The idiocy of endless growth
Today is the 40th anniversary of my full time work in the field of population and family planning. Four decades of continuous work in this field has been a very interesting ride – one that becomes more interesting every day. The challenges that come with the issue are worth putting up with, because there is no more important work to be done on the planet in order to move toward sustainability. So, I don’t plan to stop now, nor should you. There is no acceptable alternative. Thanks for all you are doing for this cause… Bill Ryerson.
Thanks to Simon Nasht for this article. See: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-idiocy-of-endless-growth-20110529-1fata.html
The idiocy of endless growth
Dick Smith
May 30, 2011
Opinion
It’s the obvious but forbidden truth: on a finite and already swollen planet, we can’t expand indefinitely.
Some time in the next few months, the world’s population clock will tick over 7 billion people. Global population has tripled in my lifetime, and is continuing to rise. The United Nations has just predicted we face a world of 10 billion in 2100. This has immense implications for all of us, and Australia will not be immune from the impacts.
No one can confidently predict where we will find the food, energy, water and resources needed to supply even the basic needs of so many people. On a finite planet, we are already using up far more than we can replenish, literally exhausting the environment on which we rely for our survival.
For decades, overpopulation has been off the international agenda. It is barely mentioned in the media, and is rarely discussed in relation to, say, climate change or the looming global refugee crisis. Yet it is the common factor that links all our global problems, and ignoring it condemns billions of people to lives of poverty and injustice.
This is why I am so disappointed that Australia has missed the chance to deal realistically with the challenges of an ever-growing population. Earlier this month, the federal government released its population strategy, and it is long on rhetoric and short on action. It mentions the word ”sustainable” dozens of times – three times just in its title – yet never defines what this overused word means.
The report ducks entirely the question of just where we should be aiming in terms of our numbers in coming decades. This renders virtually meaningless any attempts we may make to plan for the future. How, for instance, can we expect to reach the government’s target of a 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by mid-century if we have no idea how many people we will have making those emissions?
The strategy makes grand statements about encouraging people to settle in regional areas, completely ignoring the reality that nearly all new migrants choose to settle in our major cities. Little wonder that federal Labor backbencher Kelvin Thomson described the report as a missed opportunity to map out a direction for Australia’s future.
To me, the report represents a wider malaise, which is the failure of leaders here and abroad to deal with the really big inconvenient truth: the impossibility of endlessly expanding our economy and population in a finite world. No politician or business leader dares mention that there are natural limits to growth, and that the evidence suggests we are already hitting against many of them.
Instead, they hide behind the near meaningless calls for sustainability, all the while accelerating us towards a precipice.
The essential requirement of a sustainable system is that it can be continuing. Yet the global economic system is based on the need for perpetual growth of output and consumption that clearly cannot last indefinitely. Australia’s economy is based on two especially precarious principles: extracting as rapidly as possible mineral resources that have taken millions of years to accumulate, while propping up our housing and retail markets with a continuing influx of extra consumers.
How much longer can we exponentially expand our demand for energy and resources? The global economy is already five times larger than it was 50 years ago, and as China and India’s people demand more of what we have been keeping for ourselves, this explosive expansion is accelerating.
Perhaps even more alarming is that despite all this growth, the numbers in extreme poverty, currently 3 billion, continue to rise. The world’s poorest 20 per cent consume just 1.5 per cent of its resources.
Between now and 2050, we will add billions more to the global population, and the vast majority of them will be in the poorest nations. This growing disparity between rich and poor is a recipe for conflict and chaos.
If Australians feel these problems are remote, then they may be surprised to learn that the issue is very close to home. Our nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, is experiencing a demographic tsunami that will see its population double to about 15 million in the next 25 years. Our concerns about a few desperate boat arrivals today will pale into insignificance if desperate young Melanesians, denied opportunities at home, look enviously across the Torres Strait for a better life.
One day a politician will be brave enough to speak the obvious but forbidden truth: that on a finite planet we cannot continue to exponentially increase our consumption of natural resources, nor survive as a civilisation if we keep adding billions more people to our already swelling planet. Until then, I fear we are creating a dangerous world for our children and grandchildren.
Dick Smith is a businessman and former Australian of the year. Dick Smith’s Population Crisis is published today by Allen & Unwin.
August 31st, 2011 at 9:25 am
Three cheers for Bill Ryerson’s life work.
September 5th, 2011 at 2:07 am
“One day a politician will be brave enough to speak the obvious but forbidden truth: that on a finite planet we cannot continue to exponentially increase our consumption of natural resources,…. ”
Ha Ha you are kidding a right. A politician. Someone who lies for a living and his/her sold his soul to the capitalist system. Sorry this aint going to end with rational thinking. It will be more like a train wreck. The system cannot stop itself. It’s intrinsic in everything we do including politics. Coming soon to a town near you is Peak Oil, Peak Phosphates and then peak everything. I just hope it happens soon before we completely destroy the planet.
September 5th, 2011 at 2:18 am
Since birth most of us have been brain washed in to believing what a nut Karl Mark was. Of course the propaganda came from the very capitalist system he was critcising. He was right though. The capitalist system will eventually destroy itself. It’s happening now, it’s going to get ugly and no one can stop it. Next time you hear a economist espousing their gumpf on Tv or radio remember this. These are the very same poeple who believe you can have infinite growth with finite resources……
November 22nd, 2011 at 9:58 am
Petition Presentation, Town of Chapel Hill, NC, November 21, 2011.
Opening remarks…….
In Chapel Hill and around the world, it is all the same: many too many people can be found in too many places destroying the natural world for personal economic gain. Many human-induced pressures on Earth’s finite resources and its frangible ecology, that directly result from the unbridled global growth of overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities by the human species, put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future for children, not only in Chapel Hill but elsewhere on the surface of our planetary home. If we are to halt the reckless destruction of Earth as a viable resource base as well as the irreversible degradation of an already polluted environment and a warming climate, we must accept limits to growth.
We must start somewhere soon to chart a sustainable course. Endless economic and population growth appear to be unsustainable. Let us consider now and here ways we can humanely, fairly, equitably and realistically define limits to economic and population growth in Chapel Hill, while there is still time to do so. Once the comfortable and friendly size of Chapel Hill is lost due to economic and population growth pressures, Chapel Hill’s quality of life and special characteristics will be impossible to regain.
Perhaps we can “think globally” about the predicament seven billion human beings present to the viability of Earth as a fit place for human habitation. Then we choose to”act locally” in ways that move us in the direction of a sustainable future for children everywhere and for life as we know it. Thank you.
TO MAYOR MARK KLEINSCHMIDT, MEMBERS OF THE TOWN COUNCIL, TOWN MANAGER ROGER STANCIL AND WHOMEVER ELSE THIS MAY CONCERN on Monday, November 21, 2011:
A Petition to Define Limits to Economic and Population Growth in the Town of Chapel Hill, NC
Whereas the Town of Chapel Hill appears to be outgrowing the comfortable and friendly size that has made it a wonderful place to live, raise children, work and retire; and
Whereas increasing traffic congestion, crime and other social ills are presenting worrisome trends that result from human population growth which will eventually degrade Chapel Hill’s eco-friendly environs, deplete its limited natural resources and conceivably ruin what makes our town beautiful and special; and
Whereas the Town of Chapel Hill has established limits and the Great State of North Carolina has boundary lines that separate it from adjacent states; and
Whereas the USA has borders that confirm the limits of authorized human activity under its regulations and laws as well as distinguish itself as a separate nation; and
Whereas Earth is round, bounded and finite with frangible environs not flat, unbounded and unperturbed by human production, consumption and population activities of the human species worldwide; and
Whereas there are well-known biological and physical “rules of the house” in our planetary home that are categorically different from the manmade laws which regulate day to day production, consumption and population activities of human species, but are no less important to citizens of Chapel Hill, the State of NC and the USA as well as to the global citizenry of the human family, precisely because the biophysical reality of God’s Creation places immutable limits on the unbridled global growth of human overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities; and
Whereas a billion human beings were added to family of humanity worldwide in the last dozen years (1999 to 2011); and
Whereas in the month of October 2011 the seven billionth human being joined the human community; and
Whereas there are more human beings in November 2011 existing on resources valued at less than two dollars per day globally than were alive on Earth in the year of my birth (2.3+ billion in March 1945); and
Whereas we have heard many times, understood well enough, and can reasonably be expected to at least consider acting in a morally responsible way upon a shibboleth of humanity that goes like this, “Think globally, act locally,”
Now, Therefore, It appears appropriate to Propose and Present this brief Summary of a Program for Action.
As a part of the town-wide envisioning process to consciously and deliberately manage economic and population growth in the Town of Chapel Hill between now and 2020, leaders, planners and stakeholders will assure that the maintenance of the unique character and the quality of life in Chapel Hill, as we enjoy it now, is protected and preserved for the children and future generations. To accomplish this goal, various scenarios or different elements of a single scenario will be developed with the hope that the following steps will be examined for their efficacy.
Because overpopulation is ultimately a local issue, set an optimum/maximum population size for the Town of Chapel Hill in 2020. This goal can be fulfilled by adopting growth-management policies related to limits on the number of new residential dwelling units and to additional eco-friendly curbs on commercial developments per year between now and 2020. Zoning regulations can be promulgated to further restrict the size of residential, commercial and industrial buildings within the town limits. The reality-oriented adoption of “soft caps” on economic and population growth will make it possible for the Town of Chapel Hill to sensibly acknowledge and adequately address the considerable and potentially unsustainable growth pressures that are readily visible on our watch.
Steven Earl Salmony