ZERO

GROWTH

© 2001

INTRODUCTION

"Growth" is a word much on the mind and the lips of those concerned about the fate of man and the environment which sustains him. The recent attainment of a world population of six billion was cause for speculation as to how much more growth in population the world can endure without dire consequences ensuing. Suburbanites all over the world have expressed their concern about urban sprawl diminishing the quality of their lives by placing anti-growth initiatives on the ballot which would replace rampant, unrestrained growth with "smart growth." Those knowledgeable in man's exploitation of his natural resources look worriedly at the ever increasing demand for those resources and, in the case of some, the diminishing supply and call for the use of our precious natural endowment in a sustainable manner.

"Sustainability" is another word frequently heard in this context. What it means is that we should live in a way that our children, and their children after them, will live in a world as rich in the good things life has to offer as was the world in which we grew up. The idea presented in this book, that of zero growth, is closely related to this concept of sustainability. But it goes beyond the amorphous term "sustainability" in its goals and in its clarity. Consider the President's Council on Sustainable Development, which finds economic growth and environmental protection "mutually reinforcing" and believes "Economic growth based on technological innovation, improved efficiency, and expanding global markets is essential for progress toward greater prosperity, equity, and environmental quality." If this is "sustainability", what is "unsustainability"? The clarity of the zero growth concept allows no such muddled interpretations.

Many authors have eloquently and convincingly made the case for sustainability through carefully researched statistical data, sophisticated graphical projections, and detailed case studies. In arguing for zero growth I will occasionally reference a factoid here or a datum there, but the argument for zero growth presented in this book is not dependent on such an approach. Those interested in obtaining a knowledge of the quantitative base on which the concept of both sustainability and zero growth rests will need to consult more scholarly works.

Nor will a roadmap to a future zero growth world be drawn here. A proposed first step will timidly be offered towards the end of the book, but I recognize its limitations and can imagine many alternative first steps which might just as validly have been put forth. In part, this results from my faulty vision, but in a larger part it is justified by the novelty of the zero growth concept and its current negligible acceptance. Once zero growth has been accepted as a desirable goal, the time to discuss the means to achieve it will have arrived.

The concept of zero growth presented here is more than an idea or a policy. Such a revolution in man's thinking - at least contemporary man's - involves much more than simply a rational decision made on the basis of self-evident facts by enlightened leaders popularly supported. Zero growth is an ethic, a way of looking at the world and our place in it and using this vision to guide our daily lives. It is about morality as much as about politics or economics. Its wellspring is the heart as much as the mind.

CHAPTER 1 - GROWTH

It is a commonplace to note that the world has changed more in the last 200, 100, 50, or whatever years than it had in all of prior human history. The industrial revolution and the astounding changes it has brought are familiar to all and make the achievements of prior generations seem puny by comparison. Our bustling cities resplendent with towering, gleaming monuments, our ability to transport ourselves to anywhere on the globe in a matter of hours and our words in a matter of nanoseconds, our ability to venture outside our normal sphere and explore an ethereal world high above the clouds, all these tributes to man's ingenuity and enterprise fill us with awe and cause us to swell with pride to be part of such a brave new world. Our lives, we feel, are not only quantitatively different from those of our ancestors but qualitatively as well.

Inspired by the marvels of our ever-transforming world, a devotion to change is inculcated in us from birth, and we expect this change to be in a certain direction: towards growth, towards progress. We subscribe to the dictionary's definition of the Greek term for equilibrium, "stasis", equating it with "stagnancy", and make an icon of change, alias growth, alias progress. For the world not to change, and for the change not to be expressed in growth and progress, is unthinkable to us.

Yet, for most of human history mankind lived in a state which might better be described as equilibrium. The seasons changed and individuals changed as they passed from birth through the stages of maturity and old age to inevitable death, but the environment in which man eked out his existence and the means he employed to this end changed very little. One generation lived pretty much the same way as had the last and expected the next generation to do the same. The great technological and social changes which we look back on as progressive - the transformation from a nomadic hunting culture to a settled agricultural one, the age-defining metallurgical discoveries, the domestication of beasts of burden and sources of protein - evolved over spans of time expressed not in decades or even centuries but millennia.

Epic events in a people's history have provided the source material for folk myths and legends, but the very antiquity with which most such events are associated testifies to the rarity of dramatic changes. The Great Flood lives on in our collective consciousness but hardly stimulates the market for boats today. Polynesians sing of the adventurous forefathers who brought them to the far-flung islands on which they reside, but seldom set off on voyages into the limitless sea in emulation. The very sameness of man's existence over time, it might be argued, is what causes him to commemorate in poetry and song those few times when really significant things occurred. If every day brought new and exciting changes, folklore would hit the charts then be forgotten as rapidly as the popular tunes of our day. The lives of the great majority of those who ever walked the earth avoided the Confucian curse of living in interesting times.

Certainly, looking back over the long sweep of human history, we see empires rise and fall, civilizations come and go, great monuments, both physical and spiritual, that were meant to last through the ages, endure or crumble. For those we read about in the history books - the kings and emperors, the prophets and the martyrs, the thinkers and the doers - there were times of momentous change. But to what extent did these events affect the everyday lives of the common man: the peasant, the slave, the average citizen? How different was the daily life of the Egyptian fellah at the end of the 3000-year-old pharonic dynasties from what it was like at the beginning? Or the life of the serf before and after a thousand years of feudalism? Even our own grandfathers have personal experience of a time when man's principal means of transport was the same as it had been at the dawn of civilization: strong, submissive, four-hoofed animals.

Throughout most of human history change has been so unremarkable and what little change that did occur so un-directional that the great philosophers of history, at least those of a secular bent, were as likely to see history as cyclical as to see it as leading anywhere. Long before Christ offered us the prospect of a Second Coming, the foremost philosopher of the world's oldest enduring civilization, shocked by the destructive consequences of rapid political change in his native China, taught that the present should seek to emulate the golden past. Ibn Khaldun, the 14th century philosopher/historian of Muslim North Africa, saw history as repetitive cycles of hard work and cooperation leading to wealth and power, only to be followed by corruption and selfishness bringing on an inevitable decline and fall. The very word "progess" only acquired its modern connotation in the last few hundred years, previously signifying simply a physical advance from one spot to another, as in the progress of a king and his entourage from one castle to the next.

But all that has changed. Our lifestyle has changed so much in the last hundred years that we find it hard to imagine what life was like when fires had to be tended, horses fed, and water brought up from the well. We live lives very different from those of our parents in significant ways and we expect our children to live lives significantly different from our own. And all this thanks to progress, thanks to growth.

CHAPTER 2 - SYMPTOMS

When a doctor sees a patient's vital signs going off the chart, he knows it's time for emergency medication, perhaps too late. But what about a society? A chart of mankind's vital signs over the last thousand years would look like a patient going terminal. Take whatever indicator you like - population, energy consumption, agricultural production, CO2 emissions - and graph it. The left three-fourths of the chart would be almost a horizontal line, followed by an almost vertical line covering the last 250 years. Is it time for remedial action? Is it too late?

We have come to think of growth as the Great Benefactor. Rapid growth has been the hallmark of the industrialized world, bestowing on its lucky denizens a standard of living unmatched in human history. Governments of every creed - capitalist, communist, Islamic, whatever - strive to promote ever greater economic growth. How else can the world's burgeoning population of poor and miserable hope to enjoy lives of basic comfort and dignity but through growth? But should we be thinking of growth not as the Great Benefactor but as the Great Destroyer? Has growth become like a malignant cancer, devouring the very body which sustains it?

Everyone is familiar with the negative consequences of growth. We've all seen our favorite woodlands, fields, or lakeside converted into subdivisions, our view of distant mountains obscured in a brownish haze, our highways become more and more congested over time. Vociferous public debate rages over polluted rivers, holes in the ozone layer, and disappearing species. As a consequence, awareness of environmental issues is perhaps more widespread in the public consciousness than any other governmental policy issue.

And some truly stupendous ameliorative efforts have been undertaken as a result. Recycling, the realm of the kooky few just a generation ago, is now standard policy in our cities. The cars we drive today burn fuel so cleanly and efficiently that we gasp in horror when confronted with one of the old gas guzzlers, say in a sixties movie, belching its way down the highway. Fish are returning to spawning grounds their ancestors abandoned decades ago. And most amazingly, the notoriously self-centered governments of the world, who find so little common ground, actually agreed to eliminate production of an important industrial product on the not-undisputed testimony of scientists that it was destroying a precious gas far above our growth-distracted heads.

But as often as not, our best efforts are thwarted, if not reversed, by continued growth. The cycle of build-a-highway-to-ease-congestion-followed-by-increased-traffic-and-the-need-to-build-a-bigger-highway is known to every highway planner and commuter. An additive put in our gasoline to reduce the pollution resulting from more cars on the road ends up polluting our drinking water supply. Scientists astound us with their ability to extract more and more bounteous crops from our fertile earth, but the number of hungry and starving keeps increasing as the earth's human inhabitants keep multiplying.

Growth advocates assure us that man with his technological genius will always find ways to overcome whatever problems may arise and point to the tremendous accomplishments - huge dams, robotic production, superhighways, green revolutions, vaccines, satellites - which have made possible the incredible growth we have thus far experienced. They see history as a Toynbeean dialectic of challenge and response with every challenge eliciting the necessary response. Besides, they point out, with progress some problems will just go away, reminding us of the turn-of-the-century seer who predicted that, if something drastic wasn't done, New York City would soon be buried under a mountain of horse manure.

But instances where our technological genius has failed us are also apparent. Our technology did not save from extinction countless plants and animals; quite the contrary. The rate of cancer, a disease at least in part attributable to an environment polluted by the very technology we place so much faith in, continues to rise despite the best efforts of medical science. That we are still so critically dependent on fossil fuels in an age of global warming can be considered a failure of technology to provide alternative energy sources.

Moreover, even if technology resolves some of the perplexing problems resulting from growth, will we be the better for it? Some cultural anthropologists argue that the agriculture revolution we tout as a hallmark of human progress came about not by choice but out of necessity, as population density and resource exhaustion made the tried-and-true hunter/gatherer existence untenable. They further argue that man suffered a decline in living standards with the transition: a poorer diet, more disease, etc. Might we see a similar scenario in our current agricultural revolution, where to feed an ever-growing population we must resort to fertilizers, pesticides, genetically modified crops, etc.?

But the argument that technology is Our Lord and Savior remains very persuasive in light of the challenges man has overcome in the last few hundred years. We critics can mention all the species that have been driven to extinction by man's activities or the problems of hunger, poverty, and disease which continue to wrack our modern world, but on a theoretical plane the blind faith of the apostles of growth cannot be disproven. At least not until a problem so massive arises that no response is forthcoming, and then it may be too late for argumentation.

A more practical criticism the growth advocates must answer is the question of resource exhaustion. Some experts, for instance, maintain that the world will run out of fossil fuels, the sine qua non of industrialized society, within the lifetime of our children or, at best, our grandchildren. Common sense argues that there is a limit to the earth's resources and common experience confirms that those resources are being used up at an ever-increasing pace.

The more starry-eyed proponents of unending economic growth, such as the late Julian Simon, defy common sense and argue that resources are limitless, meaning that resources are infinitely substitutable (solar energy for fossil fuels, for example). Space buffs, who envision man tapping the resources of the solar system and beyond in the foreseeable future, argue slightly more rationally that resources are as infinite as the universe. But most growth advocates accept the fact that we live on a finite globe with finite resources.

They question, however, how close we are to exhausting those resources. Nobody really knows, they point out, how much petroleum lies beneath our feet awaiting our hypodermic-like probes. As if in confirmation, new fields are discovered most every year, and with each new discovery the day of reckoning is pushed back farther into the future. And then there's always substitutability, they glibly pronounce, dragging out the economists' hallowed graph of supply and demand to prove their case.

There never will come a time when two lines intersect on a chart and we will all say "Oops! I guess it's time to stop growing." There is no way of knowing what the "optimal" human population is. There is no way of knowing how much energy we can consume before we have reached the limit. And apparently there is no amount of human misery we cannot accept before we question whether growth doesn't have something to do with it. We can only hope that, if growth has become a societal cancer, we will fare better than the mindless cancer cells replicating themselves endlessly toward self-destruction.

CHAPTER 3 - ABSURDITIES

The absurdities resulting from unrestrained growth in the contemporary world are myriad. The following are some of them:

While the world's population burgeons and is widely blamed for the poverty afflicting underdeveloped countries, Russia contemplates adopting policies to encourage a higher birthrate, including tax breaks and housing subsidies for bigger families, to counter its declining population trend.

Mexico faces a long-term water crisis as its drinking water supply per capita drops to 60 per cent of what it was 50 years ago - less than in Egypt - and pollution contaminates 73 per cent of its water resources, while the Mexican government continues to supply water to agribusiness and mining firms for free.

While some scientists attribute the disappearance of toads, frogs, and other amphibians from lakes and ponds around the globe to global warming - perhaps the canaries in our open-pit mine called Earth -, President Bush declares the Kyoto accords on reducing carbon emissions dead.

Despite the establishment of a nature preserve in China to protect the panda, the destruction of the bear's forest habitat has accelerated since the park's creation - from 52 acres a year before 1975 to 237 acres a year since then - due to increased human population in the park.

Mad cow and hoof and mouth disease decimate the world's livestock, an affliction compounded by the increasingly artificial methods by which animals are raised to feed a growing global population, but the number of hungry mouths needing to be filled continues to soar.

In America, illness from food is on the rise with Americans more likely to get sick from what they eat than 50 years ago (gastrointestinal illness is 34% higher than in 1948, for example), a shortage of food inspectors, especially for imports, being cited as one of the reasons.

A study by several universities and think tanks declares that in Los Angeles "sprawl has hit the wall", concluding that the city has reached its social, structural, and ecological limits, but the city keeps growing, with another 6 million people expected to be absorbed in the next 20 years.

Could there be a link between the 5 million American children who have asthma, which has become the most common chronic childhood illness, and the 18 million American children under 10 who live in areas where the air they breathe does not meet minimal federal standards?

Authorities in France prepare to re-open the Mont Blanc Tunnel - closed after a 1999 truck accident in which 39 were killed - to trucking, but environmentalists protest, citing the threat of a smudgy appearance settling on Europe's most picturesque peak, under which the tunnel runs.

Satellite mapping shows that only 16% of the world's farmland is free of fertility problems, such as chemical contamination, salinity, or poor drainage, with contamination by aluminum alone making 17% of the farmland worldwide toxic to plants and nearly 4 million acres being lost to excessive salt, while the world's hungry population is expected to grow by 1.5 billion over the next 20 years.

While Western leaders celebrate the signing of a pact to build a pipeline from the oil-rich Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, assuring abundant fossil fuel emissions well into the next century, the sturgeon catch in the Caspian Sea plummets and the health of those living along its polluted shores is threatened by contaminated drinking water.

Futurists of the past assured us that by the millennium we would all be casting about for meaningful ways to fill our leisure time, labor-saving devices and the prosperity they brought having reduced work to a mere afterthought; but in the millennial year Americans, the beneficiaries of the richest, most advanced society on the planet, will spend more hours at work than any other people on earth and more than they ever have before.

While world reserves of petroleum, a non-renewable resource, are predicted to be exhausted within the lifetime of young people alive today, in the United States gasoline sells for about the same price as spring water, a renewable resource.

While the world's richest countries cannot agree on steps to be taken to reduce emission of greenhouse gases, the coral reefs of the earth's seven seas are dying - 25% thus far - in part because of global warming.

Dutch sugar cookies are shipped to American consumers while American sugar cookies are shipped to Dutch consumers, prompting growth critic Herman Daly to suggest they save the fossil fuel by simply exchanging recipes.

The remarkable progress made in the San Francisco Bay area in reducing smog over the last 30 years - from 65 days in violation of the Clean Air Act in 1969 to 3 in the year 2000 - is threatened by the sheer number of cars on the road as the area was stripped of its passing grade for meeting federal ozone standards in 1998 and the trend shows a disturbing sign of more smog-filled days per year in the future.

The aquifer underlying the Gaza Strip continues to drop while the population it must sustain - both Arab and Israeli - continues to rise, contributing in no small way to the tensions in that troubled land.

The world's richest man, Bill Gates, prime beneficiary of the high tech bonanza, pooh-poohs the notion of hawking computers and Internet access to the world's poor, who more often than not do not have electricity or telephones in their homes - much less clean drinking water or enough to eat.

The Food and Drug Administration bans the use of two antibiotics by poultry farmers, claiming humans risk becoming infected with germs that resist treatment, their own research concluding that 5000 Americans are so affected each year.

In Brick Township, New Jersey the incidence of autism amongst children three to five years old - almost eight per thousand - far exceeds the national average of 2-3 per thousand and some blame the toxic Brick landfill, an EPA Superfund site.

The wealth elite of civil war-wracked Colombia hold more in foreign assets - Florida real estate, Swiss bank accounts - than that country owes under its crippling foreign debt.

Fish in the Sierra Nevada range of California are found to have high levels of mercury left over from contamination during the gold mining days of the late 19th century, an ominous harbinger of the lingering effects our present pollutants, especially nuclear waste, might have on future generations for a much longer span of time.

The hole in the ozone layer keeps getting bigger and bigger - bigger than the United States in the year 2000 - while chloroflourocarbons (CFC's), the assumed culprit, continue to be manufactured, albeit in reduced quantities.

Genetically engineered crops - hailed as a new agricultural revolution - turn out to emit toxic pollen containing the insecticide Bt, which is proving lethal to monarch butterflies (and who knows what else?).

The commercial fishing fleet off California may be reduced by half as the U.S. government enacts sweeping restrictions on the catch of rockfish, an umbrella term covering some 90 species, because of overfishing.

Growth becomes an issue in localities across the United States as 148 referenda to curb urban sprawl are placed on the ballot in the 1998 elections (124 of which pass), but too often such measures are motivated by a "not in our neighborhood" attitude instead of an all-encompassing philosophy of zero growth.

Scientists find traces of a new gas in the atmosphere, trifluoromethyl sulfur pentaflouride (SF5 CF3), which is 18,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide in trapping heat, and nobody knows where it is coming from.

In California, the federal government bows to the protests of downstream cities and foregoes plans to channel selenium-laden agricultural runoff into the delta of the Sacramento River; but, as the poisonous water continues to pile up, nobody has any idea where to put it.

Apologists for unrestrained economic growth tout technology as the cure-all for the devastating impact the same technology is having on the environment, but in California's Silicon Valley - the heartland of high-tech - the computer industry generates over 100 million tons of toxic waste annually, resulting in the area boasting the largest concentration of Superfund sites - sites deemed most critical for remediation by the Environmental Protection Agency - in the United States.

China faces a water crisis as half of its cities suffer serious water shortages and pollution of its rivers make 80% of them so foul even fish cannot survive in them, but economic growth remains an icon for Chinese leaders.

The "rationalization of production and distribution" resulting from globalization, as promised by its proponents, has thus far increased the number of people living in absolute poverty, i.e., on less than one dollar a day, from one billion in 1995 to 1.2 billion today.

Each year Mexico loses 870 square miles of arable land to desertification, caused mainly by overlogging, overfarming, and overgrazing, forcing almost a million people off the land and into overcrowded cities every year.

On the high plains of the western United States, farming, ranching, and mineral extraction threaten to put one of the region's oldest inhabitants - the sage grouse - on the endangered species list.

In Ecuador, mangrove forests are cut down to make way for huge, export-oriented shrimp cultivation aquafarms, creating environmental havoc and threatening the livelihood of the local cockle shell gatherers.

Despite a nationwide trend toward curbing hazardous waste and industrial air emissions, California's overall pesticide use jumped 40 percent - including a doubling in the use of cancer-causing pesticides - in the last eight years, the highest in the history of such reporting.

The world's population of automobiles is increasing five times faster than the world's human population, while the governments of the world bicker over reducing carbon emissions.

While American environmentalists worry about fertilizer and herbicidal run-off from suburban lawns polluting the nation's rivers, a company called CHEMLAWN boasts of record sales, becoming the largest landscape contracting company in the United States.

For thirty-five years, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission has fought the filling in of San Francisco Bay, 30% of which has already been lost to landfill, and now must face a proposal to fill in another 1300 acres - the largest landfill in 60 years - for an expansion of the San Francisco Airport.

The world's finest bankers make such bad loans that they are forced to consider forgiving the debt of impoverished countries which are unable to pay in any case.

The United States moves to ban MBTE from gasoline as the additive, which was supposed to reduce air pollution, ends up polluting the nation's drinking water.

Americans moan about the rising price of gasoline, but transportation costs remain so low, thanks to the unrestrained exploitation of non-renewable fossil fuels, that it is economically viable to ship plums halfway around the world from Chile to California, the fruit capital of the world.

The world's supply of drinking water today is 60% of what it was in 1970, but today there are 2.3 billion more thirsty people on the planet.

While the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of countries in the European Union has grown by 2-3% over the last decade, unemployment has remained stagnant at 10-11%.

While global production of red meat, a staple of the more affluent of the world, has gone up 11% over the last decade, production of milk, a mainstay of good health in children, has gone down 13%.

Government and private plans are drawn up to save California's Lake Tahoe, The Jewel of the Sierra, long noted for the clarity of its water but losing that clarity at the rate of a foot a year due to development in the surrounding area, but among the suggestions one is conspicuously absent: halt growth around the lake.

Europeans spend more annually on ice cream than would be needed to provide primary education, clean water and sanitation for the tens of millions of Africans without such basic services, according to the legislature of Mozambique.

The government of India budgets more for civil aviation, to the benefit of a small fraction of its populace, than it does for agriculture, in which the vast majority of its citizens earn their livelihood.

Despite the longest sustained economic boom of the postwar era, more than half of all Americans are poorer today, in terms of real family income, than they were 20 years ago.

An increase in automobile ownership in Thailand results in traffic jams in Bangkok that reduces the travel rate on the city's streets to little better than a pedestrian's gait.

With economic growth in the industrialized world and population growth in the Third World, 70 countries are poorer on a per capita basis now than they were 20 years ago and 43 of those are poorer than they were even 30 years ago, according to the United Nations.

In California, the diversion of Sacramento River water to aid migrating salmon results in an intrusion of sea water into the river's delta, forcing the burgeoning communities of San Francisco's East Bay to turn to other sources for their drinking water.

While the United States' economy continued its prolonged boom in the year 2000, the demand for emergency food assistance and housing grew at its steepest pace in years, confirming the observation that in times of rapid growth the disparity between the rich and the poor widens.

What little is left of Finland's old growth forests - just 5% of the original extent - is in danger of being logged so that Americans (and others) can peruse 3-pound Sunday newspapers filled with articles and advertisements they'll never read.

Millions of bushels of genetically engineered corn approved only for animal use makes its way into the human food supply in the United States, forcing government and industry to scramble to find the corn and retrieve it before it is incorporated in more taco shells and corn bread.

California grapples with a power crisis, and emissions from power plants in the state triple as smog enforcement regulations are relaxed and older, higher-polluting plants are brought back into service.

Over one-third of the UN's membership - 68 countries - experienced significant conflict, either internal or external, in 2000, a situation which is sure to worsen as economic and demographic growth intensifies the struggle for limited resources amongst people both rich and poor.

CHAPTER 4 - ETHICS

Do we need an alternative to growth? Many signs - from ozone depletion through land degradation to declining sperm counts - suggest we do. But a faith in growth is so intrinsic a part of our psyches we would have to be "born again" to abandon it. Our political-economic entities and personalities make such an icon of it, the most profound revolution in human history would be necessary to redirect our societies. On the other hand, the unimaginably high stakes in the worst case scenario - the very survival of our species - cry out that, if an error is to be made in choosing between continued growth and an end to growth, we should err on the side of caution. The doomsayers, after all, only have to be right once.

The alternative to growth is not to grow, or what might be called "ecostasis", living in balance with our ecosystem. In many ways, this has been the world view of man throughout most of human history, a view inspired by the unchanging, growth-less world in which he lived. In adopting it, we would be in a sense returning to our roots, though for us it would be a conscious act of abandoning the growth philosophy to which we have subscribed and could so easily continue to subscribe.

Some of the characteristics of a world without growth can be envisioned. It would be a world in which children raise their children in the same house in which their parents raised them, and in which those children are free to romp through the same woods their grandparents played in when they were kids. It would be a world in which a rational, planned exploitation of resources reduced the vagaries of our existence and enabled us to live in peace and harmony with our neighbors, both as individuals and nations. It would be a world in which time is measured by the changes progress, not growth, brings - not more of things but better things.

Zero growth is not a political system or an economic policy or a code of morality. It is all of these things. Political action alone will not bring it about, nor a change in economic policy. It encompasses too much to be attained through these limited spheres of human endeavor and entails too great an effort to bring it about through politics or economics alone. It must spring from a change in attitude on the part of masses of people, the adoption of a new way of looking at the world and our place in it and having that vision guide our daily lives. It is an ethic.

The ethic of zero growth can only crudely be described here, as it must spring from the collective experiences of individuals and nations. A more definitive definition will grow out of the hopes, reflections, and personal behavior of believers in zero growth as they strive to accomplish it. However, three characteristics can be offered which would seem to be necessary constituents of a zero growth ethos: an emphasis on cooperation, a willingness to sacrifice, and a global scope. We will examine these in turn.

CHAPTER 5 - COOPERATION

Competition is touted in many societies as the stimulus of growth, efficiency, even social justice. Man, many would argue, is a self-centered creature and looks out for his own self-interest first and foremost. The ultimate tenet of this belief was perhaps best expressed by the lead character in a recent movie, a Wall Street banker, when he brazenly declared "Greed is good."

While instances of self-centered, self-interested behavior in man readily come to mind, so do instances where men have joined together in cooperation. We are, after all, a social animal and living in a society presumes a certain level of cooperation. Even more true is this of the complex, highly organized, populous societies in which most of mankind lives today. True, the force of law is often there to compel us to cooperate, but laws would be unenforceable without the broad support of the mass of citizens.

For zero growth to become policy, much less an ethic, it will be necessary for cooperation to supplant competition as the driving force in the home, in the marketplace, in the world. The adoption of zero growth requires a conscious decision. It is not something which springs spontaneously from an economic system, a political philosophy, or personal circumstances. This implies cooperation amongst all those involved.

Moreover, some cannot be permitted to grow - whether families, companies, or nations - at the expense of those who subscribe to a zero growth ethic. This is not to say these entities cannot grow, but the growth must be within a framework of cooperation. For instance a country with a low population density and abundant resources, such as Canada, could continue to increase in population so long as the increase was through immigration, not a high domestic birthrate, so that the total population of the world would remain unchanged. A similar scenario might apply to families, whereby the actuality of couples who do not wish to have children or no more than one would enable other couples who so wished to have more than the equilibrium-maintaining number of children.

Nor does zero growth imply an end to competition. On the individual level, careerists might still compete against each other for coveted positions, so long as the conspicuous consumption which is many times the motivator of such behavior does not violate the requirements of zero growth. On the corporate level, companies might also be free to compete within the bounds of the same requirements. A requirement which must be met, for instance, would be that the world's exploitation of the earth's resources did not increase from year to year. Competition would be allowed, perhaps even encouraged, within a framework of cooperative zero growth, much as competing on the roadways is allowed so long as we don't violate the speed limit.

Conversely, the adoption of a zero growth ethic will facilitate human cooperation as it will reduce, if not eliminate, the motivations which cause men to engage each other competitively, too often in a violent, self-destructive manner. The present necessity to "grow" to keep up with the Joneses, or maintain the company's stock price, or to survive in a world of aggrandizing nation-states will be lessened when no one expects a family, a company, a nation to have more of "things" - cars, customers, territory - tomorrow than it has today. To the extent that zero growth becomes an ethic, social sanctions, legal or otherwise, will come to bear on those who seek to grow through unsanctioned competition, much as the present awareness of the harmful effects of smoking not only on the smoker but on those around him has caused smokers to restrict their activity to certain times and places, if not give up the practice entirely.

Critics of zero growth will deride this emphasis on cooperation as wishful thinking, contrary to the very nature of man and the societies in which he functions. But examples of man competing within a framework of cooperation come readily to hand. The family, when it works, is a cooperative venture not necessarily shattered by sibling rivalry. Corporations have shown a proclivity to cooperate, whether within the law or outside of it, in competitive, free market economies. The amicable allotment of the world's petroleum resources amongst the original Seven Sisters oil companies comes to mind, as do the many corporate-sponsored public policy groups of today dedicated to promoting the interests of a particular industry as a whole. In governmental affairs, the rivalry between the FBI and the CIA, oftentimes rancorous, is not allowed to get so out of hand that it threatens the cooperative effort to protect the United States.

Cooperation amongst nations is perhaps the realm in which it is hardest to envision competitive instincts being reigned in. But here, too, examples of cooperation can be found to counterweight the many cases of devastating competition. Military alliances formed by cooperating states to confront other antagonistic, cooperative alliances have always been lamentably less than global but still constitute instances of cooperation amongst nations. In the United Nations we have an example of nations attempting to cooperate on a global scale. It may not be perfect, though it can boast of some success in certain endeavors, but at least it exists as a symbol of man's instinctual willingness to cooperate as nations for the good of all.

Perhaps we erect apes, gregarious as we are, have been programmed by evolution to place, even if unwittingly, a higher value on cooperating in the interest of preserving the species than on competing amongst ourselves out of a will to survive as individuals. If so, there is hope for an ethic of zero growth with cooperation as one of its cornerstones.

CHAPTER 6 - SACRIFICE

Zero growth implies sacrifice. We are constraining our exploitation of the earth's resources in the present so that they will be available to future generations. This means we will use less of them, which must act as a restraint on our standard of living. Many things can be done, in fact are being done, to improve the efficiency with which we use natural resources, but still a conscious restriction on our use of these resources must have a limiting impact on our consumption.

Many, unfortunately, share the opinion of the egocentric who scornfully asked "What has posterity done for me lately?" It is not easy to convince such people that they owe a debt to future generations, as such a conviction is derived from moral principles not susceptible to empirical or logical proof. But some headway might be made by asking the cynic to examine the value of many of the things that make up his present "good life." Such an approach borders on the spiritual, though it can be encapsulated in the folksy aphorism "The best things in life aren't things."

Many commentators have lambasted the citizens of the richest countries, particularly those in the United States, for their wasteful, consumptive life styles. Psychologists question the mental health of people who consume far beyond any rational physical or psychological need. As Mike "Moby" Theobald, the homeless cartoonist of Down and Out in Berkeley, succinctly puts it, "The more you want, the less you'll like what you get." It is clear the average consumer in the industrialized world could live on much less than he currently does and still enjoy a life of comfort and self-fulfillment.

And he might even be happier for it! As a British pensioner expressed it describing the angst common to his generation:

Certainly, anyone of a religious bent can understanding this. As Robert Bellah points out, "That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind." Most people seek some guiding principles of a higher standard than sheer selfishness in their lives, even if their beliefs don't conform to the tenets of any organized religion. Perhaps zero growth is the "religion" they seek.

Some reassurance can be offered to those hesitant about zero growth for fear their living standard will suffer as a result of adopting such an ethic. It is equally possible that living standards would improve despite a limitation on the amount of resources we consume through better, more efficient utilization of those resources. An end to growth does not mean an end to progress. Just as today's automobiles require less metal and get better gas mileage than the behemoths of days gone by, innovations that enable us to get more from less will be stimulated by a policy of zero growth.

Perhaps a more problematic aspect of the sacrifice a zero growth ethic requires than the need to convince people to consider future generations is the question of their willingness to share with others in the present. Every society has a stratum of people who do not enjoy a comfortable, decent living standard. But it is not clear that this problem is more difficult to resolve under conditions of zero growth than under conditions of unrestrained growth. The situation exists, after all, after 200 years of unrestrained growth. Moreover, some maintain that during times of rapid economic growth the gap between the rich and the poor widens, and the data seems to bear them out. The prolonged economic boom in the United States during the 1990s, for instance, manifest this trend.

An even more intractable problem arises with regard to the disparity in wealth between the rich and poor nations. The poverty which afflicts so much of the world is as stark as the affluence which graces a lesser part of it. Growth is generally seen as the path to salvation for the underdeveloped countries (a debatable point which will be discussed in a later chapter). If we were to put a limit on the exploitation of the world's natural resources and the share of these resources enjoyed by the developed world remained the same, this hope would seem to evaporate. In order to enable the poor of the world to escape their grinding poverty it seems necessary that those already well-off accept a reduction in their consumption of global resources.

The rich countries have shown little inclination to make such a sacrifice. In fact, many of the poor attribute their poverty to a conscious policy on the part of the advanced countries to exploit them, in the most negative meaning of the word. Certainly, even in a zero growth world, one solution to the problem of increased competition for limited resources - a solution unfortunately hallowed by the frequency of its adoption down through the ages - is for the strong to steal from the weak and kill them if they protest (a solution which is even more likely to be adopted in a growth-addicted world!).

Population stability, for instance, could be attained by raising the living standard of Third Worlders so that their reproductive habits follow the same path as that experienced in the industrialized world over the last 100 or so years, where increasing affluence has led to a voluntary decrease in family size. On the other hand, in a less rosy scenario, population stability could be achieved by the wretched of the earth sinking into such misery that the death rate from famine, war, and disease rises to the level of the birthrate, no matter how high (the present figure is about 132 million births and 55 million deaths each year).

A cynic would argue that the only way the rich countries are going to sacrifice in support of the poor countries is if they are forced to. This may be not just a cynical view but a realistic one. If saving the planet reaches a critical stage, those in the industrialized countries may find they have no choice but altruism. For instance, if the deforestation of the tropical rain forest truly threatens the global climate, the smug denizens of the temperate zone may find the only viable solution is to raise the standard of living in tropical countries so that their inhabitants have other means to survive than to practice slash-and-burn agriculture. If access to vital resources requires constant military intervention in remote far-flung marches to stabilize societies wracked with poverty or to gain advantageous terms from weak but defiant governments, a less costly, less force-based arrangement, such as bending the terms of trade in favor of the needy, might be sought by even the most chauvinistic, world-conquering realpolitician. That the World Bank has has replaced its uncritical emphasis on economic growth with a policy emphasizing poverty reduction in recent years suggests this may already be happening. Charity based on self-interest may be the surest, if not noblest, kind.

If men cannot be convinced to sacrifice for future generations, they are unlikely to be willing to sacrifice for their fellow man in the here and now. Conversely, if they can be so convinced, then there is hope that the affluent among them will accept the need to sacrifice some of their well-being for a stable world. On the belief that man is capable of both, the hope for zero growth rests.

CHAPTER 7 - GLOBALITY

Zero growth must be global in scope. Without the participation of all, stability cannot be guaranteed. The adoption of zero growth by half the world while the other half continued to grow would not remove the threat to the environment that man's activities represent. Nature, and man's impact on it, knows no borders.

Moreover, in a world of competitive nation-states, it would be suicidal for any nation, even for one with no resources or markets coveted by others, to adopt a policy of zero growth while other nations continued to expand. This unquestionably is the primary reason nations across the political spectrum put so much emphasis on rapid, continuous growth. It is a mentality which can only be supplanted by a non-growth ideology through agreement on a global scale.

This is not to say that zero growth measures cannot be adopted successfully by selected countries prior to a universal acceptance of zero growth. China has already done so with regard to its population. The United States, too, might adopt a no-growth population policy by restricting immigration to the country. But, in the present context, both the actual policy of China and the hypothetical one of the United States are only imaginable as driven by the same competitive impulse which causes them to pursue economic growth so relentlessly; in other words, they have adopted or would adopt such a policy only if it is seen as strengthening the nation. Nonetheless, that anti-growth measures on a piecemeal basis are even conceivable in a growth-oriented world bodes well for their piecemeal adoption in a stability-oriented world.

Similarly, global agreements on certain aspects of resource exploitation or pollution control prior to a worldwide end to growth cannot only be envisioned but actually exist. The Kyoto Accords to reduce carbon emissions is one example, even if its implementation has enjoyed less than total success. The strategic arms limitation agreements between the United States and Russia, whereby production of certain weapons was not only halted but reversed, is another. If such agreements can be arrived at in a world of growth, imagine how much easier they would be to arrive at if the mutually agreed upon premise was zero growth.

While partial measures to implement zero growth are conceivable, the concept does imply a global authority to monitor and enforce the ethic in the long run. Nations have shown a marked reluctance to surrender elements of their sovereignty, just as individuals covetously guard their personal liberties. But just as individuals give up some of those liberties to enjoy the protection of those liberties a governmental body provides, so might nations give up some of their prerogatives in the interest of protecting our common environment. The United Nations, imperfect as it is, symbolizes this willingness on the part of nations.

A "world government" of some sort does not sound the death knell of the beloved nation-state (Witness the flowering of nationalities in the era of the United Nations - 188 at present and growing!). Just as the existence of a national government does not demand an end to states or provinces, a world governmental body to promote and enforce zero growth does not require the abolition of the nation-state. Just as states and provinces have their role to play within a national polity, so might nations have their prerogatives within a global polity. But, just as states and provinces leave the defense from aggression to the national government, so must nations relinquish to a global body certain of their powers to defend against threats to the ecosystem.

Regardless of an ethic of zero growth, perhaps even more likely without it, current geopolitical, military, and economic realities conspire to mandate some form of global governance, even if it is in the less than ideal form of unipolar global hegemony. The only alternative, especially if the industrialized world is slow to undertake the sort of sacrifices outlined in the previous chapter, could well be global chaos. Already, 68 countries - over one-third of the UN's membership - are experiencing some form of violent, organized conflict, either internal or external. With alarming frequency these conflicts are being passed down, like macabre family heirlooms, from generation to generation, as in Angola, Colombia, Korea, the Middle East.

Partial solutions, whether Great Power-sanctioned UN peacekeeping missions or supra-legal NATO adventurism, seldom yield lasting resolution. But "final" solutions are unthinkable. Loosing the horrendous weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, nuclear - available to powerful nations today, even upon weak nations unable to respond in kind, might well prove as damaging to the inflictor as to the inflictee. Witness the tens of thousands of American servicemen stricken by a mysterious syndrome originating from their participation in the Gulf War. Total war between nuclear powers, the Armageddon that has disturbed our slumber for over 50 years, is equally unimaginable.

If counter-terrorism experts are to be believed, countries may soon have damage inflicted upon them without even knowing who their adversary is. Chemicals released in water supplies, germs dropped from on high, or suitcase-sized nuclear weapons could cause casualties in the millions without the perpetrator being known, unless he gets caught in the act. The victim might take the recourse of lashing out at a suspected enemy, but this could well prove self-defeating, provoking only further anonymous attacks.

In such a world, even the most chauvinistic leaders might conclude some diminution of national sovereignty in favor of a global governing body is the best hope for assuring the well-being of whatever national entity he holds dear. If world leaders can arrive at this conclusion from the threats arising from conventional and non-conventional warfare, then perhaps they can be made to see that an even a bigger threat confronts them, a threat of global proportions, with the most dire consequences, and coming from all sides. The enemy, as Pogo says, is us.

It is not hard to imagine an effective global governance being formed were we to be attacked from Mars. The challenge for man is to recognize the threat when it comes in the form of skyward-wafting chemicals, slight changes in temperature, and tenacious, malevolent microbes instead of little green men. It is the task of those of us who can see the surreptitious enemy to make him manifest to the complacent, unsuspecting near-sighted. If we can succeed, then there is hope for a global defense, a defense based on the ethic of zero growth.

CHAPTER 8 - PROSPERITY

It would seem to be a truism to say that increased exploitation of finite resources must reduce prosperity in the long run. Yet the prevailing wisdom is just the opposite. Only through growth, it is maintained, can the needs of suffering humanity be met. Growth and prosperity are inextricably linked in the popular mind.

It is not hard to see why this is so. Growth and prosperity have been inextricably linked over the last 200 years, at least for a portion of mankind. From the conspicuous mansions of 19th century robber barons to the affluent suburbs of modern-day America, the symbols of prosperity have followed on the heels of exponential growth. Successful, prosperous companies have been those which grew ahead of the curve. On a smaller scale, every shopkeeper, real estate developer, and local banker pins his hopes for personal prosperity on growth.

The link between growth and prosperity goes far beyond the needs of the small or big businessman. It is built into the very structure of our economies, at least in capitalist societies. Our monetary system, overwhelmingly based on commercial credit (i.e., interest-bearing loans), demands growth. "Almost all the money in a country," Richard Douthwaite points out, "exists because someone, somewhere, has gone into debt and is paying interest on it." This precarious edifice is prevented from toppling only by continuous growth, as this is the only way to meet the interest payments coming due, other than by inflation, an economically and socially dysfunctional solution.

So what happens if there is no growth? In the present context, collapse seems inevitable, with our prosperity being buried under the rubble. But this need not be the case. Our monetary system is a human creation, going back to the first cagey goldsmith of the 17th century who lent out more gold than he held (i.e., fractional reserves) in what has been called "the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented". Just as it was built by human hands, the monetary system can be changed by human hands. A monetary system that is not dependent on continuous growth can be devised, and Douthwaite and others are working on just that.

If growth is the road to prosperity, why do we live in a world of so much deprivation after 200 years of vigorous growth? The easy answer is because there are so many more of us today. This seems to be borne out by the fact that the affluent countries of today do not suffer from overpopulation, relatively speaking. If the world's population is going to continue to grow, increased exploitation of the earth's resources is the only way to meet the crying need, it is held.

But many argue that the wealth of the rich countries and the poverty of the poor countries are two sides of the same coin. Without the capability to tap the natural and human resources and dominate the markets of the Third World, the First World would have grown itself into abject misery long ago. First by outright imperialist control, then by a subtler but equally effective form of economic domination, the rich and powerful have literally stolen prosperity from the weak and hungry. Not only does growth depend on this unfair reciprocity, it aggravates it.

An end to growth in the industrialized world could be a boon to the not so industrialized world. It would reduce the rapacious plundering of Third World resources - deforestation, strip-mining, waste disposal - to meet the needs of gluttonous First World consumers, with its consequent harm to the environment, to the detriment of the whole world but especially to those countries in which these activities are carried out. Lessened demand for Third World agricultural and marine exports would enable these countries to dedicate more of their land and water resources to feeding their hungry populations. Limits to population growth through immigration in the advanced countries could clog the drain of brains - doctors, computer engineers, rocket scientists - from countries so much in need of husbanding their intellectual resources. And without the goading demands of growth the debilitating corruption amongst Third World elites which causes a deplorable portion of development funds to be siphoned off into foreign bank accounts would be less encouraged.

Still, the poverty in which so many of our fellow men live is one of the knottiest challenges the advocacy of zero growth faces. Some adjustment to allow poor countries to tap their unexploited resources in a growing way would have to be made. The sacrifice expected of the wealth countries under an ethic of zero growth, outlined in a previous chapter, will help alleviate the problem, but alone will not solve it. At the same time some way to enable these countries to surmount the problem of overpopulation which thwarts their striving for prosperity must be found. In this demographic aspect, the benefit of zero growth to the Third World is immediately apparent.

In the end, the truism that increased exploitation of the earth's limited resources cannot lead to global prosperity stands up to scrutiny. As the price of oil skyrockets, as agriculture is forced onto increasingly marginal farmland, and as the ocean's fisheries are depleted, the validity of the assumption will become increasingly obvious. Zero growth will prove to be not only not contrary to prosperity but the only hope for both maintaining and extending it in the long run. Just as man's adoption of a settled lifestyle enabled him with time to far surpass the prosperity of the hunter-gatherer existence he was forced to give up, so might the adoption of zero growth result in a heretofore unattainable degree of prosperity in the long run.

CHAPTER 9 - PROGRESS

As with prosperity, progress is linked to growth in people's minds and for much the same reason. The 20th century was a century of incredible progress, from the lifestyle-altering automobile to manned flight, first over North Carolina sand dunes, ultimately over the mountains of the moon. We marvel at the technological wonders our minds and our hands have created, and rightfully so. This progress has facilitated an equally incredible growth, but has growth been a stimulus to progress?

If growth has stimulated progress, it's not clear that it wasn't out of necessity as much as choice, much like our ancestor's decision to forego a nomadic lifestyle in favor of a settled existence. We have learned how to house more people more cheaply than ever before, but are we better off than the Victorians who could build palatial, three-story homes thanks to the abundance of virgin forests? Medical science comes up with cure after cure for the diseases which afflict modern society, but as often as not the diseases themselves - breast cancer, leukemia, asthma, autism - result from the fouling of our environment consequent to growth, even progress. We extract more and more fruitful bounty from the earth through ever more esoteric and sophisticated means, means which would be unnecessary if it weren't for the never-ending growth in population.

Critics of zero growth will argue that competition spurs innovation and zero growth's emphasis on cooperation will rein in the galloping steed of progress. There is much truth to this contention. But, as mentioned earlier, competition need not cease under an ethic of zero growth, nor the financial incentives which often inspire individual initiative. Moreover, cooperation is as much the hallmark of progress in our age as competition. The triumph of the human genome project required the cooperative effort of thousands of biological scientists. The space race may have been goaded initially by competition at a national level, but now those same nations have joined together to build the masterpiece of space technology, the international space station. And for every IPO-dizzy dot.commer out there dreaming of ten-digit wealth, there is a Jonas Salk refusing financial reward for his inventiveness, happy to consider it a gift to mankind.

Capitalism has sparked a veritable firestorm of innovation. Way back when the sort of progress taking place was still within the comprehension of everyman, Karl Marx pointed out that the first one in the market place with a new invention or a better way of doing things reaped a bonanza. He paid high tribute to the technology-stimulating mechanisms of capitalism, even if he did refer to them as "contradictions". The huge amounts dedicated to research and development by both government and industry today show that the financial rewards for innovation remain strong.

But the former Soviet Union showed that remarkable progress can be achieved within a planned, socialist economy, as well. The swift rise of the world's first communist society from a backward autocracy to a world power in just a few decades matches anything a capitalist society ever managed to accomplish. The many technological "firsts" the country achieved - the best known being its premiere role in the exploration of space - prove that progress can be stimulated without the goad of the market place.

Can progress, then, continue under an ethic of zero growth, whatever form the economic/political/social institutions of the time might take? There is no reason to think that it won't. But it will be a progress redirected toward resource-conserving ends, certainly not the constant introduction of esoteric new consumer gee-gaws and hopefully not the production of ever more sophisticated military hardware. Just as the potential of the vast North American continent and the lack of hands to take advantage of it encouraged the invention of labor-saving devices in the 19th century, so restrictions on the exploitation of our natural resources will encourage the invention of ways to get more from less. It is axiomatic amongst both climate-watching environmentalists and growth-loving economists that if the world's reserves of fossil fuels started to decline or global warming forced constraints on their use, the technological stumbling blocks which now inhibit the widespread use of alternative energy sources - geothermal, wind, solar - would be surmounted in a matter of years, not decades. In the construction trade, where waste reduction techniques now enable sixty percent of the materials from a building being torn down to be re-used, we are already seeing the sort of innovations a policy of zero growth will bring.

In the final analysis, progress is a question of values, as George Soros says. The values a zero growth ethic would inculcate are just as likely to be progressive, if not more so, than any values springing from a growth mentality. The wonder of mass production fills our homes with many nice and useful things, but also attics full of unwanted junk we once thought we could not live without, now destined for the next yard sale. We have developed incredible ways to communicate with each other and to disseminate information and entertainment but are woefully lacking in meaningful things to say. Most appallingly, we have devised awesome means of mass destruction but show little more skill at settling our differences peaceably than the caveman. Growth cannot be blamed for all our evaluative shortcomings, but it must accept having some responsibility lain at its door.

Man's intellectual inheritance will continue to expand under an ethic of zero growth. It will be one environment-friendly aspect of our existence which will continue to grow in a non-growing world.. Our great scientific minds will continue to astound us with the wonders they come up with, and our great philosophers and spiritual leaders may astound us with what they teach us about values. Just as man's exercising his necessity-inspired ingenuity to enable his settling down in villages, then towns, then great cities led to great advances in human knowledge, so might man's exercising his ingenuity once again to save himself from a deteriorating environment lead to an equally impressive flowering of further advances. The historic link between growth and progress will be found to have been coincidental, not causative.

CHAPTER 10 - ISMS

The 20th century was the age of "isms": capitalism, communism, socialism, nazism, fascism. It is too early to characterize the 21st century, but ideology is likely to remain important. It is appropriate, then, to analyze how an ethic of zero growth would fit in with the ideologies to which men cling with religious fervor.

Formal efforts to restrict growth are an anathema in the sort of free market economy capitalism avows. But, despite the capitalists' iconization of an idealized, 19th century world where fiercely competitive small producers face off against purchasing power-wielding consumers, the modern market is far from free. In the heartland of capitalist theology, the Federal Reserve Board intervenes in the economy through slight, counter-balancing adjustments in the interest rate on government bonds. The damage self-serving, antisocial corporations or individuals can inflict on the environment is thwarted by the regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The airline industry was once government regulated and could be again. And zoning laws have long introduced an element of planning to assure that whatever growth takes place in our cities is "smart".

Despite the protests of the most fervid ideologues of capitalism, planning is a key component of even capitalist societies in this day and age. It would be naive to believe there are not large groups of people, both in the major oil companies and deep within the closeted bowels of super-secret government agencies, predicting future world petroleum reserves and production and making plans accordingly. Equally naive would it be to believe that the sort of complex societies we live in today could function without a good deal of planning. In fact, strategies for planning continuous economic growth are hot topics amongst those who view growth as a desirable goal. Perhaps these same mechanisms can be turned to planning for zero growth.

Capitalism has shown a marked capability for ameliorating some of its egregious faults over the last hundred years or so. Child labor laws have eliminated the despicable sight of twelve-year-olds working ten-hour days, despite occasional lapses in practice. The rigors of the Great Depression introduced social security, in both lower and upper case, as an integral part of capitalist societies. The boom-bust cycle which characterized capitalism throughout most of its history - with an incalculable toll on personal financial and psychological well-being - has been successfully moderated through government intervention in the market place over the last fifty years. Perhaps capitalism can yet save itself from the growth-inflicted demise Trotsky predicted for it.

The Marxist and non-Marxist socialist movements which have come to power thus far have put great emphasis on rapid economic growth. As often as not, they came to power ostensibly to free the masses from their oppressed, squalid condition. Through planned economic development they sought to improve the lot of their people. And the means to that end has been seen to be unrestrained economic growth.

But in emphasizing one aspect of Marx's critique of capitalism - the chaotic nature of production under it - they have overlooked an even more important aspect of Marx's thinking: the dehumanizing way in which capitalism turns everything - land, goods, people - into commodities to be bought and sold (I exempt the Cuban regime from this failing). Marx was shocked how this mode of production perverted human values, all the way down to relations within the family. His concern manifests itself today most glaringly in those who have sunk so low as to buy and sell babies.

This is the compassionate side of Marxism. If the socialist governments can rediscover this aspect of Marxism, there faith in rational planning and dedication to equitable distribution of society's wealth may facilitate their adoption of an ethic of zero growth. On the other hand, capitalist governments can show, and have shown, a compassionate side, too, from time to time, as well as an ability to plan.

According to Marx, it is not man's social consciousness which determines his social being but his social being which determines his social consciousness. If this be true, it means an ethic of zero growth will only be adopted once we are forced into adopting it reflexively by living in an actual world of zero, perhaps even negative, growth. This is not a rosy scenario.

It is certainly conceivable that we could find ourselves living in a zero growth world without our willing it. If zero growth is attained in this manner, however, it would probably mean ever increasing poverty and misery for the bulk of humanity, while a small minority enjoys ever increasing income and comfort, totally oblivious to the squalor and suffering around them. Come to think of it, that's not too off-base a description of our contemporary world!

In such deplorable circumstances, whether an enlightened, caring cadre from the wealthy elite will lead the crusade for a rational, equitable world of zero growth, or it will spring from a revolt of the downtrodden, long-suffering masses, I will not venture to guess. Nor will I speculate under the banner of what "ism" the struggle might be waged. It will be for the people of that time to find the ideology which best serves their purpose.

But maybe Marx is wrong. Perhaps man's social consciousness can shape his social being. Perhaps we need not endure the tragic dialectic of a new social philosophy being born in angry counterpoise to the anachronistic thesis of an old, dying one. Perhaps man can use that capacity for reason he takes such pride in to determine his own destiny. It is on this hope that my proselytizing for an ethic of zero growth rests.

CHAPTER 11 - A FIRST STEP

It is perhaps premature to suggest means of achieving zero growth when the first step towards that goal - a broad, international consensus in favor of it - is not on the near horizon, indeed, not even a speck on the far horizon. Nonetheless, the initiation of a discussion of that topic is not out of place if only because it is one of the first questions both supporters and opponents of zero growth will raise. The following is a proposal for taking a first step towards ending growth.

It is proposed that world trade in 36 basic raw materials (oil, coal, iron, copper, etc.) be frozen at current levels. Countries would be allotted their share of trade in these commodities based on their current exports and imports.

Trade, rather than production, is targeted as being more verifiable and enforceable, as well as less threatening to the sovereignty of nation-states. Within their borders, nations would be permitted to expand their production of these commodities as they saw fit, so long as any expansion did not enter into world trade. For instance, the United States, unable to increase its oil imports, might expand its production of coal as an alternative energy source (though it is hoped environmental concerns would lead it to seek to expand less polluting sources!).

Commerce in raw materials, as well as the uses to which they are put, is in a constant state of flux, so a dynamic element would be incorporated in the zero growth scheme by allowing countries to barter or sell their allotments to other countries. A country which does not need the level of imports or exports allotted to it, or which cannot produce up to its level profitably, could exchange its allotment of one raw material to increase its allotment of another.

For instance, because of its dwindling reserves of iron, the United States might sacrifice some of its coal exports to increase its imports of iron, trading with, say, Great Britain. Or Saudi Arabia might decide to curtail its oil exports in favor of expanding its right to import materials needed by its fledgling industries, trading, perhaps, with a country in which newly-discovered reserves of petroleum are starting to be exploited, providing that country with the capital to exploit domestic supplies of basic materials it formerly imported.

Some provision for modifying the trade levels for the various raw materials might be made, as technological advancements cause the demand for one material to expand and another to contract or resource exhaustion causes trade restrictions on one commodity to become irrelevant while restrictions on another commodity in abundant supply and great demand become so onerous as to lead to a black market which threatens to bring down the whole system. But how this might work adds a degree of complexity best left to future refinements of the proposal.

The proposed scheme might accelerate development in the poorer countries of the world, as corporations and other entities find it advisable to invest in industrial enterprises in these countries where production of domestic resources can be increased but not their export, thus ameliorating the blight of Third World poverty, one of the major impediments to any plan for zero growth.

To carry out this proposal does not require a world government. If not carried out under the aegis of the United Nations, it could be organized through international consortiums for the various materials, similar to OPEC but more all encompassing and with a different mission. Enforcement would be assured through the commercial, and if necessary, military power of the leading industrialized nations. The implementation, and the success, of the plan does, of course, depend on overwhelming global support for the concept.

The trade freeze proposal is admittedly a far cry from a true ethic of zero growth, but it would represent a dramatic change in current world resource exploitation and would be a significant first step towards the goal of zero growth. Is it time to take that first step?

CHAPTER 12 - THE ETHIC OF ZERO GROWTH

Keynes was partially right when he said "In the long run, we're all dead." He's dead, but our children aren't. It is the interests of the yet unborn that lie at the core of the ethic of zero growth. Most of us feel some obligation toward future generations. An ethic of zero growth is the only way to ensure to these generations the chance to be fruitful and multiply, to partake of the goodness of the earth and the fullness thereof.

It would be easy for us to do nothing about our self-imposed plight. Many will argue that implementing zero growth would require an unacceptable degree of social control, that it would trample upon personal liberties and creativity. Such people must be made to see that just the opposite is the case. The constraints imposed by unrestrained growth are already apparent. Ask any businessman struggling with the requirements of an environmental impact statement. Or any government searching for ways to dispose of burgeoning toxic wastes. Ask any of the world's starving about his personal liberty and creativity. It can only get worse.

It is not a question of making a conscience decision or doing nothing. Doing nothing is a conscious decision, too. The environmentalists have seen to that by raising our awareness to too high a level for us to pretend not to see. Are we to act like lemmings scurrying merrily toward the awaiting sea without once lifting our heads to see where we are headed and adopting a different course? Or can we take hold of our destiny in an act which would be the ultimate exercise of human consciousness and the ultimate triumph of our ingenuity?

What kind of a world will it be if our children are lucky enough to live in a world of zero growth? It need not be a world that is boring or unchanging or unprosperous or unprogressive - just not growing. It will be a world in which the continuity between one generation and the next is solidified and made paramount. It will be a world in which the rational exploitation of our resources with the future accorded its proper importance will introduce a degree of calmness to our lives, in terms of job security, asset preservation, and general living conditions, which the present growth-oriented arrangement does not offer. It will be a world in which peace on earth is given a better chance than in a world where an expansionist imperative drives men into conflict. It will be a world in which we live in equilibrium - ecostasis - with nature. It may not be heaven, but it will come closer than our present earthly life, or our future life without zero growth.

Those of you whom I have convinced of the wisdom of an ethic of zero growth might be asking "What can I do to promote it?" It is difficult to see how the individual can incorporate the ethic of zero growth in his daily life. It would be tempting to tell you to forego purchasing that 3000-square-foot house when your current 2000-square-foot house should be roomy enough. But a house is an investment as well as a convenience, and in our present situation everyone must look out for his own financial interests, if only for his children's sake. Certainly, we can all resist consumerism - buying the latest gadget or gizmo of marginal utility - but there are still many things of great utility we feel a justifiable need for. Similarly for companies. The leaders of our corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to protect and promote the investment of their stockholders which comes before their obligations to the general public. A company can obey the pollution regulations, produce more efficiently, sponsor earth-friendly programs, but so long as it operates in a growth-oriented economy, it must seek to grow.

The best an individual or company can do until zero growth becomes a reality is to practice the same conservation habits adopted by any responsible citizen or company, while crusading for a zero growth ethic. And the crusade begins with ourselves. We must learn not to take growth as a given. We must increase our awareness of how growth diminishes the quality of our lives, as well as threatens our ecosystem. And we must share this awareness with our friends and neighbors. Sporting a Zero Growth button on your lapel or a Zero Growth sticker on your bumper is sure to provide the opportunity to discuss the concept of zero growth with family and friends (see inside back cover).

We must tear down the Tower of Babble that surrounds discussions on sustainability. We must confront sincere environmentalists and mealy-mouthed corporate types alike and ask "Why any growth?". When our neighbors ban together to protect the neighborhood from urban sprawl, we must raise the challenge "Why smart growth? Why not no growth?". And when our politicians promise us prosperity through continued growth, we must demand of them "How is this possible?". We must inject the idea of zero growth into the sustainability debate.

One of the hardest obstacles to overcome will be inspiring people to take an active interest in something as nebulous as mankind's future, as so many critics of growth have already discovered. Al Gore, who is in a position to know, relates how he tried unsuccessfully to interject environmental issues into his 1988 campaign for the presidency. By the time of his recent bid for that office, he seemed to have given up. Promoting a megacept like zero growth with activists dedicated to more immediate goals with a greater likelihood of attainment, such as stopping wars, feeding the hungry, reforming the political system, will not be easy. But these people must be made to see that the problems they seek to rectify are to varying degrees a consequence of unrestrained growth and that without addressing the problem of growth success in their endeavors may prove short-lived, even inconsequential. Hopefully, the definiteness of the zero growth concept, as opposed to the loosely defined principle of sustainability, will offer a clear target to work towards which will appeal to the practical bent of high-minded individuals already dedicated to making the world a better place.

Opposition - ridiculing, disputing, castigating - will be immediately forthcoming. The gut reaction of every struggling small businessman, bottom-line-eyeing corporate head, world-conquering militarist, and vote-seeking politician, as well as most professional economists and even theologians, will be almost hysterically negative. Many environmentalists will scoff at the notion. Those with a vested interest in growth - the banker, the real estate developer, the owner of unexploited resources - must have that interest exposed. But even they can be won over, for they must live in the same threatened world as the rest of us. And, like us, most of them care about the environment and feel some obligation to future generations. Only the hedonistic cynic who curses posterity is perhaps beyond hope, and even he can be encouraged to read some good philosophy or to study holy scripture.

Zero growth advocates will be labeled idealists out of touch with the real world. The label is not inappropriate; in fact, it should be worn as a badge of honor. At the same time, we must confront the realists of the world with a deeper reality. To ignore the danger to our collective future is no more real than the most fanciful utopia. The crafty, conspiring, force-wielding realpoliticians who will oppose us must be made to see that even in victory, they lose. We who have our eyes set on the stars are at the mercy of the potholes in the road, but those making the potholes would do well to cast an occasional glance skyward to chart the course of their own salvation.

The road to zero growth will not be short or level or well paved. I do not expect to see the goal reached in my lifetime. I am hopeful my children will see it; but, even in their case, I do not expect it to happen before they have children, even grandchildren, of their own. We must be patient, very patient, patient but resolute. We must reconcile ourselves to being voices crying in the wilderness for many years to come. The groundwork for a new temple must be laid by many dedicated, visionary souls, even martyrs. Remember that it took 300 years after Christ before Christianity was officially sanctioned as the religion of the Roman Empire; that a decade before George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin decided independence from Great Britain was a good idea revolutionary firebrands like the Sons of Liberty advocated just such an act to an apathetic, crown-worshipping populace; that it was 70 years after the promulgation of the Communist Manifesto before the first communist government came to power. Revolutions do not happen overnight, not lasting ones.

To inspire us in our efforts, I have composed the following creed. I hope it adequately expresses the feelings and beliefs of those who care about our species and worry about our survival. If you find it of value, use it to guide your struggle and strengthen your resolve. If not, let your heart and your mind compose a creed of your own.

The tendency and the result of the capitalist mode of production is steadily to increase the productivity of labour. Hence it also increases the mass of the means of production converted into products by the use of the same quantity of additional labour. This additional labour is then distributed progressively over a greater mass of products, thus reducing the price of each individual commodity and commodity prices in general.... It follows from this that, with the development of capitalist production and the resultant reduction in prices, there must be an increase in the quantity of goods, in the number of articles that must be sold. That is to say, a constant expansion of the market becomes a necessity for capitalist production....

"Production for production's sake" - production as an end in itself - does indeed come on the scene with the formal subsumption of labour under capital. It makes its appearance as soon as the immediate purpose of production is to produce as much surplus-value as possible.... It is a form of production not bound to a level of needs laid down in advance, and hence it does not predetermine the course of production itself.... This is one side, in contrast to the former mode of production; if you like, it is the positive side. On the other hand, there is the negative side, its contradictory character: production in contradiction, and indifference, to the producer. The real producer as a mere means of production, material wealth as an end in itself. And so the growth of this material wealth is brought about in contradiction to and at the expense of the individual human being. Productivity of labour in general = the maximum of profit with the minimum of work, hence, too, goods constantly become cheaper. This becomes a law, independent of the will of the individual capitalist. And this law only becomes reality because instead of the scale of production being controlled by existing needs, the quantity of products made is determined by the constantly increasing scale of production dictated by the mode of production itself. Its aim is that the individual product should contain as much unpaid labour as possible, and this is achieved only by producing for the sake of production.

KARL MARX, Das Kapital (1859)

If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a happier or better population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.

JOHN STUART MILL, Principles of Political Economy (1871)

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession - as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyment and realities of life - will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they made be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we should then be free, at last, to discard.... I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue- that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, English economist (1936)

A certain degree of physical comfort is necessary but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance instead of a help; therefore the ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them, seems to be a delusion and a trap. The satisfaction of one's physical needs must come at a certain point to a dead stop before it degenerates into physical decadence. Europeans will have to remodel their outlook if they are not to perish under the weight of the comforts to which they are becoming slaves.

MOHANDAS GANDHI, The Mahatma (1949)

With increasing necessity and demand for efficiency, integration, and minimizing of waste in the economic world, there will be increasing demand for efficiency, integration, and minimizing of waste in the social world. These changes will have marked effects upon the ways in which men live. It seems clear that the first major penalty man will have to pay for his rapid consumption of the earth's non-renewable resources will be that of having to live in a world where his thoughts and actions are ever more strongly limited, where social organization has become all-pervasive, complex, and inflexible, and where the state completely dominates the actions of the individual.

HARRISON BROWN, The Challenge of Man's Future (1954)

Articles on ecology generally tend to lead off with lists of disasters. But the shock effect of disasters is gone. Today such lists may even be counterproductive. They suggest we have a number of specific problems we must address. We don't. We have The Problem. All ecological concerns are interrelated parts of the problem of perpetuating life on this frail planet, and our approach to them must be holistic. It is absolute folly to continue to pursue piecemeal solutions - when we know full well that the pesticides, the detergents, and the dams are all fouling the same river.

DENIS HAYES, Earth Day Co-Founder (1970)

Many people will think that the changes we have introduced in the model to avoid the growth-and-collapse behavior mode are not only impossible, but unpleasant, dangerous, even disastrous in themselves. Such policies as reducing the birth rate and diverting capital from production of material goods, by whatever means they might be implemented, seem unnatural and unimaginable, because they have not, in most people's experience, been tried, or even seriously suggested. Indeed there would be little point even in discussing such fundamental changes in the functioning of modern society if we felt that the present pattern of unrestricted growth were sustainable into the future. All the evidence available to us, however, suggests that of the three alternatives -- unrestricted growth, a self-imposed limitation to growth, or a nature-imposed limitation to growth-- only the last two are actually possible.

CLUB OF ROME, Limits to Growth (1972)

It is difficult to expect the disadvantaged masses of India to be motivated to reduce family size by appeals to the national good or world betterment. Many of the alleged advantages to individual families are probably more apparent in theory than in practice; unless other conditions are changed, and at any rate the masses in the high fertility areas will have to be shown, not told, that such advantages exist - they have been exploited too long and too consistently by those in more privileged positions to take on faith any advice from these sectors. Not only do the poor have more immediate problems to deal with, they have the least to gain from promoting the so-called collective good and preserving the present inequitable distribution of social advantage. The fact that family planning programs are at present advocated by those who most benefit from that inequality does nothing to inspire their confidence.

KAREN L. MICHAELSON, in And the Poor Get Children (1981)

Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real.

JONATHAN SCHELL, The Fate of the Earth (1982)

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be.... The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the "crash" that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the "soft landing" that many people hope for - a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology.

JOSEPH A. TAINTER, Collapse of Complex Societies (1990)

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai he could count the rules of ethical behavior on the fingers of his two hands. In the complex global economy of the late twentieth century, in which the simple act of turning on an air conditioner sends greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere, the rules for ecologically sustainable living run into the hundreds. The basic value of a sustainable society, though, the ecological equivalent of the Golden Rule, is simple: each generation should meet its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations to meet their own needs. What is lacking is the thorough practical knowledge - at each level of society - of what living by that principle means....

It would be naive to believe that entire populations will suddenly experience a moral awakening, renouncing greed, envy, and avarice. What can be hoped for is a gradual weakening of the consumerist ethos of affluent societies. The challenge before humanity is to bring environmental matters under cultural controls, and the goal of creating a sustainable culture - a culture of permanence - is a task that will occupy several generations. Just as smoking has lost its social cachet in the United States in the space of a decade, conspicuous consumption of all types may be susceptible to social pressure over a longer period.

Ultimately, personal restraint will do little, though, if not wedded to bold political steps against the forces promoting consumption. In addition to the oft-repeated agenda of environmental and social reforms necessary to achieve sustainability, such as overhauling energy systems, stabilizing population, and ending poverty, action is needed to restrain the excesses of advertising, to curb the shopping culture, to abolish policies that push consumption, and to revitalize household and community economies as human-scale alternatives to the high-consumption life-style. Such changes promise to help both the environment, by reducing the burden of overconsumption, and our peace of mind, by taming the forces that keep us dissatisfied with our lot.

ALAN DURNING, in State of the World (1991)

However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporation, the root of the problem is always to be found in private life. We must learn to see that every problem that concerns us... always leads straight to the question of how we live. The world is being destroyed - no doubt about it - by the greed of the rich and powerful. It is also being destroyed by popular demand. There are not enough rich and powerful people to consume the whole world; for that, the rich and powerful need the help of countless ordinary people.

WENDELL BERRY, Farmer/Environmentalist/Author (1992)

We have become addicted to our way of life and to our way of thinking. We must drive our cars, use our clothes dryers, smoke our cigarettes, drink our alcohol, earn a profit, look good, behave in a socially acceptable fashion, and never speak out of turn or speak the truth, for fear of rejection.

The only way to break addictive behavior is to love and cherish something more than your addiction. When a mother and a father look into the eyes of their newborn baby, do they need a glass of beer or a cigarette to make them feel better? When you smell a rose or a gardenia, do you think of work or do you forget for a brief, blissful moment everything but the perfection of the flower? When you see the dogwood flowers hovering like butterflies among the fresh green leaves of spring, do you forget your worries?

Now, try to imagine your life without healthy babies, perfect roses, and dogwoods in spring. It will seem meaningless. We take the perfection of nature for granted, but if we woke up one morning and found all the trees dying, the grass brown, and the temperature 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and if we couldn't venture outside because the sun would cause severe skin burns, we would recognize what we once had but didn't treasure enough to save.

HELEN CALDICOTT, If You Love This Planet (1992)

Those who most depend on an expanding economy are not Malaysians or other Third Worlders, but you in the First World. In your world, you no longer have contact with the land, and you don't know how to get along without luxuries. For us, if the whole global trade system collapsed, we might be better off. We have never lost touch with the land; we know how to grow food for our communities, how to make our own clothes, how to develop the fairly simple technologies we need. This is how most of us lived until recently. We wouldn't mind having some of the new technologies you offer, and some kinds of trade are very useful, but if the Western colonial powers and transnational corporations would simply leave us alone, stop exploiting our resources and land so we could again retain their use, we could probably survive quite well. But what would you do?

MARTIN KHOR, in The Case Against the Global Economy (1992)

The reason we are emotionally attached to growth and why we find it so hard to say it should stop is that everybody feels that if they had a little bit more of something they would be better off. What we fail to realize is that what is possible for one person is probably not possible for all and if everybody gets a little bit more it may alter or destroy not only the expected benefits but also those that people enjoyed before the change. Until a few years ago the Algarve was a pleasant holiday destination, accessible only to a few. Now it appears in every package tour catalogue and hotels have been built where almond groves once stood. The region has completely altered, some would say for the worse, and many people who once spent springtime there have found somewhere more distant to go instead. Perhaps the Algarve provides more consumer satisfaction now because economic growth has enabled more people to go there but it is not offering the same product that it did. Because the place and the clientele have changed, objective comparisons are impossible. Without making value judgments we cannot say whether growth has made things better or worse.

RICHARD DOUTHWAITE, The Growth Illusion (1992)

If every company on the planet were to adopt the best environmental practices of the "leading companies -say, the Body Shop, Patagonia, or 3M - the world would still be moving toward sure degradation and collapse. So if a tiny fraction of the world's most intelligent managers cannot model a sustainable world, then environmentalism as currently practiced by business today, laudable as it may be, is only a part of an overall solution. Rather than a management problem, we have a design problem, a flaw that runs through all business.

PAUL HAWKEN, The Ecology of Commerce (1993)

Industrial societies need economic prosperity, but I do not accept that economic growth is the principal measure of the success of nations. Look at the United States and Great Britain. The United States has achieved the greatest economic growth and the greatest material prosperity known to history. During the past fifty years its Gross National Product (GNP) has more than quadrupled, adjusted for inflation. Yet U.S. society is in serious social crisis. In Great Britain there has also been a surge of material prosperity during the past fifty years. Its GNP has more than tripled in real terms. So according to conventional modern criteria, both these nations have succeeded beyond their grandest dreams. Nonetheless, both nations are profoundly troubled.

JAMES GOLDSMITH, The Trap (1994)

Since the earth itself is developing without growing, it follows that a subsystem of the earth must eventually conform itself to the same behavioral mode of development without growth, alias "sustainable development". This could happen at any scale which is below carrying capacity. The optimal scale, following our basic ethic, would be the one that maximizes lives ever lived over time at a sufficient level of per capita resource use for a good life. At present all we know for sure is that the optimal scale must be sustainable, that the economic subsystem must not overload the ecosystem to the point of reducing future life. For now it is a sufficient challenge to strive for a sustainable scale. Later we can worry about which sustainable scale is optimal.

HERMAN DALY, Beyond Growth (1996)

Environmentalists who rest their hopes on efficient resource management concentrate social imagination on the revision of means rather than on the revision of goals. An increase in resource efficiency alone leads to nothing unless it goes hand-in-hand with an intelligent restraint of growth. Instead of focusing on how many supermarkets or how many bathrooms are enough, the focus is on how all these - and more - can be obtained with a lower input of resources. If, however, the dynamics of growth are not slowed down, the achievements of rationalization will soon be eaten up by the next round of growth. Consider the example of the fuel efficient car. Today's vehicle engines are definitely more efficient and low-polluting than in the past; yet the relentless growth in the number of cars and miles driven has canceled out those gains. Efficiency without sufficiency is counterproductive; the latter must define the boundaries of the former.

WOLFGANG SACHS, in The Case Against the Global Economy (1996)

Planetary limits will eventually require our civilization to achieve a steady state in both population size and economic activities. Material growth will ultimately only be possible to the extent that increases in efficiency and productivity within the limitations of the global environment permit. This is a fact grounded in the objective nature of physical reality, just as you cannot add any more water to an already full glass without it running over. Any idea to the contrary is wishful thinking, if not a blatant disregard for scientific facts. The reason why any thought of an end to growth is anathema in political, economic and business circles is that Western capitalism as preached today cannot survive without growth.

ARTHUR LYON DAHL, The Eco-Principle (1996)

People and communities are today displaced not in the name of "development" but in the name of "globalization". There is a crucial difference. While development demanded that local communities give up their land and homes for the greater public good, and for the national sovereignty of India, globalization demands that people sacrifice their livelihoods, and sometimes even their lives, for corporate profits.... It is often argued that globalization and liberalization create growth and employment, and that growth will remove poverty. What is overlooked is that globalization creates this "growth" by destruction both of the environment and of sustainable local ways of living. For millions of people, globalization has actually created poverty and unemployment instead of removing it.

Most important, the global capitalist system exhibits some imperialistic tendencies. Far from seeking equilibrium, it is hell-bent on expansion. It cannot rest as long as there are any markets or resources that remain unincorporated. In this respect, it is little different from Alexander the Great or Attila the Hun and its expansionary tendencies may well prove its undoing.

GEORGE SOROS, The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998)

How many people the earth can support is the wrong question to be asking. Rather, we should be asking if we already have enough people and perhaps too many people. If the neoclassical economic model is right - that each additional person is a valuable worker, consumer, contributor to the GNP, and stimulator of innovative technologies that can substitute for all natural resources - then we have nothing to worry about as the population grows. If the second law of technodynamics is correct - that the increasingly difficult challenges of consuming nonsubstitutable resources, providing food, and disposing of garbage for a rapidly expanding population leaves us and future generations with fewer options and more problems to resolve - then we already have too many people on earth.

ERIC A. DAVIDSON, You Can't Eat GNP (2000)

People used to talk about apartheid in Africa; today we could talk about apartheid throughout the world, where over four billion people are deprived of the most basic rights of all human beings: the right to life, to health, to education, to clean drinking water, to food, to housing, to employment, to hope for their future and the future of their children. At the present pace, we will soon be deprived even of the air we breathe, increasingly poisoned by the wasteful consumer societies that pollute the elements essential for life and destroy human habitat.... We are fighting for the most sacred rights of the poor countries; but we are also fighting for the salvation of a First World incapable of preserving the existence of the human species, of governing itself - overwhelmed by contradictions and self-serving interests - and much less of governing the world, whose leadership must be democratically shared. We are fighting - it could almost be demonstrated mathematically - to preserve life on our planet.

FIDEL CASTRO, Speech to the United Nations (2000)

Is there anyone who believes that making more money in a nation already gorging on record wealth will emancipate us from our moral deficit? More spending hasn't improved education. More income hasn't enhanced the quality of family life. Great wealth has failed to cure our cynicism about nearly everything. We enjoy new conveniences and more leisure time, but have less time for developing our character and human relationships. Might prosperity contribute to many of our social ills rather than cure them?

CAL THOMAS, syndicated columnist (2000)

It has become a winner-take-all society. The rich, including the upper-middle class which does the top managerial and legal work for the corporations, and the professionals, are rapidly increasing their wealth and have no interest in calling for change. Inequality and polarisation are accelerating....

All this is sociologically appalling. You cannot have a satisfactory society made up of competitive, self-interested individuals! In a satisfactory society there must be considerable concern for the public good and the welfare of all, and there must be considerable collective social control and regulation and provision, to make sure all are looked after, to maintain public institutions and standards, and to reinforce the sense of social solidarity whereby all feel willing to contribute to the good of all.

Yet there is very little dissent! Capitalism has never been more secure from threat. There is little or no opposition to what is happening from the working class or the middle class. These have been seduced into docility and willing compliance in consumer society by the promise of ever-rising "living standards". There is some discontent, there is grumbling, but there is no focused resistance let alone outraged disgust at the great injustice and brutality underlying rich world affluence and no demand for fundamental system change. The media's obsession with trivia, spectacles and sport distract attention from what really matters. Governments are blindly in favour of market forces and refuse to give any attention to the possibility of limits to growth.... The academic and "intellectual" ranks fail to focus on the massive global injustice that underwrites their privileges, or on the limits to growth that will soon terminate them.

TED TRAINER, The Simpler Way (2000)

Those with a vested interest in economic growth will probably build a strawman of the steady state revolution, portraying it as an emotionally driven attempt to enforce one set of morals on the rest of society. Such a portrayal will be a transparent attempt to buy time for economic growth and the attendant profits for some, and its transparency will increase as the economy congests and the environment degrades. In a concurrently increasing fashion, the steady state revolution will be seen by objective observers as a logical attempt to debunk a harmful myth that has been perpetuated by a cadre of professionals who serve (more or less wittingly) powerful economic interests.