EDucate! - Development

The essential issue set by the limits to growth argument is whether or not it will be possible for us to go on living as affluently as we do now, with ‘living standards’ and the GNP constantly rising as the years go by. The ‘technical fix’ optimists believe that this will be possible because technical advances will be made to solve the problems that our way of life is generating. Official statements on ‘Environmentally Sustainable Development’ are always based on this assumption. A strong case can be put against this view.

Technology is Falling Behind

Despite technical advance, almost all the serious global problems are becoming more acute. Technology is not solving the problems and it is becoming more and more difficult to do things like deliver a barrel of oil or catch a tonne of fish; i.e., more costly in dollar and resource terms.

The cost of minerals and energy fell throughout the last century, until around the early 1970s. Studies indicate that since then real costs trends might have begun to rise. The energy cost of getting minerals and energy is likely to rise at 2-3% per annum from here on, i.e., to double each 25 years. If technical advance were gaining on these problems the costs would be falling.

Often technical advance is unable to overcome losses due to ecological deterioration. The amount of land farmed, and the amount irrigated are either stable or declining. World average yields for major crops are stable or falling, despite ever-increasing inputs. Nearly all the major environmental studies of the last decade have concluded that access to food and agricultural products will become more difficult and expensive. Even for items where production is increasing, this is often achieved by rapidly increasing inputs of energy etc., meaning that in many important cases we are experiencing sharply diminishing returns. For example the world’s fish catch increased slowly in the decade to 1980 but the required effort, such as the number and tonnage of fishing vessels, has increased much more rapidly, about 60% in 20 years. Increases in the efficiency of many processes, e.g., generation of electricity or production of ammonia, have tapered over time and the overall productivity of investment has fallen considerably.

The Magnitude of the Task

The technical fix optimists usually fail to recognize the magnitude of the tasks this view involves.

Firstly, surely they would agree that we should be talking about ways of living that all can share; surely our concern is not just working out how a few people in rich countries can go on living well while the rest are poor. If so, then we are at least talking about a world in which 10-11 billion people, and that means that most resource supply and pollution problems would be at least 10 times as big as they are now. In other words, the challenge is not just “can technology go on meeting the present demands?” but “can it meet 10 times these demands, indefinitely?” If the goal is to lift all people to the living standards rich countries will have by 2060, assuming 3-4% per annum growth, then technical advance would have to deliver hundreds of times of the present levels of production.

The Long List of Tasks

In order to make our present way of life possible for us through coming decades, let alone for all people, a long list of major technical breakthroughs would have to be made, many in fields where there is no prospect of this despite much research. Solar cells would have to be produced at far below their present cost, ways of conducting modern agriculture reversing the many forms of soil damage would have to be invented, a new fuel for aircraft would have to be introduced, vast new capacity for dumping garbage and industrial waste would have to be created, etc. It should be stressed that even if many of these huge breakthroughs were made, failure in any one of the several crucial areas would mean that our way of life could not be continued or extended to all. For instance, no matter how many other breakthroughs were made, if a liquid fuel to substitute for oil can’t be developed then modern agriculture and the cities it feeds cannot continue on anything like the scale they take now.

Growth

The technical fix optimists' task gets worse by at least 3% per annum. Anyone who assumes we can go on as we are now is saying we can sustain at least 3% per annum more economic activity every year. That means 8 times as much production and consumption every year by 2060, (or if we assume 5% per annum growth until then, 32 times as much.) Sooner or later continued economic growth will outweigh any plausible advances in energy conservation or pollution reduction.

The limits to growth argument is that present levels of production and consumption are causing unsustainable damage to the environment so we should be doing all we can not just to stop growth in the amount of production and consumption, but to reduce present levels.

Recycling and Substitutes

The technical-fix position is at its strongest regarding the difference that recycling and substitutes might make. However a considerable proportion of many items is already recycled (more than half of iron and steel produced) and it will be increasingly difficult and costly to recycle higher proportions, especially in view of the energy cost of collection.

Technical advance will surely develop substitutes for many uses of scarce things, but again the magnitude of the task and the costs are the main issues. Australians use about 450 kg of steel per person per year. From what substance might we derive substitutes for such a volume of this very energy-costly material, and are they likely to have anything like the same properties? Their energy cost could be even higher, e.g., for materials made from cellulose, plastic or silica.

The Question of Time

Even if we could see that various technologies would eventually make it possible for all people to live as we do it would probably take many decades, possibly a century to reach that situation. But there seems to be little doubt that soils, species, forests, waters and ecosystems cannot tolerate the present rate of impact for many more decades.

More importantly, right now most people are seriously deprived of a fair share of the worlds' resources. Every day people in rich countries go on hogging most of the resources and binding Third World people to a global economy which does not develop what they need, at least 50,000 people die as a result of this deprivation. Even if we could see that technology would in time be able to provide our living standards to all, obviously it does not follow that the present situation should be accepted until then. There is an urgent need to redistribute the world wealth immediately.

Many Problems Are Not Technical

Many of our most serious problems, especially to do with hunger, poverty and deprivation, are due to unjust social arrangements, i.e., to the fact that the rich few are taking most of the available resources. These problems cannot be solved by the development of better technology; in fact they could be made worse. In the Green Revolution plant, technologists bred more productive grains, greatly increasing food availability, but one consequence was that many people actually became more hungry because richer landowners saw the opportunity to increase their incomes using the new technology and pushed tenant peasants off their leases in order to increase planted areas. Hence a new technology can easily worsen the situation of poorer people if it is introduced into unjust social systems. Similarly if the technology to mine the sea economically were to be developed, in the present world economy the few rich countries would be the only ones who could afford it and they would surely proceed to grab most of the accessible resources.

A Statement of Faith

It is not possible for the technical fix optimists to show how we will definitely be able to solve the big problems. At present there are no plausible solutions to many of the problems. What the technical fix optimists are usually doing is expressing the faith that something will turn up or be invented to head off the problems our behavior is causing. This is like saying “I have a lung disease that smoking makes much worse, but I still smoke because you never know, they might soon find a cure for this disease”. The limits to growth argument is that the sensible thing to do is to get off the track that is leading to serious trouble, at least until it is quite clear that technology has found a way for us to continue safely.

There is Only One Problem

At first when we look at the global predicament we are in we might think we have many separate problems, e.g., an environment, energy, peace, Third World and a quality of life problem. But when we examine these problems from the limits to growth perspective we realize that all are primarily consequences of the commitment to endless growth on the part of the overproducing, overconsuming and overdeveloped countries.

There is in other words only one problem; the basic cause of the many serious problems we face is our mindless commitment to a growth and greed society. There is therefore one neat and simple solution – change to a conserver society which does not generate these many problems!

The interconnectedness of the sub-problems should also be stressed. For example we can’t expect to solve the forest destruction problem unless satisfactory development is initiated in Bolivia, Brazil and Central America where poverty obliges people to clear rainforest. We cannot expect to solve the greenhouse problem unless the Chinese can be convinced that there is a satisfactory non-urban-industrialized development path they could take and can see the rich countries taking it. We cannot expect peace until there is far greater justice in the world, and we cannot achieve that until rich countries agree to consume less, and we cannot do that