THE ENVIRONMENT PROBLEM: The Simpler Way perspective.
20.11.2023
Almost everyone assumes that the environmental problem can be solved in and by consumer-capitalist society. They think that if we do things like recycle our garbage, buy green label products, and put in rainwater tanks, and if governments enable more efficient technologies, such as electric cars, then we can cut the environmental impact sufficiently, while we all go on enjoying affluent lifestyles and economic growth.
This "Green Growth" view is mistaken --- but governments, media general publics and especially Green agencies and parties all refuse to attend to the case against it. This is despite the fact that most people are familiar with the basic figures below which contradict their delusion.
The destruction of the environment is being caused by the fact that the amount of producing and consuming going on is far beyond sustainable levels. We are taking natural resources from the planet’s ecosystems, and dumping wastes back in, at rates that the World Wildlife Fund estimates would take 1.7 planet earths to provide sustainably. And if all 9 billion people expected to be living on earth by 2050 were to live as we in Australia do now resource consumption would be 6 – 10 times as great as it is now.
Most of these resource flows are going only to the few who live in rich countries. Australia’s per capita use of productive land is probably up to 10 times as great as will be possible for all people in 2050. There is no possibility that all the world’s people could ever rise to the living standards and resource consumption rates we have in rich countries.
All green people are familiar with facts and figures like this but most of them fail/refuse to recognize what the figures mean. They mean that we in rich countries must move to a small fraction of our present volumes of resource consumption or the big global problems can’t be solved.
But the biggest problems is not the present grossly unsustainable levels of production and consumption. The main problem is that this society is manically obsessed with economic growth, with increasing rates of production and consumption, all the time and without limit. If Australia has 3% growth to 2050 and all the world’s people come up to the “living standards” we would have then, the total amount of producing and consuming going on in the world would be around 18 times as great as it is today. This is absurdly impossible and to go on in that direction is plainly suicidal – but governments and indeed the main environmental agencies and green parties flatly refuse to even think about this.
An ecologically sustainable society must have a zero- growth economy, with far less production, consumption and GDP than our present economies. There is no such thing as “sustainable growth”. The emerging global "DE-growth" movement recognises this.
Consider some of the environmental problem areas.
Species Extinction.
We are entering a period of rapid and massive loss of species. Why? Primarily because one species, out of the possibly 30 million on earth, insists on taking so much of the planet’s area and biological production. The mass of big animals in the sea is down to 10% of its original value. Most fisheries are being harvested beyond sustainable limits. Many rivers such as the Colorado and the Murray are dying because humans are taking far more water than these ecosystems can tolerate. Water tables are falling. Melbourne’s growth plan includes destruction of a large area of scarce remaining native grassland. Soils are being eroded or otherwise lost. Above all, humans are taking about 40% of the net primary productivity, that is of the biological product of all the land on the planet.
Obviously, the main reason why species are being lost is because humans are taking to0 much of them and their habitats.
…and only a fifth of the world’s people live affluently and all 10 billion will be striving to do so by 2050…and we in the richest countries insist on getting richer and consuming more, with no limit in mind!
A glance at the resource and environmental situation shows that we are already far beyond sustainable rates of production and consumption. Even though only one-fifth of the world’s people live affluently humans are using the output of 1.7 planet earths. It is obvious that there is not the slightest possibility of reducing the ecological stress to tolerable levels unless we cut present levels of production and consumption to a very small fraction of the per capita rates typical of rich countries…and that is not possible in a consumer-capitalist society.
“But better technology will solve the problems.”
The dominant view is that better technology, more recycling, and minor lifestyle adjustments will reduce the impacts sufficiently and eliminate any need to think about abandoning affluence and growth. That is, resource and environmental impacts can be "decoupled" from GDP growth. Virtually all of the studies on this find that despite much effort decoupling is not being achieved, except in some limited areas. The detailed reviews by Hickel and Kallis, (2019), and Parrique et al. (2019), land Haberl et al. conclude that it is not going to be achieved by technical advance, recycling, efficiency gains or transition to service and/or information economies. (For a detailed case against the Tech-fix faith see TSW: Tech Fix.)
If technical advance is going to solve the problems, when is it going to start? They are getting worse all the time.
The solution?
There is an overwhelmingly strong case that there can be no solution to the environmental problem in consumer-capitalist society, yet hardly anyone will think about this. There is no possibility of getting the environmental impacts down to sustainable levels in a society that a) is already far beyond such levels, b) will see the levels multiply if affluent “living standards” are extended to all people, c) insists on limitless increase in affluence, production, consumption and GDP. Consumer-capitalist society cannot possibly fix the environmental problem.
Why don’t environmental agencies say these things?
We are dealing with a society in which the supreme values are to do with wealth, possessions, consuming, and getting richer all the time, and which has an economy that must have constant increases in GDP. No one wants to even think about the possibility that these fundamental assumptions, values and systems are completely mistaken and that the big global problems cannot possibly be solved unless we face up to getting off this path.
It is therefore not surprising that all the environmental agencies, whether governmental departments or NGOs, and all the Green political parties, flatly refuse to deal with the perspective explained here. They know that if they did start saying we must abandon the quest for affluence and growth people would ignore them, green agencies would lose their subscribers, and businesses and governments world would attack them for being economic vandals. Environmental agencies do valuable things, such as saving whales and forests, but most of their campaigns make no contribution to saving the planet because that can only be done if we replace the systems and values causing the problems.
The solution?
Ecological impacts can only be cut dramatically in a society based on the very different principles of The Simpler Way, especially living frugally and simply, mostly in small, highly self-sufficient local economies, run on basically cooperative principles, in an economy driven by need and not profit and without any growth. (See TSW: The Alternative Society.)
Hickel J. and G. Kallis, (2019), “Is Green Growth Possible?”, New Political Economy, DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964
Parrique, T., et al., (2019), Decoupling Debunked. European Environmental Bureau. July. eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked