Green Growth or No Growth - a debate

Check out this debate over on CBC radio with Paul Kennedy. This is the debate we should be having as a society.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/02/02/green-growth-or-no-growth/

Just when will enough be enough?

The day after Christmas is a good day to ponder the excesses of the season. As much as we enjoy the feasting, the exchange of gifts, and the close family time there is a sense of fragility to this years festivities, a doubt about the sustainability many of the practices of the holiday season. As the young ones open the countless plastic doodads, packaged in single use plastic and wrapped in specialty papers and the adults quaff imported beverages, as we all enjoy our new electronics made from rare earth metals mined by slave labor in war torn Africa, I think even the most consumerist amongst us wonders if this can or should be maintained. Just when is enough enough? Perhaps we can use the sneaking suspicions engendered by our consumerism of one holiday to shape the next holiday. I don't usually make new years resolutions but maybe this year is good year to come to grips with the shortcomings of the path we are on. It is increasingly clear that we are running up against the limits to growth in the finite world we live in. An economy based endless growth is not only a physical impossibility based on the laws of physics but is also clearly faltering in spite of all our efforts to create the fiction of plausibility. Enough is enough!
We can have a steady state economy. It is a better option now and for the future.
Read the report from the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy.
Enough is Enough.

For today we can take comfort that at least we have the fundamental values to rely upon in the holiday season, generosity, filial love and support, and the spiritual teachings that underlie the
holiday season. None of these need rely on the fantasies of consumerism to be achieved.

Video - Securing Human Well Being in a Resource-Constrained World

"Mathis Wackernagel, Founder and Executive Director of the Global Footprint Network, challenged attendees of a November 24 lecture to consider the ecological consequences of current consumption and development patterns."

Video - The Impossible Hamster?

"What the impossible hamster has to teach us about economic growth. A new animation from nef (the new economics foundation), scripted by Andrew Simms, numbers crunched by Viki Johnson and pictures realised by Leo Murray.

www.neweconomics.org
www.onehundredmonths.org
www.wakeupfreakout.org
www.impossiblehamster.org

We wanted to confront people with the meaning and logical conclusion of the promise of endless economic growth. We used a hamster to illustrate what would happen if there were no limits to growth because they double in size each week before reaching maturity at around 6 weeks. But if a hamster grew at the same rate until its first birthday, wed be looking at a nine billion tonne hamster, which ate more than a years worth of world maize production every day. There are reasons in nature, why things dont grow indefinitely. As things are in nature, sooner or later, so they must be in the economy. As economic growth rises, we are pushing the planet ever closer to, and beyond some very real environmental limits. With every doubling in the global economy we use the equivalent in resources of all of the previous doublings combined.

Concept, script and narration: Andrew Simms
Animation: Leo Murray & Thomas Bristow
Sound: Louis Slipperz
Scientific Adviser: Victoria Johnson"

Videos - Tim Jackson - Prosperity without growth

I remember a debate I had as a young man with a friend of mine who was making his living in the stock market. He advised me to invest in banks and to learn the ways of the trader. I admonished him for being involved in an industry that rewarded companies for firing people, for putting people out of work when they had families to feed, all in the interest of short term profits. I felt, as I still feel, that an economy that grows by reducing jobs was nonsensical, unethical and unsustainable. I wanted no part of it. For all the years in between, endless growth as an economic model has been gospel and any attempt to discuss the obvious fact that we live on a limited world of resources upon which our economy and our very survival is completely dependent was met with looks of disbelief. One never heard any mainstream discussion of this problem, until now.

Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at University of Surrey and Economics Commissioner to the UK Sustainable Development Commission, (click here for bio) is advising the Labour Government, at their request, that we need to redefine what we call prosperity and find a new path there, one that doesn't involve consumerist materialistic growth! You can download his report here, the most downloaded report in the history of the Commission.

Meanwhile the fox still owns the henhouse in the US, the banksters remain firmly in control, steering the debate away from any serious discussion that the entire foundation of the economy is built on sand. Like Zombies in a Romero film, arms raised intoning "must protect the rich, must protect the rich...."

"Is our economy fit for purpose in a low carbon world? Can economic growth deliver us from the threat of catastrophic climate change, or is it the engine thats driving us relentlessly towards it?

Speaking today at a high-level debate in central London to mark the publication of his controversial new book Prosperity without Growth, Tim Jackson argues that building a new economic model fit for a low carbon world is the most urgent task of our times.

The current model isnt working, says Prof Jackson, a top sustainability adviser to the UKs four governments. Instead of delivering widespread prosperity, our economies are undermining wellbeing in the richest nations and failing those in the poorest. The prevailing system has already led us to the brink of economic collapse and if left unchecked it threatens a climate catastrophe.

Prosperity without Growth substantially updates Jacksons groundbreaking report for the Sustainable Development Commission. Launched earlier this year to great acclaim, the report rapidly became the most downloaded document in the Commissions nine year history and in recent weeks has contributed to a burgeoning debate about economic growth and its consequences for people and planet.

As world leaders prepare to meet in Copenhagen to forge a new climate deal, Jacksons analysis provides a salutary warning against complacency. Global carbon emissions have risen 40% since 1990 and will continue to rise inexorably unless action is taken urgently. By the year 2050, the carbon content of each dollar of economic activity will need to be a staggering 130 times lower than it is today, if we are to make room for much-needed development in the poorer nations and remain within a 2oC warming.

By the end of this century, well need an economy in which each and every dollar of economic activity is taking carbon out of the atmosphere, says Jackson. What does such an economy run on? What does it look like? What kind of economic activities take place in such a world? Nobody knows the answer to these questions. But its fanciful to suppose we can achieve such a transformation without seriously examining the dynamics of the growth-based model.

Jackson admits the task is not a trivial one. We are caught in a profound dilemma, he suggests. Economic growth is the default mechanism for achieving social stability. And at the same time it drives the scale of ecological damage. Whats needed now is an urgent commitment to building a different kind of economic system, one which puts people and planet at its heart, Jackson claims. For the advanced economies of the western world, prosperity without growth is no longer a utopian dream. It is a financial and ecological necessity.

Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (Earthscan, £12.99) is available from all good bookshops and www.earthscan.co.uk "

GHG Emissions from products and packaging

I try to purchase local food as much as possible. Unfortunately, the local farms aren't producing much produce and thus the farmers market is not running. So I am left to shop in the supermarkets for largely imported food. I find it frustrating that there are very few items I can purchase that are not delivered to the shops in some sort of packaging. The one exception is local banana's. They come in their own packaging. I try to avoid plastic packaging as it cannot be recycled here in Bermuda, but still leave the shop with some unwanted plastic.
I rarely purchase anything other than food.

Before we left Britain this time I went through all my stuff and got rid of as much as I could in preparation for moving to America in the spring. I gave away my Mac desktop computer, I gave away my printer, I sold some climbing gear, I recycled a few old cell phones (they had all been given to me when the previous owners upgraded), sent some clothes to thrift shops. But I am shocked at how much stuff I brought away from Bermuda when we left 3 years ago and collected over that time in the UK. I kept most of it because I think it will be useful; tools, electrical supplies for setting up a renewable energy system, various materials for home maintenance. I still ended up with a bag of electrical recycling which has to be specially recycled due to the WEEE initiative.

WEEE directs businesses to take back electrical and electronic consumer goods that they have sold in exchange for a purchase of a newer item. While I like the idea of businesses taking responsibility for goods they sell I don't like linking it to encouraging consumerism. A new report from the Product Policy Institute lays out the climate change costs of consumerism. It turns out that products and packaging account for 44% of US GHG emissions.

"It includes emissions from extracting raw materials, processing materials, manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of non-food goods, and accounts for 29 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The goods in this system include all non-food products, all packaging (including for food), vehicles, and materials for buildings and construction (except for heavy infrastructure). Emissions associated with vehicle manufacturing and building construction (including manufacturing of furnaces, hot water heaters, and air conditioners) cannot be separated from other products in the EPA data, so the Provision of Goods slice represents products in a very broad sense."

So what's to be done about it? Here's what the report has to say about it.

"Many approaches for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for example a cap- and-trade system or renewable electricity standard, act on direct emissions. Implementing these approaches requires knowing where the emissions are physically released. In these cases, only domestic emissions can be addressed. The sectors view is useful in these cases because it tells you the share of emissions coming from a particular type of facility, like electric power plants. Other approaches reduce emissions by changing the ways we produce, consume, and dispose of products and packaging. Manufacturers may improve their design or production process to reduce greenhouse gas impacts. Recycling systems can be improved. Or consumers may choose to buy more sustainable products."

Interesting language there at the end, "buy more". I notice it doesn't say consumers may choose not to purchase products at all. An obvious choice would be to never purchase a tumble dryer. This not only saves mony and the embodied energy and emissions in it's production and transport but also the very high impact in the use of the product. Certainly reducing planned obsolescence, increasing the use of recycled materials, improved carbon accounting methods and attaching the costs of carbon emissions to the products themselves is worth doing. But ultimately we will benefit more from a transition away from an economy based endless growth and pointless consumerism at the soonest possible opportunity.

In any case the planet can no longer support the level of consumerism that the west enjoys and the developing world aspires to. Cell phones are good example. Here in consumerist Bermuda we had students who got a new cell phone every month, either to keep up with the current fad, to match an new outfit, or simply because they lost or broke the last one. Astounding! A sense of value is never cultivated if a child isn't taught it. Instead they possess a sense of entitlement to all the resources of the planet.

Insufficient fuel to stoke the G20 fire

The G20 has decided to further the damaging addiction to unsustainable growth. As reported over at Peak Oil: Planning, Preparation, and Relocation;

"... we can examine the economic growth that the world experienced from 2003 until 2007. In 2003 oil consumption was 77 million barrels per day and in 2007 it was around 85 million barrels per day, i.e. an increase of 10 percent. At the moment consumption is around 84 million barrels per day. If the stimulus package that the G20 group decided on is to generate the same amount of growth as seen in the 2003 to 2007 period then we will need an increase of 8 to 9 million barrels per day during the next 5 years. Such an increase is not possible."

Clearly the energy to fuel the growth the G20 are planning on is out of the question.

As long we measure progress using the outmoded concept of GDP the illusion of perpetual growth will persist. GDP allows the inclusion of environmental cleanup, such occurred after the Exxon Valdez spill, superfund sites, and treatment of the cancers that result. If on one hand we inslude the creation of the devastation that causes the cleanup and call that activity growth and then include the cleanup itself we are at least delusional, and at worst insane. As long as we allow corporations whose only motivation is profit to define "growth" and how and why we should pursue it we are in serious trouble.

It is high time we let our leaders know that a new paradigm is needed. We need a steady state, sustainable economy, one that looks after the needs of all the worlds people through to the seventh generation, rather than one that, as Paul Hawken says, "steals the future, sells it in the present and calls it GDP."

For more details read the full article by Kjell Aleklett, Professor of Physics
Global Energy Systems, Uppsala University, www.fysast.uu.se/ges
President of ASPO International, the International Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, www.peakoil.net.

Limits to Growth, Half measures, and the consequences

The title of this blog, Sustainable Living, suggests that a sustainable lifestyle is not only possible but is also a worthy goal. We must acknowledge however that living a western consumerist lifestyle is fundamentally not sustainable. At best we have only so much ability to personally close the resource loops attached to our consumption; growing our own food, conserving and recycling water, producing our own energy, reducing if not eliminating automobile transport, and contributing to the development of a local more sustainable economy. These are all necessary steps towards a more sustainable life and when coupled with vigorous involvement in the process of government and a commitment to public education regarding the excesses of the growth paradigm can have a significant impact. But is it enough? Enough to do what exactly?
Is our goal to halt the assault on the natural world? To reduce the threat of human suffering brought on by the consequences of our over consumption?

My earliest stirrings of environmentalism came about when I returned home from several months of summer vacation and found that the woodland where I spent many of my most precious hours growing up had been cleared for a housing development. I was beside my self with anger and grief. I argued with my father that no-one should have the right to do that, I was all of 12 years old. I felt betrayed and robbed by the adult world. It was a mostly selfish response. MY rights had been ignored. But I also felt strongly that the rights of the woodland inhabitants, from the birds and squirrels right down to the bamboo grove and the sycamore tree, one of only 2 on the island, had been been denied. It was my first exposure to the western concept of nature as commodity and it sucked!

Surely, the development of deep ecology and the recognition by so many that all the creatures, all life, has an inherent right to exist is an indicator that many of us are motivated to preserve biodiversity for it's own sake, an altruistic motivation. It is also painfully clear that we are completely dependent upon it for our very lives, a more selfish reason to work for sustainability.

There are other motivators; social justice, climate change as a threat to profit, a degraded quality of life created by the debt based consumerist lifestyle, centralisation of power in the hands of corporations, a realization that we are stealing from our descendants, and for some the desire to preserve God's creation. I ask again, has it been enough? Are we on track to accomplish any of those goals? Or has environmentalism failed?

Research throughout this decade indicate that we are clearly and unequivocally failing to achieve these goals. A report from the Stockholm Resilience Center has gloomy news about the limits of the planet and how close we are to reaching them. As reported over at WorldChanging; (Emphasis is mine)

"Chemicals dispersion
"Emissions of persistent toxic compounds such as metals, various organic compounds and radionuclides, represent some of the key human-driven changes to the planetary environment. [Their] effects are potentially irreversible. Of most concern are the effects of reduced fertility and especially the potential of permanent genetic damage."
(Find more on chemicals dispersion in our archives: Personal Pollution Index.)

Climate Change
"We have reached a point at which the loss of summer polar ice is almost certainly irreversible. From the perspective of the Earth as a complex system, this is one example of the sharp threshold above which large feedback mechanisms could drive the Earth system into a much warmer, greenhouse gas-rich state... Recent evidence suggests that the Earth System, now passing 387 ppmv CO2, has already transgressed this Planetary Boundary."
(Find more on Climate Change in our archives: Zero, Now.)

Ocean acidification
"Around a quarter of the CO2 humanity produces is dissolved in the oceans. Here it forms carbonic acid, altering ocean chemistry and decreasing the pH of the surface water. Increased acidity reduces the amount of available carbonate ions, an essential building block used for shell and skeleton formation in organisms such as corals, and some shellfish and plankton species. ...The ocean acidification boundary is a clear example of a boundary which, if transgressed, will involve very large change in marine ecosystems, with ramifications for the whole planet."
(Find more on ocean acidification in our archives: Oceans Are the New Atmosphere.)

Freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle
"The freshwater cycle is both a major prerequisite for staying within the climate boundary, and is strongly affected by climate change. Human pressure is now the dominating driving force determining the function and distribution of global freshwater systems. The effects are dramatic, including both global-scale river flow change and shifts in vapour flows from land use change."
(Find more on freshwater and the hydrological cycle in our archives: World Water Day: Freshwater Roundup.)

Land system change
"Land is converted to human use all over the planet. Forests, wetlands and other vegetation types are converted primarily to agricultural land. This land-use change is one driving force behind reduced biodiversity and has impacts on water flows as well as carbon and other cycles. Land cover change occurs on local and regional scales but when aggregated appears to impact the Earth System on a global scale."
(Find more on land system change in our archives: Protecting the Environment, Protecting Our Health.)

Nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans
"Human modification of the nitrogen cycle has been even greater than our modification of the carbon cycle. Human activities now convert more N2 from the atmosphere into reactive forms than all of the Earth´s terrestrial processes combined. Much of this new reactive nitrogen pollutes waterways and coastal zones, is emitted to the atmosphere in various forms, or accumulates in the terrestrial biosphere. ...[Much ends up in] the sea, and can push marine and aquatic systems across thresholds..."
(Find more on nitrogen and phosphorus in our archives: The Nitrogen Wiki.)

Atmospheric aerosol loading
"This is considered a planetary boundary for two main reasons: (i) the influence of aerosols on the climate system and (ii) their adverse effects on human health at a regional and global scale."
(Find more on atmospheric aerosol loading in our archives: No Continent is an Island.)"

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment completed in 2005 indicates that bio diversity is more at risk than at any time in human history; (Emphasis is mine)

"Four Main Findings
■ Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth.

■ The changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development, but these gains have been achieved at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services, increased risks of nonlinear changes, and the exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people. These problems, unless addressed, will substantially diminish the benefits that future generations obtain from ecosystems.

■ The degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century and is a barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

■ The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services can be partially met under some scenarios that the MA has considered, but these involve significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices that are not currently under way. Many options exist to conserve or enhance specific ecosystem services in ways that reduce negative trade-offs or that provide positive synergies with other ecosystem services."

On top of all this, new research indicates that melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is accelerating. (Emphasis is mine)

"New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.

British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below.

In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature.

Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 percent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003." - Discovery News

The old paradigm of working at the fringes of our lives, a little recycling here, turning off the lights there, is clearly insufficient to our needs. We need a radical redesign of our lifestyles.

We must abandon consumerism, the planet can no longer support it. We must relocalize our economies, both to reduce the impact of the global transportation of commodities and to re-instill a sense of stewardship of the resources we depend on. This will reinvigorate communities ripped apart and degraded by the current system as we come to trade and work with our neighbors to create healthy neighborhoods that produce their own food and energy. We must learn the skills necessary to do this. Everyone will need a practical skill. There are those elders still alive who can teach us.

There are many systems designed that can help to bring this about, the Transition movement is one that is gaining in strength and I urge you to follow the link and check it out. Download and read the Transition Primer.

The important thing is to get started. Household by household, neighborhood by neighborhood, town by town, city by city, country by country these changes will come. All we have to do is to decide how. Climate change and Peak oil will bring the current paradigm to it's knees. Will we be forced, kicking, screaming and suffering to change, or will we plan it in advance, do it right and enjoy the freedom it will bring?

My father advised me when I was surrounded by bad behaviour,

"Set an example don't take one."

Favorite Quote and short discussion

"Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a renaissance painting to cook a meal." - E.O. Wilson, pictured.

The green economist Herman Daly said we are treating the world "as if it were a business in liquidation".

There are those among us, less and less thankfully, particularly in the White House, that still believe John Locke's justification for private property rights, essentially that endless exploitation and expropriation of natural resources by us does no harm to them as there is plenty for all. The science, the media, even some churches now accept that we live in a world of environmental limits. We must all limit our consumption of resources so that there is enough for all.(Dresner 2002) Sorry Dick, all of our lifestyles are negotiable.

Let the negotiations begin.

references:
Dresner, Simon 2002 - The Principles of Sustainability published by Earthscan London http://www.amazon.co.uk/Principles-Sustainability-Simon-Dresner/dp/185383842X

Thanks to Treehugger.com for the image.

Choices

This is the next post from my series on the Sheffield Star online Green Scene section.

In my last post I presented some recent climate science to help establish the context within which we face perhaps the most important and yet mundane choices we will make. Important in that our choices will resonate down the ages just as those our forefathers made in choosing to build an economy based on fossil fuels. Mundane in that they involve the most basic of choices we make on a daily basis but which could move us beyond our dependence on fossil fuels. Whether our forefathers are to be held to blame for their choices is not at issue, whether or not we will be held accountable is, because we know the consequences of our choice.

In our own lifetimes we are likely to see major changes in our planet come about just from the damage we have allowed to occur up to now. If we don’t make major changes in the way we go about the business of our lives we will induce far worse changes to come about after we are gone.

So do we choose to address this personally or do we leave it up to governments and corporations? Will governments and corporations choose to address this if we don’t address it on a personal level? I don’t think so. The scale of the change necessary requires both. This means that each and every one of us must make changes in the way we live. We’ve done it before in the face of catastrophe,namely WWII, we can do it again.

On BBC’s Countryfile I recently learned about the scallop fishery of Lyme Bay. 60nm2 of the bay are being closed to dredging in an attempt to restore the coral ecosystem of the bay upon which the fisheries depend. A fisherman was lamenting the loss of a way of life he and his family had pursued for many years but acknowledged that he could change to another type of fishing. It will cost money to do so and the government should help with that, after all they allowed the damage to continue for so long that such drastic action became necessary.

This one instance is a microcosm of the choices we face. If we get lost in trying preserve a way of life that is destroying the ecosystems that support us we will fail. This realisation must pervade our every decision. It is going to be difficult. It will be hard for the politicians to do the right thing if we aren’t willing to demonstrate that we understand the sacrifices necessary.

"It is no use saying 'We are doing our best' you have got to succeed at doing what is necessary" - Winston Churchill



For more about the Lyme Bay issue see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7464585.stm

The Eighth Deadly Sin by Dave

We've all heard the rhetoric of "growth". It is a word that carries heavy and sacred freight whenever uttered within financial institutions, or on the world's airwaves. It's fundamental to our concept of economic health. If a pundit should detect figures that indicate growth running at 1 or 2 percent, it would be labeled "anemic" and "worrisome". I'm no economist, but as far back as I can remember, I've been troubled by this convention, especially since the publication in 1970 of our first photo of the entire planet seen from space...it looks blue and round, beautiful but fragile, and emphatically finite. Yet 38 years later, we never hear economic experts question the illogic of endless growth within a finite system.
What can this wealth we speak of be, but the systematic mining of the world's resources? To improve our mining techniques doesn't change the equation, it only postpones the eventual reckoning...a reckoning the pioneer biologist Robert Malthus would recognize immediately; i.e. a smaller rabbit population leads to a smaller wolf population which leads to a larger rabbit population which leads...etc.
Can we be more logical than rabbits or even wolves? Can we project our destinies into the future based on all the self-evident data? Certainly we can. Our failure to do so is caused by mere unwillingness...by fear. Of course a paradigm shift of this magnitude makes people fearful- we've been growing exponentially for at least 250 years. But does the alternative have to be scary? I submit that it's less scary than "staying the course".
The alternative is "zero-growth", a state that has lasted a lot longer than 250 years. Equilibrium or balance need not be a frightening scenario. On the contrary, it could prove to be the restorative that our species needs most. "Balance", as any athlete will tell you, is the most basic attitude to adopt in order to acheive maximum physical proficiency...in any discipline. Our species has lived in balance before...we can do so again.
As we seek this sustainable equilibrium, we'll need to re-visit religious and moral concepts, rejecting some values, while re-emphasizing or inventing others. A starting place that comes to my mind are the infamous "seven deadly sins", sloth, gluttony, envy, lust (what are the other three? somebody help me out here...avarice?). I don't think I'd take anything off the list...they're all in synch with the ideal of sustainability, but I'd certainly add a new one...Waste.
The false ideal of endless growth has enabled the appearance, at least in the developed world, of the eighth deadly sin. Perhaps the most appropriate icon for this sin, both for it's revolting vividness and the universal sense of wrongness it engenders, would be the vision, in the late 19th century, of hundeds of thousands of buffalo carcasses rotting in the sun, stripped only of their hides and tongues. An act so morally bankrupt as to leave Native Americans paralyzed with the shock of it...what is this white man not capable of doing? How can the Great Spirit allow it?
As we move forward into an uncertain future of dwindling resources, we must all train ourselves to consume with the same level of awareness and balance practiced by the North American plains Indians....oh Great Spirit, deliver us from the eighth deadly sin.