Sustainable Development

The history of Sustainable Development according the UK Sustainable Development Commission:

The concept of sustainable development formed the basis of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The summit marked the first international attempt to draw up action plans and strategies for moving towards a more sustainable pattern of development. It was attended by over 100 Heads of State and representatives from 178 national governments. The Summit was also attended by representatives from a range of other organisations representing civil society. Sustainable development was the solution to the problems of environmental degradation discussed by the Brundtland Commission in the 1987 report Our Common Future.

The remit of the Brundtland Report was to investigate the numerous concerns that had been raised in previous decades, namely, that human activity was having severe and negative impacts on the planet, and that patterns of growth and development would be unsustainable if they continued unchecked. Key works that highlighted this thinking included Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), Garret Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons (1968), the Blueprint for Survival by the Ecologist magazine (1972) and the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report (1972).

The concept of sustainable development received its first major international recognition in 1972 at the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm. The term was not referred to explicitly, but nevertheless the international community agreed to the notion - now fundamental to sustainable development - that both development and the environment, hitherto addressed as separate issues, could be managed in a mutually beneficial way.

The term was popularised 15 years later in Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, which included what is deemed the 'classic' definition of sustainable development: "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

It was not until the Rio Summit, however, that major world leaders recognised sustainable development as the major challenge it remains today.

More recently, the World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg in 2002, attended by 191 national governments, UN agencies, multilateral financial institutions and other major groups to assess progress since Rio. The Johannesburg Summit delivered three key outcomes: a political declaration, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, and a range of partnership initiatives. Key commitments included those on sustainable consumption and production, water and sanitation, and energy.

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This history ties the scheme back to two popular science books, an article in Ecologist Magazine and a report called The Club of Rome.

The article in Ecologist magazine was the main source for the Brundtland Report and the Club of Rome was a major influence over the Ecologist magazine 'Blueprint for Survival.'

Here are some stupid quotes in Blueprint for Survival :

" The principal defect of the industrial way of life with its ethos of expansion is that it is not sustainable. Its termination within the lifetime of someone born today (1972) is inevitable."

"unless it continues to be sustained for a while longer by an entrenched minority at the cost of imposing great suffering on the rest of mankind."

"We can be certain, however, that sooner or later it will end and that it will do so in one of two ways: either against our will, in a succession of famines, epidemics, social crises and wars."

" Radical change is both necessary and inevitable."

" The developed nations consume such disproportionate amounts of protein, raw materials and fuels that unless they considerably reduce their consumption there is no hope of the undeveloped nations markedly improving their standards of living. "

Blueprint for Survival

= A Blueprint for Survival – Preface = by Edward Goldsmith · Robert Allen · January 1, 1972 · Leave a Comment · Share · Print

Preface : A Blueprint for Survival.

The Blueprint occupied the entire issue of The Ecologist Vol. 2 No. 1, January 1972, in advance of the world’s first Environment Summit (the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm).

The principal authors were Edward Goldsmith and Robert Allen, with additional help from Michael Allaby, John Davoll, and Sam Lawrence.

So great was demand for A Blueprint for Survival that it was republished in book form later that year by Penguin Books, on 14 September 1972.

contents · next chapter »

THIS DOCUMENT has been drawn up by a small team of people, all of whom, in different capacities, are professionally involved in the study of global environmental problems.

Four considerations have prompted us to do this: This we have tried to do, and our  Blueprint for Survival  heralds the formation of the  Movement for Survival  and, it is hoped, the dawn of a new age in which Man will learn to live with the rest of Nature rather than against it.
 * 1) An examination of the relevant information available has impressed upon us the extreme gravity of the global situation today. For, if current trends are allowed to persist, the breakdown of society and the irreversible disruption of the life-support systems on this planet, possibly by the end of the century, certainly within the lifetimes of our children, are inevitable.
 * 2) Governments, and ours is no exception, are either refusing to face the relevant facts, or are briefing their scientists in such a way that their seriousness is played down. Whatever the reasons, no corrective measures of any consequence are being undertaken.
 * 3) This situation has already prompted the formation of the Club of Rome, a group of scientists and industrialists from many countries, which is currently trying to persuade governments, industrial leaders and trade unions throughout the world to face these facts and to take appropriate action while there is yet time. It must now give rise to a national movement to act at a national level, and if need be to assume political status and contest the next general election. It is hoped that such an example will be emulated in other countries, thereby giving rise to an international movement, complementing the invaluable work being done by the Club of Rome.
 * 4) Such a movement cannot hope to succeed unless it has previously formulated a new philosophy of life, whose goals can be achieved without destroying the environment, and a precise and comprehensive programme for bringing about the sort of society in which it can be implemented.

The Ecologist

Edward Goldsmith, Robert Allen, Michael Allaby, John Davoll, Sam Lawrence.

Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the valuable comments contributed by Gerald Leach, The Rt. Rev. Hugh Montefiore, Brian Johnson and John Papworth.

We are grateful to Parts of the Introduction and “Towards the Stable Society”, notably those sections on stabilising the population and on creating a new social system, have been adapted from  The Fall of Man  by Robert Allen (to be published later this year [1972] by Allen Lane, The Penguin Press) by permission of author and publisher. Back to top
 * Potomac Associates, Washington DC, for permission to reproduce a graph from their forthcoming book  The Limits of Growth  by Dennis Meadows;
 * to the MIT Press for permission to use a number of tables and to quote extensively from their book  Man’s Impact on the Global Environment: the Study of Critical Environmental Problems  (SCEP);
 * to Pemberton Books for permission to reproduce a graph from their book  Population and Liberty  by Jack Parsons;
 * to Collier-MacMillan for permission to reproduce two tables from their book  Too Many  by Georg Borgstrom;
 * to Tom Stacey for permission to quote extensively from his book  Can Britain Survive?, edited by Edward Goldsmith.

Statement of Support
The undersigned, without endorsing every detail, fully support the basic principles embodied in the  Blueprint for Survival  which follows both in respect of the analysis of the problems
 * Prof. Don Arthur, MSC PhD DSC FIBiOI, Professor of Zoology, King’s College, London.
 * Prof. D. Bryce-Smith, DSC. Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Reading.
 * Prof. C. F. Cornford, Hon ARCA, Royal College of Art, London.
 * Sir Frank Fraser Darling.
 * Prof. G. W. Dimbleby, BSc MA DPhil, Professor of Human Environment, Institute of Archaeology, London.
 * Prof. George Dunnet, BSc PhD, Professor of Zoology, University of Aberdeen.
 * Dr. P. N. Edmunds, BSc MD MRCPath, Dept. of Bacteriology, Fife District Laboratory.
 * Prof. R. W. Edwards, DSC FIBiol, Professor of Applied Biology, University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology.
 * Dr. S. R. Eyre, BSc, phD, Dept. of Geography, University of Leeds.
 * Prof. Douglas Falconer, BSc PhD FIBiol, Professor of Genetics, University of Edinburgh.
 * Prof. John Friend, BSc PhD FIBiol. Professor of Botany, University of Hull.
 * Prof. F. W. Grimes,CBE DLitt FFA FMA. Institute of Archaeology, University of London.
 * Prof. John Hawthorn, BSc PhD FRSE ERIC FIFST, Professor of Food Science, University of Strathclyde.
 * Sir Peter Medawar, CH FRS, Nobel Prize Laureate, Medical Research Council, Former Director of MRC.
 * Prof. G. Melvyn Howe, MSC PhD, Professor of Geography, University of Strathclyde.
 * Sir Julian Huxley, FRS.
 * Dr. David Lack, DSC FRS, Reader in Ornithology, Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, University of Oxford.
 * Dr. J. P. Lester, British Medical Association.
 * Dr. John A. Loraine, DSC MB PhD FRCPEd, Director MRC Clinical Endocrinology Unit, Edinburgh.
 * Diana G. M. Loraine.
 * Dr. Aubrey Manning, BSC DPhiI. Reader in Zoology, University of Edinburgh.
 * Prof. Vincent Marks, Prof. of Biology, University of Surrey.
 * Prof. Ivor Mills, PhD MD FRCP, Professor of Medicine, Dept. of Investigative Medicine, University of Cambridge.
 * Dr. E. Mishan, PhD, Reader in Economics, London School of Economics, and Professor of Economics, American University, Washington.
 * Prof. P. J. Newbould, BA PhD FIBioI, Professor of Biology, The New University of Ulster.
 * Prof. The Marquess Of Queensberry, Hon Des RCA MSIA, Royal College of Art, London.
 * Prof. F0rbes W. Robertson, PhD DSC FIBiOI, Professor of Genetics, University of Aberdeen.
 * Prof. W. A. Robson, BScEcon LLM PhD DLitt de L’Universitè, Professor Emeritus in Public Administration, London School of Economics.
 * Dr. J. Rose, MSc PhD FIL FRIC, Director, Institute of Environmental Sciences, and Editor,  International Journal of Environmental Sciences.
 * Sir Edward Salisbury, FRS.
 * Dr. R. Scorer, MA PhD FRSH FIMA, Imperial College London and member of the Clean Air Council.
 * Peter Scott, CBE DSC LID, Hon. Director the Wild Fowl Trust.
 * Dr. Malcolm Slesser, BSC phD, Dept. of Pure and Applied Chemistry, University of Strathclyde.
 * Prof. C. H. Waddington, CBE FRS, Professor of Animal Genetics, University of Edinburgh.
 * Dr. A. Watson, RSE. DSc PhD FRSE.
 * Prof. V. C. Wynne-Edwards, FRS, Regius Professor of Natural History, University of Aberdeen and Chairman, Natural Environment Research Council.

= Introduction: the need for change = by Edward Goldsmith · Robert Allen · January 1, 1972 · Leave a Comment · Share · Print

Section 1 : A Blueprint for Survival.

The Blueprint occupied the entire issue of The Ecologist Vol. 2 No. 1, January 1972, in advance of the world’s first Environment Summit (the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm).

The principal authors were Edward Goldsmith and Robert Allen, with additional help from Michael Allaby, John Davoll, and Sam Lawrence.

So great was demand for A Blueprint for Survival that it was republished in book form later that year by Penguin Books, on 14 September 1972.

Note : click on images to enlarge.

« previous chapter · contents · next chapter »

110. –  The principal defect of the industrial way of life with its ethos of expansion is that it is not sustainable. Its termination within the lifetime of someone born today is inevitable unless it continues to be sustained for a while longer by an entrenched minority at the cost of imposing great suffering on the rest of mankind. We can be certain, however, that sooner or later it will end (only the precise time and circumstances are in doubt), and that it will do so in one of two ways: either against our will, in a succession of famines, epidemics, social crises and wars; or because we want it to – because we wish to create a society which will not impose hardship and cruelty upon our children – in a succession of thoughtful, humane and measured changes. We believe that a growing number of people are aware of this choice, and are more interested in our proposals for creating a sustainable society than in yet another recitation of the reasons why this should be done. We will therefore consider these reasons only briefly, reserving a fuller analysis for the four appendices which follow the Blueprint proper.

111.  Radical change is both necessary and inevitable because the present increases in human numbers and  per capita  consumption, by disrupting ecosystems and depleting resources, are undermining the very foundations of survival. At present the world population of 3,600 million is increasing by 2 percent per year (72 million), but this overall figure conceals crucially important differences between countries. The industrialised countries with one-third of the world population have annual growth rates between 0.5 percent and 1.0 percent; the undeveloped countries on the other hand, with two-thirds of the world population, have annual growth rates of between 2 and 3 percent, and from 40 to 45 percent of their populations is under 15. It is commonly overlooked that in countries with an unbalanced age structure of this kind, the population will continue to increase for many years even after fertility has fallen to the replacement level. As the Population Council has pointed out:  “if replacement is achieved in the developed world by 2000 and in the developing world by 2040, then the world’s population will stabilise at nearly 15.5 billion (15,500 million) about a century hence, or well over four times the present size”.

112.  The  per capita  use of energy and raw materials also shows a sharp division between the developed and the undeveloped parts of the world. Both are increasing their use of these commodities, but consumption in the developed countries is so much higher that, even with their smaller share of the population, their consumption may well represent over 80 percent of the world total. For the same reason, similar percentage increases are far more significant in the developed countries; to take one example, between 1957 and 1967  per capita  steel consumption rose by 12 percent in the US and by 41 percent in India, but the actual increases (in kg per year) were from 568 to 634 and from 9.2 to 13 respectively. Nor is there any sign that an eventual end to economic growth is envisaged, and indeed industrial economies appear to break down if growth ceases or even slows, however high the absolute level of consumption. Even the US still aims at an annual growth of GNP of 4 percent or more. Within this overall figure much higher growth rates occur for the use of particular resources, such as oil.

113.  The combination of human numbers and  per capita  consumption has a considerable impact on the environment, in terms of both the resources we take from it and the pollutants we impose on it. A distinguished group of scientists, who came together for a  Study of Critical Environmental Problems  (SCEP) under the auspices of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, state in their report the clear need for a means of measuring this impact, and have coined the term ‘ecological demand’, which they define as  “a summation of all man’s demands on the environment, such as the extraction of resources and the return of wastes”. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is population multiplied by material standard of living appears to provide the most convenient measure of ecological demand, and according to the UN Statistical Yearbook this is increasing annually by 5 to 6 percent, or doubling every 13.5 years. If this trend should continue, then in the time taken for world population to double (which is estimated to be by just after the year 2000), total ecological demand will have increased by a factor of six, SCEP estimate that

114.  It should go without saying that the world cannot accommodate this continued increase in ecological demand. Indefinite growth of whatever type cannot be sustained by finite resources. This is the nub of the environmental predicament. It is still less possible to maintain indefinite exponential growth – and unfortunately the growth of ecological demand is proceeding exponentially (i.e. it is increasing geometrically, by compound interest).

115.  The implications of exponential growth are not generally appreciated and are well worth considering. As Professor Forrester explains it [1]

116.  Thus, supposing world petroleum reserves stood at 2,100 billion barrels, and supposing our rate of consumption was increasing by 6.9 percent per year, then as can be seen from Figure 1, demand will exceed supply by the end of the century. What is significant, however, is not the speed at which such vast reserves can be depleted, but that as late as 1975 there will appear to be reserves fully ample enough to last for considerably longer. Such a situation can easily lull one into a false sense of security and the belief that a given growth rate can be sustained, if not indefinitely, at least for a good deal longer than is actually the case. It is perhaps worth bearing in mind that the actual rate of petroleum consumption is increasing by 6.9 percent per year and according to the optimistic estimate of W. P. Ryman, Deputy Exploration manager of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, world petroleum reserves (including deposits yet to be discovered) are about 2,100 billion barrels. The same basic logic applies to the availability of any resource including land, and it is largely because of this particular dynamic of exponential growth that the environmental predicament has come upon us so suddenly, and why its solution requires urgent and radical measures, many of which run counter to values which, in our industrial society we have been taught to regard as fundamental.

117.  If we allow the present growth rate to persist, total ecological demand will increase by a factor of 32 over the next 66 years – and there can be no serious person today willing to concede the possibility, or indeed the desirability, of our accommodating the pressures arising from such growth. For this can be done only at the cost of disrupting ecosystems and exhausting resources, which must lead to the failure of food supplies and the collapse of society. It is worth briefly considering each in turn.

Disruption of ecosystems
120.  We depend for our survival on the predictability of ecological processes. If they were at all arbitrary, we would not know when to reap or sow and we would be at the mercy of environmental whim. We could learn nothing about the rest of nature, advance no hypotheses, and suggest no ‘laws’. Fortunately, ecological processes are predictable, and although theirs is a relatively young discipline, ecologists have been able to formulate a number of important ‘laws’, one of which in particular relates to environmental predictability: namely, that all ecosystems tend towards stability, and further that the more diverse and complex the ecosystem the more stable it is; that is, the more species there are, and the more they interrelate, the more stable is their environment. By stability is meant the ability to return to the original position after any change, instead of being forced into a totally different pattern – and hence predictability.

121.  Unfortunately, we behave as if we knew nothing of the environment and had no conception of its predictability, treating it instead with scant and brutal regard as if it were an idiosyncratic and extremely stupid slave. We seem never to have reflected on the fact that a tropical rain forest supports innumerable insect species and yet is never devastated by them; that its rampant luxuriance is not contingent on our overflying it once a month and bombarding it with insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and what-have-you. And yet we tremble over our wheat fields and cabbage patches with a desperate battery of synthetic chemicals, in an absurd attempt to impede the operation of the immutable ‘law’ we have just mentioned – that all ecosystems tend towards stability, therefore diversity and complexity, therefore a growing number of different plant and animal species until a climax or optimal condition is achieved, if we were clever, we would recognise that successful long-term agriculture demands the achievement of an artificial climax, an imitation of the pre-existing ecosystem, so that the level of unwanted species could be controlled by those that did no harm to the crop-plants.

122.  Instead we have put our money on pesticides, which although they have been effective, have been so only to a limited and now diminishing extent: according to SCEP, the 34 percent increase in world food production from 1951 to 1966 required increased investments in nitrogenous fertilisers of 146 percent and in pesticides of 300 percent. At the same time they have created a number of serious problems, notably resistance – some 250 pest species are resistant to one group of pesticides or another, while many others require increased applications to keep their populations within manageable proportions – and the promotion of formerly innocuous species to pest proportions, because the predators that formerly kept them down have been destroyed. The spread of DDT and other organo-chlorines in the environment has resulted in alarming population declines among woodcock, grebes, various birds of prey and seabirds, and in a number of fish species, principally the sea trout. SCEP comments:

123.  There are half a million man-made chemicals in use today, yet we cannot predict the behaviour or properties of the greater part of them (either singly or in combination) once they are released into the environment. We know, however, that the combined effects of pollution and habitat destruction menace the survival of no less than 280 mammal, 350 bird, and 20,000 plant species. To those who regret these losses but greet them with the comment that the survival of Homo sapiens is surely more important than that of an eagle or a primrose, we repeat that  Homo sapiens himself depends on the continued resilience of those ecological networks of which eagles and primroses are integral parts. We do not need to utterly destroy the ecosphere to bring catastrophe upon ourselves: all we have to do is to carry on as we are, clearing forests, ‘reclaiming’ wetlands, and imposing sufficient quantities of pesticides, radioactive materials, plastics, sewage, and industrial wastes upon our air, water and land systems to make them inhospitable to the species on which their continued stability and integrity depend. Industrial man in the world today is like a bull in a china shop, with the single difference that a bull with half the information about the properties of china as we have about those of ecosystems would probably try and adapt its behaviour to its environment rather than the reverse. By contrast,  Homo sapiens industrialis  is determined that the china shop should adapt to him, and has therefore set himself the goal of reducing it to rubble in the shortest possible time. Back to top

Failure of food supplies
130.  Increases in food production in the undeveloped world have barely kept abreast of population growth. Such increases as there have been are due not to higher productivity but to the opening up of new land for cultivation. Unfortunately this will not be possible for much longer: all the good land in the world is now being farmed and according to the FAO[2] at present rates of expansion none of the marginal land that is left will be unfarmed by 1985 – indeed some of the land now under cultivation has been so exhausted that it will have to be returned to permanent pasture.

131.  For this reason, FAO’s programme to feed the world depends on a programme of intensification, at the heart of which are the new high-yield varieties of wheat and rice. These are highly responsive to inorganic fertilisers and quick-maturing, so that up to ten times present yields can be obtained from them. Unfortunately, they are highly vulnerable to disease, and therefore require increased protection by pesticides, and of course they demand massive inputs of fertilisers (up to 27 times present ones). Not only will these disrupt local ecosystems, thereby jeopardising long-term productivity, but they force hard-pressed undeveloped nations to rely on the agro-chemical industries of the developed world.

132.  Whatever their virtues and faults, the new genetic hybrids are not intended to solve the world food problem, but only to give us time to devise more permanent and realistic solutions. It is our view, however, that these hybrids are not the best means of doing this, since their use is likely to bring about a reduction in overall diversity, when the clear need is to develop an agriculture diverse enough to have long-term potential. We must beware of those ‘experts’ who appear to advocate the transformation of the ecosphere into nothing more than a food-factory for man. The concept of a world consisting solely of man and a few favoured food plants is so ludicrously impracticable as to be seriously contemplated only by those who find solace in their own wilful ignorance of the real world of biological diversity.

133.  We in Britain must bear in mind that we depend on imports for half our food, and that we are unlikely to improve on this situation. The 150,000 acres which are lost from agriculture each year are about 70 percent more productive than the average for all enclosed land, [3] while we are already beginning to experience diminishing returns from the use of inorganic fertilisers. In the period 1964-9, applications of phosphates have gone up by 2 percent, potash by 7 percent, and nitrogen by 40 percent, [4] yet yields per acre of wheat, barley, lucerne and temporary grass have levelled off and are beginning to decline, while that of permanent grass has risen only slightly and may be levelling off. [5] As  per capita  food availability declines throughout the rest of the world, and it appears inevitable it will, we will find it progressively more difficult and expensive to meet our food requirements from abroad. The prospect of severe food shortages within the next thirty years is not so much a fantasy as that of the continued abundance promised us by so many of our politicians. Back to top

Exhaustion of resources
140.  As we have seen, continued exponential growth of consumption of materials and energy is impossible. Present reserves of all but a few metals will be exhausted within 50 years, if consumption rates continue to grow as they are [see Graph 2]. Obviously there will be new discoveries and advances in mining technology, but these are likely to provide us with only a limited stay of execution. Synthetics and substitutes are likely to be of little help, since they must be made from materials which themselves are in short supply; while the hoped-for availability of unlimited energy would not be the answer, since the problem is the ratio of useful metal to waste matter (which would have to be disposed of without disrupting ecosystems), not the need for cheap power. Indeed, the availability of unlimited power holds more of a threat than a promise, since energy use is inevitably polluting, and in addition we would ultimately have to face the problem of disposing of an intractable amount of waste heat. Back to top

Collapse of society
150.  The developed nations consume such disproportionate amounts of protein, raw materials and fuels that unless they considerably reduce their consumption there is no hope of the undeveloped nations markedly improving their standards of living. This vast differential is a cause of much and growing discontent, made worse by our attempts at cultural uniformity on behalf of an expanding market economy. In the end, we are altering people’s aspirations without providing the means for them to be satisfied. In the rush to industrialise we break up communities, so that the controls which formerly regulated behaviour are destroyed before alternatives can be provided. Urban drift is one result of this process, with a consequent rise in anti-social practices, crime, delinquency and so on, which are so costly for society in terms both of money and of well-being.

151.  At the same time, we are sowing the seeds of massive unemployment by increasing the ratio of capital to labour so that the provision of each job becomes ever more expensive. In a world of fast diminishing resources, we shall quickly come to the point when very great numbers of people will be thrown out of work, when the material compensations of urban life are either no longer available or prohibitively expensive, and consequently when whole sections of society will find good cause to express their considerable discontent in ways likely to be anything but pleasant for their fellows.

152.  It is worth bearing in mind that the barriers between us and epidemics are not so strong as is commonly supposed. Not only is it increasingly difficult to control the vectors of disease, but it is more than probable that urban populations are being insidiously weakened by overall pollution levels, even when they are not high enough to be incriminated in any one illness. At the same time international mobility speeds the spread of disease. With this background, and at a time of widespread public demoralisation, the collapse of vital social services, such as power and sanitation, could easily provoke a series of epidemics-and we cannot say with confidence that we would be able to cope with them.

153 .  At times of great distress and social chaos, it is more than probable that governments will fall into the hands of reckless and unscrupulous elements, who will not hesitate to threaten neighbouring governments with attack, if they feel that they can wrest from them a larger share of the world’s vanishing resources. Since a growing number of countries (an estimated 36 by 1980) will have nuclear power stations, and therefore sources of plutonium for nuclear warheads, the likelihood of a whole series of local (if not global) nuclear engagements is greatly increased. Back to top

Conclusion
160.  A fuller discussion of ecosystems and their disruption, of social systems and their disruption, of population and food supply, and of resources and their depletion, can be found in Appendices A, B, C and D, respectively. There will be those who regard these accounts of the consequences of trying to accommodate present growth rates as fanciful. But the imaginative leap from the available scientific information to such predictions is negligible, compared with that required for those alternative predictions, laughably considered ‘optimistic’, of a world of 10,000 to 15,000 million people, all with the same material standard of living as the US, on a concrete replica of this planet, the only moving parts being their machines and possibly themselves. Faced with inevitable change, we have to make decisions, and we must make these decisions soberly in the light of the best information, and not as if we were caricatures of the archetypal mad scientist.

161.  By now it should be clear that the main problems of the environment do not arise from temporary and accidental malfunctions of existing economic and social systems. On the contrary, they are the warning signs of a profound incompatibility between deeply rooted beliefs in continuous growth and the dawning recognition of the earth as a space ship, limited in its resources and vulnerable to thoughtless mishandling. The nature of our response to these symptoms is crucial. If we refuse to recognise the cause of our trouble the result can only be increasing disillusion and growing strain upon the fragile institutions that maintain external peace and internal social cohesion. If, on the other hand, we can respond to this unprecedented challenge with informed and constructive action the rewards will be as great as the penalties for failure.

162.  We are sufficiently aware of ‘political reality’ to appreciate that many of the proposals we will make in the next chapter will be considered impracticable. However, we believe that if a strategy for survival is to have any chance of success, the solutions must be formulated in the light of the problems and not from a timorous and superficial understanding of what may or may not be immediately feasible. If we plan remedial action with our eyes on political rather than ecological reality, then very reasonably, very practicably, and very surely, we will muddle our way to extinction.

163.  A measure of political reality is that government has yet to acknowledge the impending crisis. This is to some extent because it has given itself no machinery for looking at energy, resources, food, environmental disruption and social disruption as a whole, as part of a general, global pattern, preferring instead to deal with its many aspects as if they were self-contained analytical units. Lord Rothschild’s Central Policy Review Staff in the Cabinet Office, which is the only body in government which might remedy the situation, appears not to think it worthwhile: at the moment at least, they are undertaking  “no specific studies on the environment that would require an environmentalist or ecologist”. There is a strong element of positive feedback here, in that there can be no appreciation of our predicament unless we view it in totality, and yet government can see no cause to do so unless it can be shown that such a predicament exists.

164.  Possibly because government sees the world in fragments and not as a totality, it is difficult to detect in its actions or words any coherent general policy, although both major political parties appear to be mesmerised by two dominating notions: that economic expansion is essential for survival and is the best possible index of progress and well-being; and that unless solutions can be devised that do not threaten this notion, then the problems should not be regarded as existing. Unfortunately, government has an increasingly powerful incentive for continued expansion in the tendency for economic growth to create the need for more economic growth. This it does in six ways: For all these reasons, we can expect our government (whether Conservative or Labour) to encourage further increases in GNP regardless of the consequences, which in any case tame ‘experts’ can be found to play down. It will curb growth only when public opinion demands such a move, in which case it will be politically expedient, and when a method is found for doing so without creating unemployment or excessive pressure on capital. We believe this is possible only within the framework of a fully integrated plan.
 * Firstly, the introduction of technological devices, i.e. the growth of the technosphere, can only occur to the detriment of the ecosphere, which means that it leads to the destruction of natural controls which must then be replaced by further technological ones. It is in this way that pesticides and artificial fertilisers create the need for yet more pesticides and artificial fertilisers.
 * Secondly, for various reasons, industrial growth, particularly in its earlier phases, promotes population growth. Even in its later phases, this can still occur at a high rate (0.5 percent in the UK). Jobs must constantly be created for the additional people – not just any job, but those that are judged acceptable in terms of current values. This basically means that the capital outlay per person employed must be maintained, otherwise the level of ‘productivity’ per man will fall, which is a determinant of both the ‘viability’ of economic enterprise and of the ‘standard of living’.
 * Thirdly, no government can hope to survive widespread and protracted unemployment, and without changing the basis of our industrial society, the only way government can prevent it is by stimulating economic growth.
 * Fourthly, business enterprises, whether state-owned or privately owned, tend to become self-perpetuating, which means that they require surpluses for further investment. This favours continued growth.
 * Fifthly, the success of a government and its ability to obtain support is to a large extent assessed in terms of its ability to increase the ‘standard of living’ as measured by  per capita  gross national product (GNP).
 * Finally, confidence in the economy, which is basically a function of its ability to grow, must be maintained to ensure a healthy state of the stock market. Were confidence to fall, stock values would crash, drastically reducing the availability of capital for investment and hence further growth, which would lead to further unemployment. This would result in a further fall in stock-market values and hence give rise to a positive-feedback chain-reaction, which under the existing order might well lead to social collapse.

165.  The emphasis must be on integration. If we develop relatively clean technologies but do not end economic growths, then sooner or later we will find ourselves with as great a pollution problem as before but without the means of tackling it. If we stabilise our economies and husband our non-renewable resources without stabilising our populations we will find we are no longer able to feed ourselves. As Forrester [1] and Meadows [6] convincingly make clear, daunting though an integrated programme may be, a piecemeal approach will cause more problems than it solves.

166.  Our task is to create a society which is sustainable and which will give the fullest possible satisfaction to its members. Such a society by definition would depend not on expansion but on stability. This does not mean to say that it would be stagnant – indeed it could well afford more variety than does the state of uniformity at present being imposed by the pursuit of technological efficiency. We believe that the stable society, the achievement of which we shall discuss in the next chapter, as well as removing the sword of Damocles which hangs over the heads of future generations, is much more likely than the present one to bring the peace and fulfilment which hitherto have been regarded, sadly, as utopian.

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Minimising the disruption of ecological processes
220.  Ecological processes can be disrupted by introducing into them either substances that are foreign to them or the correct ones in the wrong quantities. It follows therefore that the most common method of pollution ‘control’. namely dispersal, is not control at all, but a more or less useful way of playing for time. Refuse disposal by dumping solves the immediate problem of the householder, but as dumping sites are used up it creates progressively less soluble problems for society at large; smokeless fuels are invaluable signs of progress for the citizens of London or Sheffield, but the air pollution from their manufacture brings misery and ill-health to the people near the plants where they are produced; in many cases the dispersal of pollutants through tall chimneys merely alters the proportion of pollution, so that instead of a few receiving much, many receive some; and lastly, in estuarine and coastal waters – crucial areas for fisheries-nutrients from sewage and agricultural run-off in modest quantities probably increase productivity, but in excess are as harmful as organochlorines and heavy metals.

221.  Thus dispersal can be only a temporary expedient. Pollution control proper must consist of the recycling of materials, or the introduction of practices which are so akin to natural processes as not to be harmful. The long-term object of these pollution control procedures is to minimise our dependence on technology as a regulator of the ecological cycles on which we depend, and to return as much as possible to the natural mechanisms of the ecosphere, since in all but the short-term they are much more efficient and reliable. In the light of these remarks then, let us consider some contemporary pollution problems and how they might be solved.

222.  Pesticides. There is no way of controlling the disruption caused by pesticides save by using less and progress towards this end will probably require three operations: freeze, asystemic substitution, and systemic substitution. The freeze operation consists of the ending of any further commitment to pesticides, particularly the persistent organochlorines. For the developed countries this is a relatively simple procedure, and already the use of Dieldrin, DDT, and so on, is beginning to decline. For the undeveloped countries, however, it would be impossible without an undertaking from the developed ones to subsidise the supply of much more expensive substitutes. In the malaria control programme, for example, the replacement of DDT by malathion or propoxur would raise the cost of spraying operations from US $60 million a year to $184 million and $510 million respectively[1].

223.  Once such an undertaking is given, the undeveloped countries could proceed to the second operation. (There is no conceivable reason why the developed ones should not formally do so now.) This consists of the progressive substitution of non-persistent pesticides (organophosphates, carbamates, etc.) for the organochlorines. The third operation, the substitution of natural controls for pesticides in general could follow soon after. Two important points should be borne in mind: (a) it is most unlikely that the third stage could ever be complete – we will probably have to rely on the precision use of pesticides for some considerable time as part of a programme of integrated control; and (b) the second and third operations would proceed in harness until all countries had fully integrated pest control programmes. The drawback with integrated control (the combination of biological control, mechanical control, crop-species diversity and the precise use of species-specific pesticides) is that as yet we do not know enough about it, so that a full-scale research programme is urgently required. The agro-chemical industries should be encouraged to invest in integrated control programmes though plainly, since the profits cannot be so great as from chemical control, research will need public finance – as will the training of integrated control advisory teams to assist farmers, particularly in the undeveloped countries. Such an investment, however, will appear modest once integrated control is fully operational, in comparison with the vast sums of money currently being spent annually on pesticides. A typical operational procedure for the transfer from chemical to integrated control might be as follows: organochlorines phased out. Substitute pesticides phased in; in some cultivations these substitutes would be phased out almost immediately, to be replaced by integrated control; in others the time-table would be somewhat longer, depending on our understanding of the relevant agro-ecological processes and the availability of trained personnel.

224.  Fertilisers. While on many occasions the use of inorganic fertilisers is valuable, their overuse leads to two intractable problems: the pollution of freshwater systems by run-off, and diminishing returns due to the slow but inevitable impoverishment of the soil (see appendix on food supply). Again the solution will come through three operations: freeze, asystemic substitution, and systemic substitution. The first operation requires there to be no further increment in the application of inorganic fertilisers, and hence the removal of subsidies for them. Again this is relatively easy for the developed countries (although there may be some drop in yield per acre), but next to impossible for the undeveloped countries, which are now being introduced to the new genetic hybrids of rice and wheat. Since the remarkable responsiveness of these hybrids is contingent on massive fertiliser inputs (up to 27 times present ones), the undeveloped world is faced with an unenviable choice: either to keep alive its expanding population over the next ten years at the price of considerable damage to soil structure and long-term fertility; or to improve soil structure so that a good proportion of the population can be fed indefinitely, but in the knowledge that the population will probably be reduced to that proportion by such natural processes as famine and epidemic. In the long-term, of course, the solution lies in population control; but in the intervening period there seems to be no alternative to concentrating on agricultural methods that are sustainable even at the expense of immediate productivity. The consequences of not doing so are likely to be much worse than any failure to take full advantage of the new hybrids. In the meantime, an emergency food-supply must be created by the developed prime-producers (USA, USSR, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) so that as much as possible of any short-fall can be met during this difficult period.

225.  The second operation involves the gradual substitution of organic manures for inorganic fertilisers – though occasionally the latter will be used to supplement the former – and the return to such practices as rotation and leys; this would merge into the third operation: the adoption of highly diversified farming practices in place of monocultures. It is necessary to emphasise that this is not simply a return to traditional good husbandry: it is much more a change from flow fertility (whereby nutrients are imported from outside the agro-ecosystem, a proportion being utilised by food-plants, but with a large proportion leaving the agro-ecosystem in the form of run-off, etc.) to cyclic fertility (in which nutrients in the soil are used and then returned to it, in as closed a cycle as possible). The great advantage of nutrients in organic form is that the soil appears much better adapted to them. The nitrogen in humus, for example, is only 0.5 percent inorganic, the rest being in the form of rotting vegetation, decomposing insects and other animals, and animal manure. A high proportion of organic matter is essential for the soil to be easily workable over long periods (thus extending the period in which cultivations are timely), for it to retain water well without becoming saturated, for the retention of nutrients so that they remain available to plants until they are taken up by them (thus reducing wastage), and for the provision of the optimum environment for the micro-organisms so vital for long-term fertility. The rotation of leguminous plants and of grass grazed by animals are the most effective ways of adding organic matter to the soil, while at the same time allowing livestock to select their own food in the open has the double advantage that they are bred with a healthy fat-structure and their wastes enrich the soil instead of polluting waterways or overloading sewage systems. By diversifying farming in these and other ways we are taking advantage of the immense growth of knowledge about agricultural ecology, which plainly will increase with additional research.

226.  Domestic sewage. The volume of sewage is directly proportional to population numbers and can only be stabilised or reduced by stabilising or reducing the population. However, sewage can and should be disposed of much more efficiently. It is absurd that such valuable nutrients should be allowed to pollute fresh and coastal waters, or that society should be put to the expense of disposing of them in areas where they cannot be effectively utilised. Unfortunately, in developed countries, their disposal as agricultural fertiliser is not generally feasible, largely for two reasons: (a) they are contaminated by industrial wastes; (b) transportation costs are too high. Both difficulties can be overcome – in the first case by ensuring that there is no (or negligible) admixture of industrial to domestic effluents, which depends on better industrial pollution control (see below); and in the second case by decentralising so that there is an improved mix of rural and urban activities. This will be explored in the section on social systems. In undeveloped countries, the problem of domestic sewage could be overcome by the provision of aid to pay for sewage plants that yield purified water and usable sludge.

227.  Industrial wastes. Reduction of industrial effluent should proceed by two operations: a control operation, and an alternative (materials and energy conservative) technology operation. We have already suggested that the key to pollution control is not dispersal but recycling, and since recycling is a most important element in resource management it will be discussed in the section on stock economics. The alternative technology operation will be considered in the section on social systems. Back to top

Conversion to an economy of stock
230.  The transfer from flow to stock economics can be considered under two headings: resource management and social accounting.

231.  Resource management. It is essential that the throughput of raw materials be minimised both to conserve non-renewable resources and to cut down pollution. Since industry must have an economic incentive to be conservative of materials and energy and to recycle as much as possible, we propose a number of fiscal measures to these ends: 232.  The raw materials tax would obviously encourage recycling, and we can see how it might work if we consider such a vital resource as water. The growing conflict between farmers, conservationists and the water boards is evidence enough that demand for water is conflicting with other, no less important, values. At the moment, the water boards have no alternative but to fulfil their statutory obligation to meet demand and accordingly valley after valley comes under the threat of drowning. Clearly, unless we consider dry land an obstacle to progress, demand must be stabilised and since demand is a function of population numbers x  per capita consumption, both must be stabilised, if not reduced (and we have seen that for other reasons they must be reduced). To this end therefore, while a given minimum can be supplied to each person free of charge, any amount above that minimum should be made increasingly expensive. As far as industry is concerned, the net effect would be to encourage the installation of closed-circuit systems for water; total demand would be reduced, and there would be less pressure on lowland river systems.
 * 1) A raw materials tax. This would be proportionate to the availability of the raw material in question, and would be designed to enable our reserves to last over an arbitrary period of time, the longer the better, on the principle that during this time our dependence on this raw material would be reduced. This tax would penalise resource-intensive industries and favour employment-intensive ones. Like (b) below it would also penalise short-lived products.
 * 2) An amortisation tax. This would be proportionate to the estimated life of the product, e.g. it would be 100 percent for products designed to last no more than a year, and would then be progressively reduced to zero percent for those designed to last 100+ years. Obviously this would penalise short-lived products, especially disposable ones, thereby reducing resource utilisation and pollution, particularly the solid-waste problem. Plastics, for example, which are so remarkable for their durability, would be used only in products where this quality is valued, and not for single trip purposes. This tax would also encourage craftsmanship and employment-intensive industry.

233.  Despite the stimulus of a raw materials tax, however, it is likely that there would be a number of serious pollutants which It would be uneconomic to recycle, and still others for which recycling would be technically impossible. One thinks in particular of the radioactive wastes from nuclear power stations. Furthermore, recycling cannot do everything: there will always be a non-recoverable minimum, which as now, will have to be disposed of as safely as possible. This limitation can be made clear if we postulate a 3 percent growth rate and the introduction of pollution controls which reduce pollution by 80 percent throughout – it would then take only 52 years to bring us back where we started from, with the original amount of pollution but with a much greater problem of reducing it any further; if we had a 6 percent growth rate, we would reach this position in a mere 26 years. It is also worth mentioning that recycling consumes energy and is therefore polluting, so that it is necessary to develop recycling procedures which are energy conservative.

234.  The problem of uneconomic recycling can be resolved by the granting of incentives by government. Indeed, in the short-term, the entire recycling industry should be encouraged to expand, even though we know that in the long-term industrial expansion is self-defeating. This brings us to the intractable problem of the disposal of the undisposable, which can only be resolved by the termination of industrial growth and the reduction of energy demand. Again fiscal measures will be supremely important, and we propose one in particular: (c) A power tax. This would penalise power-intensive processes and hence those causing considerable pollution. Since machinery requires more power than people, it would at the same time favour the employment intensification of industry, i.e. create jobs. It would also penalise the manufacture of short-lived products. In addition to this tax, there should be financial incentives for the development and installation of total energy systems, a matter to which we shall return in the section on social systems.

235.  Finally, industrial pollution can also be reduced by materials substitution. The substitution of synthetic compounds for naturally occurring compounds has created serious environmental damage, since in some cases the synthetics can be broken down only with difficulty and in others not at all. The usage rate of these synthetics has increased immensely at the expense of the natural products, as can be seen from the following examples:[2] All of these processes consume the non-renewable fossil fuels, and their manufacture requires considerable inputs of energy. On the face of it, therefore, a counter-substitution of naturally occurring products would much reduce environmental disruption. However, it is possible that such a change-over, while it would certainly reduce disruption at one end, might dangerously increase it at the other. For example, many more acres would have to be put under cotton, thus increasing demand for pesticides, more land would have to be cleared and put under forest monocultures and so on. This problem can only be solved by reducing total consumption.
 * 1) In the US,  per capita  consumption of synthetic detergents increased by 300 percent between 1962 and 1968. They have largely replaced soap products,  per capita  consumption of which fell by 71 percent between 1944 and 1964.
 * 2) Synthetic fibres are rapidly replacing cotton, wool, silk and other natural fibres. In the US,  per capita  consumption of cotton fell by 33 percent between 1950 and 1968.
 * 3) The production of plastics and synthetic resins in the US has risen by 300 percent between 1958 and 1968. They have largely replaced wood and paper products.

236.  Genetic resources. Before leaving the subject of resources, it is appropriate that we consider the world’s diminishing stock of genetic resources. Genetic diversity is essential for the security of our food supply, since it is the sine qua non of plant breeding and introduction. The greater the number of varieties, the greater the opportunities for developing new hybrids with resistance to different types of pests and diseases and to extremes of climate. It is important that new hybrids be continually developed since resistance to a particular disease is never a permanent quality. The number of plant varieties to be found in nature is infinitely greater than the number we could create artificially. Most of them are to be found in the undeveloped countries either as traditional domesticated plants or as wild plants in habitats relatively unaltered by man. There is a real danger that the former will be replaced by contemporary high-yield varieties, while the latter will disappear when their habitats are destroyed. An FAO conference in 1967 concluded that the plant gene pool has diminished dangerously, for all over the world centres of diversity, our gene banks as it were, are disappearing and with them our chance of maintaining productivity in food[3].

237.  Such centres – areas of wilderness – are often destroyed because their importance is not understood. Because they seem less productive than fields of waving corn, or because they are not accessible or attractive to tourists, they are considered in need of ‘improvement’ or development, or simply as suitable dumping grounds for the detritus of civilisation. This is particularly true of wetlands – estuaries and marshes – where pollution, dredging, draining and filling are looked on almost with equanimity, certainly with scant regard for what is being lost. Yet the complex of living and decomposing grasses and of phytoplankton, characteristic of wetlands, supports vast numbers of fish and birds and makes it one of the world’s most productive ecosystems. Estuaries are the spawning grounds of very many fish and shellfish and form the base of the food-chain of some 60 percent of our entire marine harvest. Should they go we can expect a substantial drop in productivity.

238.  It is vital to the future well-being of man that wilderness areas and wetlands be conserved at all costs. This cannot be a matter simply of taking seed and storing it, since to be valuable genetic stock must continue to be subject to normal environmental pressures, and besides we have scarcely any idea of what plants we shall find useful in the future. For these reasons we must not only conserve large areas of natural habitat, we must also draw upon the knowledge and experience of the hunter-gatherers and hunter-farmers who gain their livelihood from them.

= Towards the stable society: strategy for change = by Edward Goldsmith · Robert Allen · January 1, 1972 · Leave a Comment · Share · Print

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239.  We therefore have recommended to the UN Human Environment Conference that[4] 240.  Social accounting. By the introduction of monetary incentives and disincentives it is possible to put a premium on durability and a penalty on disposability, thereby reducing the throughput of materials and energy so that resources are conserved and pollution reduced. But another important way of reducing pollution and enhancing amenity is by the provision of a more equitable social accounting system, reinforced by anti-disamenity legislation. Social accounting procedures must be used not just to weigh up the merits of alternative development proposals, but also to determine whether or not society actually wants such development. Naturally, present procedures require improvement: for example, in calculating ‘revealed preference’ (the values of individuals and communities as ‘revealed’ to economists by the amount people are willing and/or can afford to pay for or against a given development), imagination, sensitivity and commonsense are required in order to avoid the imposition on poor neighbourhoods or sparsely inhabited countryside of nuclear power stations, reservoirs, motorways, airports, and the like; and in calculating the ‘social time preference rate’ (an indication of society’s regard for the future) for a given project, a very low discount should be given, since it is easier to do than undo and we must assume that unless we botch things completely many more generations will follow us who will not thank us for exhausting resources or blighting the landscape.
 * 1) Certain wilderness areas of tropical rain forest, tropical scrub forest, and arctic tundra be declared inviolate. These being the least understood and most fragile biomes;
 * 2) the hunter-gatherers and hunter farmers within these areas be given title to their lands (i.e. those lands in which traditionally they have gained their living) and be allowed to live there without pressure of any kind;
 * 3) severe restrictions be placed on entry to these areas by anyone who does not live there permanently (while allowing the indigenes free movement);
 * 4) sovereignty over the areas remain with the countries in which they lie; who should also be responsible for the policing of their boundaries;
 * 5) funds for administration of these areas and payments in lieu of exploitation (to the host country) be collected from UN members in proportion to their GNP;
 * 6) an international body be appointed as an outcome of the Stockholm Human Environment Conference to supervise an ecological programme of research, the results of which should be freely available to participating countries.

241.  The social costs of any given development should be paid by those who propose or perpetrate it – ‘the polluter must pay’ is a principle that must guide our costing procedures. Furthermore, accounting decisions should be made in the light of stock economics: in other words, we must judge the health of our economy not by flow or throughput, since this inevitably leads to waste, resource depletion and environmental disruption, but by the distribution, quality and variety of the stock. At the moment, as Kenneth Boulding has pointed out,

Yet, both the reservoirs of raw materials and the reservoirs for pollution are limited and finite, so that ultimately the throughput from the one to the other must be detrimental to our well-being and must therefore not only be minimised but be regarded as a cost rather than a benefit. For this reason Boulding has suggested that GNP be considered a measure of gross national cost, and that we devote ourselves to its minimisation, maximising instead the quality of our stock:

We must come to assess our standard of living not by calculating the value of all the air-conditioners we have made and sold but by the freshness of the air; not by the value of the antibiotics, hormones, feedstuff and broiler-houses and the cost of disposing of their wastes, all of which put so heavy a price on poultry production today but by the flavour and nutritional quality of the chickens themselves; and so on. In other words, accepted value must reflect real value, just as accepted cost must reflect real cost.

242.  It is evident, however, that in a society such as ours, which to a large extent ignores the long-term consequences of its actions, there is a substantial differential between accepted cost and real cost. An industrial town, for example, whose citizens and factories pollute the air and water systems around it and who feed themselves from a number of increasingly intensive monocultures, not only has no way of measuring the satisfactions or otherwise afforded by its life-style, nor of equitably distributing the costs imposed by one polluter on another but no way either of assessing ecological costs, some of which will have to be paid by generation 1, others by generations 2, 3, 4, etc., and still others by people elsewhere, with whom in every other respect there might be no contact. Thus its agricultural practices might provide cheap and plentiful food for one generation and stimulate its agrochemical industries, but may so impoverish the soil and disrupt the agro-ecosystem, that the next generation will have to import more food, or failing this, to resort to still riskier expedients, thereby seriously compromising the food supply of the following generation; or the wastes of one generation might affect the health of the next, or its marine food supply, or so increase the mutation rate that future generations receive an unlooked for genetic burden. The extent to which we are simplifying ecosystems and destroying natural controls so that we are forced to provide technological substitutes, is a real cost against society and should be accounted as one. At the moment, however, we merely add up the value of mining operations, factories and so on, and that of cleaning up the mess whenever we attempt to do so and conclude that we have never been better off.

243.  Since the full costs of any action anywhere in the world must be borne by someone, somewhere, sometime, it is important that our accounting system makes provision for this. We accept however, that ecological processes are so complex and can spread so far in space and time, that this will be exceptionally difficult. Nonetheless, given the truism that a satisfactory accounting system is one which supports and helps perpetuate the social system from which it derives, we must attempt to devise one which is fitted to a society based on a sober assessment of ecological reality and not on the anthropocentric pipe-dream that we can do what we will to all species, not excepting, it seems, future generations of our own. It is worth recalling Prof. Commoner’s dictum that since economics is the science of the distribution of resources, all of which are derived from the ecosphere, it is foolish to perpetuate an economic system which destroys it. Ideally (and as befits the etymology of the two words), ecology and economics should not be in conflict: ecology should provide the approach, the framework for an understanding of the interrelationships of social and environmental systems; and economics should provide the means of quantifying those interrelationships in the light of such an understanding, so that decisions on alternative courses of action can be made without undue difficulty.

244.  One of our long-term goals, therefore, must be to unite economics and ecology. The specific measures we have proposed are, we believe, necessary steps in this direction, albeit crude ones. A raw materials tax, an amortisation tax, a power tax, revised methods of calculating revealed preference, social time preference rate and so on, with legislative provision for their enforcement, a set of air, water and land quality standards enforceable at law and linked with a grant-incentive programme – these and other measures will have to be introduced at an early stage. Naturally, the full force of such measures could not be allowed to operate immediately: they would have to be carefully graded so as to be effective without causing unacceptable degrees of social disturbance. Plainly the social consequences will be great, and these will be considered in the section on social systems. The key to success is likely to be careful synchronisation, and this too will be considered in a separate section.

Stabilising the population
250.  We have seen already that however slight the growth rate, a population cannot grow indefinitely. It follows, therefore, that at some point it must stabilise of its own volition, or else be cut down by some ‘natural’ mechanism – famine, epidemic, war, or whatever. Since no sane society would choose the latter course, it must choose to stabilise. To do this it must have some idea of its optimum size, since again it is unlikely that any sane society would choose to stabilise above (or indeed below) it.

251.  The two main variables affected by population numbers, as opposed to  per capita  consumption, are the extent to which the emotional needs and social aspirations of the community can be met (i.e. the complex of satisfactions which has come to be known as the quality of life) and the community’s ability to feed itself. In our opinion there is good social and epidemiological evidence that Britain and many other countries in both the developed and undeveloped worlds, are overcrowded. However, since this is impossible to prove and since there is immense variation in individual emotional requirements, it would be unwise in the present state of our knowledge to rely on quality of life judgements when calculating the optimum population. Fortunately, we know much more about feeding ourselves and assessment of the optimum becomes a realisable task if we base it on the simple ecological concept of the carrying capacity of the land.

252.  Carrying capacity is usually defined as the amount of solar energy potentially available to man via food-plants in a given area. This definition must be accompanied by a caveat to the effect that if carrying capacity is considered in terms of energetics alone, a number of essential ecological and nutritional variables are in danger of exclusion. For example, it would be easy to assume that land used for a combination of purposes (mixed farming, woodland, etc.) would be better employed and could support a larger population if it were exclusively given over to the intensive production of food-plants high in calories (e.g. wheat). We know, however, that protein and the other nutrients are no less vital to us than calories, while there is evidence that we are more likely to get the proper nutritional components from meat if it comes to us from free-living animals. This requirement alone demands a certain diversity, both of species and habitat and we have seen too (in the appendix on ecosystems) that diversity is essential if fertility and stability are to be maintained over the long-term.

253.  As we have seen Britain supports a population well in excess of the carrying capacity of the land owing to its ability to import large amounts of food, especially the cheap protein required to feed our poultry and pigs. As world population grows, and with it global agricultural demand, so will it be increasingly difficult for us to find countries with exportable surpluses, surpluses which in any case will become progressively more expensive. Unless we are willing (and able) to perpetuate an even greater inequality of distribution than exists today, Britain must be self-supporting. We have stated already our belief that on the evidence available it is unlikely that there will be any significant increase in yield per acre, so that there is no other course open to us but to reduce our numbers before we stabilise. Since we appear capable of supporting no more than half our present population, the figure we should aim for over the next 150 to 200 years can be no greater than 30 million, and in order to protect it from resource fluctuation probably less.

254.  Not every country is in such a difficult position as Britain. A few will be able to stabilise at or relatively near present levels. But taking world population as a whole, and using  per capita per diem  protein intake as the key variable in assessing carrying capacity, we believe the optimum population for the world is unlikely to be above 3,500 million and is probably a good deal less. This figure rests on three assumptions: (a) that the average  per capita per diem  requirements of protein is 65 grams[6]; (b) that present agricultural production  per capita  can be sustained indefinitely; and (c) that there is absolutely equitable distribution, no country enjoying a greater  per capita per diem  protein intake than any other – which compared with today’s conditions is absurdly utopian. Utopian though they may be, unless these assumptions are realised, we are faced either with the task of reducing world population still further until it is well below the optimum, or with condoning inequalities grosser and more unjust than those which we in the developed countries foster at present.

255.  While they cannot grow indefinitely, populations can remain above the optimum – indeed above the sustainable maximum – for some time. The fact that the global population, including that of Britain, is above both levels, means only that our numbers are preventing the optimisation of other values. It means that while most people receive the bare minimum of calories necessary for survival, a large proportion are deprived of the nutrients (especially protein) essential for intellectual development. They are alive, but unable to realise their full potential – which is the grossest possible waste of human resources. An optimum population, therefore, may be defined as one that can be sustained indefinitely and at a level at which the other values of its members are optimised – and the fact that we are above this level does not justify despair but does justify a great sense of urgency in working towards our long-term goal of the optimum. For it is obvious that given the dynamic of population growth, even if all nations today determined to stabilise their populations, numbers would continue to rise for some considerable time. Indeed the Population Council has calculated (Annual Report 1970) that

Clearly we must go all out for the ‘unlikely event’ of achieving the replacement-sized family (an average of about two children per couple) throughout the world by the end of this century, if our children are not to suffer the catastrophes we seek to avoid.

256.  Our task is to end population growth by lowering the rate of recruitment so that it equals the rate of loss. A few countries will then be able to stabilise, to maintain that ratio; most others, however, will have to slowly reduce their populations to a level at which it is sensible to stabilise. Stated baldly, the task seems impossible; but if we start now, and the exercise is spread over a sufficiently long period of time, then we believe that it is within our capabilities. The difficulties are enormous, but they are surmountable.

257.  First, governments must acknowledge the problem and declare their commitment to ending population growth; this commitment should also include an end to immigration. Secondly, they must set up national population services with a fourfold brief:
 * 1) to publicise as widely and vigorously as possible the relationship between population, food supply, quality of life, resource depletion, etc., and the great need for couples to have no more than two children. The finest talents in advertising should be recruited for this and the broad aim should be to inculcate a socially more responsible attitude to child-rearing. For example, the notion (derived largely from the popular women’s magazines) that childless couples should be objects of pity rather than esteem should be sharply challenged; and of course there are many similar notions to be disputed.
 * 2) to provide, at local and national levels, free contraception advice and information on other services such as abortion and sterilisation;
 * 3) to provide a comprehensive domiciliary service, and to provide contraceptives free of charge, free sterilisation, and abortion on demand;
 * 4) to commission, finance, and coordinate research not only on demographic techniques and contraceptive technology but also on the subtle cultural controls necessary for the harmonious maintenance of stability. We know so little about the dynamics of human populations that we cannot say whether the first three measures would be sufficient. It is self-evident that if couples still wanted families larger than the replacement-size no amount of free contraception would make any difference. However, because we know so little about population control, it would be difficult for us to devise any of the socio-economic restraints which on the face of it are likely to be more effective but which many people fear might be unduly repressive. For this reason, we would be wise to rely on the first three measures for the next 20 years or so. We then may find they are enough – but if they aren’t, we must hope that intensive research during this period will be rewarded with a set of socio-economic restraints that are both effective and humane. These will then constitute the third stage and should also provide the tools for the fourth stage – that of persuading the public to have average family sizes of slightly less than replacement size, so that total population can be greatly reduced, If we achieve a decline rate of 0.5 percent per year, the same as Britain’s rate of growth today, there should be no imbalance of population structure, as the dependency ratio would be exactly the same as that of contemporary Britain. Only the make-up of dependency would be different: instead of there being more children than old people, it would be the other way round. The time-scale for such an operation is long of course, and this will be suggested in the section on orchestration.Back to top

Creating a new social system
260.  Possibly the most radical change we propose in the creation of a new social system is decentralisation. We do so not because we are sunk in nostalgia for a mythical little England of fetes, ‘olde worlde’ pubs, and perpetual conversations over garden fences but for four much more fundamental reasons:

261.  (a) While there is good evidence that human societies can happily remain stable for long periods, there is no doubt that the long transitional stage that we and our children must go through will impose a heavy burden on our moral courage and will require great restraint. Legislation and the operations of police forces and the courts will be necessary to reinforce this restraint, but we believe that such external controls can never be so subtle nor so effective as internal controls. It would therefore be sensible to promote the social conditions in which public opinion and full public participation in decision-making become as far as possible the means whereby communities are ordered. The larger a community the less likely this can be: in a heterogeneous, centralised society such as ours, the restraints of the stable society if they were to be effective would appear as so much outside coercion; but in communities small enough for the general will to be worked out and expressed by individuals confident of themselves and their fellows as individuals, ‘us and them’ situations are less likely to occur – people having learned the limits of a stable society would be free to order their own lives within them as they wished, and would therefore accept the restraints of the stable society as necessary and desirable and not as some arbitrary restriction imposed by a remote and unsympathetic government.

262.  (b) As agriculture depends more and more on integrated control and becomes more diversified, there will no longer be any scope for prairie-type crop-growing or factory-type livestock-rearing. Small farms run by teams with specialised knowledge of ecology, entomology, botany, etc., will then be the rule, and indeed individual small-holdings could become extremely productive suppliers of eggs, fruit and vegetables to neighbourhoods. Thus a much more diversified urban-rural mix will be not only possible but, because of the need to reduce the transportation costs of returning domestic sewage to the land, desirable. In industry, as with agriculture, it will be important to maintain a vigorous feedback between supply and demand in order to avoid waste, overproduction, or production of goods which the community does not really want, thereby eliminating the needless expense of time, energy and money in attempts to persuade it that it does. If an industry is an integral part of a community, it is much more likely to encourage product innovation because people clearly want qualitative improvements in a given field, rather than because expansion is necessary for that industry’s survival or because there is otherwise insufficient work for its research and development section. Today, men, women and children are merely consumer markets and industries as they centralise become national rather than local and supranational rather than national, so that while entire communities may come to depend on them for the jobs they supply, they are in no sense integral parts of those communities. To a considerable extent the ‘jobs or beauty’ dichotomy has been made possible because of this deficiency. Yet plainly people want jobs and beauty, they should not, in a just and humane society, be forced to choose between the two and in a decentralised society of small communities where industries are small enough to be responsive to each community’s needs, there will be no reason for them to do so.

= Towards the stable society: strategy for change = by Edward Goldsmith · Robert Allen · January 1, 1972 · Leave a Comment · Share · Print

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263.  (c) The small community is not only the organisational structure in which internal or systemic controls are most likely to operate effectively, but its dynamic is an essential source of stimulation and pleasure for the individual. Indeed it is probable that only in the small community can a man or woman be an individual. In today’s large agglomerations he is merely an isolate – and it is significant that the decreasing autonomy of communities and local regions and the increasing centralisation of decision-making and authority in the cumbersome bureaucracies of the state, have been accompanied by the rise of self-conscious individualism, an individualism which feels threatened unless it is harped upon. Perhaps the two are mutually dependent. It is no less significant that this self-conscious individualism tends to be expressed in ways which cut off one individual from another – for example the accumulation of material goods like the motor-car, the television set, and so on, all of which tend to insulate one from another, rather than bring them together. In the small, self-regulating communities observed by anthropologists, there is, by contrast, no assertion of individualism, and certain individual aspirations may have to be repressed or modified for the benefit of the community – yet no man controls another and each has very great freedom of action, much greater than we have today. At the same time they enjoy the rewards of the small community, of knowing and being known, of an intensity of relationships with a few, rather than urban man’s variety of innumerable, superficial relationships. Such rewards should provide ample compensation for the decreasing emphasis on consumption, which will be the inevitable result of the premium on durability which we have suggested should be established so that resources may be conserved and pollution minimised. This premium, while not diminishing our real standard of living, will greatly reduce the turnover of material goods. They will thus be more expensive, although once paid for they should not need replacing except after long periods. Their rapid accumulation will no longer be a realisable, or indeed socially acceptable, goal and alternative satisfactions will have to be sought. We believe a major potential source of these satisfactions to be the rich and variegated interchanges and responsibilities of community life, and that these are possible only when such communities are on a human scale.

264.  (d) The fourth reason for decentralisation is that to deploy a population in small towns and villages is to reduce to the minimum its impact on the environment. This is because the actual urban superstructure required per inhabitant goes up radically as the size of the town increases beyond a certain point. For example, the  per capita  cost of high rise flats is much greater than that of ordinary houses; and the cost of roads and other transportation routes increases with the number of commuters carried. Similarly, the  per capita  expenditure on other facilities such as those for distributing food and removing wastes is much higher in cities than in small towns and villages. Thus, if everybody lived in villages the need for sewage treatment plants would be somewhat reduced, while in an entirely urban society they are essential, and the cost of treatment is high. Broadly speaking, it is only by decentralisation that we can increase self-sufficiency – and self-sufficiency is vital if we are to minimise the burden of social systems on the ecosystems that support them.

265.  Although we believe that the small community should be the basic unit of society and that each community should be as self-sufficient and self-regulating as possible, we would like to stress that we are not proposing that they be inward-looking, self-obsessed or in any way closed to the rest of the world. Basic precepts of ecology, such as the interrelatedness of all things and the far-reaching effects of ecological processes and their disruption, should influence community decision-making, and therefore there must be an efficient and sensitive communications network between all communities. There must be procedures whereby community actions that affect regions can be discussed at regional level and regional actions with extra-regional effects can be discussed at global level. We have no hard and fast views on the size of the proposed communities, but for the moment we suggest neighbourhoods of 500, represented in communities of 5,000, in regions of 500,000, represented nationally, which in turn as today should be represented globally. We emphasise that our goal should be to create community feeling and global awareness, rather than that dangerous and sterile compromise which is nationalism.

266.  In many of the developed countries where community feeling has been greatly eroded and has given way to heterogeneous congeries of strangers, the task of re-creating communities will be immensely difficult. In many of the undeveloped countries, however, although it will not be easy, because the process of community collapse and flight to the city has begun only recently, there is a real chance that it can be halted by such means as the abandonment of large-scale industrial projects for the development of intermediate technologies at village level; and the provision of agro-ecological training teams so that communities can be taught to manage the land together, rather than encourage farmers to turn to expensive and dangerous procedures like the heavy use of pesticides and fertilisers, which tend to reduce the number of people needed on the land.

267.  At home, industry will play a leading role in the programme to decentralise our economy and society. The discussion of taxes, antidisamenity legislation and enforceable targets for air, land and water quality in the section on stock economics, might lead some to believe that we are willing to bring about the collapse of industry, widespread unemployment, and the loss of our export markets. It is therefore worth emphasising that we wish strongly to avoid all three and we do not see that they are necessary or inevitable consequences of our proposals. It is obvious that for as long as we depend on imports for a significant proportion of our food, so we must export. And since we are likely to require food-imports for the next 150 years, we are left with the question of whether it is possible to develop community industries, dedicated to the principles of maximal use/recycling of materials and durability of goods, and at the same time to earn an adequate revenue from exports.

268.  We believe that the answer is yes, if the change-over is conducted in two stages. The first stage is to alter the direction of growth so that it becomes more compatible with the aims of a stable society. We have already mentioned that the recycling industry must be encouraged to expand, and it is obvious that, willy-nilly, it will do so, as over the years taxes and quality targets become more stringent. To give a clearer idea of how the direction can be altered we will consider briefly the question of transport.

269.  There are more than 12 million cars in Britain today, and according to the Automobile Association this figure will rise to 21 million by 1981. About half the households in Britain own a car today and presumably the car population is expected to rise in response to a rise in this proportion, though presumably too, more households will own more than one car. At all events we have sufficient experience of traffic congestion in our towns and cities and the rape of countryside and community by ring-roads and motorways to realise that the motor-car is by no means the best way of democratising mobility. Indeed, if every household had a car, we would be faced with the choice of leaving towns and country worth driving to and thereby imposing immobility on the motorist, or of providing him with the vast expanses of concrete which are becoming increasingly necessary to avoid congestion at the expense of the areas they sterilise and blight.

270.  No-one can contemplate with equanimity the doubling of roads within this decade necessary to maintain the status quo, and we must therefore seek sensible transportation alternatives. It is clear that broadly-speaking the only alternative is public transport-a mix of rapid mass-transit by road and rail. Rail especially should never have been allowed to run down to the extent that it has. The power requirements for transporting freight by road are five to six times greater than by rail and the pollution is correspondingly higher. The energy outlay for the cement and steel required to build a motorway is three to four times greater than that required to build a railway and the land area necessary for the former is estimated to be four times more than for the latter. Public transport whether by road or rail is much more efficient in terms of  per capita  use of materials and energy than any private alternative. It can also be as flexible, provided it is encouraged at the expense of private transport.

271.  This is the key to the provision of a sound transport system. First the vicious spiral of congestion slowing buses, losing passengers, raising fares, losing more passengers, using more cars, creating more congestion, etc., must be broken. A commitment to build no more roads and to use the capital released to subsidise public transport would be an excellent way of doing this. The men who would normally live by road building could be diverted to clearing derelict land and restoring railways and canals as part of a general programme of renewal. From there, the progressive imposition of restrictions on private transport and the stimulation of public transport so that it could provide a fast, efficient and flexible alternative would be a matter of course. Within the motor industry, the decline in production of conventional private vehicles would be compensated for by the increased production of alternative mass-transit systems. There would also be a switch of capital and manpower to the redevelopment of railway systems. In the long term, however, decentralisation will bring a diminished demand for mobility itself. As Stephen Boyden has pointed out[7], people use their cars for four main reasons: to go to work, to go to the countryside, to visit friends and relations, and to show off. In the stable society, however, each community will provide its own jobs, there will be countryside around it, most friends and relations will be within it, and there will be much more reliable and satisfying ways of showing off.

272.  This brings us to the second stage of the change-over, in which industry turns to the invention, production, and installation of technologies that are materials and energy conservative, that are flexible, non-polluting and durable, employment-intensive and favouring craftsmanship. Progress as we conceive of it today consists in increasing an already arbitrarily high ratio of capital to job availability; but if instead this ratio were to be reduced, then our manpower requirement would go up, while at the same time the pollution which is the inevitable by-product of capital growth would be cut down. The switch in emphasis from quantity to quality will not only stimulate demand for manpower, it will also stabilise it and give much greater satisfaction to the men themselves. Instead of men being used as insensate units to produce increasing quantities of components, they should be trained and given the opportunity to improve the quality of their work. The keynotes of the manufacturing sector should come to be durability and craftsmanship – and such a premium on quality should assure us an export revenue large enough for us to continue buying food from abroad, while providing our manpower with more enjoyable occupations. In the case of industries like the aircraft industry, which would naturally have a greatly reduced role in the stable society, their engineering expertise could be turned to the development of such things as total energy systems – designed to provide the requirements of a decentralised society with the minimum of environmental disruption.

273.  Industry can completely fulfil its new role only in close harmony with particular communities, so that the unreal distinction between men as employees and men as neighbours can be abandoned and jobs then given on the basis that work must be provided by the community for the sake of that community’s stability and not because one group wishes to profit from another group’s labour or capital as the case may be. As industry decentralises so will the rest of society. The creation of communities will come from the combination of industrial change and a conscious drive to re-structure society.

274.  The principal components of this drive are likely to be the redistribution of government and the gradual inculcation of a sense of community and the other values of a stable society. Over a stated period of time, local government should be strengthened and as many functions as possible of central government should be transferred to it. The redistribution of government should proceed on the principle that issues which affect only neighbourhoods should be decided by the neighbourhood alone, those which affect only communities by the community alone, those which affect only regions by the region alone, and so on. As regions, communities and neighbourhoods come increasingly to run their own affairs, so the development of a sense of community will proceed more easily, though we do not pretend that it will be without its problems.

275.  Those regions which still have or are close to having a good urban-rural mix will be able to effect a relatively smooth transfer but highly urbanised areas like London, the Lancashire conurbation and South Wales, will find it much more difficult to re-create communities. Nevertheless, even in London the structural remains of past communities (like the villages of Putney, High-gate, Hackney, Islington, etc.) will provide the physical nuclei of future communities – the means of orienting themselves so that they can cut themselves away from those deserts of commerce and packaged pleasure (of which the most prominent example is the Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly complex) on which so much of London’s life is currently focused.

276.  It is self-evident that no amount of legislative, administrative or industrial change will create stable communities if the individuals who are meant to comprise them are not fitted for them. As soon as the best means of inculcating the values of the stable society have been agreed upon, they should be incorporated into our educational systems. Indeed, it may not be until the generation of 40-50 year olds have been educated in these values (so that as far as possible everybody up to the age of 50 understands them) that stable communities will achieve sufficient acceptance for them to be permanently useful.

Orchestration
280.  A cardinal assumption of this strategy is that it will not succeed without the most careful synchronisation and integration. We cannot say of a particular section of these proposals that it alone is acceptable, and therefore we will go ahead with it immediately but consider the rest later on! This section, therefore, is devoted to a schematic, annotated outline of how change might be orchestrated. It is necessarily unsophisticated and oversimplified but we hope it will give some idea of how change in one quarter will aid change in the others.

281.  Variables included in schematic outline: 282.  Notes: « previous chapter · contents · next chapter »
 * 1) establishment of national population service
 * 2) introduction of raw materials, amortisation and power taxes; antidisamenity legislation; air, land and water quality targets; recycling grants; revised social accounting systems
 * 3) developed countries end commitment to persistent pesticides and subsidise similar move by undeveloped countries
 * 4) end of subsidies on inorganic fertilisers
 * 5) grants for use of organics and introduction of diversity
 * 6) emergency food programme for undeveloped countries
 * 7) progressive substitution of non-persistent for persistent pesticides
 * 8) integrated control research programme
 * 9) integrated control training programme
 * 10) substitution of integrated control for chemical control
 * 11) progressive introduction of diversified farming practices
 * 12) end of road building
 * 13) clearance of derelict land and beginning of renewal programme
 * 14) restrictions on private transport and subsidies for public transport
 * 15) development of rapid mass-transit
 * 16) research into materials substitution
 * 17) development of alternative technologies
 * 18) decentralisation of industry: part one (redirection)
 * 19) decentralisation of industry: part two (development of community types)
 * 20) redistribution of government
 * 21) education research
 * 22) teacher training
 * 23) education
 * 24) experimental community
 * 25) domestic sewage to land
 * 26) target date for basic establishment of network of self-sufficient, self-regulating communities.
 * 1) should be operating fully by 1980; review in 1995 – if replacement-size families improbable by 2000, bring in socio-economic restraints; UK population should begin to slowly decline from 2015-2020 onwards; world population from 2100; little significant feedback expected in UK until about 2030.
 * 2) progressive; ironing out run to eliminate inconsistencies up to 1980; thereafter revise and tighten every five years; increasingly significant feedback from 1980 onwards, stimulating materials-energy conservation, employment-intensive industry, decentralisation and progress in direction of (p),(q),(r) and (s).
 * 3) limited substitution of integrated control can begin quite soon, but large-scale substitution will depend on (h) integrated control research programme; naturally (h), (i) and (j) will run in parallel and are therefore represented as one; (g) will also continue for some time.
 * 4) diversified farming practices (k) and integrated control (j) will link up and form an agriculture best-suited for small, reasonably self-sufficient communities, so stimulating their development: significant feedback, therefore, will occur from this point.
 * 5) likely to be necessary at least until 2100.
 * 6) labour released from road building can go to (m) clearance of derelict land, which should be completed by 1985; thereafter there may be other renewal programmes such as canal restoration, while agriculture will increasingly require more manpower.
 * 7) development of alternative technologies (q) and redirecting of industry (r) will proceed in harness; progressively significant feedback between (b) and (t).
 * 8) target date for maximum redistribution of government 2030 to coincide with 45 years operation of (w); see note (9).
 * 9) five years only allowed for preliminary organisation and research, since it can proceed in harness with teacher training (v) and also with the education programme itself (w).
 * 10) an experimental community of 500 could be set up to clarify problems; feedback to (u).
 * 11) as soon as communities are small enough, domestic sewage can be returned to the land; there should be the firm beginnings of a good urban-rural mix by then.
 * 12) by this time there should be sufficient diversity of agriculture, decentralisation of industry and redistribution of government, together with a large proportion of people whose education is designed for life in the stable society, for the establishment of self-sufficient, self-regulating communities to be well-advanced. At this point taxation, grants, incentives, etc, could be taken over by the communities themselves. A further generation is allowed until target date, however.

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The importance of a varied environment
321.  In our industrial society, the only things that tend to get done are those that are particularly conducive to economic growth, those in fact that, in terms of our present accounting system, are judged most efficient!

322.  This appears to be almost the sole consideration determining the nature of the crops we sow, the style of our houses and the shape of our cities. The result, among other things, is the dreariest possible uniformity.

323.  In a stable society, on the other hand, there would be nothing to prevent many other considerations from determining what we cultivate or build. Diversity would thus tend to replace uniformity, a trend that would be accentuated by the diverging cultural patterns of our decentralised communities.

324.  As René Dubos has pointed out: Back to top

Real costs
331.  We might regard with apprehension a situation in which we shall have to make do without many of the devices such as motor-cars, and various domestic appliances which, to an ever greater extent are shaping our everyday lives.

332.  These devices may indeed provide us with much leisure and satisfaction, but few have considered at what cost. For instance, how many of us take into account the dull and tedious work that has to be done to manufacture them, or for that matter to earn the money required for their acquisition? It has been calculated that the energy used by the machines that provide the average American housewife with her high standard of living is the equivalent of that provided by five hundred slaves. [3]

333.  In this respect, it is difficult to avoid drawing a comparison between ourselves and the Spartans, who in order to avoid the toil involved in tilling the fields and building and maintaining their homes, employed a veritable army of helots. The Spartan’s life, as everybody knows, was a misery. From early childhood, boys were made to live in barracks, were fed the most frugal and austere diet and spent most of their adult life in military training so as to be able to keep down a vast subject population, always ready to seize an opportunity to rise up against its masters. It never occurred to them that they would have been far better off without their slaves, fulfilling themselves the far less exacting task of tilling their own fields and building and maintaining their own homes.

334.  In fact ‘economic cost’, as we have seen, simply does not correspond to ‘real cost’. Within a stable society this gap must be bridged as much as possible.

335.  This means that we should be encouraged to buy things whose production involves the minimum environmental disruption and which will not give rise to all sorts of unexpected costs that would outweigh the benefits that their possession might provide. Back to top

Real value
341.  It is also true, as we have seen, that ‘economic value’ as at present calculated does not correspond to real value any more than ‘economic cost’ corresponds to real cost.

342.  Our standard of living is calculated in terms of the market prices of the goods that it includes. These do not distinguish between, on the one hand, the gadgets that we do not really need and such essentials as unpolluted water, air and food on which our health must depend. In fact it tends to place greater value on the former, as we usually take the latter for granted.

343.  It is in terms of these market prices that the GNP is calculated, and as we have seen, this provides the most misleading indication of our well-being. Edward Mishan points out that

344.  In the same way, many of the machines whose possession is said to increase our standard of living are simply necessary to replace natural benefits of which we have been deprived by demographic and economic growth. We have pointed out how true this is of the ubiquitous motor-car. Also, many labour-saving devices are now necessary because with the disintegration of the extended family there is no one about to do the household chores. The fact that both husband and wife must, in many cases, go out to work to earn the money to buy the machines required to do these chores can serve only to render such devices that much more necessary.

345.  In a stable society, everything would be done to reduce the discrepancy between economic value and real value, and if we could repair some of the damage we have done to our physical and social environment, and live a more natural life, there would be less need for the consumer products that we spend so much money on. Instead we could spend it on things that truly enrich and embellish our lives.

346.  In manufacturing processes, the accent would be on quality rather than quantity, which means that skill and craftsmanship, which we have for so long systematically discouraged, would once more play a part in’ our lives. For example, the art of cooking would come back into its own, no longer regarded as a form of drudgery, but correctly valued as an art worthy of occupying our time, energy and imagination. Food would become more varied and interesting and its consumption would become more of a ritual and less a utilitarian function.

The arts would flourish: literature, music, painting, sculpture and architecture would play an ever greater part in our lives, while achievements in these fields would earn both money and prestige.

347.  A society devoted to achievements of this sort would be an infinitely more agreeable place than is our present one, geared as it is to the mass production of shoddy utilitarian consumer goods in ever greater quantities. Surprising as it may seem to one reared on today’s economic doctrines, it would also be the one most likely to satisfy our basic biological requirements for food, air and water, and even more surprisingly, provide us with the jobs that in our unstable industrial society are constantly being menaced.

348.  Indeed, as we have seen, the principal limitation to the availability of jobs today is the inordinately high capital outlay required to finance each worker. This limitation is withdrawn as soon as we accept that, within the framework of an overall reorganisation of our society, it would be possible for capital outlay to be reduced without reducing our real standard of living.

349.  One of the Bishop of Kingston’s ten commandments is:

In other words, there must be a fusion between our religion and the rest of our culture, since there is no valid distinction between the laws of God and Nature, and Man must live by them no less than any other creature. Such a belief must be central to the philosophy of the stable society and must permeate all our thinking. Indeed it is the only one which is properly scientific, and science must address itself much more vigorously to the problems of co-operating with the rest of Nature, rather than seeking to control it.

350.  This does not mean that science must in any way be discouraged. On the contrary, within a stable society, there would be considerable scope for the energies and talents of scientist and technologist.

Basic scientific research, plus a good deal of multidisciplinary synthesis, would be required to understand the complex mechanisms of our ecosphere with which we must learn to co-operate.

351.  There would be a great demand for scientists and technologists capable of devising the technological infrastructure of a decentralised society. Indeed, with the application of a new set of criteria for judging the economic viability of technological devices there must open a whole new field of research and development.

352.  The recycling industry which must expand very considerably, would offer innumerable opportunities, while in agriculture there would be an even greater demand for ecologists, botanists, entomologists, mycologists etc., who would be called upon to devise ever subtler methods for ensuring the fertility of the soil and for controlling ‘pest’ populations.

353.  Thus in many ways, the stable society, with its diversity of physical and social environments, would provide considerable scope for human skill and ingenuity.

354.  Indeed, if we are capable of ensuring a relatively smooth transition to it, we can be optimistic about providing our children with a way of life psychologically, intellectually and aesthetically more satisfying than the present one. And we can be confident that it will be sustainable as ours cannot be, so that the legacy of despair we are about to leave them may at the last minute be changed to one of hope.

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