Our devotion to infinite growth has put the future of the planet in peril. And, our leaders -- incapable of breaking away from that paradigm -- are dumbfounded. George Monbiot writes:
The most they tend to offer is more economic growth: the fairy dust supposed to make all the bad stuff disappear. Never mind that it drives ecological destruction; that it has failed to relieve structural unemployment or soaring inequality; that, in some recent years, almost all the increment in incomes has been harvested by the top 1%. As values, principles and moral purpose are lost, the promise of growth is all that’s left.
But a British economist, Kate Raworth, has proposed a new economic paradigm:
The area between the two rings – the doughnut itself – is the “ecologically safe and socially just space” in which humanity should strive to live. The purpose of economics should be to help us enter that space and stay there.
As well as describing a better world, this model allows us to see, in immediate and comprehensible terms, the state in which we now find ourselves. At the moment we transgress both lines. Billions of people still live in the hole in the middle. We have breached the outer boundary in several places.
The aim of economic activity, she argues, should be “meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet”. Instead of economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, we need economies that “make us thrive, whether or not they grow”. This means changing our picture of what the economy is and how it works.
She sees the economy as a doughnut:
Raworth begins by redrawing the economy. She embeds it in the Earth’s systems and in society, showing how it depends on the flow of materials and energy, and reminding us that we are more than just workers, consumers and owners of capital.
The diagram consists of two rings. The inner ring of the doughnut represents a sufficiency of the resources we need to lead a good life: food, clean water, housing, sanitation, energy, education, healthcare, democracy. Anyone living within that ring, in the hole in the middle of the doughnut, is in a state of deprivation. The outer ring of the doughnut consists of the Earth’s environmental limits, beyond which we inflict dangerous levels of climate change, ozone depletion, water pollution, loss of species and other assaults on the living world.
The area between the two rings – the doughnut itself – is the “ecologically safe and socially just space” in which humanity should strive to live. The purpose of economics should be to help us enter that space and stay there.
As well as describing a better world, this model allows us to see, in immediate and comprehensible terms, the state in which we now find ourselves. At the moment we transgress both lines. Billions of people still live in the hole in the middle. We have breached the outer boundary in several places.
Every century or so, a new idea comes along that can reshape the world.
Image: The Guardian
12 comments:
An excellent way to envisage the real costs of our acquisitiveness, Owen. Thanks.
I found the piece really interesting, Lorne. As Monbiot says, she may be the Keynes we need for the 21st century.
i like the premise, but i don't find the diagram at all clear or easily comprehensible...
kb
.. bbb but all political parties shriek how they will 'grow the economy' .. like forever if we elect them & they'll install more pipelines to ensure this 'opportunity' .. to attain 'nation building' to the mystical 'tidewater' and that their political opponents want death dealing carbon taxes instead..
.. and 'Friend' can you immediately send $$ so Dr Leitch or Dr O'Leary can surgerise or amputate or lobotomize .. Your metadata will be safe with us in the Conservative Party datatanks & only ever used for live or robocalling election frauds
They live in a world that passed them by sometime ago, salamander. Together they constitute the 21st century version of the Flat Earth Society.
Go to the link to the column, kb. The diagram is much clearer there.
I'm a bit surprised that Monbiot is getting to this party so late. Raworth's theories, as Monbiot explains them, seem a slight variation on the Steady State (SSE) economic model that's been around for decades and was even posited by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776. The economy, the net sum of human activity, has now grown beyond our environment by a factor of 1.7 and growing. SSE theory holds that the economy must never be larger than a subset of the environment which seems to lie at the heart of Raworth's model. SSE also tackles population in a similar way. Population must be reduced to a sustainable level based on available renewable resources, again a subset, and must then be controlled through reproductive technologies to ensure that births are loosely matched to deaths. As for growth, it too must be matched to well less than the planet's carrying capacity to be shared with other species and nature itself. Growth in resource extraction, in production and consumption and in waste would be curbed and thereafter growth would be limited to knowledge and quality of life.
This may sound terribly radical and if it came out of the mouth of some prime minister it would doubtless be taken that way. However, all that's needed to show its practicality and obvious necessity is to look at Earth as a spaceship, hurtling through our solar system. Once you see it as a closed system, a biosphere, our one and only, it becomes obvious, even exquisite.
That said, I won't be reading Raworth's book nor is re-reading the SSE books I already have high on my to-do list. These aren't theories that work on a local or national level. They're global solutions that carry several implications including equity and sharing, a leveling between the advanced nations and the Third World, that no nation in the Developed World would possibly entertain. However the day when your neighbour agrees to slash his standard of living by 40% immediately, increasing to 60% within a decade, do let me know. My neighbours don't think much of that idea.
The stumbling block is always NIMBY, Mound. Where we live the bone of contention is wind farms. There is a large section of the local population who have loudly taken the NIMBY position.
I'm always puzzled when I hear or read that I should slash my standard of living by 40% to 60%. Just what am I supposed to give up? Food? Health care? Heat in the winter? I'd easily give up flying which I dislike but my overseas relatives are already squawking that I don't visit enough. Having reached the so called golden years we already downsized the house so I don't know what more we can give up before we wind up in long term care.
I am not as forgiving as I might be for those populations that bred themselves into such over crowding that their societies are unworkable. It's simple math; a limited food supply means that some starve or move. What has been happening is that masses are moving away from a problem their parents caused. What really makes me angry is pressure, religious and otherwise, against birth control. We simply cannot solve any of our worldly problems when large numbers are having large families.
Owen I totally agree with the concept, but its just communism with a green heart. Communism is the greatest system that has never been tried and I believe the Linux to the apple that will eventually bear fruit. Like Kim Stanley Robinson chose, it has to happen on Mars. We have more people on todays earth living mentally and economically in the middle ages than we do on the cusp of a better world. Your not going to change these fucking idiots clogging up progress. The reason is they are humans, the most high esteem powered animals ever.
BTW not that I am surprised, but Trump has become Hillary with none of the intellectual rigor.
Its the squirrel presidency. I have not yet admitted my support of Trump was a mistake
but the wind is blowing.
Birth rates seem to decrease with development, Toby. But there are limits to development.
I suspect that a lot of Trump's supporters are beginning to feel as you do, Steve.
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