ANOTHER LIFE:IN MY CHILDHOOD, we listened to the wireless – that cosy old word – by the overhead light of one 60-watt bulb. Today, we watch television in a room with some 300 watts glowing around the walls. Tonight at 8.30, however, our windows will be darkened for Earth Hour, in common, it's hoped, with millions of other homes and public buildings as the world spins into dusk. If the weather's right, people in more than 1,000 participating cities could be offered an uncommon revelation of stars, writes MICHAEL VINEY
Earth Hour is a call for action on global warming, something to set against those pictures from space of the lit-up world at night, beautiful but ghastly in its glittering decadence, like Damien Hirst’s diamond-crusted skull. But even as climate change precipitates such gestures, humanity’s other big crisis – the collapse of free-market capitalism – is locking us further into disaster. With conjured billions, governments are propping up the biggest cause of climate change: the dogma of endless economic growth.
A few months ago, the UK’s respected New Scientist magazine stepped out of its lively digest of research to produce a special issue called The Folly of Growth: How Our Economy is Killing the Earth. It brought together key figures from politics, economics and philosophy who reject the imperative of continuing and accelerating growth and accept that science – ecology in particular – must set the limits to it.
Their conclusions left little comfort, however, for at least one fond green fantasy – a wider return to simpler, organic, self-sufficient living on the land. As the world population heads towards seven billion, it’s stuck with its hideously swollen cities, their huge footprints driven by relentless consumption of novel products to create employment and wealth.
Those who challenge the imperative of growth are accused of “wanting us all to go back to live in caves”. And it’s true that when we stop buying so much “stuff”, a lot of people lose their jobs. There are, of course, far too many of us globally, and our human ingenuity in food production and medicine is keeping us alive far too long. The planet’s resources and ecosystems can no longer support our chosen lifestyle.
“Sustainable growth” is the mantra of reform, but economics, rather than ecology, continues to set the rules.
The alternative – the so-called “steady-state economy” – demands ecological economics. This is, indeed, an emerging field, and one of its founders, America’s Herman Daly, stood at the core of the New Scientist forum. Formerly a senior economist with the World Bank’s environment department, he described his bosses’ inability to grasp the idea that the size, resources and energy budgets of the Earth are fixed, while growth is meant to barrel ahead for ever.
WHAT WOULD A steady-state economy be like? New Scientist offered a future scenario under Daly’s mentoring: “We have two guiding principles: we don’t use natural resources faster than they can be replenished by the planet, and we don’t deposit wastes faster than they can be absorbed. In our [ideal] society, scientists set the rules. They [should] work out what levels of consumption and emission are sustainable . . . Then it’s up to the economists to work out how to achieve those limits and how to encourage innovation so we extract as much as possible from every scrap of natural resource we use.”
A more broadly based cap-and-trade system and redeployment of taxes were suggested as the main mechanisms. Without economic growth to raise incomes, poverty is tackled through controlling the overall range of incomes and redistibution resources.
Payment of environmental costs means that natural resources are expensive, so that short-lived, disposable goods no longer make economic sense. Maintenance and repair become important sources of jobs, as valued as those of production. More people work part-time, earning less but enjoying life more. And so on, runs the theory.
Our own government has decided, rightly, to stick to its massive investment in science and technology. Our two leading national universities are collaborating in research for innovation. But all for what? New consumer goods and processes, new marketable drugs – anything to sell to the world.
Could we not declare some richer objectives? The end of waste would be a start. The Germans have just found a way of cooking city sewage to produce gases to fuel the furnace, leaving a simple residue of charcoal – carbon – that can be buried in the ground. Nature leaves nothing unrecycled: nor should human industry – why can’t we do more things like that?
And how is it that an equitable, environmentally sustainable society is never the objective of millions for research? Think-tanks, nibbling at the margins of politics and ideology, seem to be as far as we get. How to get to a workable steady-state economy is worth any nation’s investment and every university’s best brains.
EYE ON NATURE
I saw a duck about the size of a mallard on our local river, but somewhat more slender. It had a russet-coloured beak and head with a tuft, a collar of white around the neck and on to the breast, and a body of light grey plumage.
David Dunne, Glanmire, Cork.
It was a female red-breasted merganser.
At Harold’s Cross Bridge I saw a bird, bigger than a starling but not as big as a seagull, walking along the bank. It had long red/orange legs, dun/grey and white plumage and a long beak.
G Monaghan, Parnell Road, Dublin 12
It sounds like a redshank, more usual on Dublin Bay.
On March 10th at 11am, I saw a bat flitting about catching small insects. It was smaller than a wren with a wingspan a little wider than a robin’s. What species was it and is it normal to hunt at this time of day?
Alex White, Killeen, Co Mayo
It was probably a pipistrelle, hungry after coming out of hibernation.
On March 11th my daughter and I saw dead jellyfish along Port Beach near Clogherhead.
Florence Shields, Clogherhead, Co Louth
Early indeed for the stranding of these barrel jellyfish, Rhizostoma pulmo.
Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo. E-mail: viney@anu.ie. Include a postal address