Showing posts with label ecology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ecology. Show all posts

Thursday, 1 August 2013

Garrett Hardin

The link between Economics, and Ecology is a vital issue for the people, and the planet. Hence, the inclusion of this, and other similiar entries. RS
 
 
 
Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was an American ecologist who warned of the dangers of overpopulation. His exposition of the tragedy of the commons, in a 1968 paper,[1] called attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment".[2] He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Human Ecology: "You cannot do only one thing", which expresses the interconnectedness of every action.[3][page needed]

Biography[edit]

Hardin received a B.S. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1936 and a PhD in microbiology from Stanford University in 1941. Moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1946, he served there as Professor of Human Ecology from 1963 until his (nominal) retirement in 1978. He was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research.
A major focus of his career, and one to which he returned repeatedly, was the issue of human overpopulation. This led to writings on controversial subjects such as advocating abortion, which earned him criticism from the political right, and advocating eugenics by forced sterilization, and strict limits to non-western immigration, which earned him criticism from the political left. In his essays, he also tackled subjects such as conservation and creationism.
In 1963, Hardin drew heavy criticism from the left for his occasional indulgence in theories that may justify genocide on the grounds of ecological balance. This thesis was put forward and defended by his readings of the early Christian philosopher Tertullian, who believed that famine and war were good for society as a whole as a means of solving the problem of overpopulation and resource-sharing.
In September 1974, he published the article "Living on a Lifeboat" in BioScience magazine, arguing that contributing food to help the Ethiopian famine would add to overpopulation, which he considered the root of Ethiopia's problems. Despite his lifelong insistence that overpopulation must be curbed to avoid disaster, Hardin himself had four children.
In 1993, Hardin published Living Within Limits, which he described at the time as a summation of all his previous works. In this book, he argues that natural sciences are grounded in the concept of limits (such as the speed of light), while social sciences such as economics are grounded in concepts that have no limits (such as "infinite-Earth" economic models). He notes that most of the more notable scientific (as opposed to political) arguments concerning environmental economics are between natural scientists, such as Paul Erhlich, and economists, such as Julian Simon. Hardin goes on to label those who reflexively argue for growth as "growthmaniacs",[4] and argues against the institutional faith in exponential growth on a finite planet, illustrating this with the example of compound interest, or "usury". This, he claims, must eventually fail, and he argues that society has been duped into confusing interest with debt.[5] Hardin writes, "At this late date millions of people believe in the fertility of money with an ardor seldom accorded to traditional religious doctrines".
In 1994, he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence,[6]" an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which declared the consensus of the signing scholars on issues related to race and intelligence following the publication of the book The Bell Curve. Like many of the other signatories of that editorial, Hardin was also a grantee of the Pioneer Fund, which funds controversial research on the topic of race and intelligence and is frequently described as promoting scientific racism.
Hardin's last book The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia (1999), a warning about the threat of overpopulation to the Earth's sustainable economic future, called for coercive constraints on "unqualified reproductive rights" and argued that affirmative action is a form of racism.
Hardin, who suffered from a heart disorder, and his wife Jane, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, were members of End-of-Life Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society, and believed in individuals choosing their own time to die. They committed suicide in their Santa Barbara home in September 2003, shortly after their 62nd wedding anniversary. He was 88 and she was 81.[7]

Publications[edit]

Books[edit]

Selected journal articles[edit]

Chapters in books[edit]

  • 1991. Paramount positions in ecological economics. In Costanza, R. (editor) Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability, New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-07562-6
  • 1991. In: R. V. Andelson, (editor), Commons Without Tragedy, London : Shepheard-Walwyn, pp. 162–185. ISBN 0-389-20958-9 (U.S.)

Awards[edit]

Hardin's 1993 book Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos, received the 1993 Award in Science from the Phi Beta Kappa Society.[8][9]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Hardin, G. (1968). "The Tragedy of the Commons". Science 162 (3859): 1243–1248. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243. JSTOR 1724745. PMID 5699198. edit
  2. ^ Lavietes, Stuart (October 28, 2003). "Garrett Hardin, 88, Ecologist Who Warned About Excesses". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
  3. ^ Miller, George Tyler (1993). Environmental Science: Sustaining the Earth. Wadsworth Publishing. ISBN 9780534178086.
  4. ^ [1] Stalking the Wild Taboo - Stalkers: Hardin: Book Review:
  5. ^ "Living Within Limits" Faith in mathematically impossible exponential growth. The entire content of Chapter Eight.
  6. ^ Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994). Mainstream Science on Intelligence. Wall Street Journal, p A18.
  7. ^ Steepleton, Scott (19 September 2003). "Pioneering professor, wife die in apparent double suicide". Santa Barbara News-Press. Retrieved 28 September 2007.
  8. ^ "[[Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science]] — List of Previous Winners". Retrieved 06 December 2010. Wikilink embedded in URL title (help)
  9. ^ Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics and Population Taboos, Review and selected long quotes, paperback.

External links[edit]

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Friday, 11 January 2013

Money and Ecology


Wed, 9th Jan 2013 Positive Money
by David A. Jones (Guest Author)
“Debts are subject to the laws of mathematics rather than physics. Unlike wealth, which is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, debts do not rot with old age and are not consumed in the process of living. On the contrary, they grow at so much per cent per annum, by the well-known mathematical laws of simple and compound interest … It is this underlying confusion between wealth and debt which has made such a tragedy of the scientific era.”
–- Frederick Soddy, in Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt (1926).
What is debt and what is wealth? To a creditor, debts represent claims upon future wealth. While these claims can grow without limit, the payment of them is ultimately limited by what the biosphere provisions for the human economy – as John Ruskin once remarked “there is no wealth but life.” The economy is a sub-system of the biosphere, which ultimately derives its wealth from the abundant “organised” energy of the sun. This is indicated in my picture of “spaceship Earth” below (I explain what “entropy” is and its relevance to life on Earth here):
steadystate
As supporters of groups like Positive Money well know, society currently issues its money as interest bearing debts to private banks. This has a very important implication for society as a whole: it means that, in order for us to enjoy permission to consume the goods and services of today (which is what money gives us after all – it is a claim upon social goods and services) we must produce more goods and services tomorrow (more future wealth) so as to repay today’s incurred debts. It seems to me that there can never be such thing as a sufficiency economy – no such thing as reaching “enough” and stopping – as long as money is created in this manner. Instead, our economy must produce tomorrow for permission to consume today.
Whilst debts, being mere accounting entries, can accumulate without limit, as Soddy pointed out wealth cannot: its generation is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. This implies a fundamental and broadening incompatibility between on the one hand a financial system founded upon unlimited creation of private debts and on the other hand a finite biosphere. Geologist M. King Hubbert (of the famous “Hubbert Peak” for oil extraction rates) made essentially this point back in 1981:
“The world’s present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy; and the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.
“The first of these two systems has been responsible for the spectacular rise, principally during the last two centuries, of the present industrial system and is essential for its continuance. The second, an inheritance from the pre-scientific past, operates by rules of its own having little in common with those of the matter-energy system. Nevertheless, the monetary system, by means of a loose coupling, exercises a general control over the matter-energy system upon which it is superimposed.
“Despite their inherent incompatibilities, these two systems during the last two centuries have had one fundamental characteristic in common, namely, exponential growth, which has made a reasonably stable coexistence possible. But, for various reasons, it is impossible for the matter-energy system to sustain exponential growth for more than a few tens of doublings, and this phase is by now almost over. The monetary system has no such constraints, and, according to one of its most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest.”
But what is the relationship, if any, between economic growth and natural wealth extraction? I first note in passing that, under the current monetary system (and more broadly, I would argue, under capitalism itself, which is characterised by ongoing capital accumulation) economic growth is non-negotiable. As Barack Obama recently remarked:
“All of us are going to have to work together in an effective way to figure out how we balance the imperative of economic growth with very real concerns about the effect we’re having on our planet. And ultimately I think this can be solved with technology.”
Take note of the priority here: economic growth is an “imperative” – meaning absolutely necessary, unavoidable, non-negotiable – whilst threats to the ongoing survival of human civilization (exacerbated by ongoing economic growth) are merely “very real concerns”, which can be waved away with appeals to “technology”. Such prioritizing amongst world leaders, whilst it might look insane to an impartial alien observer of Earth, is perfectly understandable within an economic system which must grow tomorrow in order to subsist today.
But for how much longer can (or should) economic growth continue? As Prof. Tim Garrett shows empirically on his website, there is a simple linear relationship between global (monetary) wealth and global energy consumption, summarised in the plot below:
relative_decoupling
As I’ve argued elsewhere on more theoretical grounds, we cannot expect economic growth to become decoupled from increased energy demands and environmental impacts. In my opinion, this is why the Cop18 talks and similar conferences before them have failed. World leaders recognize that to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions implies a parting with economic growth which, under present monetary systems, would entail the swift collapse of their nation’s economy. I believe that so long as we continue to create permission to consume today – money – alongside the obligation to produce tomorrow – debt – they will remain correct in this surmise ( I should point out here that it is still perfectly possible to have a growth economy under full reserve banking – just no longer mandatory. So any growth enthusiasts reading this need not withdraw their support for monetary reform on that basis).
Arguably, it will furthermore be necessary to move beyond a capitalist system of production – thought that is a more debatable and less immediately pressing proposition, and also one beyond Positive Money’s remit to pass judgment upon. Once again, it is perfectly possible to have a capitalist economy under full reserve banking and so fans of capitalism can consistently support it – as plenty do. My own personal intuition, for what it’s worth, says that given mounting social and ecological constraints it will be necessary to increasingly phase out “capitalism” as a system, moving away from autocratic management of production for shareholder profits and towards democratic management of production for stakeholder needs.
Note the word “needs”, in contrast to the perpetually manufactured “wants” of the present economy. I would argue that capitalist production is both incentivised and coerced towards this behavior and also towards various hugely wasteful and inefficient forms of “planned obsolescence”; both entailing social and ecological costs a planet home to 7 billion people can no longer afford to pay for. We ought instead, I think, to have a system that is at least structurally capable of deciding that “enough is enough” and simply enjoying the material fruits of its past labours, while continuing to develop morally and intellectually. This is the economic future that John Stuart Mill looked forward to in his book Principles of Political Economy and later John Maynard Keynes in his essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.
We currently bump up against or exceed the limits of planetary wealth extraction and waste absorption in several sectors, as the picture below summarises:
Planetary_boundaries.svg
Plot of planetary boundaries according to table 1 of the paper “A safe operating space for humanity”. Nature 461, 472-475 | doi:10.1038/461472a
Martin Wolf, chief editor of the financial times, recently noted that the financial system has become a parasite upon the wider economy, commenting that:
“An out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from inside, just as a the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid.”
But more broadly, I would argue that the economic system itself has become a parasite upon the ecological systems that support it, and looks increasingly in danger of killing the host. As senior NASA climate scientist James Hansen has written in Storms of my Grandchildren:
“If we burn all the fossil fuels, the ice sheets almost surely will melt entirely, with the final sea level rise about 75 meters (250 feet), with most of that possibly occurring within a time scale of centuries. Methane hydrates are likely to be more extensive and vulnerable now than they were in the early Cenozoic. It is difficult to imagine how the methane clathrates could survive, once the ocean has had time to warm. In that event a PETM-like warming could be added on top of the fossil fuel warming.
After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.”
A new symbiosis of economy and ecology is thus required, if our grandchildren are to enjoy any sort of humane future. The alternative of ongoing parasitism could imply a grim downward spiral into police states, resource wars, potential nuclear conflicts – an increasingly desperate, violent, authoritarian struggle for survival in which many of the liberal political gains of the past several centuries would likely be lost and any hopes of advancing beyond these gains forgotten entirely.
To avoid this grim sketch of a possible future, we must cease eating the flesh of our children to cross the desert today – as one Buddhist sutra puts it. We must move beyond a monetary system which demands tomorrow’s production to enjoy today’s goods and services. And this entails, I believe and have argued here, the sorts of reforms that Positive Money is proposing. Whilst many changes above and beyond reformed global monetary systems are likely needed, I struggle to imagine a livable ecology emerging in the absence of such reforms. I see them as the first step and foundation towards building a sane, humanitarian and ecologically sound alternative to the present madness.


About the Author
At some point during a PhD in theoretical physics, David happened across information about "our" monetary system and decided that economics was too important to leave up to economists! Now he is doing his best to tell other people about this bizarre and harmful system as it stands today and to encourage discussions about what we might want to replace it with. David maintains a blog with more thoughts and discussions about this topic and others: http://freedomthistime.wordpress.com
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