I haven't yet seriously delved into the issue of the growth economy — that is, my third precept, "don't buy any new stuff you don't absolutely need"... This is a tough nut to crack because our society is so totally dependent upon consumerism it seems nearly insurmountable to imagine a way out. Good and well-meaning friends, who do profess to care about the environment and climate change, have reminded me that their jobs, or their loved ones' jobs, depend on people continuing to buy nice things; and that if everyone thought the way I do (and acted on it) the economy would collapse and complete chaos would result.
And yet I can only return to the fact that infinite growth is simply not possible on a finite planet, and any "fix" that allows us to keep growing indefinitely without harming the environment is as imaginary as a perpetual motion machine or a free lunch. As far as I can see, we can choose to follow the made-up dictates of our own made-up system (the economy), or we can follow the rules of the real world... or, as Herman Daly put it, "when faced with the unhappy dilemma of choosing between a physical or political impossibility, it is better to attempt the politically 'impossible.'"
Right now I do not have a concrete solution — as I say, our society is so bound up in this there seems to be no way out of it; I only know there must be alternatives. I'm sure there are traditional cultures who have inhabited the same territory since time immemorial without ruining the land, and perhaps we need to learn from them... I have been reading a bit of Herman Daly — Ecological Economics — on the principles of a steady-state economy. I can't speak with any kind of authority on how to get there from here; but until I have more solid ideas, here are a few quotes from my reading:
"As this is written, there are news reports of a group of economics students in French and British universities who are rebelling against what they are being taught. They have formed a Society for Post-Autistic Economics. Their implicit diagnosis is apt, since autism, like conventional economics, is characterized by 'abnormal subjectivity; and acceptance of fantasy rather than reality.' ... Current 'canonical assumptions' of insatiable wants and infinite resources, leading to growth forever, are simply not grounded in reality." - p. xxi
"We define growth as an increase in throughput, which is the flow of natural resources from the environment, through the economy, and back to the environment as waste. This kind of growth, of course, cannot continue indefinitely, as the Earth and its resources are not infinite. While growth must end, this in no way implies an end to development, which we define as qualitative change, realization of potential, evolution toward an improved, but larger, structure or system — an increase in the quality of goods and services (where quality is measured by the ability to increase human well-being)." - p.6
"Unfortunately, our ability to increase consumption while depleting our resource base has led people to believe that humans and the economy that sustains us have transcended nature. " - p. 10
"Does the system generate wastes? Does the system require new inputs of matter and energy? If not, then the system is a perpetual motion machine, a contradiction of the Second Law of Thermodynamics... Since there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, the economic system cannot be the whole. It must be a subsystem of a larger system, the Earth-ecosystem." - p.29
"The circular low vision [of standard economic models] is analogous to a biologist describing an animal only in terms of its circulatory system, without ever mentioning its digestive tract. Surely the circulatory system is important, but unless the animal also has a digestive tract that connects it to its environment at both ends, it will soon die either of starvation or constipation." - p. 29
I do have a few quibbles with Daly: in common with most conventional economists, in thinking natural ecosystems strictly in terms of resources for humans and measuring quality by the ability to increase human well-being, he falls into the common trap of thinking the entire world was created for our use — which is exactly the thinking that got us to this point. (I always keep in mind the quote from indigenous rights activist Oren Lyons, "it makes a crucial difference whether humankind thinks of the natural world as consisting of resources or relatives"). But it is useful to get some solid economic thinking on the issue. I will post further as I get further along...
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