[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Don't fix the economy - change it

[Bill Totten]

Sticking with the model that is driving us toward ecological catastrophe
will eventually kill us

by Peter G Brown and Geoffrey Garver

TheStar.com (December 26 2008)


Amid the discordant clash of solutions being served up to address the
global financial crisis, a common refrain can be heard: Most global
leaders and their economic advisers key their policy prescriptions to
"sustained economic growth". The prevailing debate is how to get there
most quickly. In Canada, how this debate plays out could bring down the
government in a matter of weeks.

Unfortunately, it is the wrong debate. Neither the Conservative minority
nor the opposition has proposed anything that will set Canada on a
long-term path toward the kind of economy that will both provide for the
well-being of Canadians and enhance and preserve the ecological
community of which people are but one dependent part.

All eyes may now be on the kind of fiscal budget the Conservatives might
produce next year, but a more essential budget also demands urgent
attention: the global ecological budget. The financial crisis has
brought into sharp focus the need to fundamentally change, not merely
repair or rebuild, our economy. Because, quite simply, sticking with an
economic model that is driving toward ecological catastrophe will kill
us. So, it is essential to address the financial and ecological crises
together.

The ecological budget, on which all life and, consequently, the human
economy depends, is already in dramatic deficit. Why is this budget
ultimately more important than the fiscal budget? September 23 2008, was
Earth Overshoot Day. The period after September 23 represents the time
the human population causes an ecological deficit, using up the Earth
faster than it can regenerate.

Every year, Earth Overshoot Day comes earlier. This moving date tells
the story of a global environment rapidly losing its ability to support
life: accelerating climate change; the loss of species and habitats;
declining fisheries; the proliferation of ocean dead zones; diminishing
freshwater resources; and more. Ecological overshoot is climate change
on steroids.

Here are six steps we can take toward a truly balanced budget that will
allow Canadians, and all people on Earth, to live fulfilling, healthy,
yet more ecologically compatible, lives.

* Recognize that the economy is part of the biosphere. A comprehensive
economic plan must be based on the scientific fact that the global
economy is a subsidiary of the natural order. Economic policies should
be attuned to the limited capacity of Earth's biosphere to provide for
humans and other life and to assimilate their waste. Photosynthesis and
sunlight are as essential to the framework for economic budgets and
expenditures as the laws of supply and demand.

* Acknowledge that we need new institutions. An economic renewal
tailored to the 21st century would establish institutions committed to
fitting the human economy to Earth's limited life-support capacity.
Canada, with its token efforts to address climate change, is far off the
track. We need something like the central reserve banks, but which look
after shares of the Earth's ecological capacity, not just interest rates
and the money supply. Money should be recognized as a social licence to
use part of Earth's life-support capacity. Some functions of governance
would have to operate at a global level, through a federation modelled
perhaps on the European Union, with enforceable laws designed to assure
that individual nations don't overrun Earth's limits. The rules for the
developed countries that are responsible for the current ecological
crisis should be different from those for developing ones.

* Acknowledge that unlimited growth on a finite planet makes no sense.
Most people wrongly believe that unlimited growth and wealth
accumulation are the "natural laws" of the economy - inviolable, even
though together they undermine the Earth's ecological and social
systems. We face a moral challenge: bring the global economy into a
right relationship with the planet and its human and non-human
inhabitants or suffer the increasing destruction of Earth's finite
life-support systems and social structures. Growth in consumption is a
nonsensical response to the sharp decline in Earth's biophysical systems
that is caused by overconsumption. Our new ecological and climate
reality demands new ways to live within the means of the Earth.

* Fairness matters. A "right" human-Earth relationship would recognize
humans as part of an interdependent web of life on a finite planet. The
economy must recognize the rights of the human poor and of millions of
other species to their place in the sun. In a world awash in money,
addressing poverty only with growth reflects a tragic lack of moral
imagination. Indeed, in pushing for more "free" trade as it is currently
understood, Canada would entrench an ongoing addiction to consumption,
pursued in a manner that often ravages the bio-productivity of
developing countries.

* Expand the discussion. The new knowledge that will forever mark this
period in human history is the overwhelming scientific evidence that we
are overconsuming the planet and accelerating toward ecological
catastrophe. The short-term approaches of most ministers of finance and
professional economists don't account for how the planet works, or even
that the economy exists on a finite planet. Scientists morally committed
to protecting the global commons and researching ecological limits to
the global economy need much more funding and influence in policy-making.

* Look beyond technological fixes. Bold new leadership is needed that
will focus on all four policy "theatres" relevant to human ecological
impact and provide the moral footing that will lead people, individually
and collectively, to choose lifestyles with radically lower impact. The
four policy variables are: technology; population; wealth and
consumption; and morals and customs. These factors should together shape
Parliament's rethinking of the current economic system. Technology can
increase efficiency of energy and resources use, yet it is
overemphasized as a solution. Pushing technological solutions like
hydrogen cars and genetically modified agriculture is much easier
politically than asking people to consume less or have fewer children.
Unfortunately, technology alone cannot solve the ecological crisis. For
one thing, efficiency gains often lead to greater, not lower,
consumption. An example is the squandering of Quebec's underpriced
hydroelectric power.

Investments in new "green" technology need to be coupled to a regulatory
structure that ensures that efficiency does not result in more impact,
along with massive investment in creating or restoring natural systems
that build bioproductivity. Economic policy must promote not more
affluence as currently defined, but more sufficiency for all Canadians -
so that all may live with self-respect, without overconsumption.

Perhaps most difficult to come to grips with is that Canada is an
overpopulated country - if you compare the individual impact of each
Canadian with what the Earth can withstand. We should escape from the
current treadmill that considers more people necessary for more growth.

Lastly, we must greatly increase investment in educational and civic
institutions that teach that we are not "consumers", but citizens of the
Earth, and guardians of life's prospect on a small, beautiful and finite
planet.

_____

Peter G Brown is a professor at McGill University. Geoffrey Garver is an
environmental consultant and lectures in law at Universite de Montreal
and Universite Laval. They are co-authors of Right Relationship:
Building a Whole Earth Economy (February 2009).

http://www.thestar.com/article/557976


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