================== Electronic Edition ==================
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #629
---December 17, 1998---
HEADLINES:
WHEN GROWTH STOPS -- SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT -- Part 6
==========
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@rachel.org
==========
All back issues are also available by E-mail: send E-mail to
info@rachel.org with the single word HELP in the message.
Back issues are also available at
http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=3
To start your own free subscription, send E-mail to
listserv@rachel.org with the words
SUBSCRIBE RACHEL-NEWS YOUR NAME in the message.
=================================================
When Growth Stops -- Sustainable Development, Part 6
Here we wrap up our discussion of sustainable development, based
on the excellent book BEYOND GROWTH by Herman Daly.[1]
Sustainable development means, first, setting physical limits on
the "throughput" of the human economy. Throughput means all the
materials and energy flowing through the economy -- all the things
we make and use, and all the energy required to do so. Another
phrase for "throughput" is "total consumption," which is total
human population multiplied by per-capita consumption.
The total throughput of the human economy must be kept small
enough to avoid exceeding two physical limits of the ecosystem:
its capacity to regenerate itself, and its capacity to absorb our
wastes. Each year now, scientists report new evidence that the
human economy has exceeded both of these ecosystem limits.
For example, nature creates (regenerates) new topsoil each year,
but in much of the world (particularly in the U.S.) humans are
destroying topsoil faster than nature can create it.[2] Loss of
topsoil reduces our future farming capacity in a fundamental way.
Topsoil destroyed today is topsoil taken from our children and
grandchildren.
Pesticides provide an example of humans producing wastes faster
than nature can absorb them. If nature could absorb pesticide
residues as fast as humans created them, then there would be no
buildup of toxic residues. But there has been a measurable buildup
of pesticides at the north and south poles, at the bottom of the
deepest oceans, in the drinking water of much of the midwestern
U.S., and in the breast milk of women worldwide. We have clearly
exceeded nature's capacity to absorb pesticide wastes, thus
denying our children their rightful share of nature's
detoxification capacity.
In sum, there really are "limits to growth" and we have already
exceeded some of those limits. This means that, at some point,
continued economic growth (growth of throughout) will create bads
faster than it creates goods (an economist would say "marginal
costs will exceed marginal benefits"). Daly (pg. 40) argues, for
example, that the U.S. chemical industry may have already passed
the point at which its toxic discharges are costing society more
than the benefits provided by its products. If this were the case,
then society would receive net benefits by shrinking the chemical
industry instead of promoting its growth.
Unfortunately, we have no way of measuring whether our economy has
passed the point at which costs have begun to exceed benefits
because, in our national accounting system (in which we measure
"gross domestic product"), we count all production of goods and
services as "goods." In tallying up gross domestic product (GDP)
we never subtract any bads. Chemicals are counted as goods and the
products they allow us to make are counted as goods. This makes
sense. But when our chemical factories produce chemical waste
dumps that must be cleaned up at huge public expense, those costs
are counted as "goods" too, instead of being subtracted as bads.
If a few hundred or a few thousand children get cancer from
exposure to chemical wastes, their hospitalization, their
radiation treatments, their chemotherapy, and their funeral
expenses are all counted as "goods" in our total GDP. If their
parents sue, all the resulting court expenses are counted as
goods, not bads. In sum, the nation's brightest economists
maintain our national accounting system with a calculator that has
a plus key but no minus key.[3] Therefore we have no way of
knowing whether the costs of economic growth have exceeded the
benefits. The nation's economists (and politicians and business
leaders) simply assume that if GDP is rising, our standard of
living is rising too. But, as the song goes, it ain't necessarily
so. (For substantial evidence on this point, see REHW #516.)
Historically, growth is an aberration; a steady state economy is
the norm. Only during the past 500 years has growth begun to seem
like the normal condition for human economies. The physical limits
to growth (which we are now perceiving because we have exceeded
some of them) require us to return to the steady state sooner or
later. If we do so by choice, we may be able to guide the process
and achieve a steady- state economy with a reasonable
approximation of the "good life" for most people, world without
end.[4] On the other hand, if we continue to blindly accept the
ideology that growth is good, then natural limits will reduce our
numbers with an ecological meat axe and the suffering will be
immense.
Why do we have so much trouble imagining a no-growth economy?
Daly believes there is one central reason: because a steady-state
economy, one that is no longer physically growing, will force us
to confront the problem of inequality, which is another name for
the problem of poverty. So long as the total economic pie is
growing we can say, "The poor will be lifted out of poverty by
growth, so we need not take any special steps to alleviate their
condition -- in fact we hardly need to think about them at all
because the market will take care of them."
In a steady-state economy, we will have to decide what is a fair
distribution of the benefits of the economy because, in the steady
state, as the rich get richer the poor must get poorer. In this
situation, the only way to make sure that a fair share is
available for everyone (whatever society decides "a fair share"
means) is to set a limit on how much the powerful and the
predatory can take for themselves. Daly says simply, "In a steady
state, if the rich get richer the poor must get poorer, not only
relatively but absolutely. If the total [throughput of the
economy] is limited there must be a maximum limit on individual
income."
Daly believes this is the key reason why we refuse to confront
limits to growth: we cling to the path of unsustainable growth so
that we will not have to think about limiting inequality. (pg.
215)
Daly argues that establishing the principle of limited inequality
is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for achieving a
modern steady state. He argues that the precise range of
inequality that we allow is not as important as establishing the
principle that inequality should be limited.
If inequality is to be limited, this implies that there will be a
maximum allowable income and a minimum income. (These standards
would have to be developed within each society because needs are
culturally determined.) Daly argues (pg. 210) that the minimum
income "would be some culturally defined amount sufficient for
food, clothing, shelter, and basic health and education." The
maximum income might be four times as great as the minimum (which
is what Plato advocated), or it could be 10 or 20 times as great.
The exact number isn't terribly important. The point is that there
must be a limit on inequality -- the precise limit can be worked
out in practice. (The overarching goal would be to provide
sufficient incentive so that all necessary jobs are filled
voluntarily by qualified people.)
Daly argues that limiting inequality (in a steady-state economy)
is a way to achieve 3 things:
1. It is a way to keep the rich from leaning too heavily on the
poor;
2. It is a way to keep the present generation from leaning too
heavily on future generations;
3. It is a way to prevent humans from "leaning too heavily on
other creatures whose habitats must disappear as we convert
more and more of the finite ecosystem into a source for raw
materials, a sink for waste, or living space for humans and
warehouses for our artifacts."
In addition to the matter of fairness (the meaning of which each
society or culture must decide for itself), in a steady-state
economy we would need to limit inequality for another reason as
well: to limit total human consumption, which is total population
multiplied by per- capita consumption. It is total human
consumption that stresses the ecosystem.
Because total consumption has two parts (human numbers and
per-capita consumption), to limit total consumption, we would need
to limit inequality AND limit total human numbers. In a
steady-state economy (one whose total size is established by the
Earth's limits), the more people there are, the lower their
average standard of living must be. Controlling growth requires us
to limit both human consumption AND human population. Both limits
are ESSENTIAL if we aim to control the total size (throughput) of
the global economy.
In recent decades we have invented several technological fixes
aimed at circumventing the natural limits of ecosystems, so that
growth can continue. The "green revolution" tried to speed up the
growth rates of the edible portions of wheat and rice plants[5] --
but these changes were achieved at the expense of stability,
resilience and resistance to disease. The latest technical fix is
genetically engineered crops. The hidden costs of this latest
agricultural gimmick have yet to be measured, but we can be sure
that they will become apparent as time passes. Daly says, "It is
for now certainly better for us to slow down our own biological
growth rate than to attempt to speed up the growth rates of all
the species we depend upon." (pg. 85)
It seems logical that we in the northern hemisphere must confront
(and achieve) the limits to growth first be-
Individual countries will find it more difficult to limit their
consumption as the "free trade" ideology is imposed on them by
powerful traders like the U.S. "Free trade" hides the ecological
costs of consumption. If Americans are doing the consuming but the
related ecological limits are being exceeded in Mexico or in
Indonesia, Americans can feel no incentive to reduce their
consumption. Free trade even makes it difficult to keep relevant
accounts because benefits are being enjoyed in one locale while
costs are being created in another, thousands of miles apart.
There is considerable evidence that free trade doctrines are
increasing inequalities within and between countries. As Herman
Daly says (pg. 156), free trade will bring with it "a further
writing off of the laboring class in this country, an increasing
disdain toward uneducated and rural people by the corporate and
university elite, and an increasing devotion by the former to the
one thing about themselves that at least vaguely concerns the
latter -- their growing arsenal of guns."
Within countries, great inequality creates civil conflict. Between
countries, in a full world, high rates of consumption create
international conflict. To the extent that free trade makes
nations less able to control their rates of consumption, to that
degree it will promote war within and between countries. To
promote peace, nations need to become more self-sufficient and to
consume less.
We have said before and we say again: We know of only one
organization committed to tackling every part of the "sustainable
development" problem: Sustainable America. We urge all our readers
to join and support Sustainable America. This is important. Please
do it. Telephone (212) 269-9550; fax (212) 269-9557; or
www.sanetwork.org.
--Peter Montague
(National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)
----------
1. Herman E. Daly, BEYOND GROWTH (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
ISBN 0-8070-4708-2.
2. Gary Hardner, SHRINKING FIELDS: CROPLAND LOSS IN A WORLD OF
EIGHT BILLION (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1996).
ISBN 1-878071- 33-5. Worldwatch can be reached at 1776
Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20036-1904. Telephone:
(202) 452-1992; fax: (202) 296- 7365.
3. Lincoln Anderson, "Gross Domestic Product," in David R.
Henderson, editor, THE FORTUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ECONOMICS (New
York: Warner Books, 1993), pgs. 203-207. ISBN 0-446-51637-6.
4. Daly (cited above in note 1) never precisely defines the
"good life" but on pg. 14 he says, "...most would agree with
[British economist Thomas] Malthus that it should be such as
to permit one to have a glass of wine and a piece of meat
with one's dinner. Even if one is a teetotaler or a
vegetarian that level of affluence is desirable, and would
serve by itself to rule out populations at or above today's
level."
5. Vandana Shiva, STAYING ALIVE; WOMEN, ECOLOGY, AND DEVELOPMENT
(London, England, and Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, USA:
Zed Books, 1989). ISBN 0-86232-823-3.
Descriptor terms: sustsinable development; herman daly; economy;
inequality; poverty; growth; free trade;
----------------------------------------------
Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly is a
publication of the Environmental Research
Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD
21403. Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet:
erf@rachel.org. Back issues available by
E-mail; to get instructions, send Email to
INFO@rachel.org with the single word HELP in
the message. Subscriptions are free. To
subscribe, E-mail the words SUBSCRIBE
RACHEL-NEWS YOUR NAME to:
listserv@rachel.org NOTICE: Environmental
Research Foundation provides this electronic
version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH
NEWS free of charge even though it costs our
organization considerable time and money to
produce it. We would like to continue to
provide this service free. You could help by
making a tax-deductible contribution (anything
you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00).
Please send your tax- deductible contribution
to: Environmental Research Foundation, P.O.
Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036. Please do
not send credit card information via E-mail.
For further information about making
tax-deductible contributions to E.R.F. by
credit card please phone us toll free at
1-888-2RACHEL. --Peter Montague, Editor
----------------------------------------------