Growth error

Jolyon Connell, founder and editorial director of The Week magazine writes in the 8 October 2011 edition that Matt Ridley, wrote in The Times that "the West has been running a vast financial pyramid scheme, but the world itself is not in debt." Correct. We haven't tried borrowing money from other planets yet and the world is of course a closed system: This applies as much to finances as anything else and importantly physical resources. But Ridley continues: "the world economy actually grew by 5% last year according to the IMF." This is factually correct, I assume, but we are talking about growth in GDP/GNP (which are identical at world level). We can't have a pyramid scheme with real resources, because they are finite. If we "liquidate our natural capital and call it income" as the authors of Natural Capitalism term what we are doing, no restructuring, bailing out, quantative easing or any other financial tinkering will save us.

A cult and a fetish

Critics of environmental sustainability often seem to portray it (negtively) as some kind of religious belief . I recently heard about something - economic growth probably - being "sacrificed on the altar of sustainability".

An article in The Week gives a precis of newspaper articles on energy reform, and most notably Matt Ridley in The Times refers to a 'carbon fetish'. He argues not only that the increased cost of using non renewable energy will destroy jobs, but that (as paraphrased by The Week I take it), 'energy is the elixir of economic growth'.


It is economic growth that is the cult and fetish here. We need energy and we need to conserve the energy we have, not use as much as possible to maintain 'economic growth'. And if we don't stop putting carbon into our atmosphere we are heading for climate catastrophe. Are we not prepared to "sacrifice" economic growth on the "altar" of our own survival as a species?

Let's set out the lie that continued economic growth is here again. We have limited, not unlimited resources. As we have limited resources, we need to conserve them if we wish to survive and prosper as a species. If we don't wish to survive as a species, we can carry on using resources as quickly as possible and lying to ourselves that they will never run out, or not caring on the basis that they won't run out in our lifetime. We can carry on competing for and fighting over the resources, making them more scarce and thereby getting more 'economic growth'.

A triumph of faith over experience

"It is homo sapiens's unique capacity for trading that pushes individuals to specialise and play to their own advantages. I am dexterous but weedy, you are strong but clumsy. I make the hooks and you catch the fish". This is a quote from The Rational Optimist, a book by Matt Ridley. He claims that trade is the vehicle that has enabled us to make progress in life expectancy, cleaner air / rivers, falling birth rate etc.

Nonsense. His example of the dexterous person making the hooks and the strong person catching the fish is an example of co-operation, not trade. And why is a falling birth rate progress? What other species, if it could count, would call this success. The rise in life expectancy is surely down to science, and who made the pollution that "trade" is now clearing up. Er, " trade". It's apparently to be congratulated for cleaning up its own mess.

George Monbiot called this  "a triumph of faith over experience"