Zombies and sensitivities

Iain Climie (New Scientist, Letters, 3/10/16) is right to emphasize the need for population reductions in the resource-greedy developed countries. But why does he think that we have difficulty "accepting our own entry in the obituary column" when this is, as my Chemistry teacher remarked, the only scientific law to which there are no known exceptions?

I don't believe that lust for immortality is the reason that we can't think clearly about population. In fact I see two reasons.

One reason is the 'zombie doctrine' that bigger is always better so a large population must be better than a smaller one. This doctrine helps to explain the political obsession with GDP - when GDP per head would make better sense (though measures of well-being would be better still.)

The other is the sensitivity over appearing to tell people how many children to have. But this is a mistake - a failure to distinguish between a need for discussion and a desire to give orders. An odd failure I think since most of the policies advocated to limit population, eg easier access to birth control, actually increase human freedom.

The real causes of wildlife losses

Martin Hughes-Games (Why Planet Earth II should have been taxed, Guardian, 2/1/17) does well to deplore the appalling loss of wildlife in the last 40 years. See, for example, my posts on apes and wilderness.

But it is ridiculous to blame Attenborough's wonderful documentaries for this and little better to demand a special tax on wildlife programmes. The losses of habitats, creatures and species are due to forces much more powerful than TV programmes. They are due to the increasing numbers of people - us - and our ever increasing demands for land, energy and food, especially meat.

Innate factors account for some of this but much is due outdated nationalism and short-sighted commercialism. Nationalist politicians - themselves a growing breed! - see a large population as a mark of national vigour and a source of economic growth. They use the power of the state and the media to play on our emotions and if that fails they try to ban abortion and contraception.

Businesses seek their own growth by persuading us to be dissatisfied with our lives and, especially, our possessions and diets. They send us to the sales and our spending feeds the juggernaut that each year grabs more and more of the Earth's resources.

This is unsustainable. It will end.

The question is whether we can restrain the forces that demand insatiable growth before they trash the planet - and us with it. Unless we do, and soon, we can say goodbye to the beautiful wild things that Attenborough has documented.

And that requires politicians willing to say stop.

The RoadWatch Debate in Context

For months Enfield RoadWatch has been collecting signatures on a petition opposing Fairview's plans for houses and a school on Green Belt land. Yesterday it presented the petition, now with 4,500 signatures, to Enfield Council. A debate followed.

If we strip out the repetition and political point-scoring we find the following arguments:

• Green Belt: Everyone agreed that the Green Belt is vital for recreation, to clean the air, provide habitats (especially for rare species) and preserve Enfield's special green character.
• Brownfield sites:  The Tories said that there are 280 acres of brownfield land in Enfield that should be developed instead of encroaching on the Green Belt. Labour said there is not so much and some is needed for recreational use.
• Population:  Labour said that the population of Enfield is expected to rise by 100,000 in twenty years!  The Tories said 'don't be silly' - it will be much less. *
• The Tories said that the Green Belt is sacrosanct and no-one should ever be allowed to build on it. Labour said that building on some Green Belt land might be the least bad option.

 Several things were not said:

• Backlog:  Like most of the UK, the borough is already short of houses and flats. It needs a lot more just to meet the needs of the current population and our children and grandchildren.
• Housing policy:  The only way that the backlog can be dealt with is by public investment in homes that will not then be subject to 'right to buy'.
• Population:  The forecast growth is partly the result of national and regional policies and different policies would have different results. (Actually one Tory did say that leaving the EU would reduce the growth but even he didn't seem to be serious.) Different policies could produce a city that was less unequal, healthier and had lower population growth.

Enfield Green Party remains opposed to Fairview's plans both because of the loss of Green Belt and because they involve a church-sponsored so-called 'free school'. But this is just one proposal. One point at which numbers and quality of life conflict.

Continued economic and population growth are not consistent with the protection of the natural environment either locally or globally. And the destruction of the natural environment will ultimately be disastrous for the health and well-being, and ultimately the survival, of much of humanity. The loss of two fields in Enfield is a small matter compared to deforestation in Brazil or famine in the Horn of Africa. But the drivers - fetishisation of growth, rampant consumerism and corporate greed - are the same.

Only Greens see these connections. That's why we need a Green government.


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* Notes on population:

1. Official forecasts here and here are for much small growth numbers than Labour claims. Perhaps 40,000 extra by 2032. That's still quite a lot.
2. Given the confused and highly unsatisfactory state of policy on migration, affordable housing and housing benefit, the likely long-term increase in the number of people wanting to come to northern Europe and the near certainty of at least one change of government in the next twenty years no forecast is reliable.

Does greed or need drive the planetary crisis?

The Green Party’s distinctive insight is that we must all live on planet Earth and that, in the long run, we must live within our planetary limits. Our species already grabs 40% of the Earth’s production. That’s morally indefensible – we are just one species yet we are driving the rest toward extinction.

It’s also unsustainable. Our impacts are ever increasing but we have only one planet. Once we’ve converted all the forests and grasslands to crops we’ll have nowhere to expand and the system of planetary exploitation we call consumer capitalism will have to stop expanding.

But that, of course, will be too late. Our increasing emissions of greenhouse gases put us on course for at least four, maybe six, degrees of warming. That will raise sea levels (by 20 meters if we can stay below four degrees) and reduce global food production. The combination of less food and more people can have no good outcome.

Pope Francis has blamed our environmental overshoot on greed whilst Mark Lynas and his fellow ‘ecomodernists’ see it as the result of trying to meet human needs. The Pope is closer to the truth.
The great expansion in fossil fuel burning in the 19th century was led by entrepreneurs. Though greed was one motive so was the desire (by some) to do good. That century produced new forms of philanthropy and Andrew Carnegie’s dictum that ‘the man who dies rich dies disgraced’ as well new forms of exploitation. Yet I believe that the simple desire to make a (big) difference was more significant than either greed or philanthropy.

Yet from these origins came a system that expected, in fact required, company directors to be greedy and which for the last 50 years has encouraged consumer greed through advertising. The system – consumer capitalism – is largely self-sustaining. It has created greedy consumers and promotes managers who are greedy for the growth and profits of their firms. It also rewards academics and commentators who encourage consumer greed (yes, I do mean you, fashion journos!) and who praise managers who increase profits – whatever the costs to other people and species.

And yet we do need some growth if we are to help the ‘bottom billion’ who go to bed hungry out of poverty. The challenge to the Green Party – indeed to everyone who cares about people and planet – is to find forms of development that relieve the worst poverty, bring greater well-being to ‘consumers’ and reduce our impacts on the rest of the planet’s ecosystems.

And to win the political battle of ideas for the new way.

Top economist backs the Greens

Greens and economists are often at odds. The reductionist short-termism that is usual in conventional economics is the antithesis of the Green view. So it's nice - if perhaps a bit worrying - when a top economist endorses us.

Here's what Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said in a recent interview with the Guardian:

“I think the Greens are right. We have to make sure that the benefits of growth are shared more equally. Anybody who is concerned about our environment has to be committed to a more egalitarian policy, because we can’t let those at the bottom have inadequate means.”

That's not entirely a Green view, of course. The problem with growth is not just that the benefits have gone to the richest 1%. It's also that the planet cannot stand continued growth in material things. Unlimited growth in mining, manufacturing and population, to name but three, is not merely undesirable but impossible.

We have been sold growth on the basis that everyone would benefit in the long run. But guess what? This is the long run and most of us haven't.

It's time for a new approach - an approach based on meeting needs and respecting planetary constraints rather than making profits. The Greens are the only party that has this at the centre of its thinking. The only party looking to the real future.