Deliver Us from Finity
Capitalism is Not Even Mathematically Possible,
Let Alone Biologically Viable
by George Monbiot
Dissident Voice
December 31, 2002
With the turning
of every year, we expect our lives to improve. As long as the economy continues
to grow, we imagine, the world will become a more congenial place in which to
live. There is no basis for this belief. If we take into account such factors
as pollution and the depletion of natural capital, we see that the quality of
life peaked in the United Kingdom in 1974 and in the United States in 1968, and
has been falling ever since. We are going backwards.
The reason
should not be hard to grasp. Our economic system depends upon never-ending
growth, yet we live in a world with finite resources. Our expectation of
progress is, as a result, a delusion.
This is the
great heresy of our times, the fundamental truth which cannot be spoken. It is
dismissed as furiously by those who possess power today -- governments,
business, the media - as the discovery that the earth orbits the sun was
denounced by the late mediaevel Church. Speak this truth in public and you are
dismissed as a crank, a prig, a lunatic.
Capitalism is a
millenarian cult, raised to the status of a world religion. Like communism, it
is built upon the myth of endless exploitation. Just as Christians imagine that
their God will deliver them from death, capitalists believe that theirs will
deliver them from finity. The world's resources, they assert, have been granted
eternal life.
The briefest
reflection will show that this cannot be true. The laws of thermodynamics
impose inherent limits upon biological production. Even the repayment of debt,
the pre-requisite of capitalism, is mathematically possible only in the
short-term. As Heinrich Haussmann has shown, a single pfennig invested at 5%
compounded interest in the year 0 AD would, by 1990, have reaped a volume of
gold 134 billion times the weight of the planet. Capitalism seeks a value of
production commensurate with the repayment of debt.
Now, despite the
endless denials, it is clear that the wall towards which we are accelarating is
not very far away. Within five or ten years, the global consumption of oil is
likely to outstrip supply. Every year, up to 75 billion tonnes of topsoil are
washed into the sea as a result of unsustainable farming, which equates to the
loss of around nine million hectares of productive land. As a result, we can
maintain current levels of food production only with the application of
phosphate, but phosphate reserves are likely to be exhausted within 80 years.
Forty per cent of the world's food is produced with the help of irrigation;
some of the key aquifers are already running dry as a result of overuse.
One reason why
we fail to understand a concept as simple as finity is that our religion was
founded upon the use of other people's resources: the gold, rubber and timber
of Latin America, the spices, cotton and dyes of the East Indies, the labour
and land of Africa. The frontier of exploitation seemed, to the early
colonists, infinitely expandable. Now that geographical expansion has reached
its limits, capitalism has moved its frontier from space to time: seizing
resources from an infinite future.
An entire
industry has been built upon the denial of ecological constraints. Every
national newspaper in Britain lamented the "disappointing" volume of
sales before Christmas. Sky News devoted much of its Christmas Eve coverage to
live reports from Brent Cross, relaying the terrifying intelligence that we
were facing "the worst Christmas for shopping since 2000". The
survival of humanity has been displaced in the newspapers by the quarterly
results of companies selling tableware and knickers.
Partly because
they have been brainwashed by the corporate media, partly because of the scale
of the moral challenge with which finity confronts them, many people respond to
the heresy with unmediated savagery. Last week this column discussed the
competition for global grain supplies between humans and livestock. One
correspondent, a man named David Roucek, wrote to inform me that the problem is
the result of people "breeding indiscriminately. ... When a woman has
displayed evidence that she totally disregards the welfare of her offspring by
continuing to breed children she cannot support, she has committed a crime and
must be punished. The punishment? She must be sterilized to prevent her from
perpetrating her crimes upon more innocent children."
There is no
doubt that a rising population is one of the factors which threatens the
world's capacity to support its people, but human population growth is being
massively outstripped by the growth in the number of farm animals. While the
rich world's consumption is supposed to be boundless, the human population is
likely to peak within the next few decades. But population growth is the one
factor for which the poor can be blamed and from which the rich can be excused,
so it is the one factor which is repeatedly emphasised.
It is possible
to change the way we live. The economist Bernard Lietaer has shown how a system
based upon negative rates of interest would ensure that we accord greater
economic value to future resources than to present ones. By shifting taxation
from employment to environmental destruction, governments could tax
over-consumption out of existence. But everyone who holds power today knows
that her political survival depends upon stealing from the future to give to
the present.
Overturning this
calculation is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. We need to
reverse not only the fundamental presumptions of political and economic life,
but also the polarity of our moral compass. Everything we thought was good --
giving more exciting presents to our children, flying to a friend's wedding,
even buying newspapers -- turns out also to be bad. It is, perhaps, hardly
surprising that so many deny the problem with such religious zeal. But to live
in these times without striving to change them is like watching, with serenity,
the oncoming truck in your path.
George Monbiot is Honorary
Professor at the Department of Politics in Keele and Visiting Professor at the
Department of Environmental Science at the University of East London. He writes
a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper of London. His articles and contact
info can be found at his website: www.monbiot.com