Doomed to failure
The carbon reduction proposals in the Stern review are not enough to save the planet. We must recognise that there are limits to economic growth
Stephan Harding
Monday November 13, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Sir Nicholas Stern's recent review proposed a series of measures we must implement immediately to "decarbonise" the global economy, including emissions trading, technological cooperation and the reduction of deforestation. Stern concluded that "with strong and deliberate policy choices, it is possible to reduce the emissions in both developed and developing economies on the scale necessary for stabilisation while continuing to grow".
While I was greatly persuaded by the recommendations made by the Stern review, this is where I believe he misses something vitally important. Simply put, growth, of the wrong kind, no matter how decarbonised, will wreck the planet.
Natural limits
The Stern review ignores a fundamental lesson of ecology: that every species operates within the limits of its surroundings - this is the notion of "carrying capacity". The review effectively acknowledges that there is a limit to the greenhouse gasses we can release into the atmosphere if we wish to avoid dangerous climate change, but it overlooks the many other ecological limits, as yet only dimly recognised by mainstream economists.
There are limits to the acreage of wild ecosystems that we can convert into farmland, housing estates, car parks, and the other apparently essential items of civilisation if we are to avoid destabilising the health of the global ecosystem on which our economy depends. Similarly, there are limits to our extraction of minerals, to our use of water and to our disturbance of the planet's nutrient cycles.
It is now clear that we have overstepped every one of these limits, and that yet more growth will take us even further in the wrong direction - it would take about three extra planets to provide the resources for everyone on earth to 'achieve' the living standards of the average UK citizen.
Balancing act
Perhaps we need to distinguish between two fundamentally distinct kinds of growth. There is the suicidal growth that our mainstream culture is so hell-bent on pursuing, despite the widening gap between rich and poor and the damage it will do to our complex, self-regulating natural world. The alternative is "intelligent growth", which recognises that we must move towards a steady-state economy in which the living standards in the south could grow whilst those of the north decline until both converge on a steady and equitable per capita share of what the earth can spare us.
Intelligent growth recognises that certain things must be encouraged to grow - the development and deployment of renewable technologies, the restoration of degraded ecosystems, the recreation of vibrant local communities and economies, and the adoption of ecologically diversified farming practices. Policies inspired by intelligent growth would stimulate those non-material things that can grow without limit - strength of community, love of the earth, creativity and spirituality. These are, after all, the sources of our deepest satisfactions and of our sense of well-being.
By choosing to ignore the problem of growth, the Stern review, much needed as it is, does no more than reform an economic system that seems doomed to prompt and spectacular failure. Desperate times call for stronger medicine and perhaps it is time for a radical change of paradigm. Perhaps we need to embrace an old idea that inspired the likes of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and EF Schumacher: that there are limits to growth.
· Stephan Harding is coordinator of the MSc in Holistic Science at Dartington's Schumacher College and the writer of Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia. To order a copy for £9.95 with free UK p&p call 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop
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