The Chair of Air New Zealand’s Sustainability Panel, British environmentalist Sir Jonathon Porritt, spoke to a group of decision makers in Nelson recently and warned about the unsustainable disjuncture between New Zealand’s branding and its reality. He expressed concern at the extent that businesses have been allowed to create wealth at the expense of the environment. Farming and forestry pollute and silt up waterways, tourism overwhelms natural values that attract people to start with. New Zealand had suffered “a phenomenal amount” of environmental damage, he said, from industry in pursuit of private wealth.
But exploitation is how surplus value is extracted in a capitalist system. Stripping value from nature and culture is how the economy grows in what economist EF Schumacher called a ‘cowboy economy’, like ours. Exploitation of paid and unpaid workers, of nature, of animals and of the commons; all creates hallowed growth. Debt produces both wealth and slaves to penury overnight. As we’ve seen in the news lately with reports of big corporations dodging taxes, costs of economic exchange fall disproportionately on the poor. Built on continuous extraction of ‘natural capital’ and discharging effects, wastes and externalities, from and into indigenous and natural commons, ‘growth’ has delivered increasing access to technological wants and needs but left wallets and hearts empty. Promises of the ‘trickle down’ effect have been well and truly broken as extremes between rich and poor become more entrenched, and former ‘Third World’ problems of poverty and related diseases, and homelessness become felt in our own communities. The underpinning of New Zealand’s ‘rock star’ economy, in particular, dairy, turns out to have been a fad after all. Our typical boom-driven investment seems to be bust. Huge debts, declining world markets and ecological overstretch now characterise last year’s wunderkind. The emperor wears no clothes.
A potential global slowdown means banks are putting a positive spin on growth rates that would have been considered tragic in the past. HSBC’s Australia/New Zealand Chief Economist, Paul Bloxham who coined the ‘rock star economy’ phrase to describe New Zealand in 2014, now says our low growth economy has reached ‘Nirvana’ because demand matches supply. Even then New Zealand’s wealth generation is largely led by immigration, tourism, service industries and construction – none exactly solid, tradeable foundations in an international market. It’s certainly no nirvana for workers whose pay remains constantly low because of lack of market movement. All stasis does for them is lock in a low paid status quo.
But maybe a low or no growth economy does offer some potential for society and ecology in a way not anticipated by mainstream economists. Certainly the oversupply of cheap oil has been good for the planet in a perverse way because it has undermined the viability of fracking and expensive types of extraction. A market correction in the oversupply of dairy will be disruptive to New Zealand’s economy and provincial communities, but good for rivers and streams (and cows), especially if the government ever stops subsidising irrigation schemes.
Schumacher contrasted the ‘cowboy economy’ model, with the ‘spaceship’ model. The spaceship model conserves energy and resources, whereas the cowboy version wants maximum exchange and throughput, regardless of the cost. The spaceship offers quality economic exchange, compared with the quantity sought by the cowboy.
In the spaceship, ecological limits are respected and restored. Over-reach beyond carrying capacity is addressed by downscaling or ‘degrowth’. Redistribution may be warranted. A steady-state economy is valued for its qualitative benefits instead of growth for the sake of increased benefits in the hands of the few. Labour assumes a personally and societally richer, value.
Debt, oversupply, inequality, environmental effects and economic imbalance may well prove to be self-correcting. There’s only so much exploitation the national and global economy can sustain before economic or ecological collapse occurs on either small or grand scale. Some dairy farmers for example, may go to the wall, but according to conventional economic theory this is the efficient operation of the market. Ultimately we have the chance to consciously respond to ecological and financial limits (such as toxic waterways, climate change, overproduction, unsustainable debt) or to be caught up in inevitable decline as natural or market feedback hits home. Mainstream political and economic interests fail to acknowledge the limits to growth, but those limits exist nonetheless.
Good article Christine Rose,
So what are these idiots going to do when our climate change effect begins to flood and create swamps of our beach properties?
Tauranga is now the latest bubble in real estate as Auckland is stagnating so they are building new four lane highways to Auckland costing us all billons.
Planet key speculators are very active here now.
“Debt, oversupply, inequality, environmental effects and economic imbalance may well prove to be self-correcting. “
This was true, once, but these days many industries (e.g. banking) are deemed “too big to fail” or pose a “systemic risk” to the economy. So what our leaders now do, is prop up failed business practice (i.e. bail out) with tax-payer money – or more accurately, borrowed money with the population’s future production used as the collateral. Charles Ponzi would be proud.
John Michael Greer warns us in his excellent book ‘The Ecotechnic Future’ that just as living organisms have a whole range of ways to maintain homeostatis’ and stay alive, our political-economic systems may be more resilient than we think, and also have a bunch of tricks up their sleeves to keep business-as-usual turning over:
http://www.newsociety.com/Books/E/The-Ecotechnic-Future
Jeff Rubin makes a similar point in his book ‘Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller’. Oil extraction rates trend down over the coming decades, and prices will trend up, but it won’t happen at smooth, consistent rates. Like a car engine running out of fuel, both extraction and prices will spike up and down in response to one another, before finally stalling when the fossil fuel age ends. Every time extraction goes up (although never as high as the mid-2000s peak), and prices go down (although never as low as they were late last century), wishful thinkers will say “See! Peak Oil isn’t happening”, willfully ignoring the medium-to-long term trends.
Finally, as the late Mike Ruppert pointed out, the solutions we need will not and cannot come from states or corporations because any change towards real, long-term sustainability requires is not in their interests. Instead, what is within our power is to create “slow and small solutions” at the community level, that transition us towards relocalized economies and redistributed decision-making power, draining the resources and legitimacy from the state-corporate system until it dries up and falls off the Earth, like an old scab falling off a healed wound.
About Paul Bloxham: that’s why it’s a wast of time looking at charts. Or listening to talking heads. It’s all just a filter to get you to spend money how they want you to spend it.
‘The Chair of Air New Zealand’s Sustainability Panel’
There is phenomenal irony in the first few word of this item, since Air New Zealand and sustainability are mutually exclusive concepts.
However, ANZ will presumably continue to pollute the atmosphere as long as rapidly-depleting fossil fuel are available to burn in the engines, just like every other airline.
‘environmental effects and economic imbalance may well prove to be self-correcting’
On the contrary, the more out of balance the global geochemistry becomes, the faster self-reinforcing feedbacks release semi-sequestered CO2 and CH4 and add to the imbalance.
The predicament we are in won’t be corrected by nature and cannot be corrected by humanity. The time to do that was in the 1960s to 1980s.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/co2_800k_zoom.png
I think Earth is a lot more resilient than you give it credit for. Remember BOTH CO2 and temperature levels have been much, much higher than today without the catastrophic feed-back loops that are popular with doomers such as yourself which would have had the planet transform into Venus every million years or so. The planet imo will self-correct. What that looks like is anybody’s guess and whether human’s are adaptive enough to survive said change is another matter entirely (we have only been around for about 200,000 years), but again, I think most (but definitely not all) will make it. We are a highly resourceful species. Maybe I’m just being optimistic.
Quoting George Carlin, the Earth isn’t fucked: we are.
The frequent talk about CO2 levels being higher in the past is totally irrelevant, and the people who bring up this argument forget that, over the past 400 million years there have been enormous sequestering events -converting atmospheric CO2 into coal, oil and natural gas etc.- most notably in the Carboniferous, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Humans have desequestered an enormous amount of previously-sequestered carbon that nature ‘put out of harms way’, and put it into the atmosphere, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide, where it does much harm. The most recent great sequestration event too place around 90 million years ago, I believe.
In other words, from about 90 million years ago until quite recently (say 1950) the quantity of carbon available was lower than during ancient high-CO2 periods.
Yes, the planet will self-correct, but that will take between 10,000 and a million years. Don’t forget that humanity has managed to overwhelm one of the most important self-correction systems, the conversion of silicate racks into carbonate rocks via acid-rain weathering.
CaSiO3 + CO2 goes to CaCO3 + SiO2.
In this context, the following is one of the most important graphs:
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/co2_800k.png
I’d rather discuss facts than opinions. Facts don’t never change. Opinions sometimes do.
‘We are a highly resourceful species.’
That is why we are in this mess.
The need to get our heads around the end of growth is going to be the new climate change. The human race is staring down the barrel of a ruined planet, countless numbers of other species extinct and us fighting among each other for what resources remain, if we do not start taking this stuff seriously.
There are respectable estimates that in order for all to live the rough equivalent of a European lifestyle, there is really only enough resource on the planet for about 3 billion of us. If you accept that, even just a little, you can see that now we are past twice that and heading higher, something will have to give, sooner or later.
Growth has always relied, as a bottom line, on growth in human population or each human consuming more, both having the same nett affect on resources, so neither an answer. China is presently trying the latter, but people do actually grow out of rampant consuming so as a population ages its usefulness as consuming units diminishes.
We have always relied on more numbers of younger generations to support the older ones, but as traditional work is more and more being replaced with technology and machinery, the work left available for people is less reliable and not well paid for. How are people to live in this brave new world?
People are starting to talk about a UBI and I believe in future it may be the only way for us to carry on in this world in a civilised manner. There is the question of how will we be able to do this. Here’s the thing, I don’t think capitalism and a UBI are a comfortable fit.
It is going to take a while to turn thinking around on this one, I am just glad the subject has been broached, it’s a start.
Screw the Nats, screw the rest.
Just listen to this excellent speech by Bernie, you will understand all that matters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWntM7pvFtg
No wonder the Nats go on about Labour loving Sanders, they are very afraid, very afraid if Labour in NZ may finally wake up and follow Sanders and Corbyn to take a clear line in policy!
My first thought when I heard Key say that was, does he not realise that is a compliment?
In Japan of the stagnant economy, there are people who aren’t interested in ‘perpetuating The Species’. Quite a few, we’re told.
If such a trend could be transplanted to areas where there are frequent droughts and resource wars life and culture in those areas may again be possible. Or even to enclaves ‘stuck in the past’ – last century or the one before – and guided by one of the regrettable patriarchal religions with a down on contraception and education for females.
And if (shuffles on soap-box) those blasted ‘wimmin’s magazines’ might stop the ‘rah’rah about ‘baby bumps’, maternity, and clutches of offspring we may be able to cut bribes such as ‘Working for Families’. Consequence? Conserving vital croplands and waterways from quick-buck exploiters looking to build ephemeral housing. (Similar serious conversations also need to be held in ‘Stories for Boys’, don’t they?)
We don’t need crops of cannon fodder. We don’t need to breed any more waves of emigrants, refugees, asylum seekers from anywhere, to anywhere.
Cut the ‘incentives’ and aim for billions fewer by the end of the century.
The problem isnt to many people, Earth could readily sustain a population of well over 10 billion
Im assuming you have no children ?
As we are still destroying natural forest and having to having look to the ocean floor for stuff like phosphate and we are at 7 billion now, it is pretty clear the planet cannot sustain that let alone 10 billion. It will pretty much mean the non-existence of other species unless we think they are specifically useful to us. Do you really want that? Damned if I want that
About 3 billion is all the planet is capable of supporting living te rough equivalent of a European lifestyle, you are fooling yourself if you think we can manage 10 billion
“living te rough equivalent of a European lifestyle”
this is the problem,
So your suggesting we sacrifice billions of people so we can carry on buying mobile phones and 6$ coffees ?
i consider every ones right to be alive greater than my right to a “European lifestyle”
All the scientific evidence indicates global oil extraction will ‘fall off a cliff’ between now and 2030. So that’s bye-bye to industrially produced and industrially distributed food, and a likely collapse in global population of around 4 billion.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/tverberg-estimate-of-future-energy-production.png
Then there is Abrupt Climate Change, which will hammer local food production.
The scientific evidence indicates there will be fewer than 1 billion by mid-century….and perhaps no one at all if the climate feedbacks take the temperature high enough fast enough.
We’ll have a better idea how dire the predicament is by the end of this year because we will then know the extent of the 2016 Arctic meltdown.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Action to limit population growth and reconfigure the financial system and economies should have been taken in the 1970s, when practically all the aspects of the predicament we now find ourselves in had been identified. Appropriate actions were not taken, and are still not taken
‘Highest-ever daily average CO2 at MLO: 407.12 ppm on March 18, 2016 (NOAA)’
https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2
Planetary overheating is accelerating.
Great post Christine.
What we seem to be lacking is leadership and co operation in the Green area.
The people of NZ clearly care, and braved the rain to march against climate change, but where do we go from there?
Every day there is articles on sites like this about RMA , destruction of democracy, lies about water, climate change, fishing and ocean degradation and actions. But when talked about in isolation and with different groups being involved it is a diluted message.
Russel Norman and the Greens should at least team up for a greater message and active push in this direction. There also needs to be a way to join all the terrible things the National party are doing to this country and the planet and roll them together into a message and with a punch and action.
One idea, stop the insane importation of palm oil cattle fodder, to limit the size of large factory farms to efficient family size.
Stop cutting forests to create irrigated pasture land.
Good for the environment, reduces the oversupply of milk and better use of our land to provide a variety of crops.
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