Growing without limits

'The idea that we can address climate change matters successfully at the expense of economic growth is not only unrealistic but it also unacceptable to the population of Australia which I represent.' - Prime Minister John Howard, at the Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership [link].

Arh, the growth at all costs mantra. Perhaps that's one of the reasons we find ourselves in this predicament? As ecologist Paul Ehrlich says, endless growth in a finite world is the creed of the cancer cell, and the result of adhering to it is death. In any case, I think I might pick up a copy of “The Ecology of Commerce” and send it Mr Howards way. Maybe he will be able to sneak in a page or two between re-reads of his favourite Bradman biography or something.

"Howard told a conference of Asia-Pacific nations and corporations that growth was the only way many nations could reduce poverty levels among their populations."

Surely the problem is not lack of wealth, but the inequality in the distribution of that wealth? In “Naked Ape to Superspecies”, economist Herman Daly says:

“We’ve built the modern economy around the idea of growth, I believe at least partly, in order to avoid facing up to the problem of sharing. If you don’t continue to grow, and you still have poverty, then you have to redistribute. You have to share in order to cure poverty. How do you cure poverty without sharing? Well, the only way we’ve been able to come up with is growing.”

So it seems you can either keep growing (and hope the poor see some of the benefits) or you can share the wealth around more evenly. The latter is a moral problem of the type that we humans apparently aren’t very good at solving. So we tend to favor the technical problem of chasing continual economic growth – with its inherent detrimental effect on the environment.

We have children too!!

"The people who run the private sector . . . they too have children, they too have grandchildren and they too live and breathe in the world and they would like things dealt with effectively, and that's what this (meeting) is all about," - US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership [as quoted here]

This sounds suspiciously like something John Stauber (author of Toxic Sludge is Good For You and Trust Us We're Experts) describes as being part of the standard anti-environmentalist spiel:

“A typical corporate rap might be to sit down with a concerned group of people and say, ‘Look, you know no one is more concerned than the people at XYZ corporation about chemicals in the environment. After all, we have children too. And we live in this community and we’re just like you. If we’re put out of business, we can’t provide jobs for our community. So let’s sit down and work for a common solution’ ”.

This approach is apparently part of the divide and conquer technique used to combat environment and social grass-roots activists. PR companies hired to make polluting corporations look better divide social activists into three or four categories – the radicals, the idealists, and the realists (and sometimes the opportunists). The above, “we’re just like you, we breath the same air, but want to keep our [polluting] industry thriving because we all need jobs, right?” shtick is intended to “educate” and sway the realists (and to a lesser extent the idealists) away from the radicals. By presenting a “solution” favorable to industry that sounds reasonable to realists, the radicals (no matter how rational and just their demands) will seem extreme and thus have less credibility. At least, that’s the theory.

Over-seafooding

“Every fish, plant, insect, bird and animal that disappears is a part of me dying. I know all their names, and I touch them with my spirit.” - Okanagan elder Jeanette Armstrong [as quoted in From Naked Ape to Superspecies].

Fortunately, I’m nowhere near a TV when Today Tonight is on. Unfortunately, I was subjected to an advert for this evening’s episode. Yet another weight loss scheme, and [adopting overly dramatic voiceover] “The unthinkable is happening, the ocean is running out of seafood.” From the 10 second blurb, it seems that illegal (and usually foreign) fisherman are depleting our, err, “seafood” stocks.

Blaming collapsing fish populations on illegal/foreign fisherman is conveniently comfortable for TT viewers I'm sure. But could the fact that Australia exports some $1.5 billion worth of seafood and aquaculture products (and is actively trying to create larger export markets) be indicative of “taking more than our fair share”?

And calling it “seafood” instead of say “fish” or “marine life” is telling. Just like trees, birds and other animals, fish are seen as nothing but machines useful for economic production - a resource to be exploited.

A slightly more sensible news piece on the same topic can be found here: The fished-out planet.