BY SOFO ARCHON
Illustration by Steve Cutts
We often hear politicians and economists talk about the importance of economic growth. But as you’ll soon see, while “growth” is essential for keeping our economy moving, it can also be extremely harmful to the planet.
The Need for Economic Growth
Why is economic growth considered a good thing, and why do we need it in our economy? To answer these questions, we first need to understand how our economic system—market capitalism—functions.
At its core, market capitalism can be understood as an interaction among owners, laborers, and consumers. Consumers demand certain products and services, which owners produce by employing laborers (who work in exchange for a wage) and then supply to consumers (in exchange for a fee).
Therefore, it is “demand” that keeps the cycle of buying and selling alive. When demand falls significantly, it can lead to “depression”—a prolonged recession characterized by sharp declines in income and employment. Put simply, the more money people are both able and willing to spend, the better it is for the economy, since spending generates jobs and raises incomes. This is why maintaining the economy in a constant state of growth is considered so crucial.
To keep money in circulation, many tactics are used. One is monetary regulation, such as increasing liquidity through interest rate adjustments. Another is planned obsolescence—the intentional production of low-quality goods that break quickly to ensure repeat purchases. Advertising is yet another tactic, exploiting people’s insecurities to persuade them to consume more. Finally, politicians sometimes urge us to keep shopping regardless of the state of world affairs, as former U.S. President George W. Bush did shortly after the September 11 attacks.
Illustration by Steve Cutts
Illustration by If money stopped circulating, the entire economy would collapse. That’s why people are expected to consume endlessly, regardless of what is being bought or sold—or at what social or environmental cost.
The Environmental Impacts of
Economic Growth
More economic growth means more consumption—and consequently, more resource extraction and waste production. The result? Resource depletion, pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss—just a few of the terrible environmental impacts, often dismissed as mere “negative externalities” of our economy. In fact, our obsession with economic growth has pushed all of Earth’s life-support systems into dramatic decline.
But who cares about the environment anyway? In our growth-based economy, only profit matters. The billions of dollars in profit generated by Monsanto are considered good for the economy, even though the company uses herbicides that damage the soil and contaminate water. The same can be said for Dow Chemical, responsible for one of the world’s worst industrial disasters, which left around half a million people suffering from diseases such as cancer, blindness, and birth defects. Or take Coca-Cola, whose excessive water use in India has drained critical aquifers, devastating the lives of farmers and their families.
Illustration by Steve Cutts
Illustration by The problem is that we’ve reached a point where we must start caring about the environment—before we completely destroy Earth and ourselves.
Right now, numerous cities across the globe are running out of drinking water. Climate-driven sea levels are rising higher and higher. Our planet is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals. Deforestation is clearing forests on a massive scale, causing habitat loss for millions of species, extreme temperature swings, and other serious damages to ecosystems. Plastic waste continues to flood the oceans, poisoning aquatic life, with estimates suggesting that by 2050 there could be more plastic than fish in the seas. I could go on, but these facts are enough to illustrate the horrifying situation we face.
Moving Toward a Sustainable Economy
Contrary to what we’ve been conditioned to believe, our current economy is actually anti-economic—if we consider both the definition and the etymological roots of the word economy:
Economy: Careful management of resources (money, materials, etc.) to avoid unnecessary expenditure or waste. Derived from the Greek word οἰκονόμος, which comes from οίκος (“household”) and νέμω (“manage”), essentially meaning “household management.”
Our contrived economy is built on consumption solely to drive so-called economic growth, with no serious regard for the well-being of the biosphere. As a result, we endlessly extract resources on a finite planet—which is utterly insane if you stop and think about it. On top of that, we produce so much waste that all life on Earth is suffering, including our own species. So where is the careful management of our household—that is, Earth?
Nowhere.
Illustration by Steve Cutts
Illustration by If we want to stop destroying the planet—and instead help heal the wounds we’ve inflicted—we need to dismantle our inherently destructive economic system and design a new, environmentally sustainable one, grounded in the principles of conservation, ephemeralization, access, and localization. Let’s take a closer look at each of these concepts and explore why they are essential for creating an economic model that aligns with the natural world.
Conservation. Conservation is the practice of using and managing natural resources efficiently, while preventing harm to shared resources such as air and water. Currently, we are consuming resources faster than the Earth can replenish them, and in ways that generate massive amounts of toxic waste. For example, we rely heavily on non-renewable and highly polluting fossil fuels, like crude oil, without considering the severe repercussions for the planet. Unfortunately, our current economic system treats nature merely as a commodity to be converted into profit, rather than valuing it in its own right. A true economy would respect and care for the natural world, taking only what is necessary for human well-being while causing minimal harm.
Ephemeralization. A term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller that refers to the ability of technological advancement to “do more with less”—producing larger quantities of higher-quality goods and services while using fewer resources and less effort. Our market economy, however, prevents this technological trend from reaching its full potential. Increased efficiency would reduce the number of jobs (due to technological unemployment—the loss of jobs caused by advances in technology) and, consequently, decrease the circulation of money. As we saw earlier, money is the lifeblood of market capitalism, and if it stops moving, the entire economic system would quickly collapse.
Access. Our profit-driven economy relies on the notion of ownership and property. An access economy, by contrast, focuses on people gaining access to goods and services through sharing. Just as we can access shared libraries today, this idea could extend to social services such as food sharing, home sharing, car sharing, and tool sharing. By creating an access-based system, we could meet our needs while dramatically reducing resource extraction, environmental destruction, pollution, and waste. However, the creation of such an “access abundance” is blocked by the market economy, which depends on endless consumption and growth.
Localization. As opposed to globalization, localization focuses on increasing efficiency and reducing waste by producing goods locally whenever possible. Today’s form of globalization is often wasteful and inefficient—for example, the average food item in the U.S. travels around 1,500 miles from farm to table, consuming labor and resources unnecessarily and contributing to environmental pollution. In our current profit-driven economic model, companies do almost anything to reduce production costs, such as exploiting cheaper labor in foreign countries. Once again, this shows how market capitalism stands in stark opposition to what a true economy would look like.
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We already have the technical know-how to create a sustainable economy—one that allows us to enjoy the best Earth has to offer while living in harmony with nature. Yet, because of outdated values and beliefs, we remain trapped in an obsolete and life-negating economic system. The question is: How much more suffering and destruction are we willing to endure before we decide to break free?
Further reading:
Images credit: Steve Cutts
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