*[Enwl-eng] Opinion: Challenging the Notion of Growth
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Apr 4, 2013, 6:54:57 AM4/4/13
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*When to Choose Enough vs. More, A New Strategy*
January 24, 2013
By Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill
Illustration Omitted:
You can help to change the world by realizing in your own life
when enough is enough. Photo by Fotolia/Denis Zaporozhtsev
Growth. No, that's not the one word to change the world, but it is the
word of the day --- the front-runner among strategies for improving
society. Economic growth is the universal plan coming from classrooms,
boardrooms, and pressrooms. If you stop for a second and listen, you can
hear a professor, a pundit, or a politician prescribing economic growth
as the pill to cure any ill. Climate change? Don't worry --- all we need
to do is grow the economy and we'll have the money to capture carbon
emissions or re-engineer the climate. Poverty? Sit tight --- all we need
to do is grow the economy, and a rising tide will lift all boats to
waterfront mansions.
The only trouble is that the "cure" has become more of a curse. We've
had decades of economic growth in nations around the world, but our most
profound social and environmental problems continue to intensify. During
the age of growth we've witnessed the loss of climate stability, the
loss of biological diversity, and the loss of social cohesion. To add
insult to injury, surveys indicate that the additional production and
consumption is failing to make us any happier.
It's time to try a new strategy --- the strategy of enough. Suppose that
instead of chasing more stuff, more jobs, more consumption, and more
income, we aimed for enough stuff, enough jobs, enough consumption, and
enough income. What if enough took the place of more as the organizing
principle for the economy?
A prerequisite for changing the economy this way is to recognize the
point of enough in our own lives and in the broader economy. Common
sense can give individuals a starting point. For instance, if you can't
find enough to eat, then more food is better. If the alarm wakes you up
before you've had enough sleep, hitting the snooze button and resting
for a few more minutes feels great. But once you've had enough, eating
more food can lead to obesity, and sleeping more could be classified as
a medical condition.
Even so, knowing when to stop pursuing more can be challenging,
especially because we live in a society where the imperative to grow
creeps into all facets of life. Advertisements, the mainstream media,
pop culture, and even our peers push us in the direction of more
consumption: eat more, drink more, drive more, buy more. It helps to
inoculate ourselves against this consumptive push so that we are more
likely to see when we have enough. To do so, we can avoid advertising
--- or at least become aware of how advertisers exploit our
psychological shortcomings --- so that we can limit the degree of
influence. We can join communities of friends and peers who focus on
health and well-being instead of what the consumer culture tells us to
do. We can look for opportunities to boycott unsustainable sectors of
the economy.
Such activities can help us achieve the satisfaction that comes with
having enough, but to make the transition to a sustainable society, we
need more sweeping changes. And as challenging as it is for individuals
to spot the dividing line between more and enough in their own lives,
it's a tougher challenge to define this line in the broader economy.
Fortunately researchers have made progress.
The ecological footprint is a measure of how much productive land a
population requires to produce the resources it consumes and absorb the
wastes it generates. The footprint is telling us that we're consuming
resources fifty percent faster than they can be regenerated. Simply put,
we've overshot the point of enough. The warming climate, disappearing
species, vast numbers of people living in poverty, and drawdown of
critical natural resources --- these are all warning signs of an
overgrown economy, an economy that has been seduced by the madness of
more and neglected the wisdom of enough.
Acknowledging this predicament obligates us to overhaul our economic
institutions and policies.
Specifically, we need new strategies to conserve natural resources,
stabilize population, reduce inequality, fix the financial system, and
create jobs. Developing and implementing these policies for a
prosperous, nongrowing economy will be an exceptional challenge. But
what's the tougher challenge: embracing a new set of policies for a
sustainable economy, or dealing with the aftermath of collapse because
we failed to heed the warning signs?
Imagine an economy that can meet people's needs without undermining the
life-support systems of the planet. Imagine an economy founded on
fairness instead of foolishness. Imagine taking action to begin the
transition. One thing's for certain: the changes will only materialize
when we achieve widespread recognition that enough is enough.
Rob Dietz is the editor of the Daly News and the former executive
director of CASSE (the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State
Economy). Dan O'Neill is a lecturer in ecological economics at the
University of Leeds and the chief economist for CASSE.
* * *
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-walker/when-enough-is-enough_b_2623406.html
*When Enough Is Enough*
Posted: 02/11/2013 5:25 pm
Since the dawn of civilization humanity has been engaged in the
relentless pursuit of more. Our relentless desire for more has led us to
procreate more, extract more, harvest more, trade more, build more,
produce more, sell more, promote more, and consume more.
In the pursuit of more, we drain wetlands, level off mountains, harvest
ancient forests, lay waste to the soil, despoil the oceans, hunt animals
to extinction, and call it progress. We worship more. Evangelists tell
us that God wants us to have more. We persuade ourselves that more is
selfless and virtuous; we only want more for ourselves so that others,
too, might have more. More is the yardstick by which we gauge our
progress; we take no account of depleted resources or environmental
degradation. We have grown accustomed to more and reject out of hand the
idea of less.
It's time to challenge our obsession with more. It's time to consider
the radical idea that our reckless and relentless pursuit of more might
be yielding less happiness and satisfaction. That, at least, is the
compelling thesis of Enough is Enough, a bold new book by Rob Dietz and
Dan O'Neill. Dietz is the former director of the Center for the
Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE), while O'Neill, who has
a PhD in ecological economics, is the chief economist for CASSE.
Environmentalists have been warning for decades that the human
enterprise is putting Mother Nature out of business and that our
consumption of scarce resources is imperiling the welfare of future
generations. Dietz and O'Neill have environmental credentials, but they
are also economic thinkers. They argue that economic growth as we have
known it is not sustainable and that we must, if we are to avoid
economic collapse, make the transition to a "steady-state economy."
A steady-state economy, as they define it, is one that maintains a
stable level of resource consumption and a stable population. It's an
economy in which "material and energy use are kept within ecological
limits, and in which the goal of increasing GDP is replaced by the goal
of improving quality of life."
Living within ecological and resource limits is a daunting challenge,
but Dietz and O'Neill insist that we don't have a choice: Either we
bring our consumption of resources into balance with nature or nature
will ultimately put us out of business. Many of us can accept that
conclusion, but few among of us are willing to accept their corollary
conclusion: Economic progress, as it is traditionally defined, must come
to an eventual halt.
We cling to the idea that technology will keep us going. We hope,
against all evidence to the contrary, that increased efficiency in the
use of energy and natural resources will enable us to become sustainable
before it's too late. But Dietz and O'Neill argue that we are trapped by
Jevon's Paradox; increases in the efficiency of resource use tend to
lead to higher resource consumption. They insist that "de-coupling"
economic growth from resource consumption is essential, but hardly
sufficient to stop the ongoing destruction of the bio-systems needed to
sustain economic growth. They note that between 1980 and 2007, the
"material intensity" of the global economy (i.e., the amount of biomass,
minerals, and fossil fuels required to produce a dollar of world GDP)
decreased by 33 percent, but that total resource use still increased by
61 percent. In other words, all the gains in resource efficiency were
wiped out by the overall expansion of the economy.
Dietz and O'Neill sketch out the broad policy changes that would be
required to achieve a steady-state economy with full employment. They
include better measurements of economic growth and well-being, limits on
material and energy consumption, a stable population, reduced
inequality, and a shorter workweek. In a steady-state economy, consumer
goods would be made to last longer and when products are broken they
would be repaired, rather than thrown away. Science and technology would
be focused on conserving resources, not exploiting them. People would be
consuming less in the way of resources, but enjoying more leisure time.
What we would lose in the way of material comforts would be compensated
for by less stress, more connection with family and friends, and more
time for physical exercise and creative pursuits.
Dietz and O'Neill do not provide a detailed blueprint for their
steady-state economy; they acknowledge that they are in uncharted
waters. Nevertheless, they raise critical questions and pose some
possible solutions to the great economic conundrum that we now face. For
all those who are concerned about the future of the planet or worried
about the viability of the current growth model, this is valuable and
provocative reading.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-community/enough-versus-more-zwfz1301zhun.aspx#axzz2JyHRbhfj
*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only. ***
From: "Yahoo Newsgroups" <vasi...@ramapo.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 7:39 AM
Subject: Opinion: Challenging the Notion of Growth
------------- * ENWL * ------------
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(Russian)
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-------------------------------------
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January 24, 2013
By Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill
Illustration Omitted:
You can help to change the world by realizing in your own life
when enough is enough. Photo by Fotolia/Denis Zaporozhtsev
Growth. No, that's not the one word to change the world, but it is the
word of the day --- the front-runner among strategies for improving
society. Economic growth is the universal plan coming from classrooms,
boardrooms, and pressrooms. If you stop for a second and listen, you can
hear a professor, a pundit, or a politician prescribing economic growth
as the pill to cure any ill. Climate change? Don't worry --- all we need
to do is grow the economy and we'll have the money to capture carbon
emissions or re-engineer the climate. Poverty? Sit tight --- all we need
to do is grow the economy, and a rising tide will lift all boats to
waterfront mansions.
The only trouble is that the "cure" has become more of a curse. We've
had decades of economic growth in nations around the world, but our most
profound social and environmental problems continue to intensify. During
the age of growth we've witnessed the loss of climate stability, the
loss of biological diversity, and the loss of social cohesion. To add
insult to injury, surveys indicate that the additional production and
consumption is failing to make us any happier.
It's time to try a new strategy --- the strategy of enough. Suppose that
instead of chasing more stuff, more jobs, more consumption, and more
income, we aimed for enough stuff, enough jobs, enough consumption, and
enough income. What if enough took the place of more as the organizing
principle for the economy?
A prerequisite for changing the economy this way is to recognize the
point of enough in our own lives and in the broader economy. Common
sense can give individuals a starting point. For instance, if you can't
find enough to eat, then more food is better. If the alarm wakes you up
before you've had enough sleep, hitting the snooze button and resting
for a few more minutes feels great. But once you've had enough, eating
more food can lead to obesity, and sleeping more could be classified as
a medical condition.
Even so, knowing when to stop pursuing more can be challenging,
especially because we live in a society where the imperative to grow
creeps into all facets of life. Advertisements, the mainstream media,
pop culture, and even our peers push us in the direction of more
consumption: eat more, drink more, drive more, buy more. It helps to
inoculate ourselves against this consumptive push so that we are more
likely to see when we have enough. To do so, we can avoid advertising
--- or at least become aware of how advertisers exploit our
psychological shortcomings --- so that we can limit the degree of
influence. We can join communities of friends and peers who focus on
health and well-being instead of what the consumer culture tells us to
do. We can look for opportunities to boycott unsustainable sectors of
the economy.
Such activities can help us achieve the satisfaction that comes with
having enough, but to make the transition to a sustainable society, we
need more sweeping changes. And as challenging as it is for individuals
to spot the dividing line between more and enough in their own lives,
it's a tougher challenge to define this line in the broader economy.
Fortunately researchers have made progress.
The ecological footprint is a measure of how much productive land a
population requires to produce the resources it consumes and absorb the
wastes it generates. The footprint is telling us that we're consuming
resources fifty percent faster than they can be regenerated. Simply put,
we've overshot the point of enough. The warming climate, disappearing
species, vast numbers of people living in poverty, and drawdown of
critical natural resources --- these are all warning signs of an
overgrown economy, an economy that has been seduced by the madness of
more and neglected the wisdom of enough.
Acknowledging this predicament obligates us to overhaul our economic
institutions and policies.
Specifically, we need new strategies to conserve natural resources,
stabilize population, reduce inequality, fix the financial system, and
create jobs. Developing and implementing these policies for a
prosperous, nongrowing economy will be an exceptional challenge. But
what's the tougher challenge: embracing a new set of policies for a
sustainable economy, or dealing with the aftermath of collapse because
we failed to heed the warning signs?
Imagine an economy that can meet people's needs without undermining the
life-support systems of the planet. Imagine an economy founded on
fairness instead of foolishness. Imagine taking action to begin the
transition. One thing's for certain: the changes will only materialize
when we achieve widespread recognition that enough is enough.
Rob Dietz is the editor of the Daly News and the former executive
director of CASSE (the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State
Economy). Dan O'Neill is a lecturer in ecological economics at the
University of Leeds and the chief economist for CASSE.
* * *
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-walker/when-enough-is-enough_b_2623406.html
*When Enough Is Enough*
Posted: 02/11/2013 5:25 pm
Since the dawn of civilization humanity has been engaged in the
relentless pursuit of more. Our relentless desire for more has led us to
procreate more, extract more, harvest more, trade more, build more,
produce more, sell more, promote more, and consume more.
In the pursuit of more, we drain wetlands, level off mountains, harvest
ancient forests, lay waste to the soil, despoil the oceans, hunt animals
to extinction, and call it progress. We worship more. Evangelists tell
us that God wants us to have more. We persuade ourselves that more is
selfless and virtuous; we only want more for ourselves so that others,
too, might have more. More is the yardstick by which we gauge our
progress; we take no account of depleted resources or environmental
degradation. We have grown accustomed to more and reject out of hand the
idea of less.
It's time to challenge our obsession with more. It's time to consider
the radical idea that our reckless and relentless pursuit of more might
be yielding less happiness and satisfaction. That, at least, is the
compelling thesis of Enough is Enough, a bold new book by Rob Dietz and
Dan O'Neill. Dietz is the former director of the Center for the
Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE), while O'Neill, who has
a PhD in ecological economics, is the chief economist for CASSE.
Environmentalists have been warning for decades that the human
enterprise is putting Mother Nature out of business and that our
consumption of scarce resources is imperiling the welfare of future
generations. Dietz and O'Neill have environmental credentials, but they
are also economic thinkers. They argue that economic growth as we have
known it is not sustainable and that we must, if we are to avoid
economic collapse, make the transition to a "steady-state economy."
A steady-state economy, as they define it, is one that maintains a
stable level of resource consumption and a stable population. It's an
economy in which "material and energy use are kept within ecological
limits, and in which the goal of increasing GDP is replaced by the goal
of improving quality of life."
Living within ecological and resource limits is a daunting challenge,
but Dietz and O'Neill insist that we don't have a choice: Either we
bring our consumption of resources into balance with nature or nature
will ultimately put us out of business. Many of us can accept that
conclusion, but few among of us are willing to accept their corollary
conclusion: Economic progress, as it is traditionally defined, must come
to an eventual halt.
We cling to the idea that technology will keep us going. We hope,
against all evidence to the contrary, that increased efficiency in the
use of energy and natural resources will enable us to become sustainable
before it's too late. But Dietz and O'Neill argue that we are trapped by
Jevon's Paradox; increases in the efficiency of resource use tend to
lead to higher resource consumption. They insist that "de-coupling"
economic growth from resource consumption is essential, but hardly
sufficient to stop the ongoing destruction of the bio-systems needed to
sustain economic growth. They note that between 1980 and 2007, the
"material intensity" of the global economy (i.e., the amount of biomass,
minerals, and fossil fuels required to produce a dollar of world GDP)
decreased by 33 percent, but that total resource use still increased by
61 percent. In other words, all the gains in resource efficiency were
wiped out by the overall expansion of the economy.
Dietz and O'Neill sketch out the broad policy changes that would be
required to achieve a steady-state economy with full employment. They
include better measurements of economic growth and well-being, limits on
material and energy consumption, a stable population, reduced
inequality, and a shorter workweek. In a steady-state economy, consumer
goods would be made to last longer and when products are broken they
would be repaired, rather than thrown away. Science and technology would
be focused on conserving resources, not exploiting them. People would be
consuming less in the way of resources, but enjoying more leisure time.
What we would lose in the way of material comforts would be compensated
for by less stress, more connection with family and friends, and more
time for physical exercise and creative pursuits.
Dietz and O'Neill do not provide a detailed blueprint for their
steady-state economy; they acknowledge that they are in uncharted
waters. Nevertheless, they raise critical questions and pose some
possible solutions to the great economic conundrum that we now face. For
all those who are concerned about the future of the planet or worried
about the viability of the current growth model, this is valuable and
provocative reading.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-community/enough-versus-more-zwfz1301zhun.aspx#axzz2JyHRbhfj
*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only. ***
From: "Yahoo Newsgroups" <vasi...@ramapo.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 7:39 AM
Subject: Opinion: Challenging the Notion of Growth
------------- * ENWL * ------------
Ecological North West Line * St. Petersburg, Russia
Independent Environmental Net Service: http://www.bellona.ru/enwl/
Russian: ENWL(discussions), ENWL-inf(FSU information), ENWL-misc(any topics)
English: ENWL-eng (world information)
en...@lew.spb.org, enwl...@lew.spb.org, en...@lew.spb.org, en...@lew.spb.org
Subscription, Moderator: vf...@lew.spb.org or en...@enw.net.ru
Archive: http://enwl.bellona.ru/pipermail/
and http://groups.google.com/group/enwl/
SEE ALSO: http://www.bellona.org (English)and http://www.bellona.ru
(Russian)
RSS: http://groups.google.ru/group/enwl/feeds?hl=ru
(C) Please refer to exclusive articles of ENWL
-------------------------------------
ONLY if your address is subscribed:
Enwl-eng mailing list
Enwl...@enwl.bellona.ru
http://enwl.bellona.ru/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/enwl-eng
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