BY POLLY MANN
I do believe we need one, that is, a new economic system, and economist John Scales Avery describes one to us in this book. I didn’t read the book, knowing myself to become overwhelmed by its knowledge as such has happened to me before. But I read a six-page analysis of it, which I’ve compressed into this even shorter version. I do think it’s important.
Maybe we’re not doing too badly under the present economic system, but it cannot go on indefinitely. Among the early prophesiers of its weaknesses were the members of the Club of Rome, an organization of economists and scientists devoted to studying the predicament of human society. “Unlimited industrial growth on a finite planet is impossible” was the basis of their 1972 book entitled, “Limits to Growth.” Scales Avery provides details in his book: “Growth cannot continue forever. It is destroying the earth.”
Biologists looking at the system believe that if any species, including our own, makes demands on its environment which exceed the environment’s carrying capacity, the result is a catastrophic collapse both of the environment and its population. Scales Avery writes: “The size of the human economy is the product of two factors—the total number of humans and the consumption per capita. If we are to achieve a sustainable global society in the future whose demands are within the carrying capacity of the global environment, then both these factors must be reduced.” (Between 1930 and 2011 the population of the world increased from 2 billion to 7 billion.)
The food-importing nations are dependent, almost exclusively, on the grain belt of North America and in the future this region may be vulnerable to droughts produced by global warming. As population increases, the cropland per person will continue to fall. Farmers will be forced to make still heavier use of oil-based fertilizers and reserves of oil are likely to be exhausted by the middle of the century. Today large numbers of the world’s people live in near-poverty or absolute poverty, lacking safe water, sanitation, elementary education, primary health care and proper nutrition.
At the same time, the structure of Western society seems designed to pushing its citizens in the opposite direction, towards ever-increasing levels of consumption. One of the problems in reducing this consumption is the prevailing attitude that regardless of income, the individual must have more and more. Scales Avery cautions that we need to rediscover ethical values, once part of human culture but lost during the process of industrialization. He warns: “The whole world seems to be adopting values, fashions and standards of behavior presented by the Western world media … we need to reverse this trend. The wisdom of our ancestors, their respect for nature and their traditions of sharing can help us create a new economic system founded on social and environmental ethics.”
Are we up to doing this?
