http://globalpublicmedia.com/hooked_on_growth_on_the_reality_report

Maybe John will blog post about polar cities concept one day soon, pro or con, or just let reaers decide for themselves, but it’s a good talking point. Comments welcome to me too, in far away Taiwan: danbloom at GMAIL

http://tinyurl.com/273yg6

Getting ready for a no-growth future

DOUG SAUNDERS

January 5, 2008 at 12:05 AM EST

LONDON — Can you do well without having more? In these austere and bloat-sapping weeks after the holidays, a lot of us find ourselves asking that question. And it’s one that the whole world is pondering at the moment, since it appears that 2008, for many countries if not the whole world, will be a year without economic growth.

A non-growing economy is something we haven’t experienced in 15 years or more. We usually associate it with unfortunate things: unemployment, rising poverty, reduced social mobility — a worse chance for everyone.

But could there be a way to have a good life without growth? For the past 40-odd years, a handful of economists, environmentalists and assorted observers have been arguing that we can, and should, and ought to do so now.

The zero-growth movement, a product of the tumult of new thinking of the 1970s, is enjoying a significant renaissance today. There is renewed interest in the idea that humanity might be able to prosper without either economic or population growth (to the extent that those concepts can be separated), and that this may be a good idea.

It was 36 years ago that the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, which suggested that the population-driven growth in resource depletion was going to lead us to doom within a lifetime.

Five years later, economist Herman Daly came up with an idea he called “steady-state economics,” which held that economic policy could be aimed to maintain our stock of resources rather than maximize growth. He suggested that we stop treating the depletion of the world’s resources as “income” on our balance sheets and start looking at it as depreciation.

None of this was taken very seriously at the time. But two things have happened since then.

First, the crisis in climate change, and the realization that human inputs play some role, has made leaders everywhere realize that we are burning up the world’s resources too fast. Some of Mr. Daly’s fringe ideas have become tangible reality: He proposed that we should place an economic value on the depletion of resources; today, we have things such as the European Emission Trading Scheme, which tries to place a market price on pollution in order to reduce emissions.

Second, in the past four decades the quality of life for the world’s poorest people has improved dramatically, as a result of smart policies in education and health that were made possible by that burning up of energy. Economists now largely agree that economic growth makes it possible to move large numbers of people out of poverty, if governments are willing to use that growth to pay for it.

If you stop one, must you stop the other? Without growth, must poverty increase? That’s my central question here. In the seventies, that was an all-or-nothing matter: It looked as though we would keep increasing forever, ruining the world, and poverty was the only alternative. Today, thanks to those education and health programs, it looks like the world’s population will stop growing in about 50 years — that is, if we maintain enough prosperity to keep education and health levels growing. Will it require economic growth to get there?

And what happens then? When the population stops growing, Mr. Daly’s ideas will have their ultimate test: Without population growth, we surely won’t have economic growth. No-growth economics, in our children’s lifetimes, will become everyone’s economics………………………

Steve Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001

Barring that, I’ve seen your request, Krish, for some rushes. I’ll see what I can do. Bear with me on that, as I have much on my plate. I really appreciate your interest in helping in this way. We should have our first promotional trailer within a month or so.

Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
http://www.growthbusters.com

If you’d like, we can continue our discussion (prior to your last comment above) via email. It’s not likely to be wrapped up quickly, and is not quite right for this site. That is, you have your agenda, I have mine, and I cannot turn the site over to our hashing out whose agenda makes more sense, as that’s not what the site’s about, eh? When I get the chance, I’ll email you a reply to some of your comments above.

I’ll just mention one item, which we can discuss in email: In you last response to me and your last comment above you’ve offered ideas for how to reduce population growth (which, contrary to your assumption, I have indeed discussed in past articles, though awareness of the problem itself is currently a higher priority) and ideas for how to reduce economic growth. If you wish to do anything to effect these changes, then I think you should talk to Don Roberton, the American philosopher, because he’ll tell you you’re practicing science, and that it’s bad stuff.

You have my complete support. The global challenges before humanity will likely require the sincere efforts of many people like you, who are going to be doing many things that will move our species away from an unsustainable way of life toward something different that is more likely sustainable. That looks to me like the task at hand.

Of the many things you report, and I am one who deeply appreciates your perspective and positions, there is one thing you say that strikes me as vital.

As you suggest, people must be active and there are many ways of being a good activist, that is to say, a humane and honorable activist, one who will be an example for others to follow. In the early days of transition to begin in our time and proceeding through the coming years, every one of us who is active now is a leader. It seems to me that we have to be humane, careful and skillful, as well as outspoken, bold and courageous, in what we do as activists.

Always,

Steve

The problem is how to affect a slowing, or as I would say is necessary, a negative economic growth. So let me lend some tentative analysis to the various ways I see to affect that goal.

1) Brute force sabotage
a) bombs, assassinations, spread war or pestilence, attack the world’s infrastructure making it impossible to consume or produce, degrade the world’s moral conscience and let mayhem and murder do its work

2) Education consciousness raising
a) educate the populace that consumerism and growth policies are collectively suicidal
b) educate the populace that a crucial, or several key components of consumerism and growth policies are immoral, unappealing and socially taboo, heritical or blasphemous (take your pick there)

3) Political conquest and the passage of laws, rules and regulations that would limit growth
c) build a political party, affect a platform, and run for office to sieze control of the economy through a massive bureaucratic action

4) Economic conquest that would seize control of the means of production and the opportunities for consumption and control these, or a single or multiple necessary components that would strangle growth.
a) out-Bill Gates Bill Gates and out-Sam Walton Sam Walton, by producing the most successful commodity stream yet invented, one that has a smaller footprint and yet profitably satiates the human desire to own and to spend
b) buy up all the real estate and gate out all the producers and the consumers, or seize some other key component in a rear guard action

5) Create a social invention that would reorganize society into a new groupings making consumption and production act in a different manner than these do today
a) such a movement that would be the antithesis of globalization, where secessionist movements are set forth as a human right allowing the social and political world to fragment into a great number of feudal-like enclaves that sought self sufficiency
b) or anything similar along these lines

5) All or a combination of any of the above

Now, as this provides at least a tentative start at enumerating the possible means to accomplish these ends, perhaps they should be better qualified by adding their potential for success.

As I have made it clear which I think is the most likely to succeed, I’ll let others here prioritize how they might see the success of these or any other methods they might come up with.

I will say though, I think the movie route can only encourage consumption, and that it cannot discourage consumption unless it encourages something on the list specifically or another possible alternative.

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher

:0)

Let us also not entertain those who shout that SOMEONE ELSE out there — government, big-businesses etc. — should be doing something. Because that does not help at all.

Let us only entertain the opinions of those who are considering some form of action that involves themselves… including lobbying the powers-that-be, generating awareness, disturbing the current growth-oriented mindset through various forms of activism… whatever.

Ones actions may not necessarily what we consider appropriate, but an unwillingness to act (or a willingness to just flow with the consumerist tide) is absolute poison.

So let us stop wasting our time and mindspace with people who have nothing positive to contribute.

We need to be aggressive to get the world’ attention. We need to stop being nice guys, comfortable in our ‘alternative economics’ circle.

We need to get OUT THERE and create a debate, a ruckus in the ‘real economics’ space, which is currently filled with bullshit projections of GDP growth by various nations…. bullshit because these projections do not factor in the ECOLOGICAL & SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS of growth, and the PLANETARY RESOURCE & RECYCLING CAPACITY LIMITATIONS.

We need to move the Genuine Progress Indicator into the mindspace of governments, administrators, businesses and informed citizens everywhere. Currently, their dialectics and decisions are driven by dreamy-headed theories like the BRIC nation theory promoted by Goldman Sachs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC).

MY SPECIFIC SUGGESTION IS: Please publicly rubbish the BRIC theory and such other woolly-minded thoughts. Please let us launch a concerted attack NOW! Let us all target them through the media.

Please let us all be the kids who shout aloud, “The Emperor has no clothes on! He is buck-naked.” Because if we don’t, nobody will… and time is running out.

It would be media-friendly for us to form an Economic Forum, with some sort of formal name and formally declared doctrine, such as ‘Economics that listens to the Ecology?’

Warmly,
Krish

PS: Guys, I can see I’m coming across kinda loud here — rather like an over-eager adolescent — but it’s just that I wanna make the point with a minimum of niceties. If offended, kindly excuse.

All the Best!

Warmly,
Krish

Perhaps I have not given you enough of your due as you plod along seemingly disinterested defending what is clearly a more majority (if indefensible) view. This condescending notion expressed thus:

“I suspect going any further with this will be repetitive, so I may not pursue this line of discussion further unless I see that I’ve neglected to include some relevant thought which I think would further clarify the issues.”

Is only a surrender made upon the merits of the case given to you thus far. I have heard this argument before, many times, and it doesn’t wash out well in the historic clothing. It is a surrender from behind the walls of a personally entrenched dogma.

I apologize if you cannot see that you are traversing new and uncharted ground, nor that I am fleshing out my own more novel position due to the opportunities you have afforded me. Three or four times I have gone back and amended my own work due to our discussions here.

I mean not at all to simply take advantage of your willingness to play the dupe here. So, I will concientiously address your points one by one, and, should you decide not to respond, then so be it.

1) ” [...] opinion [...] promoting “rewilding,” a return to a more primitive way of living [...]” is a loaded statement I do not find in line with what I have consistently asserted. I have argued for humanity’s embrace of civilization, and a civilized humanity. I have consistently likened science to witchcraft, and not something offensely too modern for my own “primitive” tastes. You read too much between my lines if you think I am a back to the earther. I would of course have you see me rather as more modern than you or anyone else you know.

This was perhaps just a passing idea you had about my ideas, and you need not address my revulsion at the idea you have made of mine though unexpressed that way.

2) You seem to want to avert criticism by stating my “opinions” have no merit because they are “opinions.” That’s not even an interesting argument. So, I’ll let it slip overboard like any one of your dead sailors should similarly be disposed.

3) This paragraph, “I don’t think there’s a clean dividing line between human actions in general and those aimed at improving the future. If we tried not at all to improve the future, many of our actions would nevertheless overlap with those we now take with improvement of the future in mind. So I don’t think we can say we suddenly start being destructive the moment we include a thought of improving the future in our actions.” Is a misinterpretation of what I have said.

I said, We should stop rearranging the pictures on the walls and redesigning the plumbing in an effort to make the place better in our PRESENT in the belief we have some competence and capacity to confer some benefit upon the future by our ill thought out improvements.

History has simply shown improvements to the present necessarily confer a detriment upon the future because of the overwhelming complexity of reality, all alternatives being wholly incapable of being thought through by human reason.

I further stated and will re-emphasize, We are being categorically immoral whenever we gamble the future by our actions. It is a categorical moral statement because such detriments as arise from these gambles create a cumulative debasement of the future.

My wife and I visited Niagara Falls two years ago. If you ever get there, or you have been there, perhaps you should consider all the improvements made to the place.

I know you are timid of these moral arguments, as you avoid them, but this is the gist of what I am driving at. Morality is not relative. It is precise and can and must prioritise all our reason and logic, less these should fail due to a lack of due heed to Categorical Knowledge.

Your final argument in this line of reasoning is that, “[...] as long as I’m not absolutely convinced collapse is inevitable, it only makes sense to work to avert or at least mitigate it.”

You have ignored every bit of my argument when you make such a statement. You seem to be saying, or so I hear you say, this is just how I feel, (regardless of the moral deficit of my judgment here).

Still, if what you want to do can be done without any gamble to the future, go for it with my philosophic blessings. But, Hail Mary passes are simply immoral, where everyene dies, and even a simple running play is likely only to make matters worse.

As for my bent here to accomplish your stated goal to prevent the collapse whenever it may ultimately manifest itself beyond its sure rumbling and grinding annoyance we see today, I have previously suggested exposing the pragmatic liars who say we must make a choice quickly, and also by exposing empirical science as a fraud for its benefit for humanity.

This is the most moral course, as well as the only reasonable or logical course given the downside of increasing the speed of an ever worsening deterioration of the prospects for humanity.

The pragmatists and the empiricists are both P.T. Barnums with a song and something to sell us. Their reason and logic are not cogent for these are not moral. This is my well tested and well proven assertion that is provided in my work, that for logic or reason to be cogent, it MUST be moral.

It is no wonder so many have difficulty with my views. No one before me ever said logic and reason must be moral for these to be cogent.

The reason this knowledge has not been given to us before this time like that is because no one had discovered Kant’s Catgeorical Imperative before 2006, when I discovered it. Again:

The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.

That is one of a very few categorically true statements. By understanding it well, you can glimpse Categorical Knowledge and thereby entirely alter all reason and logic refining it toward real truth.

I will come back to your notions about what can be done, and how to go about it, regardless of whether or not you are convinced the collapse is inevitable, and your humanitarian need to go to the rescue..

3)”As I’ve said, the things I and many others here promote (e.g., reducing population growth, addressing economic growth) really aren’t science.”

You would have a few dissenters among social scientists and economists about what is or is not a science. Generally, almost everything is empirical science today, and as I have said, I have gone to great pains to provide a proof that all empirical science is merely a religion.

One of the major assertions of my work is that empirical science must stand upon its historic merits compared to other religions. For due to my (soon enough to be) immortal work empirical science no longer has any philosophic basis to assert any (primitive/modern) superiority over other religions. I have unequivocally proved, science is but another religion, and at that, one most akin to witchcraft.

This is a very tough hill to climb, the notion that empirical science is but another religion. But the view from there is quite spectacular. You can see Paradise from there on a clear day. (It is likely a mirage because of human nature, but the view in that direction is indeed quite lovely. For one thing I would restore Niagara Falls to its Seventeenth Century splendor.)

Back to what is science.

From one perspective economics can be described as a science of efficiency. It is still today wrongly heralded as a great boon for humanity. The almost universal belief is that economic growth is magic.

The defeat of economics in the arena of truth arrives not too late when we realize every increase in efficiency for its benefit to humanity arrives still born as a net negative at our doorstep as another package from the stork, (over population,) more science, (dangerous knowledge sets humanity is incapable of surviving,) and a more tenuously supported human population (due to increased complexity in culture and society.)

You have asserted you are for population control, but your assertion comes with no recommended actions for the solution, or none anyway that could even approach the time honored methods of war, murder, starvation and pestilence.

In my work I have encouraged stigmatizing mothers (who hold the keys to the birthing machines) who have more than a child or two.

Nancy Pelosi is a good target here. She is roughly my age, and had five children. I know the education she received, and I honestly do not understand where she got off the boat. You must call a pig a pig, and if you have to spit in their faces to get their attention, then you spit in their faces. Nancy Pelosi is simply a pig and a horrible role model for youth.

Finally you come up with this, “We have opinions based on evidence as we assess it.” You then go on to assert I am conceited, which is certainly true, so I take no offense by your noting it. I am in excellent company. When I am dead it will be a fair statement to say, he was conceited. And when I am long dead, it will still be true to say he held a very high opinion of his opinions. (The sting of such an accusation dissipates quickly, doesn’t it?)

Behind your assertion, and further exemplied by your closing remarks is this implicit notion that you hold a relative reality to be the only truthful reality.

Let me help you dispel that notion.

Philosophy holds itself out as the pinnacle and at the apogee of all human knowledge. From the view expressed by the most able philosophers we find quite astounding statements that blend across broad swathes of other human knowledge.

So, let me share with you something about “relativity”.

While there are many facits of reality that are relative to other facets of reality, and those relative to yet other facets of reality again and again, until the whole of reality demonstrates to us quite convincingly that we can know nothing if we do not know everything, in the final analysis, there is only one reality. And it is not relative to anything.

So we should not take our relative notions to mean we cannot rule out what is not reality.

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher

Ah, okay, so you see collapse as inevitable and any effort to prevent or mitigate it as bound to make it worse.

(1) That collapse is inevitable is a respectable opinion, but it is only an opinion. At this point no one knows for sure if it might be averted or significantly mitigated. (Yes, it may be in process as we speak. Another respectable opinion. That doesn’t really alter my argument.) Some good sites sharing your opinion are those promoting “rewilding,” a return to a more primitive way of living once human numbers have declined to well under 1 billion.

My view is that as long as I’m not absolutely convinced collapse is inevitable, it only makes sense to work to avert or at least mitigate it. Note that reducing population growth – to take one example – should be one of the few actions we can take now which would, in fact, have a mitigating effect in the event of a major collapse some decades down the road.

The same problem of “opinion” applies to the notion that any efforts to avert or mitigate are absolutely destined to make things worse.

(2) I don’t think there’s a clean dividing line between human actions in general and those aimed at improving the future. If we tried not at all to improve the future, many of our actions would nevertheless overlap with those we now take with improvement of the future in mind. So I don’t think we can say we suddenly start being destructive the moment we include a thought of improving the future in our actions.

(3) As I’ve said, the things I and many others here promote (e.g., reducing population growth, addressing economic growth) really aren’t science. So, while I’m sure we could discuss and quibble about science, it’s a discussion which may not, in any event, apply.

(4) You say, “forget the golden rule and do for the future as you would have had the past do for us in the present.” Among other things, I would have had the past pay more attention to population growth and economic growth. In some cultures they did. Unfortunately, though, the culture which came to dominate did not.

Don, I don’t think it is possible for anyone to have the answers here. We have opinions based on evidence as we assess it. No one knows for sure how things are going to turn out or what the sum of our actions today may be. I think your view is reasonable, and can be supported with evidence. But the same can be said of mine. Because I think it is a kind of conceit to think one has the absolute answers on these things, I am, in fact, less willing than you to commit to an absolute view, and remain somewhat agnostic on the matters involved, though admittedly leaning slightly in a particular direction. One argument you can throw at me but which I will not convince me is that you know absolutely the answer and have arrived at a singularly correct course of action to the exclusion of all logical alternatives.

I suspect going any further with this will be repetitive, so I may not pursue this line of discussion further unless I see that I’ve neglected to include some relevant thought which I think would further clarify the issues.

Thank you. These three articles on “the hidden holocaust” are all wonderful. There’s not much new in them, but for wrapping things up quite elegantly, Nafeez Ahmed he deserves all manner of credit.

Thanks for the link. I believe I ran across that blog once before, but never had a chance to look closely.

I’ll read it with interest.