suffianr
22nd November 2002, 12:50
Capitalism might work if we had a spare planet or two
By Stan Cox
1:06pm Sun Sep 15th, 2002
We have led by example, and now, in Johannesburg, we are leading by obstruction.
At the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, the United States has been far out front in opposing action on renewable energy, prevention of global warming, biodiversity protection, and decent sanitation for people who don't have it. One senior European delegate was dumfounded: "We cannot understand why the United States, being a world leader, is taking such a harsh stance."
I'm afraid that the answer is a simple one. We and other wealthy nations are committed to the global pyramid scheme we call capitalism. That means we are committed to infinite economic growth on a finite planet. And that puts us on a collision course with Mother Nature.
A study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that human activities worldwide are already overshooting the earth's carrying capacity by 20 percent. The authors put the results in these terms: "It would require 1.2 earths, or one earth for 1.2 years, to regenerate what humanity used in 1999."
As recently as 1961, humans had been consuming the resources of only 0.7 earths per year. At that rate of economic growth, we will have to find a second planet in 40 years.
Don't blame it on all those poor people who've been protesting in Johannesburg. While the world's ecological overshoot is 20 percent, Europe's is about 100 and America's is 300. The research group Redefining Progress analyzed the resource use of Sonoma County, California, a haven of recycling and bicycling that ranks among the top 4 percent of America's counties in personal income. It turns out that even the eco-friendly Sonomans live at a level that would require the resources of four earths annually if practiced worldwide.
For a short while, in the long-ago Nineties, we enjoyed the illusion that capitalism could metamorphose into a clean and painless perpetual-motion machine, as it stayed afloat on a flood of words and graphics, data and dollars, electrons and photons.
Consumption of real stuff
But photons can only sell an SUV. They can't build one. The market economy — whether it's in a boom or a bust — depends on the consumption of real stuff, and a lot of it.
While accountants were tallying every penny of the vast wealth being "created" in recent years, they left a lot out of the debit column: continued destruction of soil and water, disruption of the climate for decades to come, saturation of the environment with synthetic hormones, and an alarming rate of species extinction.
As the dot-com billions appeared and then evaporated, a billion pounds of lead piled up in discarded computers across the country.
And don't think that managing a pyramid scheme is easy. When he's not busy sabotaging environmental treaties in the name of economic growth, President Bush takes time to denounce corporate excess in accounting and stock trading, each time sending the markets into a tailspin. Greed is both the engine and the Achilles heel of capitalism, and it's hard to fine-tune greed.
Theoretically, we could get the whole earth into the accounting spreadsheets with "green" taxes or credits that force industries and individuals to pay the real cost of environmental destruction and become more efficient. This approach has appeal, but it also has a fatal flaw that's obvious to just about anyone but an economist.
Free access to ecosphere
It is absurd to consider topsoil, water, carbon, carcinogens, amphibians, dumping space or shade trees to be exchangeable with any number of tennis rackets or DVD players. How do you enter into a spreadsheet the current decline or extinction of half of the frog, toad and salamander species around the world?
Today, corporations get almost free access to the ecosphere. That giveaway needs to be stopped, but not by putting a barcode on nature. To do so would only open more creative avenues of profitable destruction.
Someday, through either foresight or burnout, capitalism will have to be emasculated, downsized and stuffed inside societies that value the health of the planet and the well being of every inhabitant. — Yellowtimes
STAN COX is a senior research scientist at The Land Institute, Salina, Kansas and a member of The Prairie Writers Circle. He holds a PhD in plant breeding from Iowa State University. He lives in the United States.
By Stan Cox
1:06pm Sun Sep 15th, 2002
We have led by example, and now, in Johannesburg, we are leading by obstruction.
At the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, the United States has been far out front in opposing action on renewable energy, prevention of global warming, biodiversity protection, and decent sanitation for people who don't have it. One senior European delegate was dumfounded: "We cannot understand why the United States, being a world leader, is taking such a harsh stance."
I'm afraid that the answer is a simple one. We and other wealthy nations are committed to the global pyramid scheme we call capitalism. That means we are committed to infinite economic growth on a finite planet. And that puts us on a collision course with Mother Nature.
A study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that human activities worldwide are already overshooting the earth's carrying capacity by 20 percent. The authors put the results in these terms: "It would require 1.2 earths, or one earth for 1.2 years, to regenerate what humanity used in 1999."
As recently as 1961, humans had been consuming the resources of only 0.7 earths per year. At that rate of economic growth, we will have to find a second planet in 40 years.
Don't blame it on all those poor people who've been protesting in Johannesburg. While the world's ecological overshoot is 20 percent, Europe's is about 100 and America's is 300. The research group Redefining Progress analyzed the resource use of Sonoma County, California, a haven of recycling and bicycling that ranks among the top 4 percent of America's counties in personal income. It turns out that even the eco-friendly Sonomans live at a level that would require the resources of four earths annually if practiced worldwide.
For a short while, in the long-ago Nineties, we enjoyed the illusion that capitalism could metamorphose into a clean and painless perpetual-motion machine, as it stayed afloat on a flood of words and graphics, data and dollars, electrons and photons.
Consumption of real stuff
But photons can only sell an SUV. They can't build one. The market economy — whether it's in a boom or a bust — depends on the consumption of real stuff, and a lot of it.
While accountants were tallying every penny of the vast wealth being "created" in recent years, they left a lot out of the debit column: continued destruction of soil and water, disruption of the climate for decades to come, saturation of the environment with synthetic hormones, and an alarming rate of species extinction.
As the dot-com billions appeared and then evaporated, a billion pounds of lead piled up in discarded computers across the country.
And don't think that managing a pyramid scheme is easy. When he's not busy sabotaging environmental treaties in the name of economic growth, President Bush takes time to denounce corporate excess in accounting and stock trading, each time sending the markets into a tailspin. Greed is both the engine and the Achilles heel of capitalism, and it's hard to fine-tune greed.
Theoretically, we could get the whole earth into the accounting spreadsheets with "green" taxes or credits that force industries and individuals to pay the real cost of environmental destruction and become more efficient. This approach has appeal, but it also has a fatal flaw that's obvious to just about anyone but an economist.
Free access to ecosphere
It is absurd to consider topsoil, water, carbon, carcinogens, amphibians, dumping space or shade trees to be exchangeable with any number of tennis rackets or DVD players. How do you enter into a spreadsheet the current decline or extinction of half of the frog, toad and salamander species around the world?
Today, corporations get almost free access to the ecosphere. That giveaway needs to be stopped, but not by putting a barcode on nature. To do so would only open more creative avenues of profitable destruction.
Someday, through either foresight or burnout, capitalism will have to be emasculated, downsized and stuffed inside societies that value the health of the planet and the well being of every inhabitant. — Yellowtimes
STAN COX is a senior research scientist at The Land Institute, Salina, Kansas and a member of The Prairie Writers Circle. He holds a PhD in plant breeding from Iowa State University. He lives in the United States.