It's time to re-define growth, writes Murray Grimwood.
Recent leadership comments suggest we are beginning to have a long-overdue conversation.
Mayor Dave Cull has bravely stated that we need to talk about future strategies for South Dunedin, and the Council is moving to divest itself from fossil fuels.
Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown has made post-storm comments that ‘we need to stop creating the problem, as well as dealing with the impacts'.
Germany's Angela Merkel has pushed for a G7 communique urging adherence to a 2 degree limit and the Pope is even wading in to point out that this Great Flood is of our own over-consumptive making.
The popular narrative is that we just have to move to a renewable-energy society, and all will be rosy, going forward! The first part is correct; we will end up with renewable energy. Whether this is because we've used up all the non-renewable stuff or because we were smart enough to make the move first, renewables are where we will end up.
The second part is - unfortunately - incorrect. We used that one-time injection of fossil fuels to build an unsustainable amount of infrastructure, grow an unsustainable population and deplete our planet's resources at an unsustainable rate. We have become the major cause of global change; a situation demanding that responsibility be taken.
If we are framing a new debate, it has to encompass not just the rejection of fossil fuels, but the rejection of all activities which are unsustainable.
Everything we do should be examined in terms of whether it can be maintained in the long term or not; a very clear demarcation-line. For instance, the use of fossil fuels is - Climate Change aside - physically unsustainable. So it's out.
Logically, then, any activity which relies on them is ‘out' too, unless it can be adapted to run on renewables. Additionally it would have to be proven that the activity wasn't depleting other resources, regardless of who claimed to own them or who wanted to profit from the process.
Food, for example, would have to be planted, grown and harvested using renewable energy. It would need to be transported using renewable energy and processed using renewable energy. All the machinery involved would need to be built using renewable energy, maintained using it, and 100% recycled using it. No rainforest could be cleared in the process, no phosphate mined, no water-flow over-drawn or quality diminished, no soil-count altered, no quota depleted.
That yardstick - and no other - determines the number of people the planet can adequately feed long-term, yet many folk - including some who have been educated enough to know better - prefer to start from a false premise and then attempt to make reality fit it.
Food is a classic example; typically the story goes 'we have to feed 8 (or 9, or 10) billion by 2050'. Actually, anyone under the age of 35 in 2050, doesn't yet exist. There is an obvious, less destructive alternative right there and the Pope will be well aware of it, although whether he can persuade enough of us to celebrate celibacy is another matter.
This is the biggest task the human race has ever faced - if indeed we choose to face it. One way or another - by control or by collapse - our population must reduce dramatically. So too must our consumption of stuff made out of the planet; another way of saying ‘of everything'.
We are the only species smart enough to have tapped into that extra energy injection which we dumbly used to overpopulate, over-pollute and overrun the planet. Are we smart enough to override our instincts to reproduce ourselves and to store things? Smart enough to live within a finite set of limits without fighting about it?
Let's assume we are.
One of our first problems would be monitoring those bottom-lines. Who would track the materials to ensure 100% recycling occurred? Who would verify that a product was sustainably produced? How would transgression be policed? Who would 'pay' for that? Market forces don't do this; they are reactive and thus too short-term to guarantee long-term outcomes.
Then there are governance questions. Local production should generally be less fossil-fuel-demanding than overseas production - yet Climate Change is one of many issues which are global. How should governance interrelate at those levels? Top down? Bottom up? Enforced by?
Mostly, though, we have to re-define growth. More correctly, we need to identify things we can allow to grow, and things we can't. We can't grow CO2 emissions, but we can probably increase research into efficient technologies almost without limit. The trick there, of course, is not to bank on an anticipated technological breakthrough until it has actually been made.
A quick web search for images of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), for instance, shows only artists impressions; sure indicator that no breakthrough has yet happened.
Fiscal growth? We are already seeing that you can't have that in a real sense. If money represents the ability to buy some processed part of the planet and the supply of those parts is limited, then there is an upper limit to real 'wealth'. We often lose sight of that fact; washed away in a sea of artificial valuations and digitally-held expectations that the future will continue to deliver.
If we do step up and make the mature decision to become a sustainable society, we'll never have been so busy. Jobs there will be aplenty, though inevitably the rewards won't all be in monetary form.
There is a lot to do, so much more to undo. Big questions, big answers. Some will be seriously unwelcome. As for when to start the process? Donella Meadows - one of the original authors of the Limits to Growth - used to say "we have exactly enough time, starting now".
Logic tells us that her statement must have a cut-off date.
