In the spirit of self-criticism, here’s a non-exhaustive list of things people on the green side of the fence say, with all good intent, that are demonstrably wrong.
“We can protect the environment without jeopardizing economic growth.”
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
“Population is not a problem. We have enough food to feed everyone well. It’s merely our current economic system, which distributes food inequitably, that is responsible for hunger. If we distribute food equably there will be enough to go around.”
“As Chief Seattle said, ‘How can you buy or sell the sky?’ [or] ‘This we know; the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.’ [or] ‘Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it.’ [or] ‘I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train.’ [or insert lyrical poetical environmental sentiment here.] ”
“Man [sic] is the only animal that hunts for sport.” (Alt: “...kills for pleasure.”)
“If the world were a village of 100 people: 6 of them would possess 59% of the wealth… (etc)”
Rebuttals are below the fold. Suggest your own in comments! This may turn into a sporadic series.
We can protect the environment without jeopardizing economic growth.
Wrong. Economic growth, despite the claims of a handful of cornucopians like the late Julian Simon, can not proceed indefinitely in a finite world. The global economy derives its motive force from natural resources. Some of those resources are renewable and some aren’t, but all of them are finite. At some point in the growth of an economic system, the system’s resource “burn rate” will exceed the rate at which the environment can sustainably replenish those resources. The result? The natural world’s systems start to break down.
This is a basic and inescapable consequence of the first two laws of thermodynamics.
That’s not to say that a healthy planet and a healthy economy cannot coexist. A stable-state economy, one which consumed renewable resources no faster than they could be renewed and reused the non-renewables rather than mining more, could potentially provide a comfortable standard of living for the people of the world. An upside: a steady-state economy would be about as unlikely to go through a recession as it would be to grow. More information on steady-state economies can be found at the Center for the Advancement of the Steady-State Economy.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Wrong. This epigram by Margaret Mead is very popular among activists who have not yet managed to gain public support for their causes. A cursory examination of history will show that while a small group of thoughtful committed individuals may be an important precondition for movements that change the world, they usually accomplish nothing without massive popular support. To illustrate by way of metaphor: having a car key may be a crucial precondition for a road trip, but if the car key doesn’t find a matching vehicle, your road trip will likely take a very long time.
As Ohio Citizen Action puts it:
Let’s go back 50 years and look at some world-changing events. In the 1950’s and early 60’s, scores of colonies around the world, especially in Africa, revolted and broke free from the empires that had held them. Who did this? Not a small group of thoughtful committed individuals, but millions of thoughtful committed individuals.
This civil rights movement in the United States? The antiwar movement? The women’s movement? Millions.
The overthrow of the Soviet Union and the other Soviet bloc dictatorships? The end of apartheid? Millions of thoughtful, committed people.
In general, small groups can win small victories. Big networks of groups can win big victories.
In any event, it’s clear that massive social changes do not rely on a small avant-garde. Technological innovation has changed the political world, for instance, with examples including agriculture and printing and oral contraception and the Internet. External factors wreak massive changes, as the Ancestral Puebloans and the first European colonists of Greenland will tell you. War changes a lot, sometimes arguably for good but mainly not. Mead got it wrong.
Population is not a problem. We have enough food to feed everyone well. It’s merely our current economic system, which distributes food inequitably, that is responsible for hunger. If we distribute food equably there will be enough to go around.
Frances Moore Lappe made this argument thirty years ago. It was almost certainly true then, if you discount the unsustainable loss of habitat to agricultural conversion. Thing is, it’s been quoted without updating since Lappe’s book Food First was published in 1977. Since then, the global population has grown by more than 2.5 billion people. In other words, there are half again as many people on the planet now as there were in 1977. Meanwhile, the amount of land under cultivation has scarcely grown at all. These UNEP data run up until 1998, and even assuming a moderate uptick in the ten years since, the amount of land under cultivation per capita has dropped rather precipitously. Increases in yield per acre ensured a wholesale global food surplus until at least 1990, but by the middle of this decade, that was no longer the case.
It’s going to get much worse. One third of the world’s present population relies on the Haber-Bosch process to provide nitrogen fertilizer for their food crops. The Haber-Bosch process, one of those technological innovations that changed the world, uses natural gas to turn inert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen compounds plants can use as nutrients. Without nitrogen, yields suffer and plants die. As Peak Oil remakes the world energy economy and the demand for natural gas rises, fertilizer will become first increasingly expensive and then scarce. What’s more, food production itself is increasingly an environmental catastrophe, from greenhouse-gas-emitting rice farms to the depletion of global fisheries to the razing of Brazilian rainforests to grow soya. The collapse of the world food system is already in progress, and our choice is now whether to reduce global population voluntarily and humanely, or to let global famine do it for us.
Lappe’s argument was a crucial, incisive criticism of a stratified global society, and of economic systems driving agriculture for export from hungry nations. She was absolutely correct. But the data she based it on is now 30 years out of date. Enviros who quote it without considering the passage of time are getting it wrong.
As Chief Seattle said, “How can you buy or sell the sky?” [or] “This we know; the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.” [or] “Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it.” [or] “I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train.” [or insert lyrical poetical environmental sentiment here.]
Wrong. Those words, quote fodder for a million environmental articles, were written in 1971 by screenwriter Ted Perry. That link is to a page at the debunkers’ website Snopes.com, which states as fact that Seeath (Seattle) did give a speech in 1854, transcribed a bit later by Dr. Henry Smith (full text of that transcription is here), which has a remarkably different content. One federal researcher even disputes Seeath’s having given that speech, stating that the only recorded words Seeath spoke are as follows:
I look upon you as my father, I and the rest regard you as such. All of the Indians have the same good feeling toward you and will send it on paper to the Great Father. All of the men, old men, women and children rejoice that he has sent you to take care of them. My mind is like yours, I don’t want to say more. My heart is very good towards Dr. Maynard [a physician who was present]. I want always to get medicine from him.
Now by this we make friends and put away all bad feelings if we ever had any. We are the friends of the Americans. All the Indians are of the same mind. We look upon you as our Father. We will never change our minds, but since you have been to see us we will be always the same. Now! Now, do you send this paper.
The fanciful speech serves more to illustrate greens’ tendency to stereotype Natives as Bambified, one-dimensional cartoon cutouts than it does to honor the actual warrior chief.
Man [sic] is the only animal that hunts for sport. (Alt: “...kills for pleasure.”)
Wrong, and trivially refuted. People that make this claim are, to put it bluntly, unfamiliar with cats and dogs.
If the world were a village of 100 people: 6 of them would possess 59% of the wealth (etc)
And 18 of them would have forwarded this list in email to the other 82. Snopes has a good dissection of this often-shared list of claims, the best that can be said of which list is that it is roughly true in spirit, though outdated and sloppily defined. This is another good example, like Lappe’s argument above, of the importance of updating one’s rhetoric.
=v= As you know, I pay a lot of attention to cars in particular. Every technological advance in the world is at some point spun as a way to make cars more eco-friendly, and every such scheme is predictably embraced by most environmentalists. To me this indicates widespread awareness of some of the impact of cars, but it also indicates a steadfast unwillingness to seriously entertain alternatives.
A disturbing aspect of all this is the Jevons Paradox, in which increased efficiency leads to increased consumption. The last true ecological advance in cars was better fuel efficiency in the 1970s, and those gains were completely erased by the sprawl they enabled.
I’m going to rebut some of your points here.
1. Economic growth: You are correct if growth is defined as the use of more and more resources. Our current economy cannot have growth without overwhelming the planet’s ability to sustain it. However, if we change how we use resources then it is possible to make efficiency gains that maintain much of our standard of living while using fewer resources over time, assuming that we get population under control. Some things will have to change—suburban sprawl and consumer culture, most notably—but in terms of feeding, housing, and caring for the population and providing people with time for creative and leisure pursuits, there’s plenty of room to maintain or improve life for billions of people.
2. Population. When women have control over their fertility and at the same time their ability to participate meaningfully in economic and political life, population levels out. It is quite possible for our world’s population to stabilize mid-century close to the 10 billion mark. The question then becomes if that’s a number that can live in a sustainable way. Again, that depends on changing how we use land and resources. Denser cities, more land set aside as undeveloped to protect and maintain biodiversity, and more land claimed for food production can coexist if we make the right (hard) choices. It just means that suburbia will have to be dismantled in phases to make room for these other uses. Yes, we’ll have to lose most of our consumer toys, our cars, our diet, and the frequency and means by which we travel longer distances, but that does not necessarily equate to a declining standard of living or negative economic growth.
The question really is whether we consciously move toward this future or resist it. All signs are that we won’t make these changes, and we’ll see declining standards of living amid a nexus of disasters of our own making. But I don’t think it’s impossible. I think it’s our responsibility to try and manage the simultaneous protection of non-human ecologies, the equitable feeding and caring of all people, and the exploration of human culture. Even if we fail, we’ll be better equipped to deal with the consequences.
No argument on your other points, though.
I knew that the Seattle quote was bogus, but hadn’t thought about the enough food/distribution problem in terms of how long that’s been kicking around. Thanks for the info. I also agree that the “noble savage” stereotype, while less hurtful than negative stereotypes of Native peoples is nonetheless the other side of the same coin.
I also agree with the comment above that although there are ways to live more sustainably, there doesn’t seem to be the collective will to make the needed changes. Unfortunately human beings feel smarter than we actually are. Folks will probably wait until disasters push us into making changes and under those circumstances the options available and the options feasible won’t be the same. There’s an
old Jewish story that the messiah can come slowly on the back of
a white donkey (because people create a better world) or fast with a flaming sword (because people make such mess of the world). It’s a metaphor for
the way change can happen.
hm. i think you take unnecessary argument with the “small group of people” quote. i do think it is intended to point at the small, intense beginning many movements seem to derive from. no, they dont finish out with only a small group, but without those people (and honestly i do think it is meant as a metaphor?), without that spark i’ll say, the greater amount of flames would never catch. you seem to indicate that you understand how it is meant, but then proceed to be terribly literal about it. anyway, let the committed invisible people feel they have reason to hang in, ya doomsayer! ;)
Sorry, Cascadian, but infinite growth in a finite system is impossible. Economic growth is the increase of monetary throughput in an economy. It takes energy to drive this throughput and the second law of thermodynamics sets strict limits on how efficiently we can use energy.
Some people speak of development as “qualitative growth”. While I think such terminology unnecessarily confuses the term “growth”, it is certainly true that our economies and societies can continue to change and develop even as economic throughput remains roughly constant.
I miss bullshitting.
In response to Jane, while you’re right that an economy can’t grow forever we’re nowhere near close to using all of the energy available for human use, nor are we anywhere near maximum efficiency. You just can’t invoke the second law of thermodynamics in this context.
If human population stabilizes but technology for energy efficiency continues to improve, we can improve quality of life while using fewer resources. There’s some theoretical point at which that won’t be possible. Then we can talk about the end of economic growth. As long as people are starving, regularly going without basic medical care, and cut off from the opportunity to engage in creative pursuits and the other pleasures of being alive, we need economic growth at least in per capita terms. The question is where the sustainable threshold is in terms of human population, and that’s not something that can be answered authoritatively by anyone.
A big part of the problem here is how economic growth is defined. We add up all goods and services and a lot of those goods and services in our economy are malign. In a future economy, instead of consumer goods we might focus on quality of human life and creativity and put a value on that. That would tend to use fewer resources but result in a greater proportion of happy people and a healthier ecological environment, even with the same population. And of course there’s the matter of distribution of resources. A small minority uses a huge portion of resources and energy, and merely moving to a model where the current median use of resources was close to the mean would equate to a massive cut back in overall resource use.
Great post, man.
Doomed! I’ve been worrying a lot for my daughter.
But that might have something to do with just having read The Road on the plane from Quito to Miami, returning to my suburban life w/ Jeep Cherokee.
Good post, Chris. Thanks for the link to that steady-state economy site. I’ve long been wondering what the alternative to our growth-growth-growth mantra would be, other than the kind of bust we’re now in. Looking forward to checking it out.
I always liked Dr. Smith’s version of the Seattle speech, even though it was written down from memory years later, and thus likely to be a fabrication. I hadn’t seen the short version you posted here.
i’d like to submit that it’s not “millions of thoughtful people,” it’s a few thoughtful people leading or manipulating millions of people who don’t really have a sure grasp on the philosophical, economic or political mechanics of their cause annd throw their lot in with the brain trust that guides it, anyway.
the ends can be good (independence) or bad (dittoheads), but doing something without knowing why is always worse than the alternative, if the alternative exists.
I’ve been thinking about the population issue for several years, and getting progressively more morose about it. Every time I read the type of Pollyannish comments people make, I want to slap somebody and shout “Wake the hell up!!”
If there were (say) fifty critical factors that went into understanding the impacts of population and population growth, I don’t think I’ve ever read an analysis that deals with more than a handful of them. And every article and comment I’ve ever seen seems to start with the proposition “we can make this work.”
We’ve never been willing to imagine the possibility of disaster, which means we have yet to really even delineate the full range of possible results. We’re like compulsive gamblers – unable to even briefly entertain the idea that we might lose everything, all our possible actions arise from winning scenarios: When I win, I’ll go on a vacation to Italy! No, when I win, I’ll buy my girlfriend a car! Oh wait, when I win, I’ll put the money in the bank for my kid’s college education! —NOT gambling, a possible choice arising from the proposition “if I lose,” isn’t even on the list.
Optimistic nitwits confidently imagine 10 billion humans on Earth, blithely unaware that the planet already can’t support us all, and the REAL carrying capacity of Earth is some fraction of the number of humans already here.
People talk like happy parrots about the amount of energy or food we can produce, never thinking of looming shortages of basic things for which there is no substitute — copper, for instance, or phosphorus, or even just asphalt for highways. What do you do when there just ain’t no more? What do you do when you’re recycling like mad, and there STILL isn’t enough? (Oh, but we can count on all those wealthy, well-educated women having fewer children! We just have to wait until that happens! —Yeah, right.) The happy parrots think we’ll go find more in space or something — but we CAN’T run out of copper, there’s a whole UNIVERSE full of undiscovered copper out there — and everything will be just peachy.
(And if I hear another person caw “Well, we can’t harm the Earth! The Earth will get along just fine!” I think I’ll have an Scanners-type exploding aneurysm.)
The truth is, there was a moment when we might have dealt with population, when we might have consciously chosen to be sane and rational and SMART, and it was probably back in the 1960s, or even earlier. But the warmongers and Christians, corporations and sitcom writers won out instead. Everything since then has been a slow-moving avalanche downhill. Most of us are not only too stupid to solve the situation we find ourselves in, we’re too stupid to even see it.
Something I realized a few years back: Human beings under stress become LESS intelligent. I actually think the election of George W. Bush was a symptom of this deeper phenomenon, a creeping panic that’s making us dumber by the day — producing anger instead of awareness, craziness instead of sanity, frozen fear instead of action ... or just Pollyannish confidence instead of hardheaded practicality.
You only have to turn on the radio or TV to find people who are not just batshit insane, but becoming rich as hell from spouting their batshit insane opinions and instructions to millions of followers.
So here we are in Our Glorious Future, a bucket-of-crabs scenario in which the crabs on top continuously convince those of us on the bottom that all we have to do is keep boosting them up, and eventually we’ll all get out.
If we do go down hard, I’m hoping that the brain-eating zombie remnants of humanity will, as their last act, storm the armed compounds of every last one of the rich, fatuous Republicans and conservative talking heads and ten-million-dollar-a-year corporate CEOs and just eat them a-fucking-live. For George Bush and Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, I hope it takes days.