Pop!ulation Press

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.

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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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

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 26, 2013 · 9:33 am

2012: The Hottest Year In USA History by the Center for Biological Diversity

“The blazing temperatures that scorched America in 2012 are a bitter taste of the climate chaos ahead.”

The National Climatic Data Center reported that 2012 was the hottest in recorded U.S. history (i.e., since 1895). “The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree,” read an item in The New York Times, “but last year blew away the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit.” The news confirms the need for rapid, ambitious action on climate, starting with full implementation of the Clean Air Act.

“This puts the heat on President Barack Obama to take immediate action against carbon pollution,” said Shaye Wolf, the Center for Biological Diversity’s climate science director. “The blazing temperatures that scorched America in 2012 are a bitter taste of the climate chaos ahead. Science tells us that our rapidly warming planet will endure more heat waves, droughts and extreme weather. The president needs to start making full use of the Clean Air Act to fight greenhouse gas emissions, before it’s too late.”

So far more than 40 communities around the country agree — Broward County, Fla., just joined the Center’s Clean Air Cities campaign. Will your city be next?

To learn more about the Clean Air Cities campaign, and how your city can join, go to the Center for Biological Diversity’s website: <http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/clean_air_cities/index.html>

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Filed under Climate, Energy, Leadership, Sustainability, Weather

March 18, 2013 · 10:22 am

A Biological Holocaust in the Making by Leon Kolankiewicz

Is the elephant doomed by insatiable need and greed?

As a kid, my second favorite animal was the African elephant. My favorite was the woolly mammoth, which once roamed across our own North America, as well as the steppes of Eurasia.

Unfortunately, all that remains of mammoths are cave paintings, that and their forlorn bones and tusks – lonely relics of a bygone era. Mammoths and their cousins the mastodons are extinct, gone forever, felled by the Ice Age, or so said the encyclopedias and textbooks of my youth. Apparently their shaggy coats didn’t offer enough protection from the piercing cold, or overheated them in the warm whispering winds of an interglacial.

It took a trip some years later to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles to suggest otherwise. Exhibits at the George C. Page Museum there depicted the human role in the demise of the woolly mammoth. These exhibits pointed out that the mammoths and scores of other large beasts (megafauna) in North America had survived multiple advances and retreats of the massive ice sheets that occurred during the Pleistocene. Until the final advance, when suddenly everything changed.

What changed was that the Earth’s supreme predator arrived from Asia equipped with technology no more advanced than spears and projectile points but a cunning that brute size could not match. During that final southward surge of the ice – and the corresponding drop in sea level – humans are believed to have marched across the land bridge over the Bering Strait from the Asian continent into a North American primeval paradise teeming with large, wondrous, and dangerous creatures.

There were giant (4-ton) ground sloths, dire wolves, tapirs, peccaries, short-faced bears, American lions, giant condors, giant beavers, and not just fearsome saber-toothed cats but even a 9-ft long “sabertooth salmon” that would have dwarfed even the king salmon. All of these marvels vanished suddenly in one of the greatest mass extinction events in the recent history of life on Earth.

Upon learning that scientists now implicate human beings in the demise of the woolly mammoth, I used to find solace that at least its relative the elephant survives in the wild to this day – if not on our own continent. Recent news out of Africa has shaken that solace.

The Wildlife Conservation Society has announced the results of a 9-year study of population trends among forest elephants in Central Africa. The study found that the numbers of these elephants had dropped by 62% from 2002 to 2011. The cause of this sharp decline? Not habitat destruction, but poaching, for the ivory in their tusks of course. This “blood ivory” is destined for Asia, principally China. Some 25,000 elephants are being slaughtered annually for the illicit ivory trade.

To a wildlife conservationist and population activist, the welcome attention this ongoing outrage is receiving still falls woefully short of the mark. The population angle is conspicuously absent. (So what else is new?) Yet population figures into this story in at least two ways.

First, the countries of Central Africa where the elephant slaughter is underway all have ultra-high fertility rates, skyrocketing human populations, and widespread poverty. For instance, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a total fertility rate (TFR) of 6.3 – that is, on average, each woman gives birth to more than six babies. Congo’s 2012 population of 69 million is projected to grow 2.8 times to 194 million by 2050! Its per capita GDP is $216, less than one half of one percent of America’s $49,601 per capita GDP. It’s no wonder that elephant poaching is an attractive career option for an ambitious young man who needs to put food on the plate for his growing family or wants a little cash to purchase consumer goods like cell phones.

The original scientific paper in the online journal PLoS One concluded: “High human population density, hunting intensity, absence of law enforcement, poor governance, and proximity to expanding infrastructure are the strongest predictors of decline.” It’s frightening to say so, but the population projections just cited ensure that all of these factors will go from bad to worse in the coming years.

The second population angle is less obvious, but concerns gigantic China. While China has taken extraordinary and controversial steps to slow its population growth, there are still 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with rising incomes, each having a greater per capita impact on the environment as they grow more affluent. And now more and more can afford to buy ivory. Unless China’s rising affluence is accompanied by a more enlightened environmental ethic, the elephant is doomed, pure and simple. Anti-poaching campaigns will be overwhelmed by powerful demographic and economic forces.

Famed biologist E.O. Wilson once estimated that the total biomass (living weight) of all 7 billion humans on Earth probably outweighs by 100 times that of any large animal species (including the dinosaurs) that ever existed on land. With this alarming news out of Africa, that ratio just got even more lopsided. And the African elephant, like the woolly mammoth before it, may yet be pushed over the edge of the precipice into the abyss of extinction – a void from which there is no return.

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Filed under Environment, Population, Sustainability, Wildlife

March 1, 2013 · 6:00 am

Experts Fear Collapse of Global Civilization by Stephen Leahy

“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

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

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.”

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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