Growth; Not Inevitable and Not Good:
Good Morning America, your King of Simple News is on the air after a restful holiday break.
As most of you know, my philosophy is that “growth is not good.” Normally, I state that my reason for resisting growth is to avoid depleting the earth of all natural resources to a point that we all starve to death in the cold; an event that I’m fairly confident is not on your “things to do tomorrow” list. However, there is another compelling reason as to why we should adamantly resist unchecked growth.
This “other compelling reason” was the subject of an hour on talk radio that I did last week Even if exponential growth were mathematically possible in a finite world (which it still isn’t), the diminishing standard of living alone should give pause to consider the perils of our base economic model.
When the majority of our United States population grows up in a world that does not include grass and trees, but rather cement and asphalt, it signifies a dangerous trend. This is a trend that is unfortunately supported and in some areas mandated, by many environmentalists and societal planners under the guise of smart growth. Smart for who?
The “smart growth” crowd makes such comments as, “Growth is inevitable and so we may as well grow smartly.” I disagree on both premises. Growth is not inevitable and crowding into cities is not smart. Both are false assumptions that are the products of our current economic underpinning of “growth is good.” But let’s forget about economics for a moment and consider the cost of growth as it applies to our quality of life. After all, not all loses are measured in dollars and cents.
When children “hang out” on sidewalks and street corners in crowded tenements rather than green woodlands, ball-fields and along the shores of lakes, rivers and creeks, it distorts their perspective of what constitutes normal and natural.
When thousands of kids join violent gangs rather than Little League or the Girl and Boy Scouts; are we progressing or regressing?
Col. Townsend Whelen wrote in 1961 that Judge William G. Long of Seattle had stated that in more than 45,000 juvenile cases presented to him in 20 years on the bench, there was not a single case of serious misconduct involving a youngster whose hobby and recreational outlet was fishing. The inference is obvious.
I don’t believe that we will be able to say the same about children whose hobby and recreational outlet was hanging out on a concrete street corner breathing polluted air and fearing reprisal from the rival gang on the next block.
I wrote a piece not long ago regarding my past home of Talkeetna, Alaska. We had no police presence, no official paid town government, and no state or federal government presence in our community. We lived a life of enviable freedom. We self governed quite well…in fact, extremely well. Why? We were a population of fewer than 500 full time residents.
I’m not foolish enough to believe that everyone in America can live in a village such as Talkeetna. What I am foolish enough to believe is that there are soooooo many benefits to reducing population and soooooo many provable pitfalls to massive overcrowding, that we will eventually recognize the unheralded advantages of the smaller, freer and healthier America of yesteryear. We didn’t call it the good ol’ days for nothing.
Growth is not inevitable. This common belief is the greatest and most dangerous false premise of our American society. A belief, that if not reversed, will destroy our very way of life.
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Hi Mike,
I don’t think that anyone could state with more clarity the problem of exponential growth than you, especially in your pithy statement, “. . . my reason for resisting growth is to avoid depleting the earth of all natural resources to a point that we all starve to death in the cold.” To add to your extensive and creative expressions of this concern, Carolyn Baker yesterday linked to a post by Chris Martenson who provided some more concrete examples of what happens under conditions of exponential growth. If anyone’s interested, the article can be found at http://www.vtcommons.org/journal/2008/08/exponential-money-finite-world-part-1-chris-martenson.
On a somewhat related note, what boggles my mind is how few people share the concern about resource depletion. While on our sailing vacation, we saw many fewer power boats in the mid size and price range than in the past (we saw plenty of the very “high end” powerboats), we encountered people who seemed oblivious to the rising cost of gasoline. One couple we spoke to wanted to rent a boat slip in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan for one of their 27 foot powerboats, and keep their other 27 footer close to home in Ohio. It is at least an 8-9 hour drive from the Ohio-Michigan border to the UP harbor they were considering. Nice folks to talk with, but in the back of my mind I kept wondering if they were totally out of touch. They appeared to be “middle class” people so I couldn’t help wondering why they would even consider such an arrangement, given rising gasoline prices. And, concern about gasoline prices is only the tip of the iceberg of what we’re facing. Oh, well.
By the way, people with sailboats seem to be enjoying the Great Lakes in the same numbers and enthusiasm (if they still have jobs to take vacations from) as ever. Many more sailboats passing by than the mid range powerboats. Slower, but you have much more fun getting there!
Kathy
Kathy,
The total disconnect from the provable fact that resources are finite is numbing.
I speak to MBAs who say, “Haven’t you ever heard of technology.” I say, “Sure I have, it’s the stuff that allows us to extract resources at a greater rate this year than we could last year.”
We change batteries with solar technology; we build them from natural resources.
Sailing of course is as old as time. A form of motivation that is truly “renewable.” Even the wooden hull and cotton sheets (sails) were renewable forever.
There will be many lessons learned from our past that will represent our future.