Going against both the naive techno-optimism of ‘greening business as usual’ and a resurgent ‘catastrophism’ within green thinking and politics, The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability offers an analysis of the causes of unsustainability and diminished human flourishing. It makes a case for seeing that it is profound and deepening unsustainability and growing injustice that characterizes the modern world. The books locates the causes of unsustainability in dominant capitalist modes of production, debt-based consumerism, and the imperative for orthodox economic growth. The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability offers a trenchant critique of the dominant neoclassical economic groupthink, which the book argues must be seen not as some value-neutral form of ‘expert knowledge’ but as a thoroughly ideological ‘common sense’ that has corrupted and limited creative ways of thinking about and through our current predicament. It offers a green political economic alternative which replaces economic growth with economic security, and views economic growth as having done its work in the minority, affluent world, which should now focus on human flourishing and lowering socio-economic equality and fostering solidarity as part of that new re-orientation of public policy. Complementing this green political economy, the book outlines and develops an account of ‘green republicanism’, which represents an innovative and original contribution to debates on the political responses to the crises and opportunities of global unsustainability. The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability draws widely from a range of disciplines and thinkers to produce a highly relevant, timely, and provocatively original statement on the human predicament in the twenty-first century. 

John has kindly given me permission to publish a short extract from this new book. The extract I have chosen is called, “Transition Towns as Resilience Pioneers” (pp.104-108, minus footnotes).

TRANSITION TOWNS AS RESILIENCE PIONEERS

John Barry

In this section I wish to draw attention to and dwell on an aspect of the Transition movement related to the notion of those involved in them as pioneers and indeed the movement as a whole being best thought of as a form of pioneering. The word ‘pioneer’ is derived from the old French peonier, meaning ‘foot soldier’, so it is rather appropriate to view those involved in the Transition movement as ‘foot soldiers’ for new ways of living (while also touching upon the wartime mobilization narrative with which the Transition movement is sometimes associated). A pioneer is one who goes before others, leads and prepares the way for others to follow, and this is a perfect description of the Transition movement as it pioneers new ways of thinking and living. As Sharon Astyk notes, ‘We talk a good game about wanting a better world for the next generation, but we aren’t living our lives as though we love our own kids, much less anyone else’s. It seems to me that the only way to give the next generation a decent shot at life is for those of us who care most about them to take things into our own hands and prepare for the changes ahead’ (Astyk, 2008: 7; emphasis added).

She is explicit in recognizing the pioneering aspects of low-energy and low- carbon living, suggesting that ‘instead of everyone picking up and moving to a farm, or building some new society, what we need is a ‘Little House in the Suburbs’ model—a way of making what we already have usable in a much lower-energy and—emissions world’ (Astyk, 2008: 147). Of course there are other groups and movements which can also be viewed as pioneers both now and historically, so it’s not that somehow the Transition movement is unique in being pioneers. In particular, apart from the long-standing commitment to a less consumerist society within Green political parties and elements of the environmental movement, we should also highlight how the voluntary simplicity movement (Alexander, 2011) can also be seen as anticipating aspects of the Transition movement, and has much to contribute to it. However, what I am interested in here is interpreting and understanding Transition initiatives as pioneers and also the extent to which people and communities involved in them identify and see themselves as pioneers.

Pioneer is a more preferable term to the more common one of ‘social entrepreneur’ which is another interpretative frame for understanding innovative forms of social mobilization and activity. For example, the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, states that, ‘Social entrepreneurship can further be defined as any action that displays three key characteristics: sociality, innovation, and market orientation’ (Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, 2009). Equally the descriptive term ‘innovation’, like ‘entrepreneur’ comes with baggage which is biased towards viewing it as a social activity which integrates with or does not challenge conventional economic progress and a ‘business as usual’ and techno-centric approach. At the same time, however, ‘pioneer’ as a concept is not completely free of this conventional economic connotation. Pioneers can also have a more economic/instrumental understanding in the sense of ‘pioneers’ as ‘first movers’ in the emerging markets for green energy, waste, and other forms of ecological infrastructure and production to capture competitive advantage—one of the dominant discourses of ‘cleantech’ and the ecological modernization of the economy as in the Green New Deal (Barry, 2009a –GND articles; Mayoh, 2009). And, of course, pioneers share many of the same character traits as entrepreneurs— risk-taking, experimentation, creativity, and as will be outlined below, courage to strike out in new directions, challenge conventional wisdom and structures, and revise previously strongly held or well-established views. But in the sense used here, pioneers are those whose vision and activism are potentially much more radical than the ‘social entrepreneurship’ concept (Parkin, 2010).

As already suggested, one of the many features or traits of a pioneer is courage. In the Transition movement it is clear that it takes courage to accept, embrace and internalize the implications of peak oil and climate change. It also takes courage to criticize the status quo and seek to create change, as the history of struggle for political and social change tells us. A key virtue or character trait of the pioneer is courage and it is, at least in terms of the argument developed here, significant that courage is one of the classical and enduring cardinal virtues. As Van Wensveen points out, ‘Courage is needed to shake familiar, but unsustainable habits and to challenge ecologically harmful practices, in institutions and structures of power. Moreover, courage is needed to venture into the unknown, to make new beginnings. Without courage, one would not have the ability to persist with good habits such as frugality and temperance in a world that is likely to welcome such habits with mockery and threats’ (2000: 131; emphasis added). She goes on to suggest that there is a link between courage and vulnerability, in a manner directly compatible with my own account of vulnerability in the previous chapter:

True courage must somehow involve the ability to embrace fear. . . . This again requires a basic personal attitude, namely vulnerability. People who both accept their existential vulnerability and can make themselves vulnerable (i.e. open) will have the ability to experience fear without panic. This will enable them to respond to dangerous situations with maturity and without harmful side effects. . . . Vulnerability in the context of an ecological world view implies the ability to face our creaturely limits, especially death, and to accept our dependence on the web of life. (2000: 138–9)

For Hopkins, this element of personal courage is central to the transition to a low energy, sustainable post-peak oil society. As he puts it, ‘understanding that the scale of this transition requires particular inner resources, not just an abstract intellectual understanding’ (Hopkins, 2008a: 79), and fully acknowledges that to accept the inevitability of the transition to a life beyond cheap oil and a climate-changed world requires considerable courage and fortitude. Holding such a disposition is doubly demanding in the context of the majority of one’s fellow citizens and the dominant culture more generally, either being indifferent, ignorant, or explicitly rejecting any argument about the coming of the end of our current high-energy unsustainable lifestyles and its associated socio-economic infrastructure. Hence the explicit concern within the Transition movement, as indicated above, with the psychological and emotional dimensions of change, both at the collective and individual levels.

The notion of a pioneer also conveys a sense of identifying and venturing into new horizons of possibility and new frontiers of creativity, whether this is in thinking or doing. For example, Richard Heinberg, one of the main thinkers in the ‘peak oil’ movement, in suggesting the creation of ‘Post-Carbon Out- posts’ (Heinberg, 2007: 235) implicitly or explicitly evokes the image of the American West as a frontier in which ‘empty lands/wilderness’ are broken up with scattered outposts of a different type of society. In the Transition movement the ‘empty lands/wilderness’ is the dominant Western consumer and high-energy way of life (conventional civilization) and the outposts are low/post-carbon experiments and local initiatives. But the analogy still stands whether pioneer outposts are viewed in terms of actual experiments in post- carbon ways of life, or in cultivating modes of thinking and analysis which challenge the dominant cultural and economic narrative. Objectives such as food and energy self-reliance and security, which are central to the Transition vision, resonate with a fairly traditional ‘pioneer mentality’ of people venturing into new lands and without the infrastructure of society, or a national or globalised economy, and who had to support and fend for themselves. The transition vision of a local economy progressively decoupling from the long supply chains of energy, materials, and commodities of the globalized economy does herald a clearly more self-reliant economic and social vision.

Transition Towns exemplify the cultivation of new ‘sustainability’ subjectivities and characters in integrating reflection and action across intellectual, emotional, and practical dimensions of the self. The Transition movement’s focus on ‘head, hand, and heart’ denotes its character-building potentialities. The cultivation of ecological virtue can be measured to the extent it allows the integration of thinking, feeling and action. In the Transition movement case this is geared towards or woven into the recreation of community at its foundation, as the baseline from which collective and local resilience can be created and sustained. The cultivation of ‘earthiness’ in Van Wensveen’s terminology is most evident in the Transition process, a sense of creating identities linked to the earth (either directly through practices such as food growing or land management or indirectly through heightened awareness of human dependence on the earth) but in a resolutely non-romantic sense. As Van Wensveen points out ‘earthy’ people ‘are not romantic dreamers. They will get their hands dirty to do what needs to be done…And they are not perfectionists either…in order to balance their great love of life with the constant messiness of life, earthy people need a sense of humor’ (2000: 34–5; emphasis added). This non-perfectionist element is worth stressing, since one of the central features of the Transition movement, in part drawing on its permacultural roots or inspiration, is its resolute pragmatism, of not being tied down to ideological issues and political debate but simply ‘getting things done that need doing’. This non-perfectionism is also worth stressing since it helps underscore the ‘concrete utopian’ characterization of the Transition movement, in that, in guarding against the ‘perfect becoming the enemy of the good’, the Transition perspective is wary of Duncombe’s uncompromising and unrealizable ‘unconditional impossible demand’ while still remaining a ‘political dream’ (Duncombe, 2007) and form of grounded hope for a realizable but different way of living.

This was an excerpt from John Barry’s The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Contrained World.

A new report has just been published which ought to provoke a Copernican revolution in dominant conceptions of renewable energy and of sustainability more generally. The message may not be one that environmentalists want to hear, but it is one that we must all take very seriously, or risk having our good intentions dedicated to goals that cannot actually solve the very real environmental crises that we face.

Most people, including many environmentalists, seem to believe that Western-style consumer lifestyles can be sustained and even globalised, provided the world transitions to systems of renewable energy and produces goods more cleanly and efficiently. This assumption is reflected especially clearly in political discussion on environmental issues, which consistently pushes the message that we can grow our economies while reducing ecological impact. This view relies heavily on the expectation that renewable energy sources can be substituted for fossil fuels, but very little attention is given to the question of whether that expectation is realistic. Environmentalists want to believe it, but of course merely wanting something does not affect the laws of physics.  

With little recognition, Dr. Ted Trainer has spent the best part of a decade tirelessly surveying the best available data on renewable energy and other technologies, and he has recently published the culmination of his efforts with the Simplicity Institute. Contradicting widely held assumptions, Trainer presents a formidable case that renewable energy and other ‘tech-fixes’ will be unable to sustain growth-based and energy-intensive consumer societies, with implications that are as profound as they will be unwelcome.

Trainer’s general point on technology is that the extent of ecological overshoot is already so great that technology alone will never be able to solve the ecological crises of our age, certainly not in a world based on economic growth and with a growing global population. The best-known advocate of technological solutions to ecological problems is probably Amory Lovins, most famous for his ‘factor four’ thesis. He argues that if we exploit technology we could have four times the economic output without increasing environmental impact (or maintain current economic output and reduce environmental impact by a factor of four).

In response Trainer points out that if the rich economies grow at 3% until 2070, and by that stage the poorest nations have attained similarly high living standards – which seems to be the aim of the global development agenda – total world economic output and impact could be 60 times larger than it is today. If we assume that sustainability requires that fossil fuel use and other resource consumption must be half of what they are today (and the greenhouse problem would probably require a far larger reduction than this), then what is needed is something like a factor 120 reduction in the per unit impact of GDP, not merely a factor 4 reduction.

Even allowing for some uncertainty in these calculations, the claim that technological solutions can solve the ecological crises and sustain limitless economic growth is simply not credible. Trainer has shown that the necessary reductions in ecological impact that are just beyond what is remotely possible. The final nail in the coffin of techno-optimists is the fact that despite decades of extraordinary technological advance, the overall ecological impact of the global economy is still increasing, making even a factor four reduction through technological advance seem wildly optimistic.       

Trainer has also levelled a narrower critique of technological solutions, which focuses on renewable energy. This is not the place to review in detail Trainer’s arguments and research, which would be a laborious task given the meticulous and necessarily dry nature of his analysis of the evidence. For the facts and figures, readers are referred to Trainer’s latest essay. But the critical findings of his technical research can be easily summarised. After examining the evidence on varieties of solar, wind, biomass, hydrogen, etc., as well as energy storage systems, Trainer concludes that the figures just do not support what almost everyone assumes; that is to say, they do not support the argument that renewable energy can sustain consumer societies. This is because the enormous quantities of electricity and oil required by consumer societies today simply cannot be converted to any mixture of renewable energy sources, each of which suffer from various limitations arising out of such things as intermittency of supply, storage problems, resource limitations (e.g. rare metals, land for biomass competing with food production, etc.), and inefficiency issues. Ultimately, however, the cost is the fundamental issue at play here. Trainer provides evidence showing that existing attempts to price the transition to systems of renewable energy are wildly understated.

This challenging conclusion, however, only defines the magnitude of the present problem. If we were to commit ourselves to providing nine or ten billion people with the energy resources currently demanded by those in the richest parts of the world, then the problems and costs become greater by orders of magnitude. The challenges are exacerbated further by the existence of the “rebound effect,” a phenomenon that often negates the expected energy use reductions of efficiency improvements. At times efficiency improvements can even be the catalyst for increased energy consumption, a phenomenon known as the “Jevons” paradox. Going directly against the grain of mainstream thinking on these issues, Trainer is led to conclude that renewable energy and efficiency improvements will never be able to sustain growth-based, consumer societies, primarily because it would be quite unaffordable to do so.     

It is of the utmost importance to emphasise that this is not an argument against renewable energy; nor is it an argument more broadly against the use of appropriate technologies to achieve efficiency improvements. Trainer argues without reservation that the world must transition to full dependence on systems of renewable energy without delay and exploit appropriate technology wherever possible. We cannot afford not to! But given the limitations and expense of renewable energy systems, any transition to a just and sustainable world requires a vastly reduced demand for energy compared to what is common in the developed regions of the world today, and this necessitates giving up growth-based, consumer societies and the energy-intensive lifestyles they support and promote.

The implications of this can hardly be exaggerated. It means that the global consumer class must learn how to live ‘simpler lives’ of reduced resource and energy consumption, as well as build new economic systems based on notions of sufficiency rather than excess. But as I have argued elsewhere, this does not need to sound so depressing. A growing number of people are seeing the hollowness of consumer culture and are finding a new abundance in oppositional lifestyles of voluntary simplicity. The necessary cultural shift obviously requires a radical change in worldview, and it is difficult to be optimistic that the necessary changes will ever arrive. But as Lao Tzu once said: ‘Those who know they have enough are rich,’ which also suggests that those who have enough, but who do not know it, are poor.

The choice is ours, if only we choose it. 

The policy proposal document I posted was obviously drafted with respect to my local Council, the City of Moreland. But I have since redrafted the document to make it generic. This means that if you agree with the vision in the policy proposal, you can now send the generic document to your city council, since the new document is not limited to the City of Moreland, or even Australia. It’s now a general policy document that can be submitted to any city council.

It can be downloaded here. 

If you want to see more local food production – in particular, if you want to see more fruit and nut trees line the streets of your locality – please consider submitting this new policy proposal to your local council. This is potentially a significant form of political activism, and one that should only take about 5 or 10 minutes to enact. Your support would be greatly appreciated; together we could achieve a great deal.

Imagine you were responsible for enriching your suburb with productive fruit trees? What a legacy to leave your community!

As the poet Goethe once wrote: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”

The City of Moreland (my local Council in Melbourne) is in the process of reviewing its policies on the urban landscape, including its regulations governing what can be planted in nature strips. Currently there are strict guidelines which prohibit residents from planting trees in their nature strips – despite the fact that there are hundreds of fruit trees already lining our streets. There are now ten flourishing fruits trees on my cul de sac alone!

Some Councils have recently opened up their guidelines to allow productive trees in nature strips. For example, here are three passages from the City of Yarra guidelines:

• ‘The City of Yarra recognises the importance of urban agriculture in supporting community sustainability, especially in times of changing climate and the myriad of associated issues such as food security due to diminishing oil supplies.’

• ‘Planting productive trees is considered by Council to be an effective means of inspiring and enabling community food production in the City of Yarra by generating environmental, social and economic wellbeing from the ground up – created for and by local people.’

• ‘There are terrific social and physical benefits in being able to access safe public spaces to grow food and share fresh produce.’

The City of Moreland is currently seeking submissions from the community on their guidelines, and I have just drafted and submitted a policy proposal which can be read here. 

The aim is to convince Moreland to adopt something similar to the Yarra guidelines. I’ll keep you posted, and please leave a comment below if you’d like a word document of my policy proposal to amend and submit to your own council. I encourage you to do so!

Abstract:

For several decades Ted Trainer has been developing and refining an important theory of societal change, which he calls The Simpler Way. His essential premise is that overconsumption in the most developed regions of the world is the root cause of our global predicament, and upon this premise he argues that a necessary part of any transition to a sustainable and just world involves those who are overconsuming accepting far more materially ‘simple’ lifestyles. That is the radical implication of our global predicament which most people, including most environmentalists, seem unwilling to acknowledge or accept, but which Trainer does not shy away from and, indeed, which he follows through to its logical conclusion. The Simpler Way is not about deprivation or sacrifice, however. It is about embracing what is sufficient to live well – and recognising that far less is needed than is commonly thought.

This essay presents an overview of Trainer’s position, drawing mainly on the most complete expression of it in his latest book, The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World, an analysis which is supplemented by some of his more recent essays. My review is designed in part to bring more attention to a theorist whose work has been greatly underappreciated, so the review is more expository than critical. But in places my analysis seeks to raise questions about Trainer’s position, and develop it where possible, in the hope of advancing the debate and deepening our understanding of the important issues under consideration. I begin by outlining the various elements of The Simpler Way and proceed to unpack them in more detail.

The full paper can be downloaded here: Ted Trainer and The Simpler Way.

In line with the arguments and essays presented on this website, one of the key findings of the report is that an equitable and swift transition to a sustainable, post carbon economy will require “a significant shift towards economic priorities focusing on improving social and ecological wellbeing rather than unconstrained growth in material consumption.”

After reviewing and summarising 18 major studies on post carbon transitions, the authors conclude that the most common ballpark estimates of the costs of actions required to rapidly decarbonise the global economy are in the order of US$1,000 billion pa to 2030. To give some sense of perspective, the United States Government funds allocated to the 2011 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) supporting the ‘bail out’ of the US banking system amounted to US$700 billion.

You can download the briefing paper here (8 pages) and the summary here (18 pages). The full report is available here (132 pages).

This report focuses particularly on comprehensive large-scale post carbon transition strategies, defined as  ‘documents which identify one or more integrated, plausible pathways for achieving dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, within a national or supra national jurisdiction’. The report is the first stage in a larger, ongoing Post Carbon Pathways project, which you can learn more about at their website here.

The weight of evidence suggests that income growth tends to contribute positively to human wellbeing when people and societies have very low levels of material wealth. But once basic material needs have been met – as they generally have been in the most developed regions of the world – further increases in income tend to contribute less and less to wellbeing. The evidence even suggests that there comes a point – a threshold point which the most developed nations have already crossed – where the anticipated benefits of income growth are nullified by social and psychological phenomena such as status competition, hedonic adaptation, rising expectations, overwork, etc. While it is true that within a nation the richest people are generally happier than the poorest (no surprises there), it seems that once a moderate level of wealth has been attained, further increases in wealth play only a minimal role raising wellbeing. What this means is that if people whose basic material needs have been met continue to dedicate their lives to the pursuit of more and more wealth, they may find that they are essentially wasting their time so far as wellbeing is concerned.

This has been called the ‘income-happiness paradox,’ because it contradicts the widely held assumption that more income and more economic growth will always contribute positively to human wellbeing. After reviewing the empirical literature, the analysis proceeds to consider the various explanations for this so-called ‘paradox,’ and it also considers what implications this paradox might have for people and nations that are arguably over-consuming.

Could it be that many people in the developed world today can live better on less? And could planned economic contraction – or degrowth – actually be in our self-interest? Based on the evidence, the paper answers those questions in the affirmative, and concludes by outlining an ‘economics of sufficiency,’ both at the personal and the macro-economic levels.

The full paper is available here.

This paper is soon to be published as part of the Limits to Growth 40th anniversary at www.growthbusters.org. For more information, see:

Increasing material wealth has been, and remains, one of the dominant goals of humankind – perhaps the dominant goal. This is hardly surprising, of course, given the extremely low material living standards endured by most people throughout history, and indeed, by great multitudes around the world even today. When people are hungry, they understandably desire more food; when people are cold, warmer clothing and adequate housing are critically important; when people are ill, they naturally want access to basic medical supplies; etc. In such circumstances, the pursuit of more material wealth seems wholly justifiable.

But what about those of us in the highly developed regions of the world who generally have our basic material needs for food, shelter, and clothing adequately met, and who even have some discretionary income to purchase things like alcohol, microwaves, fashionable clothing, takeout food, movie tickets, books, and the occasional holiday? In these relatively comfortable material circumstances, is more material wealth a goal for which we should still be striving? Or should we now be dedicating more of our time and energy to other, less materialistic pursuits?

These questions are of the highest importance, today more than ever before. First of all, at a time when Earth’s ecosystems are already trembling under the weight of overconsumption, increasing the consumption levels of those who are already materially well off seems to be a highly questionable objective. Secondly, the extent of global poverty strongly suggests that the wealthier sectors of the global population should restrain their consumption in order to leave more resources for those in greater need. This is especially so given that the global population is expected to reach 9 billion by mid-century. These moral arguments will not persuade everyone to consume less, of course, but that does not mean the arguments are unsound.

In recent decades, however, a large body of sociological and psychological research has emerged which suggests that people living high consumption lifestyles might actually find that it is in their own, immediate self-interest to consume less, irrespective of the moral arguments for reduced consumption. This research suggests that once human beings have their basic material needs satisfied, further increases in material wealth stop contributing much to our wellbeing. What this means is that if we continue to dedicate our time and energy to the pursuit of more and more wealth, we may find that we are essentially wasting our time so far as wellbeing is concerned. On the other hand, if people in affluent societies rethink their relationships with money and reduce their outgoings, they just might be able to free up more time for those things that truly inspire them and make them happy, such as more time with friends and family, or more time to engage in one’s private passions and hobbies. Given the urgency with which overcoming societies need to reduce their impact on the planet, an argument based on ‘self-interest’ should be taken very seriously indeed, for the reason that such an argument may prove to be more persuasive than more ‘moralistic’ arguments. Could it be that there is an elegant ‘win-win’ solution on offer here?

Fortunately, we no longer need to rely on theories or arguments to show that people can live well on less. A growing number of people in the ‘voluntary simplicity’ movement are choosing to reduce and restrain their consumption – not out of sacrifice or deprivation, but in order to be free, happy, and fulfilled in a way that consumer culture rarely permits. By limiting their working hours, spending their money frugally and conscientiously, growing their own vegetables, sharing skills and assets, riding bikes, rejecting high-fashion, and generally celebrating life outside the shopping mall, these people are new pioneers transitioning to a form of life beyond consumer culture.

The most promising thing about this emerging social movement is that it may provide a solution to one of the greatest problems of our age – the problem of growth. Despite the global economy exceeding the planet’s sustainable limits, even the richest nations on the planet still seek to grow their economies further. This growth imperative arises because our economies are dependent on growth to function, for when growth-based economies do not grow, people suffer. One is struck here by a painful contradiction arising from the need to consume less for ecological reasons, but consume more for the sake of a strong economy. Can this contradiction be resolved?

Perhaps, but only perhaps. If more people came to place self-imposed limits on their own consumption, rather than always seeking an ever-higher material standard of living, then this could well open up space to rethink the growth imperative that defines our economy. In other words, if an economics of sufficiency were ever embraced at the personal and social levels, there is no reason to think that an economics of sufficiency could not also arise at the macro-economic level. This may sound like science fiction to those who cannot think beyond the growth model. But times they are a-changing.

So ask yourself: Could it be that it is now in your self-interest to voluntarily embrace a lifestyle of reduced and restrained consumption? In an age such as our own that glorifies consumption as never before, this may seem like a counter-intuitive idea, at best. But the growing ‘voluntary simplicity’ movement is showing that such an intuition may well be false.

Consume less, live more. Just perhaps this is a ‘way of life’ whose time has come.

Celebrated economist, Sir John Hicks, began one of his essays with the pronouncement, ‘We are living in an age of growth.’ It is a view that applies more so today than ever before, at least as a statement of economic desire, if not as a description of recent economic reality. As the world economy teeters on another meltdown arising from the economic crisis in Europe, the imperative of all governments around the world to maximise growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has never been stronger. In early 2010, then Prime Minister of Britain, Gordon Brown, arguably spoke for all nations when he declared: ‘Going for growth is the government’s number one priority.’

According to this dominant economic paradigm, growth in GDP provides governments, by way of taxation, with more resources to pay for the nation’s most important social services. It provides the necessary funds needed for national security and a police force, democratic elections, sophisticated heath-care and sanitation systems, public education, unemployment benefits, etc., as well as such things as environmental protection programs, foreign aid, and the arts. These are all good things, but they cost money, and funds are always limited. Therefore, by maximising growth of the economy a government can secure more funding for such services and thereby contribute most, so the argument goes, to social, economic, and ecological wellbeing.

Furthermore, the argument might continue, as an economy grows, so too do personal incomes, meaning that individuals, not just governments, have more money and thus more freedom to purchase those things which they desire most. Growth is unquestionably good, one might conclude, from which it would seem to follow that more growth always must be better.

This growth model of progress strikes many people as basically correct. Cracks have formed in this economic paradigm, however, which can no longer be dismissed as minor anomalies in an otherwise healthy system. This is illustrated most clearly when we reflect upon the violence currently being inflicted on the natural world in the name of economic growth. Disturbing though it may be to consult, the best available evidence plainly illustrates that the global economy has physically grown to such a size that it now exceeds the regenerative and absorptive capacities of Earth’s ecosystems.

The Living Planet Report 2010, for example, which is based on the scientific research of the Global Footprint Network, reports that humanity’s ecological footprint is now exceeding by 50 percent the planet’s sustainable carrying capacity. In other words, human beings are now over-consuming ‘natural capital’ and diminishing the capacity of the planet to support life in the future. Even from an economic perspective, this makes as much sense as the business that each and every year sells off some of its key assets and treats this income as profit – a practice of dodgy accounting that might seem fine on paper until the shareholders are told there aren’t any more assets. Put more vividly, today’s global economy resembles a snake that is eating its own tail. At what point, one might ask, will the snake recognise that it is feeding upon its own life-support system?

To put it proverbially, if we do not change direction, we are likely to end up where we are going.

The fact that the global economy is already in significant ecological overshoot is even more challenging to mainstream views of economic growth when we bear in mind that, in the poorest parts of the world today, great multitudes are living lives oppressed by extreme poverty. The global challenge, therefore, in terms of humanitarian justice and ecological sustainability, can be stated as follows: We must find a way to raise the material standards of living the world’s poorest people – whose economies surely have a right to develop economically – while at the same time reducing humanity’s overall ecological footprint. The difficulty of this challenge is intensified, of course, by the fact that the global population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050.

Intellectually and morally – even in terms of economic self-interest – these issues raise questions that in good conscience cannot be avoided: Should the richest nations on the planet still be aiming to maximize the growth of their own economies? Or will that just exacerbate the greatest social and ecological problems of our age? The logic is easy to ignore but it impossible to escape: The richest nations must begin to question the legitimacy of the growth model and explore alternatives.

This is the point at which neoclassical economists and their handmaidens in the political mainstream speak up, declaring that environmentalists like me, in our naivety, have failed to grasp the importance of science and technology. Rich economies don’t need to stop growing, these people will object. All that needs to happen is for economies around the world to adopt ‘sustainable development,’ which in theory means using science and technology to produce and consume more cleanly and efficiently.

A nice story, perhaps; but here’s the problem. Although economies are demonstrably getting better at producing commodities more cleanly and efficiently (a process called ‘relative decoupling’), overall ecological impact is nevertheless still increasing, because every year increasing numbers of commodities are being produced and consumed. We might have more fuel-efficient cars, for example, but the rebound effect is that we are also driving more and buying more cars. This is but one example of a phenomenon that permeates market societies.

It is theoretically possible, of course, for an economy to grow and its overall ecological impacts reduce (a process called ‘absolute decoupling’). Nobody denies that. And techno-efficiency improvements in production are indeed being exploited in many areas of life with that aim in mind. But despite many techno-efficiency improvements occurring, the evidence shows that an overall reduction in the ecological impact of economies – which is obviously what is needed to achieve ecological sustainability – is not occurring. Therefore, it is dangerous and irresponsible to propagate the fantasy that rich nations will grow themselves out of the ecological crisis by relying on science and technology. It is time for such technological optimists to wake up from their dreamland before they impose a nightmare on the rest of us. Nothing less than the world is at stake.

I must not, however, be misunderstood. Techno-efficiency improvements will undoubtedly have an extremely important part to play in any transition to an ecologically sustainable society. We must exploit appropriate technologies in every way we can for the good of our planet and the entire human community. But science and technology are at best only part of the solution to the ecological crisis. What is needed, first and foremost, is a dedicated reduction in the overall ecological impact of the human economy, and this depends primarily on the richest nations on the planet voluntarily producing and consuming less stuff.

This brings me to my final point: Does producing and consuming less stuff actually need to sound so depressing? There is a quietly emerging social movement of people embracing ‘post-consumerist’ lifestyles that suggests not. Known as the Voluntary Simplicity Movement, this diverse group is made up of people who are choosing to live ‘simpler lives’ of reduced income and consumption; not out of sacrifice or deprivation, but in order to be free, happy, and fulfilled in a way consumer culture rarely permits. By limiting their working hours, spending their money frugally and conscientiously, growing their own vegetables, riding bikes, rejecting high-fashion, and generally celebrating life outside the shopping mall, these people are new pioneers transitioning to a form of life beyond consumer culture.  It remains to be seen whether this movement ignites the quiet revolution in consumption behaviour of which it is capable. But it is decidedly the most promising social movement on the planet at the moment, as it is guided by an ‘economics of sufficiency’ so desperately needed in the political arena, especially in the West.

I do not pretend that any implementation of a macroeconomics ‘beyond growth’ would be straightforward. I certainly would not pretend to have all the answers myself about how such a transition would play out. But it seems clear enough that the ideology of growth economics governing the world today is leading human civilisation to a dead-end, and so all I ask is that we start talking seriously and with some urgency about alternatives. As we move into the future, hope resides solely in Green politics and grassroots action.

Freya and James Archer live the high life in a luxury home in Sydney’s poshest suburb, with money, matching Jags, two beautiful teenage kids … and they couldn’t be more despondent. Black Cow is a novel that takes on the notion, popularised by Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, of ‘affluenza’: that all-too-prevalent modern condition that combines stress, overwork, super-consumption and debt, with a deep sense of dissatisfaction and hunger.  The story begins with a family in trouble as the global recession deepens. As CEO of a large corporation, James finds himself laying off staff, while Freya’s real estate returns are dropping. In response, Freya and James work longer hours, spend more, and run faster in their effort to follow the myth of the Australian dream (which could easily be the American or European dream).  The Archer’s world is full of noise. The mobile phones rarely stop ringing long enough for the family to talk, or listen, to one another.

Freya and James aren’t the only ones in trouble either.  Their children are suffering from self-inflicted illnesses. As Freya and James slide towards forty, the realisation that something is very wrong in their lives is becoming overwhelming. Finally the family give into their desperation for something real in their lives and leave behind the gleaming Double Bay home and corporate life for self-sufficiency in an old Tasmanian farmhouse. But as the Zen saying goes “wherever you go, there you are”, and the family need to do more than move house and leave their jobs to re-connect with themselves.

Black Cow is a character driven novel that charts the transformation of this family, which could be nearly any modern family, coupling fear of poverty with a wholehearted acceptance of “the happiness lie”. This is a family that has come to accept, through their behaviour, the notion that happiness lies in the pursuit of wealth, physical beauty, and overt consumption.  Why shouldn’t they?  Governments and marketers everywhere are pushing this line as if it were the latest designer drug.  The Archers fit the dream perfectly in every way: they’re right on top of the corporate ladder, they dress well and look sharp, with kids in the most exclusive schools. Their whole lives revolve around earning and spending, and the worse the economy gets, the harder they work and the more they spend.  It’s possible to think of The Archers as a microcosm of society. When faced with economic difficulties the family goes into stimulus spending mode.  But less and less is actually being created.  The Archers aren’t happy, and no amount of spending is going to buy them the self-fulfillment they so desperately crave. Their lives are almost entirely devoid of creativity. They’re cut off from self-reflection, from real communication, from smell, taste, touch — they’re too busy running to feel anything other than fear, guilt, and desperation.

This is the underlying theme of Black Cow.  The book asks, within the context of its fictive truth, how we can, in the face of this increasing pressure to earn and spend, stop the madness, jump off the treadmill, and begin to live again — slowly, fully, creatively.  How do we create meaning in our lives, in spite of the ongoing onslaught of commercial messages that tell us to move faster, think less, and accept that we’re going to die early?  The Archers find a way out of the madness, but it’s no easy panacea. They have to first heal themselves, and go through an almost comical transformation to learn to live sustainably again, in the context of the shared wisdom of community. There are so many skills they’ve lost. Above all, they need to re-connect to their own pasts.  As the name suggests, Freya’s name is Norwegian, and her rejected, semi-mythical past is part of what fuels her creative transformation.  James too has a past to unearth as he uncovers his own tamped down hurt.

In writing Black Cow, it was never my intention to preach about sustainability or the pains of over-consumption. The story isn’t specifically meant to be didactic or even edifying. As a fiction writer, however, I’ve sought to explore these notions through the tools of fiction: the character arc, plot, conflict, structure, narrative. The good life is certainly an evocative notion for me, even if total self-sufficiency isn’t necessarily practical in the world we currently live in. The notions I explore in the novel are ones that I’m certainly attracted to personally, along with the themes of creative and personal transformation, subjects that I suspect will always form the backbones of any fiction I write and much of my poetry.

Magdalena Ball is the author of Black Cow. Grab a free mini e-book brochure here:  http://www.bewritebooks.com/mb/BlackCow/BlackCow.html

For more about Magdalena visit: http://www.magdalenaball.com