Becoming
Humane - Being Humane Evolution of the
Humane - Globalisation of Peace - World in
Balance We must
move to the simpler way Ted Trainer,
Faculty of Arts, University of NSW, Australia (
pdf.file
) (Spanish) ( German
version
) The Global
Situation, the Sustainable Alternative Society, and the
Transition to it The way of life we
have in rich countries is grossly unjust and unsustainable
and we must face up to radical change. There is no
possibility of the "living standards" of all people on earth
ever rising to rich world per capita levels of consumption
of energy, minerals, timber, water, food, phosphorous etc.
These rates of consumption are generating numerous alarming
global problems, now threatening our survival. Yet most
people have no idea how far we are beyond a sustainable
levels of resource use and environmental impact. There is a
massive refusal to even think about the situation we are
in. Consider some basic
aspects of our situation: - If all 9
billion were to have the present US timber use per
person, the forest area harvested would have to be 3 to 4
times all the forest area on the planet. - If 9 billion
were to have a North American diet 4.5 billion ha of
cropland would be required, but there are only 1.4
billion ha of cropland in use, and this is likely to
decline. - Several
geologists have recently begun to claim that global
petroleum supply will peak within a decade, and be down
to half the present level by about 2030. In view of our
heavy dependence on liquid fuels this prospect is
alarming. - One of the
most worrying resource problems is water. Demand far
exceeds supply in 80 countries. Water tables are falling
as we pump and use more water than falls as rain. In fact
480 million people are fed by irrigation drawing stored
ground water in excess of the rainfall replenishment
rate. How will these people be fed when the tables are
too low? - If 9 billion
people were to use minerals at the present per capita US
rate of use, estimated potentially recoverable resources
then 1/3 of the 36 most used minerals would be completely
exhausted in about 30 years. - "Footprint
analysis" indicates that the amount of productive land
required to provide one person in Australia with food,
water, energy and settlement area is about 7-8 ha. The US
figure is closer to 12 ha. If 8 billion people were to
live as Australians do, approximately 70 billion ha of
productive land would be required. However the total
amount available on the planet is only in the region of 8
billion ha. - Atmospheric
scientists have estimated that if the amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere is to be kept below twice the
pre-industrial level annual emissions must be in the
region of 9 billion tones. ( Enting, 1994.) For a world
population of 9 billion this means a per capita limit of
1 tonne p. a. Yet the present Australian per capita rate
of emission from fuel burning alone is 16 tonnes, and
when land clearing is added it is 27 tonnes!
The point which such
figures makes glaringly obvious is that we are not just a
little beyond sustainable levels of resource demand and
ecological impact &endash; we are far beyond sustainable
levels. Rich world ways, systems and living standards" are
grossly unsustainable, and can never be extended to all the
world's people. We must face up to dramatic reductions in
our present per capita levels of production and
consumption. Now add the
absurd commitment to economic growth The main worry is not
the present levels of resource use and ecological impact.
The biggest worry is the levels we will rise to given the
obsession with constantly increasing levels of production.
The supreme goal in all countries is to raise incomes,
"living standards" and the GDP as much as possible,
constantly and without any notion of a limit. Few economists or
politicians would be satisfied with 3% rate of economic
growth. If we assume a) a 4% p.a. economic growth, b) a
population of 9 billion, c) all the world's people rising to
the "living standards" we in the rich world would have in
2070 given 4% growth until then, the total volume of world
economic output would be 120 times as great as it is now.
Even if we assume only 3% growth in rich countries and the
Third World rising only to the present "living standards" of
the rich countries, the multiple is 14. So even though the
present levels of production and consumption are grossly
unsustainable the determination to have continual increase
in income and economic output will multiply these many times
in coming decades. Yet it is impossible to get people or
governments to even think about this "limits to growth"
critique of our situation. But what about
technical advance? Such enormous
multiples rule out any realistic possibility that technical
advance can enable us to continue the pursuit of growth and
affluence while greater energy efficiency, recycling effort,
pollution control etc eliminates the resource and ecological
impacts. Obviously the "Factor Four" reduction Amory Lovins
claims technical advance would make possible would fall far
short of what was required. The crucial assumption
made by those who assume that radical change will not be
required is that renewable energy sources can be substituted
for fossil fuels. For a detailed argument that this
assumption is mistaken see Trainer, 2003. Think about
global problems in these limits terms This "limits to
growth" perspective is essential if we are to understand the
most serious global problems facing us: - Resource
depletion is obviously due to producing and consuming at
unsustainable rates. - Third World
poverty and underdevelopment are inevitable if a few
living in rich countries insist on taking far more of the
world's resouces than all could have. The Third World can
never develop to rich world ways, because there are far
too few resources for that. - Conflict and
war are increasingly inevitable if all aspire to rich
world rates of consumption, and if rich countries insist
on growth, on a planet with limited resources. Rich
countries must support repressive regimes willing to keep
their economies to the policies that enable our
corporations to ship out cheap resources, use Third World
land for export crops, exploit cheap labour etc. We must
be prepared to supply arms to factions promising to rule
in our interests, and to invade and run countries that
threaten to follow policies contrary to our interests.
Our rich world "living standards" could not be as high as
they are if a great deal of repression and violence was
not taking place, and rich countries contribute
significantly to this. If we are determined to remain
affluent we should remain heavily armed! It is also a
grossly unjust society We in rich countries
could not have anywhere near our present "living standards"
if we were not taking far more than our fair share of world
resources. Our per capita consumption of items such as
petroleum is around 17 times that of the poorest half of he
world's people. The rich 1/5 of the world's people are
consuming around 3/4 of the resources produced. Many people
get so little that malnutrition affects 1.2 billion people
and more than that number have dangerously dirty water to
drink. Three billion live on $2 per day or less. Conditions
for the world's poorest are deteriorating. This grotesque
injustice is primarily due to the fact that the global
economy operates on market principles. In a market need is
totally irrelevant and ignored; things go mostly to those
who are richer, because they can offer to pay more for them.
Thus we in rich countries get almost all of the scarce oil
and timber traded, while billions of people in desperate
need get none. This explains why one third of the world's
grain is fed to animals in rich countries while around
30,000 children die every day because they have insufficient
food and clean water. Even more importantly,
the market system explains why Third World development is so
very inappropriate to the needs of Third World people. What
is developed is not what is needed; it is always what will
make most profit for the few people with capital to invest.
Thus there is development of export plantations and cosmetic
factories but not development of farms and firms in which
poor people can produce for themselves the things they need.
Many countries like Haiti and Tuvalu get no development at
all because it does not suit anyone with capital to develop
anything there
even though they have the land, water,
talent and labour to produce most of the things they need
for a good quality of life. Even when
transnational corporations do invest, wages can be 15-20c an
hour. Compare the miniscule benefit such workers get from
conventional development with what they could be getting
from an approach to development which enabled them to take
all the benefit from their labour, applied via mostly
cooperative local firms to producing the things they most
need The "Structural
Adjustment Packages" inflicted on poor countries are now the
main mechanisms forcing them to do things that benefit the
rich countries. "Assistance" is given to indebted countries
on the condition that they de-regulate and eliminate
protection and subsidies assisting their people, cut
government spending on welfare, etc., open their economies
to more foreign investment, devalue their currencies (making
their exports cheaper for us, and increasing what they must
pay us for their imports), sell off their public
enterprises, and increase the freedom for market forces to
operate. All this is a bonanza for our corporations and for
people who shop in rich world supermarkets; they can buy up
firms cheaply and have greater and less restricted access to
the cheap labour, the markets, the forests and the
land
and the repayment of loans to our banks is the
supreme goal of the Packages. Yet for most Third
World people the effects are catastrophic; (
see note 1
for many quotes from the vast literature documenting this).
Large numbers of people lose their livelihood, access to
resources is transferred from them to the corporations and
rich world consumers, and the protection and assistance
their governments once provided is swept away. For the
poorest people living conditions are significantly reduced.
These are the reasons
why many now regard conventional development as a form of
plunder. The Third World has been developed into a state
whereby their land and labour benefit the rich, not Third
World people. Rich world "living standards" could not be
anywhere near so high if the global economy was
just. Globalisation is
rapidly accelerating these effects, since it is essentially
about increasing the freedom for market forces to determine
what happens; i.e.,, the freedom for transnational
corporations to get access to markets, resources, labour,
and firms previously protected for the benefit of local
people. The effects are evident in accelerating global
inequality. The corporate super rich are galloping to
obscene levels of wealth. Less than 1% own most of the
world's capital now. Conclusions on
our situation These considerations
of sustainability and global economic justice show that our
predicament is extreme and cannot be solved without enormous
and radical change in some fundamental elements in this
society. There is no possibility of having an ecologically
sustainable, just and morally satisfactory society if we
allow market forces and the profit motive to be the major
determinant of what happens, if we seek economic growth and
ever-higher "living standards". We must face up to radical
and extreme change in our systems, ways and
values. The Required
Alternative; The Simpler Way Numerous people have
discussed what would seem to be the inescapable implications
from the foregoing analysis for the form that a sustainable
and just society must take. The basic principles must
be: - High levels of
self-sufficiency at household, national and especially
neighbourhood and town levels, with relatively little
travel, transport or trade. Mostly small, local economies
in which most of the things we need are produced by local
labour from local resources. - Basically
cooperative and participatory local
systems, - A quite
different economic system, one not driven by market
forces and profit, and in which there is far less work,
production, and consumption, no growth
and a large
cashless sector, including many free goods from local
commons. - Most
problematic, a radically different culture, in which
competitive and acquisitive individualism is replaced by
frugal, self-sufficient collectivism. Some of the elements
within The Simpler Way are voluntary community working bees
&endash; committees - town meetings &endash; commons - many
small firms, ponds, animals, farms, forests throughout
settlements &endash; participatory democracy at the local
level &endash; a neighbourhood workshops &endash; many roads
dug up &endash; "edible landscapes" providing free fruit and
nuts &endash; being able to get to decentralised workplaces
by bicycle or on foot &endash; having to work for money only
one or two days a week &endash; no unemployment &endash;
living with many artists and craftspeople &endash; strong
community. Advocates of the
Simpler Way believe that its many benefits and sources of
satisfaction would provide a much higher quality of life
than most people experience in consumer society. Many would say that
the chances of achieving such a huge transition are remote,
but that is not central here. The crucial question is given
our situation, can a sustainable a just society be conceived
in any other way than as some form of Simpler Way?
Over the past 20 years
many small groups throughout the world have begun to build
settlements and systems more or less of the kind required,
many of them explicitly as examples intended to persuade the
mainstream that there is an alternative that is sustainable,
just and attractive. The fate of the planet depends on how
effective this movement becomes in the next two
decades. Those who wish to
contribute to the transition to The Simpler Way should
firstly work hard at getting this perspective onto the
agenda of public discussion. Most important however is
helping to establish ventures such as community gardens and
workshops which can eventually develop into the new
cooperative, self-sufficient local economies that people can
turn to when the mainstream runs into increasingly serious
problems, such as petroleum scarcity. Enting, I, Wigley,
T., and Haimann, M, (1994), Technical Paper 31; Future
Emissions and Concentrations of Carbon Dioxide, CSIRO
Division of Atmospheric Research, Melbourne. Trainer,T. (F. E.),
(2003b), "Renewable Energy; The limits?",
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D72.RENEWABLE.ENERGY.html Note 1.
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/DocsTHIRDWORLD.html#STGRUCTURAL
ADJUSTMENT PACKAGES NB. This is a 6
page account; for the detailed 27 page account see: For detailed
material on these themes see: The
Simpler Way website
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/ DIE
OFF, "If a path to the better
there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." --
Thomas Hardy Consumercide,
consumercidal: Consumerism as
a cause of death, i.e., death of the individual (~suicide)
or of others (~homicide) or the environment/planet in
general, through an excess of the combination of affluenza
and ignorance.
http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/human/simpler.html
- If all 9
billion people soon to be living on earth were to consume
resources at the present per capita rate in rich
countries, world annual resource production rates would
have to be about 8 times as great as they are now. All
estimated potentially recoverable resources of fossil
fuels (assuming 2t tones of coal) would be exhausted in
about 18 years.
- The
environmental problem is basically due to the fact that
far too much producing and consuming is going on, taking
too many resources from nature and dumping too many
wastes into nature.
- Far
simpler material living standards,
R. L.
Erickson, (1973), "Crustal abundance of elements and
mineral reserves and resources", in D. A. Brobst and W.
P. Pratt, Eds., United States Mineral Resources,
Geological Survey Professional Paper 820.
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/02-The-Simpler-Way.html
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