The issue features eight articles that New Scientist editors believe
justify their editorial entitled, “Why economic growth is killing
the planet and what we can do about it.” Presented below the
editorial is an ominously drawn graph purporting to show how global
temperatures, population, carbon dioxide concentrations, GDP, and
loss of tropical rainforest and woodland have dramatically spiked
upward since 1750, and how species extinctions, water use, motor vehicle
use, paper consumption, fisheries exploitation, ozone depletion, and
foreign investment spiked during the 20th century. The editorial concludes
that “the science tells us that if we are serious about saving
the Earth,” economic growth must be limited.
In the first essay, University of Surrey (UK) sustainable development
professor Tim Jackson doubts renewable energy technologies will work
without reduced consumption. Rather than buying an energy efficient
TV, you ought to consider not buying a TV at all, he says.
Next, prominent Canadian Green David Suzuki says that nothing is more
important than the environment and that we need to lower our standard
of living. You need to judge your standard of living by “quality
of life, your relationships with other people and your community,”
Suzuki says. Stores filled with food, record longevity and wealth
is an “illusion,” he asserts, because we’re using
up our children’s and grandchildren’s inheritance.
University of Maryland ecological economist Herman Daly claims that
we’ve passed the point where economic growth provides benefits
and that we need to “transform our economy from a forward-moving
aeroplane to a hovering helicopter,” but that such a “steady-state”
economy “doesn’t have to mean freezing in the dark under
a communist tyranny.” In trying to explain his latter comment,
he says that “Most of the changes could be applied gradually,
in mid-air,” by which he apparently means replacing the income
tax with a tax on goods to “encourage people to use them sparingly.”
Although he acknowledges that this regressive policy would hurt the
poor, he says taxes could be used to provide welfare.
James Gustave Speth -- Yale University dean, co-founder of the Natural
Resources Defense Council and former adviser to President Jimmy Carter
-- says that green values stand no chance against market capitalism.
Economic growth “creates barriers to dealing with real problems,”
he says. While we need to spend more money on social services and
environmental protection, he is “not advocating state socialism,
he claims, but rather a “non-socialist alternative to today’s
capitalism” whatever that means.
Andrew Simms of London’s New Economics Foundation describes
as "disingenuous" the argument that global economic growth
is needed to eradicate poverty. He says that “we have to overcome
knee-jerk rejection of the ‘R’ word -- redistribution”
and that we need a “Green New Deal” that controls capital
and raises taxes to create environmental jobs.
Susan George of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute advocates
developing a World War II-type mentality toward life including rationing,
“victory” or home gardens and the government run by wealthy
elites who would work for a salary of $1 per year.
London Metropolitan University “environmental philosopher”
Kate Soper says that the tourist industry, food service industry,
dating services and gyms are evidence that we need to shift to a less
work-intensive economy. “Of course, we would have to “sacrifice
some conveniences and pleasures: creature comforts such as regular
steaks, hot tubs, luxury cosmetics and easy foreign travel,”
she says, but “human ingenuity will surely contrive a range
of more eco-friendly excitements.”
What’s missing from the New Scientist compilation of Green-think,
of course, are essays from Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx, and, perhaps,
Al Gore. Malthus, a prominent nineteenth century economist, famously
predicted that a geometrically expanding human population would outpace
the arithmetically expanding food supply. Unable to foresee the improvements
in agricultural technology, he turned out to be entirely wrong.
Karl Marx could have chimed in with his communist slogan, “From
each according to his ability, to each according to his need”
-- where the government gets to determine what your needs are. As
implemented in the Soviet Union and Communist China, Marxism resulted
in the starvation and murder of perhaps more than one hundred million
of people and the political and social repression of the survivors.
Al Gore could have contributed an essay reassuring Green elites that
none of this wealth redistribution and standard of living contraction
would affect those who, like him, can already afford home indoor heated
pools or those who can could afford to spend $65,000 and three weeks
jetting around the world with the World Wildlife Fund.
The New Scientist essays reveal how the Greens aim to eviscerate life
as we know it. They want to take us from 200 years of “more-bigger-better”
to a future of “less-smaller-worse.” Won’t happen,
you say?
With Barack Obama leading in the polls, one of his advisors recently
issued an ultimatum to Congress regulate carbon dioxide emissions
in 18 months or an Obama EPA will do it unilaterally. And then there’s
Obama’s famous colloquy with “Joe the Plumber,”
where he said he was for redistributing the wealth. And let’s
not forget Obama’s comment in May that, “We can’t
drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72
degrees at all times…”
Obama has said he’s for economic growth, yet he’s willing
to force-feed us Green policies that would crush it. And as it turns
out, that’s what the Greens are really after in the first place.
