CommonDreams: Enough Already

[marmar]

Published on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Enough Already
by Robin Mittenthal


One classic definition of insanity involves doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A twice-divorced friend of mine who recently married again seems insane in this way.

So, unfortunately, do most economists, policy-makers and pundits, who think the economy can — must! — grow forever. Whenever recession looms, as it does now, these folks seem to think the answer is for us all to make, buy and sell each other more stuff.

What’s the problem with growth? There are several, not the least of which is the gradual transformation of our country into a coast-to-coast strip mall. In the long run, though, the biggest problem is simply that we’ve already bought, sold and buried in landfills an awful lot of the material goodies Earth has to offer.

The closer one looks at where we’re getting the resources to grow with, the more the idea of perpetual economic growth starts to smell like yesterday’s diapers. To get gold, copper and even common metals like iron and aluminum, we’re mining ores today that companies 50 years ago ignored as inferior. In many cases we’re so desperate for metal that we’re actually mining the waste from ores previously mined.

Similarly, in Alberta, Canada, petrochemical companies have built giant facilities to produce oil from thick, tarry gunk that’s bound to sand under much of the province. Short of liquefying coal, there’s no less efficient source of oil. But oil is now valuable enough to justify the enormous expense.

Metals and oil are nonrenewable resources, but the picture is pretty much the same for resources that theoretically replace themselves. Between timber harvesting and agriculture combined, some scientists estimate that we now consume more than 40 percent of the earth’s “net primary productivity,” the total amount of energy accumulated by all plants everywhere. You might think that’s OK — 100 minus 40 leaves 60, after all. But the natural systems on which we depend for clean water and air and other useful perks seem to need just about all of that 60 percent to keep going. That’s especially true as those systems are stressed by climate change, pollution and just plain abuse.

Economists have long answered this sort of argument by pointing to “resource substitution” — the idea that scarce metals, for example, can be replaced in many situations with high-tech plastics. They also argue that we’re good at figuring out how to use resources more efficiently, making cars and electronics and other doodads with less metal and plastic and whatnot than a generation ago. In general, they seem sure that our big brains will keep coming up with solutions when we need them. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/09/8179/

[PATRICK]

1. On one hand

they switch the economy over to intangibles and services which seems to break loose from producing anything at all physically. Yet even with this hedged castle in the sky approach the attrition of simply continuing at all to deplete non-renewables and reduce the ecosystem(whatever the population) is a finite approach to a very real cliff.

The "recyclable" feel good slow down of waste means what exactly? that we fill up all the nation's dumps 10% more slowly? Cherry-picking math is lunacy. That is the thinking that allowed a lot of people to go blind regarding the consequences of invading Iraq. Attrition is what won the Revolution for this country.
Inevitable results, no matter how undramatic, how slow, how counterbalanced by show and pomp and force should be the stuff of human reasoning. In our MSM, policy fronts and most of the leadership and wealth of the country the controllers of the show are wearing life jackets in quicksand and enjoying the "swim".
Of course the majority of humans don't have those life jackets.