What do we really want?
Economic growth is seen as good, yet it makes many in the rich world miserable
George Monbiot Tuesday August 27, 2002 The Guardian
There is scarcely a discussion of climate change on the radio or
television that does not involve a "climate sceptic" - someone who believes
there is no problem. This would be unexceptionable if the media always promoted
dissent: if, for example, someone was brought in to attack capitalism every time
the economy was discussed. But the coverage the anti-environmentalists receive
suggests that the dissent that reinforces an underlying orthodoxy is welcome
while that which challenges it is not. Whatever the explanation may be, the
airtime their views receive is out of all proportion to the scientific support
they muster.
But let us, for a moment, assume that they are right. Let us imagine that
climate change does not exist, that pollution does no damage to ecosystems or
human health, that fisheries are not collapsing, freshwater reserves are not
drying up, topsoil is not eroding, and forests and coral reefs are not
disappearing. Let us pretend there is no conflict between two of the avowed
goals of the current earth summit: relieving poverty in the poor nations while
enhancing economic growth in the rich ones. Let us pretend that there is no
competition for resources between rich and poor. Let us accept, in other words,
the myths of neoliberalism.
This is the position taken by the farmer and philosopher Simon Fairlie in his
new pamphlet, The Prospect of Cornutopia. He envisages the future that most of
the rich world's governments, economists and media foresee. In this vision,
economic growth proceeds at some 3% a year, without threatening the earth's
capacity to support its population. By 2100, if this rate is sustained, we will
be 18 times richer than we are today.
Fairlie asks the question that so many economists have ducked. When we possess
this fabulous wealth, how will we spend it? "A fraction of this amount," he
notes, "will provide all of us with the one car per two people which appears to
be the saturation rate ... What next? Will everyone be jetting around the world
on a weekly basis from airports in every town? Will each home have 10 rooms and
a swimming pool and, if so, where are we going to build them?" Will we then
inhabit the terrestrial heaven that the advocates of endless growth have
promised us?
I hardly dare to mention this for fear of being accused of romanticising poverty
or somehow conspiring to keep people in the picturesque state to which I would
never submit myself. But it is impossible not to notice that, in some of the
poorest parts of the world, most people, most of the time, appear to be happier
than we are. In southern Ethiopia, for example, the poorest half of the poorest
nation on earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter. In homes
constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile
more often, express more affection than we do behind our double glazing,
surrounded by remote controls.
This is not to suggest that poverty causes happiness. In southern Ethiopia
people desperately want better healthcare, better education, better housing and
sanitation, not to mention smart clothes, motorbikes, refrigerators and radios.
But while poverty does not cause happiness, there appears to be some evidence
that wealth causes misery. Since 1950, 25-year-olds in Britain have become 10
times more likely to be affected by depression. And it is surely fair to say
that most of us suffer from subclinical neuroses, anxiety or a profound
discomfort with ourselves.
Perhaps one of the reasons why people in Ethiopia appear to be happier than we
are is that they have less to lose by letting other people into their lives. The
more wealth we possess, the more isolated we become. We must defend it, and
ourselves, against the intrusions of other people.
An increase in wealth is always either preceded or followed by an increase in
property rights. Over the past 20 years, for example, wealthy people have laid
claim to human genes, public archives, town squares and village greens, playing
fields, beaches, even clouds and landing spaces on the moon. Having enhanced
their wealth, they retreat to gated communities, hire guards and install CCTV
and movement sensors.
The rich lock themselves in and lock everyone else out. So many fences rise to
exclude us that after a while we are no longer shut out but shut in. And if we
try to cross those barriers we pay dearly, for the increasing freedom of capital
has been accompanied by unprecedented rates of imprisonment. For both the
secluded and the excluded, the fruits of economic growth become a substitute for
human interaction: we prefer watching TV than talking to our neighbours.
Plenty of evidence suggests that as we become richer, we become less content
with ourselves. It is incorrect to say that necessity is the mother of
invention. In the rich world, invention is the mother of necessity. When people
already possess all the goods and services they need, growth can be stimulated
only by discovering new needs. Advertising creates gaps in our lives in order to
fill them. We buy the products, but the gaps remain.
Already, in the rich nations, the beneficiaries of development spend much of
their money on escaping from it: it costs a fortune to live in a place that does
not assault your eyes and ears with ugliness. To absorb our increasing wealth we
must keep building. Our new cars need new roads, our new goods and services must
come from new shops and warehouses and offices. One day there may be nowhere
left in which we can shut the noise out of our heads.
Wealth also appears to reduce our capacity to act. Our reliance upon technology
supplants our reliance upon ourselves and other people. As George Orwell
suggested, "the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being
to something resembling a brain in a bottle".
In other words, as Simon Fairlie argues, the rich world is approaching the point
at which "satiation turns into deprivation". Even if we were to forget the
damage our growing economies inflict upon the environment, even if we were to
ignore the conflict between our greed and the fulfilment of other people's
needs, we should be able to see that economic growth in nations that are rich
enough already is a disaster.
Environmentalists have been fudging this issue for far too long. We have been
demanding an accommodation between the irreconcilable objectives of
ever-increasing wealth and environmental protection, an accommodation we call
"sustainable development".
We know that the world is already rich enough to meet all real human needs, but
that this wealth is not trickling down from rich to poor. We know that while
there is a desperate need for redistribution, further growth in the rich world
is likely to make everyone more miserable. We know that wealth has been
romanticised. Yet we are afraid to ask for what we really want. Unless we are
brave enough to confront the notion that growth is good, the world will shop
until it drops.
The Prospect of Cornutopia can be obtained by emailing [email protected]