The Impossibility of Growth Demands a New Economic System
Why collapse and salvation are hard to distinguish from each other.
by George Monbiot
Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham(1).The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. We simply can't go on this way.
Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It’s 2.5 billion billion solar systems(2). It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.
To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues were miraculously to vanish, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.
Economic growth is an artefact of the use of fossil fuels. Before large amounts of coal were extracted, every upswing in industrial production would be met with a downswing in agricultural production, as the charcoal or horse power required by industry reduced the land available for growing food. Every prior industrial revolution collapsed, as growth could not be sustained(3). But coal broke this cycle and enabled – for a few hundred years – the phenomenon we now call sustained growth.
It was neither capitalism nor communism that made possible the progress and the pathologies (total war, the unprecedented concentration of global wealth, planetary destruction) of the modern age. It was coal, followed by oil and gas. The meta-trend, the mother narrative, is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots. Now, as the most accessible reserves have been exhausted, we must ransack the hidden corners of the planet to sustain our impossible proposition.
On Friday, a few days after scientists announced that the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is now inevitable(4), the Ecuadorean government decided that oil drilling would go ahead in the heart of the Yasuni national park(5). It had made an offer to other governments: if they gave it half the value of the oil in that part of the park, it would leave the stuff in the ground. You could see this as blackmail or you could see it as fair trade. Ecuador is poor, its oil deposits are rich: why, the government argued, should it leave them untouched without compensation when everyone else is drilling down to the inner circle of hell? It asked for $3.6bn and received $13m. The result is that Petroamazonas, a company with a colourful record of destruction and spills(6), will now enter one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, in which a hectare of rainforest is said to contain more species than exist in the entire continent of North America(7).
The UK oil company Soco is now hoping to penetrate Africa’s oldest national park, Virunga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo(8); one of the last strongholds of the mountain gorilla and the okapi, of chimpanzees and forest elephants. In Britain, where a possible 4.4 billion barrels of shale oil has just been identified in the south-east(9), the government fantasises about turning the leafy suburbs into a new Niger delta. To this end it’s changing the trespass laws to enable drilling without consent and offering lavish bribes to local people(10,11). These new reserves solve nothing. They do not end our hunger for resources; they exacerbate it.
The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. As the volume of the global economy expands, everywhere that contains something concentrated, unusual, precious will be sought out and exploited, its resources extracted and dispersed, the world’s diverse and differentiated marvels reduced to the same grey stubble.
Some people try to solve the impossible equation with the myth of dematerialisation: the claim that as processes become more efficient and gadgets are miniaturised, we use, in aggregate, fewer materials. There is no sign that this is happening. Iron ore production has risen 180% in ten years(12). The trade body Forest Industries tell us that “global paper consumption is at a record high level and it will continue to grow.”(13) If, in the digital age, we won’t reduce even our consumption of paper, what hope is there for other commodities?
Look at the lives of the super-rich, who set the pace for global consumption. Are their yachts getting smaller? Their houses? Their artworks? Their purchase of rare woods, rare fish, rare stone? Those with the means buy ever bigger houses to store the growing stash of stuff they will not live long enough to use. By unremarked accretions, ever more of the surface of the planet is used to extract, manufacture and store things we don’t need. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that fantasies about the colonisation of space – which tell us we can export our problems instead of solving them – have resurfaced(14).
As the philosopher Michael Rowan points out, the inevitabilities of compound growth mean that if last year’s predicted global growth rate for 2014 (3.1%) is sustained, even if we were miraculously to reduce the consumption of raw materials by 90% we delay the inevitable by just 75 years(15). Efficiency solves nothing while growth continues.
The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth’s living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence. As a result they are mentioned almost nowhere. They are the 21st Century’s great taboo, the subjects guaranteed to alienate your friends and neighbours. We live as if trapped inside a Sunday supplement: obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle class conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic that demands our attention.
Statements of the bleeding obvious, the outcomes of basic arithmetic, are treated as exotic and unpardonable distractions, while the impossible proposition by which we live is regarded as so sane and normal and unremarkable that it isn’t worthy of mention. That’s how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7853
2. Grantham expressed this volume as 1057 cubic metres. In his paper We Need To Talk About Growth, Michael Rowan translated this as 2.5 billion billion solar systems. (http://persuademe.com.au/need-talk-growth-need-sums-well/). This source gives the volume of the solar system (if it is treated as a sphere) at 39,629,013,196,241.7 cubic kilometres, which is roughly 40 x 1021 cubic metres. Multiplied by 2.5 billion billion, this gives 1041 cubic metres. So, unless I’ve got the wrong figure for the volume of the solar system or screwed my units up, which is eminently possible, Michael Rowan’s translation looks like an underestimate. I’ll stick with his figure though, as I don’t have much confidence in my own. Any improvements, comments or corrections via the contact form gratefully received.
3. EA Wrigley, 2010. Energy and the English Industrial Revolution. Cambridge University Press.
4. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/12/western-antarctic-ice...
5. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/23/ecuador-amazon-yasuni...
6. http://www.entornointeligente.com/articulo/2559574/ECUADOR-Gobierno-conc...
7. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/ecuador-approves-yasuni-ama...
8. http://www.wwf.org.uk/how_you_can_help/virunga/
9. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/23/fracking-report-billi...
10. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10598473/Fracking-could...
11. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/23/fracking-report-billi...
12. Philippe Sibaud, 2012. Opening Pandora’s Box: The New Wave of Land Grabbing by the Extractive Industries and the Devastating Impact on Earth. The Gaia Foundation. http://www.gaiafoundation.org/opening-pandoras-box
13. http://www.forestindustries.fi/industry/paper_cardboard_converted/paper_...
14. https://www.globalonenessproject.org/library/articles/space-race-over
15. Michael Rowan, 2014. We Need To Talk About Growth (And we need to do the sums as well.) http://persuademe.com.au/need-talk-growth-need-sums-well/
© 2014 George Monbiot
George Monbiot
George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at
www.monbiot.com
Link to where I originally read the work
40 comments:
Jerry, many thanks for your comment. If my writing is pompous it is because it reflects the support material which it addresses, and which is far more interesting to think about than the art work. The artist asked Dick Whyte to prepare the text and I have responded to that. That is reasonable.
No vindictiveness is intended. Writers choose from shows those aspects that intrigue them, and naturally ignore those that don't. If you want to see Tao's documentation of his own exhibition, click on the link to his blog I have placed over his name.
To me your writing still seems to be a personal stab at Wells (by not mentioning his work)as he seems to be a thorn in your side?
I'm also curious that "Cheryl Bernstein's" comment has been trashed...doesn't she have a blog that you provide a link to?
JW
With Tao it is all about generating noise, attracting attention. He has developed some ideas first put forward by the late Julian Dashper with his Driver drumkit and installation project. So it is really about promotional strategies and how to get audiences to look your way. Not about any objects that might happen to be in the gallery.
He is not a thorn in my side at all, and I don't think I am in his. He has pasted my review into Artbash so he is obviously very happy to be talked about. After all I could have ignored his show.
I trashed the pseudonym 'Cheryl Bernstein' not the author. If the latter has posted the same comments I'd be happily debating things with her.
November 24, 2009 2:42 PM
The anarchist posturing is a little tedious for those of us who remember Rik from The Young Ones, and frankly it probably wouldn't hurt for some people to be clearer in their communications for the sake of we plebs.
And as this isn't artbash bitchfest (which has its place), hiding behind a pseudonym is a bit childish in this context.
Andrew Paul Wood
Interested readers can type your full name into search and see for themselves how insincere you are.
See you tonight at AUT or Monday at Newcall.
I was looking forward to some real criticism but came away disappointed to say the least. What do you consider a terrible artist? What do you consider a good one? And how do you define merit?
If you really don't like him (as a person or an artist) as much as you profess - isn't that an achievement in itself? - please elucidate. Then I could evaluate your merit on a point-by-point basis.
Better luck next time.
Here's my family name: Hanson. I hope that satisfies you.
I found Whyte's essay of more interest (for reasons outside of Wells' display) so I commented on that - it being part of the contextual envelope Wells placed around his practice. He is an incorrigible stuntster, and I regard his claim that his high school art is of public interest a good example of that (what other living artist would have the nerve?), as is his sudden refusal to provide his name at the top of his comments.There are over sixty galleries in Auckland so I could have justifiably ignored the exhibtion but I didn't.I focussed on aspects I felt were worthy of discussion.
It's not a vendetta. I have reviewed his shows in the past and will do so in the future.I just prioritised the material presented before me.
Why should you write about the work when Austin hasn't? Well, one, because you're a writer. And, two, as you said, Austin was not the curator but the selector.
Auckland may have 60 plus galleries, but all in all, as you may have noticed, it's a pretty predictable - not to mention heavily commericialised - scene with a lack of independent risk-taking activity. Wells, whether hit or miss, tends to freshen things up a little. But it's been frustrating to see no one really take him on.
I wonder sometimes if New Zealand truly appreciates the value of a provocateur. There seems a tendency to dismiss rather than engage.
If Whyte fails to adequately comment on the show, it's time for you to step in. There's little critical discourse in New Zealand on art, at all, so you fulfill a vital role. If I'm not satisfied, there's where else to turn.
My particular favourite is this one: http://www.wayfarergallery.net/dicksartblog/?p=1
I think it is very conspicuous that no images are shown here. All your other reviews contain lovely images John. The thing is, with the images available at the links above your review makes no sense. Tao's work is very interesting and I wold love to hear some actual art criticism from you concerning his work.
(Thank you Tao too for giving me unexpected publicity for my own art practice, on Dick's blog).
When I write a review often there are no images around to post, but if there are some, I will attempt to use them. My problem is that if I wait too long for the artist's or gallery documentation to appear, I lose momentum for the writing. I prefer to post the text, 'seize the time' - and if I find images later I can then post them.
At the time of writing there were some dreadful images of the show on Tao's own blog - they looked as if taken through a yellow filter - and nothing on Gambia Castle. There was nothing I could use at that moment, but I did provide links to your, Gambia's and Tao's sites.
So I will now post some images taken later from your site and from Gambia Castle's. Thanks for telling me they were around.
Also - you have known about the images on Art Bash for at least 9 days - and I quote:
John Hurrell: "I agree that Artbash, as you say, has much more interesting images." (24/11)
So, it is not just that you couldn't find them around. You knew that good images were there and you chose not to put them up with the review, which I feel was somewhat calculated.
Tao Wells
some more pics not included in the original article posting