{"id":506,"date":"2012-12-02T23:36:55","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T04:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=506"},"modified":"2013-09-29T15:48:57","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T20:48:57","slug":"less-is-more-more-or-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=506","title":{"rendered":"Less is More, More or Less"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving, the celebration of bounty, seemed a completely appropriate time to contemplate the corollary concept of enough. Hence one of my tasks for the weekend (why do I always think a day or two off, or even a long plane flight, will give me the time to catch up on everything?) was to read the advance copy of Enough Is Enough<\/em> sent me by co-author Rob Dietz. A bit overoptimistic I was. I\u2019ll blame the lingering L-tryptophan effect. But I\u2019ve only missed the goal by a bit.<\/p>\n

Dietz is the executive director of an organization called CASSE or the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy<\/a>, a mouthful as large as the (first) slice of leftover pumpkin pie I had for breakfast on several of the days following the feast. \u201cEnough Is Enough\u201d rolls off the tongue much more easily (than CASSE, not pumpkin pie), and the strong, memorable title makes me almost wish CASSE would change its name to accompany the book.<\/p>\n

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The basic tenet of the steady state economy (or SSE) is an observation that makes complete sense: you can\u2019t have infinite growth in a finite system. Unfortunately, conventional economics \u2013 perhaps in an attempt to defy its characterization as the dismal science \u2013 says otherwise. Its faith in unending growth portrays it as both possible and desirable.<\/p>\n

EcoOptimism, though based (obviously) in optimism, doesn\u2019t subscribe to this delusional belief in the virtues of growth. In another post, I\u2019ll discuss how that self-serving faith is actually more akin \u2013 as faith-based ideas tend to be \u2013 to a religion than it is to a science. So much so that, in attempting to escape the \u201cdismal science\u201d moniker by being less dismal, conventional economics may have instead lost its reasoned science aspect.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in a name?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of the politically untouchable faith in growth derives from the positive nature of the word growth. How could growth possibly be bad or undesirable? And, even after proving that it is, finding an appealing word or phrase to convey that idea is a difficult task, yielding less than positive terms. Ungrowth? Uh uh. Degrowth? No better. Is the opposite of growth diminishment? Nothing appealing in that. Another suggested term, post-growth, gets warmer, but still doesn\u2019t quite make the cut for me.<\/p>\n

And so we get to steady state economics. Though it ain\u2019t exactly catchy ( as noted above) SSE at least doesn\u2019t succumb to easy connotations of negativism and survives the first round of sound bite tests. Steadiness, especially when compared to the booms and busts of recent history, has much to be said for itself.<\/p>\n

Going Steady<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the goal of SSE is not so much to steady the rough ride of economic cycles as it is the creation of a path for continuing human growth within the constraints of an amazing yet finite planet. And it\u2019s also more than (merely) achieving sustainability. It is the decoupling of economic growth from human flourishing. It is the enabling not just of a future, but of a positive future.<\/p>\n

We already know that happiness (yes, I know that\u2019s a mushy subjective quality, but there actually are ways to define and measure it) does not correlate with economic growth, at least not in the long run. In the richer nations (the \u201cdeveloped\u201d world), where essential needs have largely been met, the acquisition of more material things does not lead to happier or more fulfilled lives. And acquiring things is, after all, an integral part of material growth and its measure, the appropriately named Gross<\/em> Domestic Product. But even with this knowledge (which is not nearly widely enough known), how is the iconoclastic case against growth made? And accepted?<\/p>\n

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I have nearly the same image in my book, Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide<\/em>, but this is from Enough Is Enough<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

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There\u2019s been a plethora of books on this topic of late. I\u2019ve written about some of them before<\/a>: Prosperity Without Growth, The End of Growth, Plenitude, eearth<\/em>, et. al. But in virtually every case, what\u2019s been missing from the iron-clad arguments has been an accompanying roadmap. We have a general idea of where we want to go, but no idea \u2013 especially not a convincing one \u2013 how to get there.<\/p>\n

Indeed, this shortcoming is a major part of the purpose behind EcoOptimism. Along with the lack of concrete steps, I\u2019ve been positing that we need verbal descriptions and perhaps graphic illustrations (I must still be in a Thanksgiving state of mind because that made me think of the \u201ctwenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one\u201d from Arlo Guthrie\u2019s Alice\u2019s Restaurant<\/em> — but I digress) depicting what our un\/re\/de\/post-growth future will look like.<\/p>\n

Happily, Dietz and co-author Dan O\u2019Neill have brought us much closer to answering the how-the-hell-do-we-get-there question. Each chapter in the section \u201cStrategies of Enough\u201d as well as most of the chapters in the third section \u201cAdvancing the Economy of Enough\u201d begin by asking \u201cWhat Are We Doing?\u201d and proceed to \u201cWhat Could We Do Instead?\u201d Then they move to the part I devoured each time: \u201cWhere Do We Go From Here?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dietz and O\u2019Neill are, of course, thoroughly familiar with the concepts of a Steady State Economy. But, they write, \u201cwe had been asking ourselves for some time how a steady-state economy would work in practice.\u201d What are \u201cthe policies and transition strategies that would turn [a SSE] vision into a reality?\u201d Those questions, as it happens, are the same ones I\u2019ve been asking since I started focusing on the \u201cNew Economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve done a terrific job on the second question. First they demolish the conventional argument that growth is the solution to poverty, poor education and unrepresentative rule as well as pollution (the argument proffered by groups like the WTO and mainstreamed by Bjorn Lomberg\u2019s The Skeptical Environmentalist<\/em>). Toss out the convenient and misleading metaphor \u201ca rising tide lifts all boats.\u201d Our economic history strongly declares otherwise.<\/p>\n

Responding to the Econ 101 tenet \u201cMarket prices give no reason to believe that natural resources are a limit to economic growth,\u201d they almost literally scream \u201cThis statement may be true, but it reveals more about the failure of markets than the absence of limits!\u201d This is the core of an argument many of us have been making in various forms for years: a \u201cfree\u201d market can work only if everything<\/em> is priced accurately. And our current markets, which consider almost every resource and service provided by nature to be free, are far from that point. \u201cPrices often fail to capture the effect of resource depletion, waste generation, and loss of ecosystem services. As a result, the market sends improper signals\u2014if it sends any signal at all\u2014regarding the sustainability of throughput levels. We need to eliminate this market failure\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Enough?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Making economic growth the measure and the goal does humanity a huge disservice. Growth, in the gross unqualified version that we currently reflexively strive for, is a false god asking us to sacrifice everything (our lives, our planet) in search of a future nirvana that cannot possibly be the result. The problem, putting aside such relevant constraints as physics and, yes, economics, is that we\u2019ve set our goal on the wrong sight. \u201cMore\u201d is not only unachievable; it is undesirable. And the opposite of more is not less; it\u2019s enough<\/em> \u2013 provided that what we achieve enough of is what we in fact need to grow qualitatively. This becomes a two-part question: first, what is \u201cenough,\u201d meaning what sates us and leaves us better off than we started and, second, how do we get to that state?<\/p>\n

We can continue the overly obvious Thanksgiving analogy here. For most of us, the quantity of the food leaves us with that content but overstuffed lagginess and perhaps the feeling that we overdid it. We certainly could live without it, though most of us would choose not to. Why? Because we enjoy the ritual, the company \u2026 and the food. What, more precisely, is it that makes the holiday so valued to so many? It\u2019s not the amounts of food that we often wish we had exercised a bit more willpower to resist. It\u2019s the circumstance, the associations and the experience (both social and sensorial), not the amount of food. In a crude way, this sums up the difference between the economy of growth and the economy of enough. Economic growth, after a point, does not translate to improved well-being. And after that point \u2013 the point at which basic life needs have been met — our economic and social goals should change course.<\/p>\n

This does not by any means signify stagnation, which is perhaps the main problem with the term steady state \u2013 it\u2019s vulnerable to being misinterpreted as a call to sacrifice. In reality, it\u2019s the opposite of sacrifice; it\u2019s finding the true<\/em> value and measure of progress. As Dietz and O\u2019Neil more succinctly put it: \u201cthe economy can develop qualitatively without growing quantitatively.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s People!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Environmentalists all know that our problems stem from the combination of too much consumption (or rather, unnecessary and inefficient consumption primarily by people in the rich nations) and too many people (who, increasingly, are in the poorer nations). And therefore any real solution has to address both problems.\u00a0 While the first part is certainly key, the second part \u2013 population growth \u2013 is the elephant in the room. It\u2019s an incredibly delicate and laden topic. To its credit, Enough Is Enough<\/em> doesn\u2019t skip over it, as most such discussions do. \u201cWe need smaller footprints but,\u201d they emphasize, \u201cwe also need fewer feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors underscore the point that the number of unintentional pregnancies in the world each year (80 million) is equivalent to the annual growth of the human population. This means we don\u2019t need to dive into heavy-handed intrusive programs like the Chinese one-child-per-family rule. We can achieve steady population through education and voluntary birth control.<\/p>\n

The Role of Wall Street<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I discuss ecodesign in my classes, I emphasize that there are two ways to approach changing the environmental impact of a product. One is the \u201ctweak,\u201d which involves one or more relatively small and incremental changes to the design. The other is the \u201cinnovation,\u201d which demands rethinking the problem (often by rephrasing the question) to find alternative ways of achieving the result the product provides. Often this leads to what has come to be called disruptive technology, a fancy phrase for a new way to do something that reduces the old to history. Think Internet versus encyclopedias. Or 3D printing replacing mass production.<\/p>\n

I found myself categorizing the suggestions within Enough Is Enough<\/em> the same way. Many of their proposals required minor alterations to our current ways of doing things. Others, though, are more like the \u201csquare one\u201d approach. For instance, in the chapter \u201cEnough Debt,\u201d they propose some fundamental changes to how the financial world operates, ranging from the technical (requiring reserves on loans to be 100%) to the structural (decreasing the size and power of financial institution below the \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d level and \u2013 here comes the part that will elicit protests of socialism \u2013 democratizing the means of production).<\/p>\n

Instead of hailing and idolizing the financial arena as the source of investment and growth as we currently do, the authors say we should be viewing it as a cost<\/em>. \u201cThe fewer resources needed to accomplish this service [helping money to flow where it\u2019s needed in the economy], the better off society is. So we should aim to minimize the cost represented by the financial sector\u2014it should account for as small a percentage of total economic activity as possible.\u201d We\u2019ve come to see the financial world as an end in itself (how\u2019s the market doing today?), forgetting in the process that its purpose is to be a means to the improvement of our lives. \u201cInstead of focusing on using money to make more money, financiers should be focusing on serving a stable economy, an equitable society, and a healthy biosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enough is (Almost) Enough<\/strong><\/p>\n

Enough Is Enough<\/em> does an admirable job of making the off-putting topic of SSE much more approachable and enticing, but (ironically) leaves me still wanting more. The authors fully understand that \u201cfor people to embrace the concept of a steady-state economy, they need to understand how it would work and why it would be preferable to what they\u2019ve become accustomed to.\u201d They\u2019ve brought us much closer to this point, but I came away still wanting to know what it will feel like and look like and how we will experience it.<\/p>\n

This shortcoming \u2013 and I\u2019m nitpicking through an exceptional book \u2013 strengthens the underlying need for what I see as a primary mission of the EcoOptimism blog: providing that visceral taste of a positive future. Enough Is Enough<\/em> lays the policy groundwork. Now we need to make it concrete and present it in a form people can relate to in order to convince an understandably skeptical populace.\u00a0 This requires the merging of policy wonk-dom with the visioning and communicating designers can provide (with perhaps some added oomph from the PR and advertising worlds).<\/p>\n

Dietz and O\u2019Neill write \u201cAn enlightened transformation to a steady-state economy is a profoundly hopeful prospect.\u201d Not one of doom and gloom or involving sacrificing the \u201cAmerican way of life.\u201d The overriding need is to develop and successfully present this thoroughly desirable future so that we will pursue it, not because we have to but because we want to. Enough Is Enough<\/em> is a major step on that path.<\/p>\n

Enough Is Enough will be released by Berrett-Koehler Publishers<\/em> on January 7, 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

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