What Happens When the Economy Eats the Planet?

Over the past couple of years, the global economy has been in rough shape, no doubt. But as we start to pull ourselves out of this slump, have have to ask ourselves: is it a good thing to resume growing?

This is something I've been worried about for a while, but not being particularly savvy about economics, my fret was relegated to simply wondering "wait, how is it that every aspect of a healthy economy is predicated on infinite growth? We live on a finite planet, with finite resources. Should we really expect to be able to grow forever?"

Luckily Andrew Simms over at the Guardian is much more eloquent than I about expressing such fears. In a recent column, he laid out several reasons why we shouldn't cheer on economic growth for it's own sake. Not least of those is a quote from Jared Diamond's book Collapse, in which the author states that when it comes to our ability to harvest more and more wealth from our oceans, farmland, and forest, "an impressive-looking bank account may conceal a negative cashflow."

In other words, we're living beyond the means Earth has provided for us.

Of course Simms isn't the first to raise this red flag -- many others have done it in the context of how our addiction to burning fossil fuels is causing global warming, or how the human "population bomb" will lead to mass starvation as the planet's natural systems falter.

But money talks, and despite these warnings, very few people have done what Simms does in explicitly stating what might seem obvious: the economy (and all of the people, companies, industries, and the resources they consume) simply cannot grow forever. No matter how many new technologies we develop to suck oil from the Earth, how many new territories we open up to natural gas drilling, how many rich new aluminum or iron deposits are discovered, we will eventually run out.

So what do we do -- can we simply abandon a growth mentality? The global economy is based on emitting carbon, which causes global warming. So, the healthier our economy, the worse it is for the environment. In order to stop the vicious cycle, Simms points out, the global economy would have to become 200 times less "carbon intense," a gargantuan feat that seems almost impossible when prominent members of the business world still deny that climate change is a problem.

But Simms stumbles when he gets to "ok, now what?" part. He says we can give up a growing economy, but in favor of what? Western and capitalist culture is predicated on growth -- if a business owner does not seize every opportunity to out-compete her/his rivals, then the business fails, because someone else will. It's a biological imperative; we're hardwired to grow and expand as much as possible (see: sex drive).

You know, on paper, communism wasn't such a bad idea -- make everyone equal, and take away the advantage people get from hoarding wealth and resources. The problem arose because people aren't on paper -- we're biological organisms with the urge to obtain, to compete, to grow. So can we leave growth behind?

I don't think Simms or anyone has answered that question yet. But it's high time we start thinking seriously about it. How we respond might determine whether civilization as we know it survives or not.

Of course, capitalism and communism are just end members. Somewhere in between, maybe, there lies a reality where people can funnel competitive urges into new technologies that will make fossil fuels obsolete, end global warming, and provide endless food and medicine for a global population that exceeds 7, 8, 9 billion people and beyond.

Maybe that's what people mean when they say 'sustainability'. But wouldn't we grow out of that, too? We could move to the Moon, Mars, or a near-Earth asteroid, and colonize it. But what happens after we eat the solar system?

Image: NASA/GSFC