Another voice against the economic policies of the US, and indeed much of the world.
As economist Herman Daly so heretically points out, the fatal flaw of free-market ideology is that sustainable growth is an oxymoron. Eventually growth runs up against sensitive ecosystems, and a finite Earth. Climate change is here to show us that economic activity can’t ignore limits and relationships forever – sometimes not even in the short term.
Here's a very well expressed thought that I think is so important for us to understand and to act upon.
As the current global financial crisis unfolds there are a lot of words being thrown around on the subject of recession. I'm no economist, but the concept that any economy of any scale can healthily and sustainably experience continued growth seems absurd. There is no system in nature that does that, and to think that man can create one seems to me either an arrogant or an ignorant overlooking of her laws.
What is even more absurd, as No Impact Man says so well, is that the way in which we measure this growth is using economic metrics that have little, if any, relationship to those things which indicate true prosperity: health, happiness, security, stability and freedom. Indeed most of these things have been on the decline the world over for a long time, and yet the world's greatest economies have been growing.
How has it happened that the manner in which we measure the success of society as a whole has become so far removed from what it means to be human? We have created whole industries—today's financial industry is I think the prime example—whose primary purpose is not to supply the things we need to stay alive, happy, and develop as human beings. Instead they exist to generate financial returns.
This "free marketism" has created such a strain on our planet that we are running headlong towards environmental crises of unprecedented proportion: energy shortages, climate change, clean water and food shortages. And yet we and our governments still want that any solutions to these problems are "economically viable" in the short term before we support them. It shows how reactive we are as a society.
The warnings are there already: the crises the planet faces are not financial and economic, but far more fundamental, far more difficult ones. Perhaps we will heed the signs and take more significant and meaningful action now—that will be the less painful route—and there is reason to be optimistic that more and more people are becoming aware of this; but if we don't, then I can't help but feel that the change of consciousness will be forced upon us by an enormous upheaval of nature.
In the words of John Ruskin, "there is no wealth but life."
It is that time of year again when I seem to find myself at greatest odds with certain aspects of the society we have created. Rather than my repeating last year's efforts, how about a numbers game?
The list could go on, and indeed there are a vast number of shocking statistics out there. And though they can be manipulated, they cannot change the facts. Things as they are are clearly unsustainable. We have built a society that has lost all touch with the world around us.
Of course, it will change, because it must. But the question still remains: will the change be forced upon us, or will it come from within?
A very happy Christmas to you! May it be an opportunity to celebrate what we have received from Nature, and to renew our resolve to live in a manner such that our children, and theirs, will be able to rise to a bright dawn.
The first of this year's series of BBC Reith lectures is available to listen to or read at the Radio 4 website.
The lectures are presented by the eminent economist Jeffrey Sachs, who speaks of the increasingly threatening global challenges that we face. I suggest that it is worth all of us hearing what he say to say, whether or not we agree with all of it. I think I am guilty of his accusation of being all too pessimistic; I think many of us are. It's too easy to sit back and say things can't be changed.
Was it Einstein who said that the only way to find the limits of the possible was to go beyond them into the impossible?