At the level of microeconomics, “jobs, jobs, jobs” is most important to the middle and working classes. At the level of macroeconomics, “growth, growth, growth” is most important to the supporters of capitalism. And at the level of Earth’s ecology and evolution, “sustainability, sustainability, sustainability” is most important to all life on Earth. Concern with the impossibility of maintaining both continued unlimited economic growth and a sustainable Earth must become apparent to all thinking citizens of the planet. And to create and maintain worthwhile jobs on a sustainable Earth must become a priority.
Until the industrial revolution in the middle of the 19th century, humans depended on the use of renewable resources to sustain life. What growth that took place was episodic and localized. Human populations grew to about 250 million at the beginning of the Christian Era and to only 1.5 billion in the 1850s. But in the ensuing 160 years, the Earth’s population has exponentially grown more than 4 ½ times to over 7 billion. This growth is underlain by relentless mining of non-renewable resources and largely fueled by coal, oil, and natural gas deposits which were formed in the geologic past.
Today, economic growth is founded on the consumption of both non-renewable and renewable resources. Non-renewable resources can now be seen as in ever shorter supply or as increasingly more expensive. Yet we continue to exploit them as if they were infinite. Renewable resources, too, are being altered through such actions as soil erosion, water overuse, forest destruction, over grazing and over fishing. Unwanted by-products—waste and pollution—are also the result of increased growth and consumption. To maintain current patterns of consumption and associated pollution, extinctions, and rapid entropy can only lead to extraordinarily unpredictable natural and social consequences. Even the unpredictable consequences of climate warming are only now beginning to be recognized.
The basic question that arises from these facts is how to shift from an economy based on growth and consumption to one that supports ordinary people’s lives while sustaining natural ecological conditions and the slow, natural processes of evolution. The fundamental answer is to reduce growth and consumption and at the same time provide food, shelter, health, and emotional and intellectual stimulation to all humans. But how?
The mantra of economic growth, which is fundamental to contemporary free-market capitalism, must be replaced by an economics of sustainability. Sustainability means that macroeconomics has to be placed in the broader context of the Earth’s ecology and be measured in terms other than monetary. Today’s markets do not recognize the inherent wealth of natural resources, calling them externalities. However, in terms of ecological economics, natural resources have primary value in providing the basic flows of energy and materials that support life on Earth. A standard measure of the energy—not money—is required to transcend the ecology/market economy boundary.
Within a sustainable macro economy, economic activities need to be re-prioritized. Today, the average American, when grouped together, each year consumes over 38,000 pounds of new materials and has the energy equivalent of about 300 slaves working for him/her every day around the clock. Individuals, corporations, local, state, and national governments must consume lesser amounts of the Earth’s materials and depend on many fewer energy slaves. Consumption for energy-rich non-productive items, such as “national defense” and personal luxuries, large and small, needs to be reevaluated in light of both what it contributes to society and what it extracts from the ecologic health of the planet. In the playing out of micro economies, jobs should still be of prime importance. But they must not be based on the growth of consumptive industries. Supported by renewable resources, supplemented by much smaller amounts of non-renewable material and energy, micro economies need to prioritize and create jobs in sustainable agriculture, forestry, fishing, and animal husbandry—jobs that will provide the necessities of life and also provide surpluses for education, health, recreation, and spiritual sustenance. Participation in non-consumptive activities can enable personal satisfactions. And redistribution of wealth can assist in developing a sustainable life for those who now live in poverty.
It is hard to imagine a world in which exponential growth is not the goal by which societies and individuals live. But to continue our current economic dreams is to ignore the fact that energy and mineral resources are limited and pollution and extinctions will continue to increase. The transition to a sustainable Earth in which all its inhabitants live a healthy and inspirited life will be extraordinarily difficult.