Can modernisation be “ecological”?

Three guest posts from Martin Lack of Lack of Environment, today the concluding Part Three

Hope you have been following the previous two parts of this essay from Martin.  Part One can be read here; Part Two here.

————————-

Can modernisation be “ecological”? – Part 3

This is the third and final part of my mini-critique of the school of environmental thought known as Ecological Modernisation.
——————-
Newsflash: Today [Sept. 27th.] is Earth Overshoot Day for 2011. This was a genuine coincidence (i.e. I did not know this when I decided to do this 3-part story). See paragraph 2 below…
——————-

Where are we now?
In his seminal 1968 article on ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Garrett Hardin had observed that it was not possible to achieve Jeremy Bentham’s hedonistic goal of “the greatest good for the greatest number” because, at the level of the individual, to do so would require food and/or energy to be used for subsistence purposes only (Hardin 1968: 1243). In 1977, William Ophuls agreed that the optimum population is not the maximum possible, which appears to imply that, if necessary, artificial limits to growth should be imposed. Furthermore, he explicitly stated that, “…this optimum level… may be as little as fifty percent of the theoretical maximum…” (Ophuls 1977: 28).

Mathis Wackernagel et al have recently provided “…evidence that human activities have exceeded the biosphere’s capacity since the 1980s. This overshoot can be expressed as the extent to which human area demand exceeds nature’s supply. Whereas humanity’s load corresponded to 70% of the biosphere’s capacity in 1961; this percentage grew to 120% by 1999.” However, the authors also pointed out that, if… “12% of the bioproductive area was set aside to protect other species; the demand line crosses the supply line in the early 1970s rather than the 1980s” (Wackernagel et al 2002: 9268-9)(emphasis mine).

In laboratory-controlled studies, the size of a population of, say, fruit flies can be shown to depend on the scarcity or abundance of food; and the presence or absence of predators. However, in 2005, Meadows et al pointed out that a growing population “…will slow and stop in a smooth accommodation with its limits… only if it receives accurate, prompt signals telling it where it is with respect to its limits, and only if it responds to those signals quickly and accurately” (Meadows et al 2005: 157).

This pursuit of the resulting “S-curve” is sometimes referred to as the demographic transition of an increasingly affluent society through three stages: (1) high birth and death rates; (2) high birth rate but low death rate; and (3) low birth and death rates. However, in a section entitled ‘Why Technology and Markets Alone Can’t Avoid Overshoot’, Meadowset al also pointed out that if we put off dealing with limits to growth we are more likely to come up against several of them simultaneously (ibid: 223).

Even though no-one seems to want to talk about population control today, neither Hardin nor Malthus was the first to raise this contentious subject because, as Philip Kreager has pointed out, this dubious honour goes to Aristotle’s treatise on Politics within which, “…population is a recurring topic, extensively discussed and integral to the overall argument…” (Kreager 2008: 599). Furthermore, according to Theodore Lianos, although Aristotle was thinking at the scale of a city rather than a country, the great philosopher recognised that there was an optimum population size, which depended on the land area controlled by the city (for food production purposes), which could be determined by, “the land-population ratio that produces enough material goods so that the citizens can live a wise and generous life, comfortable but not wasteful nor luxurious” (Lianos 2010: 3).

Conclusions
It has been demonstrated that dematerialisation alone cannot deal with the problem of resource depletion unless the increase in unit efficiency is greater than the increase in scale of production (i.e. something that cannot be sustainable indefinitely).

Furthermore, whereas it may be possible to partially decouple environmental degradation from economic growth, pursuit of this as a sole objective is a dangerous strategy. This is because to do so is to remain ambivalent about the existence and significance of limits to growth; indeed it is to deny that growth itself may be the problem.

In the final analysis, the only thing that will be sustainable is progression towards the steady-state economy proposed by Daly and others; combined with qualitative development instead of quantitative growth. Therefore, the only form of modernisation that could be ecological is one that places the intrinsic value of vital resources such as clean air and clean water – and the inherent value of a beautiful landscape – well above the instrumental value of money or precious metals.
——————-
References:
Hardin, G. (1968), ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 168, pp.1243-8.
Kreager, P. (2008), ‘Aristotle and open population thinking’, Population and Development Review 14(34), pp.599-629.
Lianos, T. (2010), ‘Aristotle’s Macroeconomic Model of the City-State’.
Meadows D, et al (2005), Limits to Growth: the 30-Year Update, London: Earthscan.
Ophuls, W. (1977), Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, San Francisco: Freeman and Co..
Wackernagel, M. et al (2002), ‘Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy’,Proc. of the National Academy of Sciences [USA], 99(14), pp.9266-9271.

10 thoughts on “Can modernisation be “ecological”?”

  1. Thanks again to Paul for posting this mini-series on Ecological Modernisation… Just a quick update (for those that have not visited my blog). After first publishing the above, I referred to it in an excange of comments with arch-blogger (and author of Chasing Rainbows…) Tim Worstall, in which he denounces the research of Wackernagel et al as unreliable (2 October). For the record, Tim is obviously in the habit of typing ‘Worstall’ into search engines to check-up on who is writing about him on the Internet (which is how he found me).

    However, as Tim tends to extremely verbose, I will summarise: He does not deny that anthropogenic global warming is happening, but he does doubt the sensibility of most things proposed to tackle it. He believes that humanity can solve the problem using market-based instruments such as green taxes (i.e. what I call Prometheanism); and that the Sun will ultimately save us from Limits to Growth/Energy Crises (i.e. what I call Cornucopianism). Therefore, as I have said, “I would like to say I admire [his] optimism, but I don’t. Neither, of course, do I share it!…</em

    Like

    Reply

  2. Break the cycle by expanding meaningfully again. Massive infrastructure, massive education, followed by massive science, followed by massive new technology. Basically, what China is doing, but done from our higher level, but just as ferociously. And with the aim of sustainable civilization.

    And first, immediately, put all of finance under very tight regulation, supervision and forceful shrinkage.

    We are in a scientific civilization, or more exactly scientific spaceship going to its doom, as systems falter, due to the fact the principles of science are not respected by the plutocrats who have seized command, and their obsequious servants, anxious for a little seat at the big table of these big monsters.

    What is the fundamental principle of science? Democracy. Because only by the number and rule of the people comes the wealth of ideas. The open society comes only from the open mind, and the open discourse. This requires transparency: the anti-Obama, in other words. Funny to have to say that, for someone who did so much for his friend Obama… Absolute power corrupts absolutely, that is why we need the People: it cannot be corrupted.

    http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

    Like

    Reply

    1. Hi Patrice,

      Thank you for commenting. I agree with your reference to the famous “absolute power corrupts absolutely.. (for evidence of which one need look no further than Obama’s failure to bring Greenspan et al to account for the financial meltdown). However, I do not agree that you can spend your way out of a debt crisis (if that is what you are suggesting). This crisis is not like a normal recession; spending money will only get us all further into debt; and even China has a finite capacity to lend money to others… Maybe you are one of those that favours Professor Stephen Hawking’s solution for humanity to colonise space (having trashed the planet)? Personally, I see that as an abdication of responsibility; rather than take the trouble to modify our collective behaviour.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Martin, Having been reading Patrice’s writings for a couple of years now, methinks you have misunderstood the essence of what Patrice is saying. The world’s economy is huge but, to me, the issue is very much the wrong sort of spending. Growth is not a dirty word. If we shut down (the wrong sort of) spending to try and reduce debt, it will be counter-productive; the debt will spiral even higher as tax intake, business profits and individuals’ incomes spiral downwards. As I write this coming Friday, Naomi Klein said something valuable at the Occupy Wall Street gathering,

        “We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.”

        That is what I read in Patrice’s comment, and I agree 100%.

        Much appreciate your comment to the post, and Patrice’s, thank you both. Paul

        Like

      2. Hi Martin:
        There are extensive answers to all your points on my sites. My WordPress site has more than one million words. One cannot spend one’s way out of a debt crisis: this is what Keynes advocated, and it’s wrong, not to say perfectly idiotic.
        But one can invest oneself out of a debt crisis. Mr. Hawking did not invent the expansion-as-safety idea. It has been all over science fiction forever.
        People like Mr. Hawking like to make us believe they invented everything, and I am getting fed-up with this kind of self glorification aiming at one’s material success. Intellectuals have to teach by example, not by behaving like mini Obamas.
        The conquest of space by humankind is also unachievable with present tech. We would need a space elevators and safe (= ultra efficient) nuclear rockets.
        Chinese banks are in big trouble, BTW (latest news). The French socialists are going to block China within months. Anyway, rest re-assured: I am hyper revolutionary, and I have studied all the angles. The Europeans will be doing within months what I have advocated (default Greece, nationalize the banks).
        http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

        Like

  3. Martin and Paul: Thanks to both. Paul describes my general position perfectly: growth is good, and necessary. Malignant growth, what we have now, does not just kill Jobs (pardon the allusion), it kills civilization itself.

    Like

    Reply

    1. My apologies, Patrice: I have only just noticed your earlier comment addressed to me (I was not ignoring you). I like William Hague’s charactersiation of the EU as “a rning building with no exits” but, joking apart, it is hard to see a happy ending for the EU… Mirroring what Joseph Huber said (“…all ways out of the environmental crisis lead us further into modernity“)… I think all ways out of this financial crisis lead us further into European integration… which wil be a disaster for eveyone involved (whether they wanted it or not).

      Like

      Reply

      1. Martin:
        I don’t see why Europeans not waging war against each other is a “disaster”. Also I don’t see the EU burning. I see banks burning us, though. Time to house them down with cold water.
        PA

        Like

      2. Patrice, I agree that the absence of war in Europe over the last 65 years has been, in large part, due to collective determination to avoid it. But, that is just the point, this has been achieved without supra-national convergence. Just as within Christendom you can have unity without uniformity, so Europe should remain a collection of soveriegn nation states (in my humble opinion).

        Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.