Economics blind spot is a disaster for the planet -- Herman Daly, New Scientist

[IrateCitizen]

Cross-post from E&E forum...

Special report: Economics blind spot is a disaster for the planet
15 October 2008 by Herman Daly

HERE is a salutary tale about the World Bank. The first draft of its 1992 World Development Report, dedicated to sustainable development, contained a diagram labelled "the relation of the economy to the environment". It showed a rectangle labelled "economy", with an arrow entering it labelled "inputs" and an arrow exiting it labelled "outputs". That was it.

It was my job, as senior economist in the bank's environment department, to review the draft and offer suggestions. I said drawing such a picture was a great idea, but it really had to include the environment. As drawn, the economy was receiving inputs from nowhere and expelling outputs back to nowhere.

I suggested we draw a big circle around the economy and label it "ecosystem". Then it would be clear that the inputs represented resources taken from the ecosystem, and the outputs represented waste returned to it as pollution. This would allow us to raise fundamental questions, such as how big the economy can get before it overwhelms the total system.

When the second draft came back, a large unlabelled rectangle had been drawn around the original figure, like a picture frame. I complained that it changed nothing. In the third draft, the diagram was gone. The idea that economic growth should be constrained by the environment was too much for the World Bank in 1992, and still is today. The bank recognised that something must be wrong with that diagram - but better to omit it than deal with the inconvenient questions it raised....

READ THE REST HERE

Thoughts?

[blindpig]

1. No surprises there.

The demand of ever increasing profit makes capitalism an utterly disasterous steward of the environment. Capitalism will consume the earth if unchecked. The only viable alternative is a socialism.

[IrateCitizen]

2. There is no viable "ism" alternative...

Socialism has proved disastrous in terms of environmental approach. Capitalism and socialism are opposite sides of the same coin. Both are based upon a decidedly materialist dialectic and a linear, positivist view of history that does not readily acknowledge the notion of limits.

[blindpig]

3. Strongly disagree.

The environmental sins of socialist countries in the past were the result of copying capitalist method, lock, stock & barrel. And don't forget that capitalism was running amok devastating the planet at the same time. If you don't think lessons have been learned consider Cuba.

I'd suggest you read some Marx on the matter, the old man was quite aware of environmental degradation, sometimes almost prescient.

[tama]

4. Marx was a philosopher

but don't know about his enviromental credentials - where the answer IMO lies not in materialism but in "animism". Lenin was a technocrat. Believing in technocratic domination of nature, that nature is just a resource.

Marx denied being a Marxist, but Marxist are the other side of the technocracy coin.

[blindpig]

6. Materialists can have ecological sensibilities too.

In addressing these environmental issues Marx took over the concept of Stoffwechsel or metabolism from Liebig,2 describing the ecological contradiction between nature and capitalist society as "an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism." Indeed, "capitalist production," Marx explained, "only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth -- the soil and the worker." This rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature could only be overcome, he argued, through the systematic "restoration" of the metabolism between humanity and nature "as a regulative law of social organization." But this required the rational regulation of the labor process (itself defined as the metabolic relation of human beings to nature) by the associated producers in line with the needs of future generations. "Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together," Marx stated, "are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias ."3

Marx's ecological discussions, coupled with those of Engels, therefore went well beyond the general understanding of his time. Today the ecological issues that Marx and Engels addressed (albeit sometimes only in passing) read like a litany of many of our most pressing environmental problems: the division of town and country, the degradation of the soil, rural isolation and desolation, overcrowding in cities, urban wastes, industrial pollution, waste recycling in industry, the decline in nutrition and health, the crippling of workers, the squandering of natural resources (including fossil fuel in the form of coal), deforestation, floods, desertification, water shortages, regional climate change, conservation of energy, the dependence of species on changing environments, historically-conditioned overpopulation tendencies, and famine.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/foster281107.html

[tama]

7. Of course they can

and Marx' philosophical-dialectical materialism is very different beast from the reductionistic materialism of today's (layman's) physics.

And if we go deep enough into multiD quantum physics (and accept the quantum mind hypothesis even tentatively) and ToE, it does not really matter if we call the math/forms on that level "matter" or "idea".

E.g. Bohm's interpretation of QM is essentially animistic or panpsychic.

But in our relations to our environments it matters a great deal if we perceive and experience that also trees and even stones feel and experience - or don't. In a way, we are the prodigal son, returning to the home of our shamanistic/animistic/othername ancestors.

[blindpig]

9. Well, mebbe so

but that has nothing to do with politics. Perhaps when we have established the basis for a just and humane society humans might return to a Pleistocene mindset, I dunno. I cannot see us getting there by adopting deep ecological thinking one person at a time. That may be fine for the individual, but it will do nothing to stop our headlong dive into ecocide. For that politics is necessary.

[tama]

10. I agree

to extent. But deep ecology is not about individualism (literally undivided atomism) bot communalism and sharing. Politics. For example, ecovillage movement is about politics (just and humane society), ecology and spiritualism - and variety. All these aspects are needed, together, they are not mutually exclusive but complementary.

[truedelphi]

5. I have always felt sorry that Marx was blamed for Communism

That is sort of like blaming Jesus for many of the Catholic Church's priests being pedophiles.

There is a relationship, sure, but such an indirect relationship that it makes the comparison rather untidy at best and downright irresponsible at worst.

[tama]

8. Well, to be fair

Marx shares the guilt for revolutionary socialism aka "communism" (so far communism as a practical way of life has existed only in it's native non-marxist tribal form plus in some religious movements such as early Christianity) - which Bakunin and others correctly critisized for its inherent corruption.