December 2011

Change, growth, debt and the future

At the time of writing: Cop17 is in its second week and very slowly going nowhere; Angela Merkle is promising concrete steps towards a fiscal union in the eurozone and warning that any debt-crisis fix is likely to take several years; the ANC's Information Bill is awaiting further scrutiny in the provinces and, hopefully, in the Constitutional Court; Jackie Selebi has been ambulanced into to correctional services; Julius Malema's appeal is still pending; and the CSA is still ‘on-trial'. Afghanistan remains a war zone, as does Syria; protests in Egypt continue; and post-Gaddafi Libya believes it has the solution to global warming.

Does this event-snapshot suggest that the world has changed in the 2011 year or is it thrashing around like a petulant child resisting changes that seem immanent? Now I argue strongly that an unusually hot or cold day, or week/month/year for that matter, can't be used as evidence for or against global warming. And neither does one week's news signify the turning point of history, but am I alone in seeing winds of change blowing across the world?

In a web-based article by Stephanie Rogers and published by Earth Life entitled ‘7 Environmental problems that are worse than we thought', the CO2-emissions problem is listed as number two. The biggest environmental problem facing the world, according to Rogers, is population growth. "It took nearly all of human history - from the first days of man on earth until the early 1800s - to reach a global population of 1-billion. In just 200 years, we managed to reach 6,5 billion. That means the population has grown more since 1950 than in the previous four-million years," she writes, and we are now another half a billion further on. "All of those mouths will need to be fed. All of those bodies will need clean water and a place to sleep. All of the new communities created to house those people will continue to encroach upon the natural world ... and the fact is, we simply can't continue living our lives as if everything is peachy," she warns.

The Arlington Institute, which runs the World's Biggest Problems portal, identifies the possibility of economic collapse as the world's number one problem. It says that the world economy is facing two looming crises. First is debt at the individual, institutional and governmental levels, which has driven the US$ to its lowest rate in years and is causing the fundamental driver of the US economy - the housing market - to unravel. Secondly, though, it identifies the demographic trend throughout the developed world of people living longer, while having fewer children as its second crisis. Governments with strained budgets are struggling to fund retirement programmes and most nations find themselves having to choose between raising taxes or cutting benefits, options that seriously threaten the stability of their societies. Rapid climate change only makes problem number five on the Arlington Institute's list.

It is a mystery to me why, when facing such problems, the heavily-indebted US public should be encouraged to rush to the stores on ‘Black Friday' to spend as much money as possible! Does the economic recovery of the world really depend the amount of shopping that gets done? Surely the money spent simply creates more debt and more environmental harm? Does economic growth equate directly to increased consumption?

There must be a way to grow in the development sense without depending on shopping and cheap goods for our economic wellbeing. Surely, when in debt, you buy wisely. You resist luxuries, buy only what you need and make everything you have last for as long as possible. When buying goods on borrowed money, isn't it also wisest to ensure that the product outlasts the debt and that the investment truly represents the most cost-effective long-term option? We need to be willing to spend more on the necessary technological solutions that are most cost effective but lead to the minimum environmental damage.

Like the debt crisis in the developed world, the world's global problems arise at the individual, institutional and governmental levels. Lasting solutions are also, therefore, only possible if applied at all of these levels. Essentially, however, it is people who need to change. We need to live more wisely and much less wastefully if we are to avoid living in increasingly unpleasant societies and environments.

Thanks to all of you for your support and interest through the 2011 year. We look forward to engaging further in the challenging times to come and to finding out about the wise solutions you are adopting. May you, your businesses and your government departments stay sustainably healthy and wealthy through 2012 and beyond.

Peter Middleton