The Fatal Taboo: Endless Growth

It’s obvious when you hold a petri dish up and smear some bacteria on it that, without intervention, one day the bacteria will run out of resources and die. Our minds can comprehend that, despite the tiny, tiny size of the baceria at work, they will run out of food. We can see the full extent of their food, the resource we have given them to survive on. The Bacteria, we have to assume, is unaware that it is in a little biosphere with enough food to last it X amount of time. Once it starts multiplying it has half-X, a quarter-X, one-eighth-X, etc.

We assumes the bacteria doesn’t understand its situation because we imagine that, given the same set of circumstances, we would be more frugal with the resource, aiming to make it last as long as we possibly can. We assume the bacteria is stupid and we are smart. Indeed, when faced with a size of resource that fits into our field of view we can be very frugal, we can ration for ourselves and decide how much to use on any given day with the end goal of making it last as long as we can. When faced with a resource that doesn’t fit into our field of view we act like the bacteria.

It brings up Richard Heinberg’s question again: Are we smarter than yeast?

When you try and make them face the reality of a infinite growth system on a finite world, most people don’t have the head-space for it. You can try all you like to tell them that inifinity inside something finite doesn’t work. You can use the Kalam Cosmological Argument (intended as a proof of God’s/Allah’s existence, but serviceable), which hinges on Zeno’s Paradox to shoot down the idea of infinity within a finite space. You can pick numbers so astronomically huge and depletion rates so tiny and show them how steady depletion at that rate isn’t sustainable, let alone a growth in depletion rate. They tend not to comprehend. Whether this is a case of it being impossible to tell someone something that the way they lead their lives necessitates being counter to what you’re saying, or it’s a case of the failings of the education system yet again, it’s not important. You often can’t explain this in such a way as it passes the filters in place over most people’s minds. Growth is good. Infinite growth is highly desireable. Recessions are terrible. Ever increasing profits are to be rewarded with praise.

“We are imprisoned by our political Hippocratic oath: we will deliver unto the electorate more goodies than anybody else. Such an oath was only ever achievable by increasing our despoliation of the world’s resources. Our economic model is not so different in the cold light of day to that of the Third Reich – which knew it could only expand by grabbing what it needed from its neighbours.

“Genocide followed. Now there is a case to answer that genocide is once again an apt description of how we are pursuing business as usual, wilfully ignoring the consequences for the poorest people in the world.” – Challen, ‘We must think the unthinkable, and take voters with us,’ The Independent, March 28, 2006.

There are resources which are termed as ‘renewable’. The tag is often used interchangeably with ‘infinite’, but a lot of them aren’t. Trees are often called renewable, but they are certainly not infinite. They are renewable so long as they are used at a rate which they can recover from. Since we are losing over 2% of the forest cover of the planet each year, it’s not extreme to suggest we are using trees at a rate greater than they are replenished. We live in a growth-based system. If we are deforresting at a rate of 2% this year, then next year we aim to be deforresting at a rate of 2.04%, the year after that we aim to be deforresting at a rate of 2.08%, 10 years after that we aim to be deforresting at a rate of 2.54%, in a further 10 years we aim to be deforresting at a rate of 3.09%. That’s with the ’stable’ growth that most governments want of 2% per year.

If you change that to the more optimistic growth desires of large companies, who want to grow as much as possible but we’ll cap it at 5% instead then 20 years after that 2% starting point you’re at 5.05%. Of course, when you’re talking about organisms which need other organisms around to make their next generation then you’re talking about a much more complicated system, but if the rate of tree reproduction could be kept constant while this rising number of tree destruction continues then 20 years after the start of the 5% growth chart you’re left with about half the trees you started with. Small percentages result in a depletion that is horrific.

No one is really willing to accept that they may need to be paid less and less each year, mother culture has promised more and more money each year. No one is really willing to accept that they may need to have fewer and fewer things each year, mother culture has promised more and more things each year. The argument often spewed by those on the other side of the fence is that I just want to make you all live in caves again. That’s not really accurate. I’m saying one day we will probably be living in caves again, maybe not in our life time, but within the life time of our traceable children. I’m suggesting we might want to make that time as far off in the future as we possibly can. I’m suggesting we might want to control the decrease in resource use rather than have it dictated to us by the planet.

I’m only suggesting that people start to ask the questions, start to debate what needs to be debated. I’m also suggesting that a lot of the standard discourse around these issues is fog, smear, smoke blown out by large companies to hide the reality, to cloud judgements.