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... our continued devotion to growth above
all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively
and individually. Growth no longer makes most people wealthier,
but instead generates inequality and insecurity. Growth is
bumping up against physical limits so profound – like climate
change and peak oil – that trying to keep expanding the economy
may not just be impossible but also dangerous. And perhaps most
surprisingly, growth no longer makes us happier. — Bill McKibben,
Deep Economy
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In 1975, the distinguished National Academy of Sciences’ Panel
on Climatic Variation reminded us that “the global patterns of
food production and population that have evolved are implicitly
dependent on the climate of the past century.” The panel further
suggested that “our vulnerability to climatic change is seen to
be all the more serious when we recognize that our present
climate is in fact highly abnormal, and that we may already be
producing climatic changes as a result of our own activities.”
For more than 30 years scientists, in other words, have known
that the increased food production of the previous 60 years,
which had “fed the world” and “saved the lives of millions of
people,” was not only the result of new “green revolution”
technologies but also sprang from unprecedented favorable global
climate conditions of the past century. In addition, scientists
have known for this same period of time that we are engaged in
human activities (many related to green revolution technologies)
which threaten to further destabilize our climate in the future.
And the same panel of prominent scientists warned us that “this
dependence of the nation’s welfare” on unusual climate stability
“should serve as a warning signal that we simply cannot afford
to be unprepared for either a natural or manmade climatic
catastrophe.”
If that is not sobering enough, internationally renowned
climatologist Tim Flannery, who has studied the history of
climate in North America (see The Eternal Frontier), says
that the continent will be particularly vulnerable to climate
change. Due to our unique place on the planet, when the earth
cools by 4 or 5 degrees Celsius, America’s heartland
tends to chill by around 10 degrees Celsius.
Given these warnings, one would think we might take the lead in
mitigating climate change and preparing for our uncertain
future. Sadly, that has not been the case.
I suspect that one of the reasons we fail to take the
overwhelming evidence in climate science seriously is that we
continue to subscribe to an economic paradigm that makes us
reluctant to take precautionary action. Our prevailing economic
mythology prompts us to believe that growth forever is
the only avenue to economic health and well being. But as
economist Joseph Schumpeter has pointed out, such paradigms are
based on a “preanalytic vision” that is an intellectual
construct, not an eternal truth. Therefore we can – and
often need to – change it!
Economist Herman Daly has argued for many years that we
desperately need to alter our preanalytic vision. He points out
that our human economy is not a bubble floating in space but a
“subsystem of the global ecosystem” and our global ecosystem is
limited. Consequently, continued growth is untenable.
Daly argues that we must shift now to a new “preanalytic vision”
based on “ecological economics” that would always determine
“when the benefits of continued growth in the economic subsystem
are outweighed by the increasing opportunity costs of
encroaching on the sustaining ecosystem.” In other words, when
growth begins to undermine the health of the very system that
makes economic growth possible, then we need to establish
commercial rules that “keep the economy within its ‘optimal’
size range.”
The time for academic debate on these matters is now running
out. We must act. Besides, as Bill McKibben points out,
it is now in our own self interest to act.
We must reduce our ecological footprint if we are to preserve
the “health of the land.” As Leopold observed, “health is the
capacity of the land for self-renewal.” Without that capacity
there can be no economic growth, let alone sustainable
agriculture. And we are seriously undermining that capacity.
While we face enormous challenges in redesigning our economies,
including agriculture, there are things we can all do now. The
April 9 issue of Time magazine listed 51 things that all
of us can do to make a difference [www.time.com/time/specials/2007/environment].
National Public Radio has featured a series of programs with
suggestions we can all adopt [www.npr.org].
The American College and University Presidents Climate
Commitment has developed a long list of steps that can be
initiated on college and university campuses [www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org].
As of this writing, 239 presidents have accepted the challenge.
If self interest is not sufficiently compelling,
perhaps the fact that the future of our children – as well as
the future of the children of all of earth’s species – now is
also at stake, can motivate us to make the necessary changes.
Kathleen Moore, chair of the Department of Philosophy at Oregon
State University, has framed all of this as a poignant question:
“What will our grandchildren say?” She then imagines a letter
from her grandchild, written to her from the future, which says
in part:
How could you not have known? What more
evidence did you need that your lives, your comfortable
lives, would do so much damage to ours? And if you knew, how
could you not care? What could matter to you more than your
children, and their babies? How could a parent destroy what
is life-giving and astonishing in her child’s world? And if
you knew, and if you cared, how could you not act? What
excuses did you make? And now, what would you have us do?
Fred Kirschenmann |
