Our future cannot depend on consumption

Keskiviikko 7.10.2020 klo 11.26 - Mikko Nikinmaa

At least one thing is certain, Earth has finite size. People may disagree on economic policies, but in the end Earth's limits dictate, what the economic thinking must converge to in the end: sustainability. This is because we do not have planet B, C, D etc. to continue economic policies, which do not take Earth's limits into account. For a long time it has been possible to base all the future scenarios on limitless growth. This has been possible, because human population had new areas to live in, because new material resources were always found and because the atmosphere, aquatic environment and unused land absorbed all our wastes and toxic materials without observable damage. Thus, economic theories are based on growth and we depend on population growth to maintain welfare state in European countries.

However, we have now reached tipping point. Economic growth requires increased consumption. Increased consumption requires the use of increased amount of resources, somewhere to dispose of wastes, increased land use to relieve anthropogenic pressures and so on. There are several indications that finite Earth cannot tolerate increased consumption any more. We have climate change, pandemic, biodiversity loss (6th extinction wave) and global pollution - for example about 1/3 of world's children are subjected to chronic lead poisoning. Despite all the indications that we cannot continue in the path of earlier generations, it has become very common to start defending nationalistic values and possessions at the expense of those bloody foreigners, especially in poor areas, who do not do their share, and whose work we in the rich areas can utilize to increase our consumption. This attitude is very short-sighted, as the limits to Earth do not follow national boundaries and no country can be hermetically sealed off from the earth.

People are saying that changing our feeding habits from meat-based to vegetarian diet would change the situation: combat climate change and limit pandemics. Yes, it would improve the situation momentarily, but if the economic theories were still based on limitless growth, after a lag time we would be back to the same problems we presently face. Its length would depend on the time that will be taken for the growth to eat up the environmental benefits that the new habits have given. Because of this, the only way to sustainability is to decrease consumption, where it is possible. It is also necessary to scrap the concept of dependency ratio, because it is completely unsustainable. Maybe this would buy us enough time to achieve, what is an ultimate necessity for sustainability, a reduction of human population.

One would need to develop a sustainability index, which takes into account both the consumption per person and population growth. By doing this, one could relate the actions in rich European and poor African and Asian countries. At present it is quite clear that one child born in USA causes a bigger load to the environment that ten born in Nigeria. Regardless, it is imperative that the consumption in the rich countries is decreased.

I hope that we can get away from the unfortunate truth in the "joke", where an economist says to an environmentalist: "Climate change and environmental distruction are just unfortunate consequences of having a healthy economy."