Growth - UofO debate

But cold war era propagandists promised growth with McMansions and two cars in every garage for the whole world! City living in suburbia!!

And if they can't deliver, well then,  the big American-Canadian dream turns into the big lie that it is. Perhaps the propaganda machine was too hard on Soviet communists promising just roofs, jobs, education and health care for all. Maybe capitalism itself has become dull and grey and incapable of producing the goods.

Capitalism cannot survive without growth; thus we must get rid of capitalism if we are to have an environmentally sustainable society.

Yes, yes, I agree with a lot of what Peter Victor suggests. We could eliminate poverty and unemployment in a low or zero growth economy. The problem is a political one not economic. Jobism as the only solution to poverty is an obsolete idea. Our politicians and the people who vote for them have us all stuck in a Puritannical Protestant past that says it's immoral for able bodied people not to work. We are killing the planet for the sake of jobism. People burn billions of gallons of gasoline to drive to their no-wealth-creating jobs where they burn up even more resources contributing to the mountains of crap and plastic widgets only later to be thrown on the capitalist scrapheaps of time. And they do this every day because there are few alternatives worth considering.

I meant there are not enough alternatives to the Don Valley Pkwy drive, yes. Billions, and one estimate says over a trillion gallons of gasoline are burnt up every day with "the commute." Some large percentage of workers load themselves into five and six-seat gas guzzlers to drive to work and do jobs which also end up contributing to harm done to the environment. Why not give people a choice to stay home and do nothing? $20000 a year basic income for staying home and not poisoning the environment with their carbonmobiles and commuting to their no-wealth-creating jobs doing harm to the environment. $20000 base income for doing nothing, and let the poor decide if they want to supplement that income with a lower to mid-range wage job in, and hopefully, a green sector job. ie. selling stuff over the phone, or call centre work a few days a week, or whatever doesn't necessitate driving dozens of miles every day in their carbon machines.

You are right on the money, David Lee.  Back in the early 1970s there were serious economists (institutionalists) who tried to construct a framework for a zero growth economy.  Hell, I looked at economic history in graduate studies at the U of T in hopes of finding the secret to zero growth. I found that  M Spector was correct:"Capitalism cannot survive without growth; thus we must get rid of capitalism if we are to have an environmentally sustainable society." But I believe that not all of the institutions of capitalism must be abandoned to achieve the objective of zero growth.

 Your thinking: "it can't go on for very much longer, isn't that obvious? the choice is to get real or go extinct, is that it? or if not extinct then some gross devolution of civilization?" , has been driving a flaky few like myself to distraction for four decades now, wondering why in Gaia's name it is not the central concern of all institutions of higher learning. I decided - over a bottle of Seagram's VO, just last year - that the answer lies in the nature of Homo sapiens. We're not up to that level of self sacrifice. Too busy doing the Darwinian thing. Surviving for the moment.

CAnada's Charles Taylor wrote a short paper on the subject at the height of heated debate - it was 1974, I believe - concluding that, perhaps, conditions are going to have to deteriorate to the point when it will be seen that we have to row together to save the fragments of what has developed since our cave days.  He called it the Dunkirk scenario.

A new babbler in another thread has brought forward an acronym - also from the Second World War, one coined by someone in one of the services - which might  describe the state at which critical mass (reaction) will develop.   FUBAR... Fucked Up Beyond All Repair .

Quote:

Capitalism cannot survive without growth; thus we must get rid of capitalism if we are to have an environmentally sustainable society.

And you cannot have an environmentally sustainable society if one important variable continues its growth unchecked. 

Don't get bogged down in numbers, chaps.

Think ...causing the collapse of every bloody corporation that is dependent on market speculation. The Economic Imperative.

Think.  Don't trivialize this one.

In the following paper (chosen just for its use of dates) you'll see something of the brief, recent history of Homo Sapiens' struggle with the idea that we're making Earth inhabitable for a lot of species, including our own. I hope that Ottawa gathering of minds was not just into re-inventing the wheel of discourse on steady state economies. You'll see the Bruntland report coming into the picture in the 1980s with the concept of "sustainability," which was the copout point in the discussion. People could live with the idea of making their lifestyle "sustainable," even though not one in 100,000 achieves it. It will require social restructuring for success on any meaningful scale. The demise of capitalism.

One other point. James Lovelock spent much of his life convincing the physical science people that the equilibrium of Earth's atmosphere that has made life possible on its surface, so near to the Sun, is not just a happy accident. The appearance of life forms that began to sequester carbon a couple of billion years back initiated a symbiotic relationship by which plants and marine life - together with physical aspects - gave us this baby bear's porridge of climate and atmosphere that we continue to take for granted.

Lovelock's theory is now accepted into the mainstream of science and is no longer contentious, except in the minds of some who stand above all that and don't realize how ridiculous they look in the process.

THE DISCOURSE ON SUSTAINABLE

DEVELOPMENT

1.1. Roots of the Discourse

The roots of the discourse on sustainable development as an internationally recognized

issue extend to the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in

1972 and to some earlier influential studies (see e.g. Carlson 1962, SCEP 1970,

Meadows et al. 1972). The concept "sustainable development" first became prominent

in the World Conservation Strategy published by the World Conservation Union in

1980 (IUCN 1980). It was thoroughly discussed and elaborated by the UN World

Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 in the so-called Brundtland

report 'Our Common Future' (WCED 1987). And finally the global ethos of

sustainable development was agreed on and confirmed by national governments at the

UN World Conference on Environment and Development (United Nations 1993) in

Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Sustainable Development (SD) is generally expressed by the Brundtland Report as

an ethos that "humanity has the ability to ensure that it meets the needs of the present

without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs"

(WCED, 1987, 8). From the discussion followed it became evident that the meaning of

SD is made up in three dimensions: economic, ecological and socio-cultural. In the

ecological dimension, SD refers to the adaptation of economy and technology to the

earth's ecological constraints and environmental challenges. In the social dimension

SD refers to giving attention in welfare creation to social equity and global solidarity

rather than to the share-holders' profit issue. SD policies should give priority to those

who live in poverty, and to achieving better equity both within generations

(intragenerational equity) as well as across generations (intergenerational equity).

Provided with unlimited natural resources and with adequate accumulation of

appropriate scientific knowledge we were easily able to meet the fundamental human

needs of our generation without denying similar opportunities to succeeding

generations. However, in a finite world such as ours where the human population is

estimated to double while natural capital is depleted and degraded in increasing pace,

we have to challenge the pace of knowledge accumulation. If not in synchrony with

each other resources may become to constrain severely the task of meeting

fundamental needs for all either periodically or spatially. Basically, the major options

before humans are either a co-evolution with nature towards global sustainable society

based on advancing human knowledge and wisdom, or a competitive fragmentation of

societies and collapse of life support systems, - in the worst case - extinction of

humankind. The choice is primarily an ethical and socio -cultural one, and only in the

second place economic and technological in nature (Malaska 1971, 1972).

It's a Western world banking system that dictates growth. We must grow or fall deeper and deeper into indebtedness to the banking cabal and global money speculators. We either grow, or our bought and paid-for stooges tell us they have no other option but to pawn off ever more of the family jewels and silverware to financial capitalists who are strangling the low growth-pro financial economy from both ends. Who's in charge, our stooges or their money masters? At some point they own everything and have taken over powers of resource allocation from "democratically" elected government. At some point they will have to seize control of new lands in Asia and surround Russia and China militarily for what they hope will be the biggest land grab since enclosure era England that lasted centuries, and of 1990s Russia, some of which has been reversed since under Putin. Usury and interest rates-driven growth and ficititious capital are what drives our western economies. And right now the BRIC countries, South Africa and Malaysia and ALBA countries are saying no to marauding capital.

DavidLeeWilson wrote:

... I had never seen the name Alejandro Nadal before, nor Richard Smith, nor John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, but I thank you Spector for the links provided, I had a brief look at them, there is certainly a good argument to be made on the basis of 'what broke it ain't likely to fix it' but...

And I had a "brief look" at your webcast and the list of participants (all of whose ideas I do have some familiarity with) and decided my time was better spent plucking my ear hair.

Just not the "lovely young ladies" and Lovelock sucks because he's against wind turbines across the countryside parts.

This snippet was fascinating: "even Our Lady of Growth Elizabeth May (no lie, her speaker at the annual convention last year was none other than Don Drummond talking about the 'inevitability of growth');"... A Green convention????

And Paul Krugman in the NYTimes today describes what all economists should be taking note of in a world of growing populations and growing storms:

February 6, 2011

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Droughts, Floods and Food

We're in the midst of a global food crisis - the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they're having a brutal impact on the world's poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs.

The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics. After all, the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Middle East isn't so much why they're happening as why they're happening now. And there's little question that sky-high food prices have been an important trigger for popular rage.

So what's behind the price spike? American right-wingers (and the Chinese) blame easy-money policies at the Federal Reserve, with at least one commentator declaring that there is "blood on Bernanke's hands." Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France blames speculators, accusing them of "extortion and pillaging."

But the evidence tells a different, much more ominous story...

"The usual suspects will, of course, go wild over suggestions that global warming has something to do with the food crisis; those who insist that Ben Bernanke has blood on his hands tend to be more or less the same people who insist that the scientific consensus on climate reflects a vast leftist conspiracy.

"But the evidence does, in fact, suggest that what we're getting now is a first taste of the disruption, economic and political, that we'll face in a warming world. And given our failure to act on greenhouse gases, there will be much more, and much worse, to come."

This link brought absolutely no feedback in political debate. Does it excite any interest/disinterest in an environmental context? :

SLOW MONEY. Green Calgary presents Woody Tasch, founder of the Slow Money Alliance. 23 February.

It was offered to readers looking for innovation, MS, not doctrinaire fundamentalists.  

From my post #14: "I believe that not all of the institutions of capitalism must be abandoned to achieve the objective of zero growth." This may or may not be viable, but it sure beats the empty rhetorical approach and the 1917model.

From [i]The Future of Capitalism[/i], by Lester Thurow:

Quote:

Nowhere is capitalism's time horizon problem more acute than in the area of global environmentalism ...

What should a capitalistic society do about longrun environmental problems such as global warming or ozone depletion? ...

Using capitalist decision rules, the answer to what should be done today to prevent such problems is very clear - do nothing. [b]However large the negative effects fifty to one hundred years from now might be, their current discounted net present value is zero.[/b]

If the current value of the future negative consequences are zero, then nothing should be spent today to prevent those distant problems from emerging. But if the negative effects are very large fifty to one hundred years from now, by then it will be too late to do anything to make the situation any better, since anything done at that time could only improve the situation another fifty to one hundred years into the future. So being good capitalists, those who live in the future, no matter how bad their problems are, will also decide to do nothing.

Eventually a generation will arrive which cannot survive in the earth's altered environment, but by then it will be too late for them to do anything to prevent their own extinction. [b]Each generation makes good capitalist decisions, yet the net effect is collective social suicide.[/b]  (emphasis added)

Thanks to [url=http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=3816]Climate and Capitalism[/url] for this.

I think western capitalist culture is on a death trip, plain and simple. Capitalism has systematically downgraded greater society's survival mechanisms as a side effect of its constant search for profit. But! The last crash is a sign of intensification as the system starts to autocannibalize. For all the talk of recovery the reality is the 'system' has already started to shrink; and it may be that it runs out of steam before taking the biosphere with it. A faint chance.

Sure, LTJ, as the posting notes, there was bugger-all response, but here goes again, same appeal ...

This link brought absolutely no feedback in political debate. Does it excite any interest/disinterest in an environmental context? :

SLOW MONEY. Green Calgary presents Woody Tasch, founder of the Slow Money Alliance. 23 February.

We will not be able to break with the salting-away of savings for those golden years, which has cemented the market-voter relationship more than anything else in the postwar period. So there must be a means of saving with progressive goals in mind...the conservation of energy through innovative (alternative) technology would be high on the list, along with food production. People in Ontario only howl about the higher cost of electricity under the new "smart meter" regimen being put in place (the average is about $1.50 more per month for 80 per cent of the consumers - a $3 per month saving for the 20 per cent who can most easily use the system - as the citizenry come to learn its mysteries. Such ignorance of the reasons behind institution of smart meters in the first place demonstrate just how difficult it will be to make a transition to a zero growth economy. It's why Charles Taylor (see above) thought there wouldn't be much progress until things got very difficult to explain away and ignore.

In that regard, a return to the loss of value on the market experienced in the depth of the Great Recession just two years ago, would do wonders in moving people away from expectations of double-digit returns on their investment.

Then, of course, there would have to be a return to exchange controls in a wartime setting...with a place for increasing state industry in the mixed economy that achieved its peak just 70 years ago. But only an economy on wartime footing could overule the squeals from the free-marketers and those pricing for whatever the market would bear. The late Kenneth Galbraith was appointed price-control "czar" by Roosevelt only 71 years ago. Part of the problem in envisioning any of this, of course, is a result of the radical movement away from state involvement since the 1960s.

Since the monetarists of the Chicago School took over, its been "impossible" for the mainstream to consider allowing the economy to deflate, which would lead to recession and eventually depression.

Globalization, in turn, demonstrates how destructive a narrow focus on productivity and competition can be for a majority of the working population. In "Why your world is about to become a whole lot smaller" we learn why that has to end, anyway, as we run out of the cheap oil  necessary for container ships to make foreign products competitive.

So, LTJ, a return to wartime conditions, allowing a modest profit to crucial production aimed at survival in a warming world and investment of pension funds in those areas. (With lots and lots of wrinkles to work out in heated discussion, trial and error... :)