Why do we continue living as though we were not a part of nature? One of the root causes has to do with the rise to global dominance of the market economy and its underpinning assumptions and pre-requisites, one of which is continuous growth. Even in his recent impassioned writings, scientist Tim Flannery has found it necessary to rely on market forces – in this case carbon trading – to produce continued ‘development’, productivity and future wealth. I think Flannery is partly correct in this, but his argument doesn’t go anywhere near far enough. At a deeper level we should be thinking about how and why global warming has come about and why we have been so reticent to address it.
If our economic theories rely absolutely on the assumption of continuous economic growth, and yet we live on a planet in which continuous growth is plainly impossible, then our economic theories must be seen as being fatally flawed. This of course, seems almost comically divorced from reality but it’s not. We need, as a matter of the utmost urgency, to seek out ways by which our human society can re-couple itself with our underlying biology and work towards operating the way the rest of the planet does, ultimately achieving a societal – and economic – steady state.
Interestingly, Anne and Paul Ehrlich, authors of the 1968 book The Population Bomb, have recently added their voices to the debate by pointing up the possible benefits – economic and otherwise – of a declining world population. Far from creating the catastrophe forecast by our economists – whose theories are really about as primitive in a predictive sense as was the theory of blood flow prior to William Harvey – negative growth may be a very good thing indeed, enabling us to move more swiftly to a truly sustainable steady state society.
Just as inappropriate use of fresh water is coming to be seen as profligate – even criminal – so societal models that cannot operate in the absence of continued growth will also come to be seen as highly inappropriate and destined for the scrap heap. Plant and animal populations frequently demonstrate local boom and bust cycles where herbivores eat themselves out of vegetation or booming carnivore populations eat themselves out of house and home. In such situations the consequences for both individual animals and populations can be severe. It may be that global warming, by signalling the onset of a major catastrophe, is offering humanity an opportunity – indeed an imperative – to radically re-think its priorities. If we can achieve that, and do so in time, then the climate crisis may actually have been a very good thing indeed.
With extreme predictions of 25 metre sea level increases following polar icecap melting, perhaps we should have filmed the office scene at Williamstown completely underwater!
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