29 July 2008

Money NO Solution to Eco Crisis

The Market CANNOT Solve
Ecological Problems


Economic advisor to the UK government, Nicholas Stern, said that climate change was the result of the single greatest failure of the market ever! Stern was wrong. The markets do what they're supposed to do: maximise profits. However, climate change is an indicator of failure: our failure to live within the limits set by Nature.
Debate about the causes of climate change usually revolves around the burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse gases emitted in the process. Occasionally, de-forestation also gets a mention as a contributing factor. By only concentrating our attention on the way we produce energy misses the point and will do little to safeguard the continuity of life on the planet.
Climate change is not just about how we produce energy; it is also about what we use the energy for. Because the more abundant and cheap the energy is that we have at our disposal the more readily we use up all the other natural resources and the more we run down our life­support systems.
Like many previous civilisations, we haven't had the good sense to see that we are living beyond our means; way beyond our means. In other words, we are using up and degrading the natural world: water, soils, woodlands, forests, fisheries, wetlands etc faster than natural processes can replace them.
Building an industrial system on the energy stored in such fuels was never going to be more than a one-off and very brief extravaganza. Fossil fuels, especially oil, have proved to be so seductive because they have been the cheapest and most convenient resources ever discovered. However, we are now learning that the aftermath of our energy binge is neither cheap nor convenient.
There is no substitute: not nuclear (now refashioned as `clean' and `green'), not geo-thermal, not renewables and not bio-fuels that could provide anything like the energy we have become accustomed to. Furthermore, most other fuels are fraught with their own problems - even renewables require a large fossil fuel subsidy to get them up and running, especially on the vast industrial scale required to run such energy guzzling activities as space exploration, the military, mass production of all consumer items, agriculture, a mass transit system - including air and sea transport - private cars, agriculture, water desalination plants, mining, pharmaceuticals, hospitals and on and on.
Imagine that if by some miracle, a readily available and non­polluting substitute for fossil fuels were to be discovered, would that be the answer to all the crises we have created? For instance, would this clean source of energy prevent overpopulation, ozone depletion or habitat destruction? Of course not. Unless, that is, we were prepared to alter fundamental attitudes about human nature and our place on this planet, and unless we were prepared to accept that like all other species we are bound by natural limits.
Richard Heinberg in his book Powerdown says, “... unless we dramatically cut back our demand on the Earth's life-support systems, a new energy source will make little difference”.
And, George Monbiot, investigative journalist and author of the book Heat, maintains that alternative energy permits us to imagine that we can build our way out of trouble by responding to one form of overdevelopment with another.
The government's response to the threat from climate change - to introduce a market-based permit and trading system for greenhouse gas emissions - is an economic rationalist response to an ecological catastrophe. It is far too little, far too late.
Furthermore, it is a system designed to allow economic growth and consumerism to proceed unhindered; it is a system designed to let politicians and their corporate masters off the hook (at least for now); it will impose a regressive tax which will unfairly burden those least able to pay; it will stimulate an even larger lobbying industry and provide windfall taxes to governments. And just as a cap and water trading system has failed to halt the decline in the Darling and Murray rivers, so too will an emissions trading system fail to significantly halt an already disastrous situation from growing worse.
Is the party over? Very possibly. A considerable and impressive body of opinion now informs us that the global climatic system is now so stressed that it is at, or close to, a tipping point when feedback processes overwhelm the Earth's ability to restore its own balance - possibly even in the very long-term. Or as a popular human nuclear scientist, James Lovelock, notes, there is now such a frequent number of bizarre and extreme weather events occurring around the world that you don't have to wait for the experts to confirm your worst fears.
What, then, is to be done?
Firstly: Our best bet, expect the worst. To do otherwise is to dig ourselves further into trouble and delay any meaningful response.
Secondly: Acknowledge that we are part of nature. The principles of ecology apply to all living things and that includes us!
And thirdly: Stop believing that economic growth in a finite world is the source of all benefit when in fact it is destroying life.
If we could achieve the above, we could then begin adapting to solutions such as:
  • moving towards self-sufficiency at the community, regional and national level
  • contract the economy, including trade
  • utilise solar energy in small-scale and dispersed systems
  • shift to diversified and organic farming
  • revegetate large tracts of agricultural and pastoral lands remove financial incentives for having children
  • strict enforcement of conservation of land, water and bio­diversity measures
  • stretch supplies of fossil fuels as long as possible instead of competing and fighting wars to hasten their consumption
  • ration all basic requirements just as in war time
  • and, develop an ethic based on simplicity, frugality and restraint

Ally Fricker 2008-2010
This is produced by the group PRECIPICE
(People Representing Ecological Consciousness and Integrity of the Planet Instead of Committing Ecocide)
Phone (O8) 8581 8255.
International Phone (61) 8 8581 8255.
Write:
Ally Fricker
RSD 3
ROBERTSTOWN SA
5381
AUSTRALIA