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Limits to Growth – United Nations in Wales, 20th November 2012.

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Pippa Bartolotti, Wales Green Party Leader

We are not on a sustainable trajectory.

For 10 thousand years this planets systems have been stable, and this has enabled humanity to develop into the ‘civilization’ we are todayHowever, economic growth has brought instability.

Economic Growth, and the unreasonable capitalism which has accompanied it, is touted as a solution to everything. How can that be? We have only one Planet, and it’s resources becoming ever less finite as biodiversity is diminished, and the ecosystems ability to clean up after us is dangerously compromised.

The ecosystems which sustain us are collapsing under the weight of excessive human consumption. We have already overshot some of the limits to stabilityIt’s a simple equation: Where there are limits to growth, Overshoot = Collapse

The remarkably intuitive study by the Club of Rome in the ‘70’s projected 5 measures which could take humanity (and the biodiversity on which we all depend) to the brink of collapse. They modelled:

Persistant Pollution

Population

Food Production

Industrial Output

Consumption of non renewable resources

 

Whilst we have already overshot some of those limits, we have undershot on others, but it turns out that some count much more than others.

Population has not increased as sharply as predicted. Food production has tripled since 1961. BUT Greenhouse gasses, notably CO2, have increased exponentially – 310ppm in 1958 to 391ppm last month. The safe level of 350ppm was surpassed in 1988. This is our most serious overshoot.

It turns out that C02, and the burning of fossil fuels which creates it, co-relates directly with wealth creation. Finance, or maybe we should call it greed, appears to be the weakest part of the system. We live under a debt based fractional reserve system, and moving from a system of increasing debt to a system of decreasing debt has all governments in shock and denial. They only understand growth, because the success of their policies depends entirely upon growthWe have been in or near recession since 2008, and traditional ways of stoking the economy such as low interest rates and large budget deficits, are no longer working.

Here is an example: Plant growth is not governed by the total resource available, but by the input of the resource in least supply such as nitrogen. If oil becomes the resource in least supply (and why else drill so deep, so recklessly and so desperately - tar sands; fracking) and if our addiction to it is not cured, then here will lie the first serious stresses. And of course oil is directly related to wealth and markets, speculation and derivatives, the dollar, food prices, transportation and all points in between.

Today’s markets do not seek to understand a system of dynamic equilibrium, or steady state, where an economy can work and prosper within the churn of it’s own means, taking no more than it needs, and replacing that which it does take. Dynamic Equilibrium is Green Economics; localism; community based prosperity, full employment and a higher sense of well-being.

The world of money, natural resources and well-being has become distorted on a global level, where the money is seen as the goal, and the latter two needs barely get a look in. Conventional economics is a form of brain damage. (Eco, from oikos – home) ECOlogy and ECOnomics are from the same root. The Study of home and Management of Home are 2 disciplines which any sensible person would co-manage. Alas, traces of sensibility are sadly lacking.

We may look to China as a huge CO2 emitter, but look again. Where do we buy our stuff from?  In reality many developed countries are offshoring their emissions and pollution all round the world. The manufacturing base stupidly becomes anywhere but here where it is needed.

The study done by the Club of Rome way back in 1972 showed that only drastic measures for environmental protection could change behaviour. Climate change is the most tangible evidence of our stubbornness not to take drastic measures. There is no replacement for good arable land or fresh water. In the industrialised ‘west’ there is certainly no sign of drastic measures.

The current danger is that instead of searching for solutions through investment in innovation and green technologies, governments are grabbing share –land grabs: buying up land in other countries, disenfranchising local farmers, whilst the people of Tuvalu and Kiribati ( who did nothing to add to global warming)slowly drown under rising sea levels. Fertile deltas are becoming salinated and many crops will not grow in these conditions. Arctic ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, yet the reaction is only to industrialise the northern coasts of Russia and Canada, exacerbating the problem. Climate change is death by 1000 cuts.

Preservation of what we have requires analysis : our energy needs, planetary food needs especially as developing nations adopt a high protein diet, land needs. Yet these items for our very survival are subordinate to the needs of the creation of wealth. In every company there is a war between money for innovation, and money for profit.

Ever increasing consumerism adds little to human happiness – it may even impede it.Global warming is here, and there is little evidence that we can correct the imbalance we have caused. Yet we must devise a new path which does not rely on the cult of economic growth. Fulfilling a vision of an economy based on natural capital and redefined prosperity is the most urgent task of our time.

Sadly the response to changing conditions is too slow. The same conditions which keep the system rigged in favour of a small and privileged class are behind our inability to tackle climate change and environmental degradation. We need an economy working with nature instead of against it. Drastic change never resonates with the ballot box, yet that is what is needed. The voting population will continue to vote against wisdom, because wisdom is not on offer.

Limits to Growth in 1972 predicted ‘The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity’ or to put it another way: a massive population crash in a starving polluted, depleted world.

The best way to solve a problem is not to create a bigger one. Yet that is exactly what we are doing by our inaction.

May you live in interesting times.


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