Pearls and Irritations

This initiative is important in making a strenuous plea for urgent action on the global “poly crisis”. But it fails to make clear the fundamental cause of the problem, or the way out of it.

The call comes from 26 agencies including the Club of Rome, the Council for the Human Future, Extinction Rebellion and 23 other major bodies. It includes short statements by about thirty well known activists, summarising the situation and putting forward things that must be done. It will be a valuable prod to greater recognition of the dire situation and to greater action by individuals and governments.

But the report is open to the fundamental criticism that it fails to represent the situation properly, and fails to deal with the basic causes of the predicament.

It is excellent in identifying the many elements in the crisis and their seriousness, but the considerable space given to “solutions” more or less just says we need to take steps such as ”Develop a World Plan of Action to combat the crisis”, “Reconstruct the architecture of our governance systems worldwide”, “Develop an Earth System Treaty, under the UN”, “Act urgently to prevent planetary ‘tipping points’ from escalating into irreversible crises.” All of these are admirable and many are beyond dispute. But they almost entirely do not go near what is the basic cause of the predicament and what has to be done if it is to be solved.

The fundamental cause of just about all the big problems now threatening our existence is simply over-production and over-consumption, and the blind obsession with the pursuit of affluence and growth driving these. We are far beyond levels of resource use and the consequent environmental damage that are remotely sustainable or that could be spread to all the world’s people. There is a strong case that present rich world per capita resource use would have to go down to one-sixth or less of present levels before a sustainable and just world could be achieved.

This is causing resource depletion, environmental destruction, imperialism, deprivation of poor countries of a fair share of world resources, and resource wars. Yet just about all governments, elites and people in general are determined to increase “living standards” and the GDP as fast as possible and without limit. This suicidal commitment is hardly mentioned at all in the World Call document (although a few do politely question “consumption”.) It means that solutions to the predicament cannot possibly be achieved unless there is very large scale degrowth, a term which does not seem to occur in the document.

Also totally absent is any notion that the big problems cannot possibly be solved within or by the capitalist system. Capitalism is a growth system. It involves constant effort to produce and sell more. It cannot tolerate stability let alone reduction in production for sale. Capital is constantly accumulating in the hands of a very few and they constantly seek profitable investment outlets for it, and more resources to feed into them.

It is an economic system that is driven by those with capital investing it, to produce not things that are needed, but things they think will most increase their wealth. Are you surprised that urgent needs go unmet, half of Americans are poor, while the wealth of the rich is going through the roof? It is a system that defines “development” as striving within the global market to become like the rich countries, by exporting resources. So they must borrow to build infrastructures the foreign investors want, so they soon have impossible debt, which the IMF and World Bank solve … by lending them more … on condition that they gear their economies more to the interests of the corporations and banks, and cut spending on welfare in order to pay off debt. This is well described as legitimised plunder. They are now exporting to the rich countries net wealth over several trillion every year.

How likely is it that the capitalist class would accept the phasing out of most of the investment opportunities and the elimination of most of the purchasing that is presently going on? Evidently the document’s gurus see no significant problems here. The document does not use the term “class” and I think that the word “capitalism” occurs only once in the document. One of the authors told me not to try to get rid of capitalism, because “ … there isn’t time.” The point is that you aren’t going to solve the problems until you do get rid of it.

Few people among elites, academics, economists and the general public have the slightest idea that the predicament is due to over-production and over-consumption. Most proceed as if a) it’s all the fault of our stupid and corrupt politicians captured long ago by the corporations, and b) that it could all be solved without much impact on our comfortable “living standards”, kitchen renos and holidays in Bali. This document reassures us that things can be fixed if governments just implemented tighter recycling, electric cars and better laws etc. along with the other many steps the document reassures us are available. No one, including most of the authors of this report, want to think about reducing ”living standards”.

What then is the answer?

There is only one general social form that could possibly enable the per capita resource use rates to be got down sufficiently, while enabling a high quality of life for all the world’s people. It has to be about far simpler lifestyles and systems. Many are now working for this “Simpler Way” in Ecovillage, Transition Towns and degrowth movements. (My first statement of it was in 1985; for the updated detail see: thesimplerway.info.) This World Call document makes no reference to any need to transition in this direction.

Most people would have to live in small highly self-sufficient and self-governing communities, in control of their stable, needs-driven and collectivist economies, drawing mostly on local resources, and deriving life satisfaction from non-material values. Town assemblies, working bees and spontaneous voluntary action would administer and maintain systems. There would have to be a strongly collectivist ethos. We would make sure no one was poor or unemployed. Above all there would have to be a culture of sufficiency and frugality, and of prioritising the welfare of the town. We would realise that we as individuals would not thrive unless the town was thriving.

The integration and proximity of functions in such settlements would enable resource demand to be cut dramatically. For instance most food would need to travel only from the gardens and commons in the settlement or nearby small farms. Most people could get to work on foot or bicycle. Recycling of all “wastes” back to local gardens could eliminate the need for sewer systems or a fertiliser industry. Our study found that the dollar and energy costs of some items could be cut to around 2% of supermarket products.

The Dancing Rabbit ecovillage in Missouri does these things and its per capita resource use is around 5-10% of the US average. The quality of life in ecovillages is reported to be higher than average.

So how do we get there?

Neither the situation we are in or the way out of it are understood by governments, elites or ordinary people. Even if understood, the astronomical change required could not be made by the decision-making institutions of this society. Can you imagine them trying to agree on which factories to close down, or what to do with the displaced workers, when at present they are all working frantically to increase production, consumption, jobs and the GDP? Do you realise that it would mean the end of capitalism? If production and consumption were dramatically reduced then most investment opportunities would cease to exist. Governments would have to decide how much of which few essential items were to be produced, and which firms were going to produce them. That’s ultra hard-core “Socialism”.

This monumental conundrum is not recognised by the any of the World Call gurus.

Well then, how are we going to get there? How do we get rid of capitalism, determination of economics by market forces and profit, the quest for affluence and growth, etc? The answer is … we don’t, and we can’t. These things will get rid of themselves.

We have begun to accelerate down into a time of great troubles which might be the end of us all. But the global collapse will clear the way for the building of the new ways. There are four main reasons why a mega-breakdown is underway.

The first is the multi-factorial biophysical overshoot that makes this society grossly unsustainable … the increasingly serious problems the Call points to. These will greatly increase difficulties and costs.

The second is the decline in oil availability likely to begin as fracking peaks, maybe around 2030. Renewable energy is not likely to fill the gap. Energy and therefore all other costs will probably rise dramatically.

The third is the coming collapse of the global financial system house of cards. Global debt is now three times global GDP and is accelerating. It can never be repaid. Many now see a debt crash coming.

The fourth is the disintegration of social cohesion as people are increasingly impoverished and angry over what the system is doing to them. They are turning to authoritarian leaders promising to save them. This leads to fascism.

As Marx saw long ago, capitalism has contradictions built into its nature, which will eventually destroy it. There is nothing anyone can do about our trajectory now. (See the detailed TSW transition theory.) Our task is to try to get as many people as possible to understand the situation, to adopt the alternative vision, and to start building it. As governments and corporations increasingly fail to provide for us people will be forced by circumstances to come together in their localities to work out how to set up highly cooperative and self-sufficient alternative arrangements. This is happening now, evident in Ecovillage, Transition Towns, Degrowth and many related movements.

This is the kind of action we need a World Call to.

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