, the work won’t be able to be had cheaply. There is nothing “natural” about someone in a parasitic profession (like much of investment banking) earning a lot of money and someone doing necessary but menial work (like garbage collection) earning much less. Where a society is really forced to “incentivize” the latter, the market will dictate a lower-than-current value for the derivatives trader and a higher-than-current value for the sanitation worker. That revaluation may make some people uneasy, but their complaint isn’t really that such a change is unworkable; it is that they find the prospect of different people than usual having to adapt outrageous.

The nature of work, too, would likely be reorganized. Once, six-day work weeks were routine, as were 10 to 12 hour work days. Pressure from labor caused the developed world to adapt. If, by the middle or latter part of this century, workers who perform hard manual labor can only be secured by offering shorter-than-eight-hour days, we’ll have to adapt again. Jobs designed in lockstep at a time when households most typically had one, full-time (male) wage earner might have to become more flexible (something that is already overdue) to facilitate the part-time participation of older workers in the labor market not as an act of desperation but rather in a way that, consistent with any age-based constraints, facilitates participation in productive activity.

And, yes, it would cost more as a society to support those who are not working. (News bulletin: it will cost more in any scenario, even if we insist on punishing more older people with decades of life not much better than subsistence level). The question will be the old one, and one that should be easy to answer for a society that, unlike most others, remains remarkably wealthy: Is maintaining massive inequality of wealth on an individual level more important than trying to maximize the quality of life for most citizens?

Better now than later

For a long time, India, whose population now exceeds 1.2 billion people, did not act. Its population is estimated to grow to somewhere between 1.5 billion and 1.9 billion people in coming decades. An article on recent Indian attempts to control its birthrate pointed out, “Indian leaders recognize that [those massive growth scenarios] must be avoided.” The article quoted a demographer who said, “It’s already late…It’s definitely high time for India to act.”

The U.S. has the opportunity to be a lot more prescient, but we will have no chance to be unless we begin to discuss all of the consequences of being a country that continues to grow, and until we allow ourselves to imagine the potential benefits of alternative futures.

Craig Gurian is the editor of Remapping Debate.  He is also Executive Director of the Anti-Discrimination Center and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

Source:  Remapping Debate website <http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/population-us-remains-full-denial-mode?page=0,0 > May 2, 2012. Reprinted with permission. Craig Gurian is the editor of Remapping Debate. He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia College, his law degree from Columbia Law School, and a master’s degree in United States history from the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He is also Executive Director of the Anti-Discrimination Center and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

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