Former Alberta environment minister Lorne Taylor was reported to have remarked to David Suzuki that without a strong, growing economy, Canadians simply could not afford to protect the environment.
Most economists today continue to promote the idea that the wealthier the economy, the more money we will have to reduce pollution, invest in green technologies and protect wilderness areas. So why on Earth would we want to dispense with the pursuit of economic growth, particularly when the global economy is so vulnerable?
For Tim Jackson, the answer is simple: the relationship between growth and prosperity has fundamentally broken down. His most recent book, Prosperity without Growth, grew out of a report he wrote in 2009 for the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission, the government’s independent watchdog on sustainable development. Based on three years of research, the report looked into the connections and conflicts between sustainability, growth and well-being.
As Jackson rightly notes, realizing the legitimate desire for all of humanity to lead full and prosperous lives – given the planet’s finite resource base – may well be the most profound dilemma of our times. What can prosperity possibly look like, he asks, in a world with a global population expected to reach nine billion by mid-century? The traditional economic response has been to associate prosperity with income and to call upon continued growth to deliver it.
But prosperity, Jackson argues, is not the same as material wealth. The former resides in our ability to “flourish as human beings, in the quality of our lives, the strength of our relationships, participation in our communities and the health and happiness of our families” – none of which are automatically delivered by continued growth.
Although Jackson believes there is no case to abandon the growth imperative in all countries, it has thus far failed to eliminate poverty, reduce income disparities or make citizens of developed countries any more satisfied with their lives. The growth model may be undermining happiness and causing a “social recession,” he says. Even if growth were socially desirable, the author makes the case that it would be ecologically impossible to provide the material comforts found in developed countries to the entire global population.
This is not the first time the growth objective has been questioned. What sets Jackson’s critique apart is that it shows how the modern economy is structurally reliant on growth for its stability. When growth falters, businesses struggle, people lose their jobs, recession looms. This leads to what he calls the growth paradox. “To risk growth is to risk economic and social collapse,” he writes. “To pursue it relentlessly is to endanger the ecosystems on which we depend for long-term survival.”
The case Jackson makes is a remarkably cogent one, yet it would be more convincing if he fully addressed how economists typically respond to anti-growth critiques. Jackson exposes the myth that we can dramatically reduce material consumption while continuing to grow the economy. However, some economists view resource limits as irrelevant, and believe that technological innovation, ingenuity and behavioural changes can make the prosperity of tomorrow desirable, unlike the prosper-ity of today. It makes no sense, they say, to extrapolate current consumption rates into the future because there is no reason to believe that the future will look anything like the past.
There are a few minor nuisances, such as when Jackson includes several graphics that are either poorly explained or contribute little that is of value. He also makes some careless factual errors. He states, for example, that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is currently 435 parts per million, whereas the actual level is closer to 390.
Despite these oversights, Prosperity without Growth succeeds in explaining how continued growth cannot be sustained and how we might attain prosperity without it. The solution, says Jackson, is not to try to make growth sustainable but to make de-growth stable. “Anything else invites either economic or ecological collapse,” he writes. The last few chapters consider opportunities for achieving lasting prosperity that redresses the “iron cage of consumerism” and imposing meaningful resource limits on economic activity.
Jackson is no wild-eyed revolutionary, and he recognizes that his message may border on the blasphemous for many economists. But when a government commission in one of the world’s most advanced economies publishes a report calling for an end to growth, perhaps the time has come for economists to take note.
Reviewer Information
Mark Brooks is a journalist, broadcaster and environmental educator. Follow him on Twitter: @earthgaugeCA.
