The case against growth, and other stories

The case against growth: Ted Trainer (UNSW) makes the case that very few people are taking seriously the full economic and political implications of the concept of limits to growth: "The growth problem is not just that the economy has grown to be too big, now depleting resources and damaging ecosystems. The more central problem is that growth is integral to the system. Most of the system's basic structures and mechanism are driven by growth and cannot operate without it. It is not that this society has a growth economy; it is that this is a growth society. Growth cannot be removed leaving the rest of the economy more or less as it is. Unfortunately people in the current 'De-growth' movement tend to think growth is like a faulty air conditioning unit on a house, which can be taken away and the house will function the way it did before."

Peak stuff? Fred Pearce investigates the claim that consumer societies are becoming post-industrial. Based on various metrics that have actually started to decline in many rich countries (for example, car use is waning in most developed countries), some commentators look forward to the "dematerialisation" of the economy proving the silver bullet that saves us from ourselves. As others note, however, such evidence is patchy, and fails to account for the fact that we've still got decades of massive consumption growth if the developing world is to approach our present consumer lifestyles. Even if there is a point at which such development reaches a natural plateau in per capita consumption, it is not at all clear that reaching that plateau won't involve massively overshooting various planetary boundaries (as outlined effectively in the "case against growth" above).

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Climate Change: Brad Littlejohn offers some dark humour reflecting on our obsession with novelty. Discussion in the comments ponder further about the place of novelty and humour in our ecological deliberations.

Fossil fuel glut: Much noise has been made about developments in the fossil carbon extraction business that ensure these companies are not about to go out of business anytime soon, with claims that "peak oil" is disproved or that the US will lead a fossil fuelled renaissance. The reality is that these non-conventional carbon pools are only now economically available due to a high oil price, and that unless the price stays high, they will not be extracted. So we have indeed very likely seen the end of rising production of cheap, easily accessible conventional oil. That doesn't mean we run out of oil, just that energy gets expensive, which still has all kinds of economic implications. And if we insist on remaining addicted to fossil carbon, pursuing non-conventional sources is leap out of the frying pan of energy insecurity into the fire of climate chaos.

Economic growth and ecological health: It has become popular in certain circles to argue that as countries get richer, they clean up their environmental problems and that therefore the solution to our ecological woes is to grow the global economy as fast as possible (sometimes called an environmental Kuznets curve). This piece is a sustained critique of that idea.

How Money Makes People Less Humane. Some really interesting research on the effects of money (either having it, wanting it, thinking about it or even having it subconsciously suggested) on empathy. The upshot is that, statistically speaking, money functions to disconnect us from those around us, making us less caring, less sensitive, more suspicious and more individualistic. Or, as the scriptures would say: "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6.10).

Empathy and Energy: a new revolution is required

Here's a fascinating 50 minute talk from a creative, insightful and controversial thinker, Jeremy Rifkin. As he mentions in the talk, he's an advisor to the European Parliament, which has formally endorsed the energy plan he has outlined here. But while he ends on energy, the core of the talk is about empathy and the significance of empathy in history and human society. I won't attempt to summarise his argument, but commend it as a very interesting thesis.

A couple of my reflections on the talk (and you may wish to listen to it yourself first): he's massively oversimplifying (of course),* but I buy the basic idea that energy revolutions are correlated with revolutions in consciousness and social organisation. I also buy the critical significance of empathy for ethical deliberation and intuition. I'm not sure I'm yet convinced about the technical feasibility of transforming our energy infrastructure to a distributed system without also transforming our expectations of energy. That is, the kind of distributed energy system he presents may well be technically possible (though few engineers seem to share his optimism about hydrogen fuels), but whether it can deliver even present levels of energy consumption per capita for a rising population is another matter (let alone provide for ongoing growth in energy consumption). It is also not clear whether it can be exported to areas of the world with higher population densities (e.g. India and China). At one point Rifkin seems to imply that retrofitting every building in Europe is what is going to ensure ongoing economic growth, meaning that for him, economic growth seems to be a sine qua non of any positive path forward. In this way, I think he's still stuck in 19th/20thC thinking. Yet his reference to beef production/consumption and the failure of any national leader to mention its contribution to climate change does imply that he's keen for cultural transformation at least insofar as diets are concerned. I'd like to apply the same thinking to energy consumption. It is quite possible to live a flourishing and enjoyable life on far, far less energy than the average consumption of the developed world (even Europe, which consumes roughly half the energy per capita of the US or Australia). But trying to rebuild our energy infrastructure without also changing our energy consumption patterns is likely to be only a halfhearted affair.
*Not least in his sketch of theological anthropology and the transference of all ethical considerations into an otherworld. Sounds like he's been reading too much Nietzsche and not enough actual theology.

Perhaps most critically of all, I'm fairly pessimistic about the political feasibility of implementing the infrastructural changes he advocates on the timescale required to avoid ecological and climatic changes that will render such grand projects ineffective at helping to build a stable society, especially in the face of massively wealthy fossil energy interests who show almost no sign of the empathetical sensibility discussed here. Of course, political winds can shift quickly, and so I do think that seeking to effect cultural and political transformations that can enable the industrial and infrastructural changes he's talking about is a very worthy goal. Yet he doesn't seem to be (at least here) confronting the social, cultural and political barriers to these changes.

Nonetheless, I think there's much here that is worth sharing and pondering further, not least the idea that unless our capacity for empathy can extend beyond parochial, generational and even species ties, then we're in for a very rough century.
H/T Lorna.

In search of a guiding virtue

This is an interesting piece comparing the primary virtues of McCain and Obama (honour and empathy), analysing their limits and pondering their implications for foreign policy. H/T Sam.*

This piece illustrates an interesting feature of ethics: the interdependence of the virtues. Is it possible for one virtue to interpret all the others? The article argues that honour and empathy are both insufficient as guiding principles in a complex world and each could lead to bad decisions as president. What then is a sufficient principle? Is there a better virtue than honour, a greater one than empathy?

"Love binds everything together in perfect harmony" (Colossians 3.14). Here is a candidate for the position of guiding principle. Yet might it not also face a similar critique to those levelled against honour and empathy? Might love be but a partial grasping of the picture that obscures as it reveals?

It all depends how we understand the "binding" to which the verse refers. Importantly, the context is one rich with all kinds of ethical language - honesty, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance and forgiveness all appearing in quick succession. Apparently this is not the kind of binding that destroys all distinction, such that no more needs to be said than the imperative "love!". There is still a place for reflection upon the relation of honesty to kindness, or of compassion to forbearance. Yet it is love that prevents these discussions from becoming wars of attrition in which the champions of truth seek to dominate the defenders of mercy or vice versa. The primacy of love does not consist of demanding that we prefer being loving to being truthful or being meek. It consists in the faith that these demands are not ultimately in conflict. "Ultimately", since the unification of the moral life in love is not simply revelation of what is, but a promise of what is to come.
*NB Sam has also posted a link to a good little piece introducing virtue ethics for those unfamiliar with the phrase.
Twelve points for picking the location of this Sydney shot.