[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
societies where there is no growth at all are hardly a delight either,
greens claim that we are stunted ethically by the growth economy s
refusal to take the quality of life of future generations seriously and by
its easy preparedness to take the Earth as resource rather than as bless-
ing. We produce indiscriminately and consume voraciously, and our
status and aspirations are largely judged and dictated by the wealth
at our disposal. Greens believe that lives in the growth economy will
tend away from the elegant and towards the grubby and materialistic.
Conversely, they suggest that a society orientated around sustainable
growth would be a less greedy and more pleasant place in which to live,
and if this seems hard to credit, then greens might quote John Stuart
Mill as a temporary bulwark against disbelief:
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition
of capital and population implies no stationary state of human
improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds
of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for
improving the Art of Living and much more likelihood of its being
improved.
(in Meadows et al., 1974, p. 175)
As pointed out earlier, there are signs that this view is beginning to get a
mainstream hearing (Layard, 2003, 2005). As with climate change and
other signs of environmental stress, greens will of course take this as
confirmation that they were right all along, and that both social and
environmental stresses would be less acute if green analyses had been
taken seriously and earlier.
Questioning consumption
Political ecologists argue, then, for a contraction in economic growth or,
more accurately, in what economist Herman Daly calls throughput
(1992, p. 36). The components of throughput are resource depletion,
production, depreciation (involving consumption) and pollution. Of
these four components, it is probably production that receives most
attention when commentators consider the bases and implications of
the sustainable society, but consumption provides the most useful start-
ing point for discussion. In the first place, this is because the other three
terms are founded on the existence and persistence of consumption:
The sustainable society 71
consumption implies depletion, which implies production, which implies
waste or pollution. And second, the picture of the Good Life that the
political ideology of ecologism paints for us is differentiated from most
other pictures precisely because of its arguing for less consumption
for some.
An increasingly common way of thinking about our differentiated
impact on the environment is through the idea of the ecological
footprint . Nicky Chambers, Craig Simmons and Mathis Wackernagel
write that:
Every organism, be it bacterium, whale or person, has an impact on
the earth. We all rely on the products and services of nature, both
to supply us with raw materials and to assimilate our wastes. The
impact we have on our environment is related to the quantity of
nature that we use or appropriate to sustain our consumption
patterns.
(Chambers et al., 2000, p. xiii)
The ecological footprint is an expression of the quantity of nature we
appropriate to sustain our individual and collective lives a time-slice
indicator of a human community s metabolistic relationship with the
goods and services provided by its natural environment (Dobson,
2003, p. 100). Every animal, including the human animal, has an
ecological footprint, and so there is nothing new in general in the
idea that humans have ecological footprints. The difference now
though, say greens, is that humanity s ecological footprint has become
so large that it threatens the continuing provision of nature s goods and
services.
The ecological footprint notion focuses our attention on the con-
sumption stage of the reproduction of human life, and it also has the
capacity to make us aware of globally unequal shares in nature s goods
and services. We could take the example of CO2 emissions:
assuming a global target of 11.1 gigatonnes CO2 emissions is
required to maintain climate stability by 2050, and assuming that the
global population in 2050 is 9.8 billion, the per capita environ- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl chiara76.opx.pl
societies where there is no growth at all are hardly a delight either,
greens claim that we are stunted ethically by the growth economy s
refusal to take the quality of life of future generations seriously and by
its easy preparedness to take the Earth as resource rather than as bless-
ing. We produce indiscriminately and consume voraciously, and our
status and aspirations are largely judged and dictated by the wealth
at our disposal. Greens believe that lives in the growth economy will
tend away from the elegant and towards the grubby and materialistic.
Conversely, they suggest that a society orientated around sustainable
growth would be a less greedy and more pleasant place in which to live,
and if this seems hard to credit, then greens might quote John Stuart
Mill as a temporary bulwark against disbelief:
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition
of capital and population implies no stationary state of human
improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds
of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for
improving the Art of Living and much more likelihood of its being
improved.
(in Meadows et al., 1974, p. 175)
As pointed out earlier, there are signs that this view is beginning to get a
mainstream hearing (Layard, 2003, 2005). As with climate change and
other signs of environmental stress, greens will of course take this as
confirmation that they were right all along, and that both social and
environmental stresses would be less acute if green analyses had been
taken seriously and earlier.
Questioning consumption
Political ecologists argue, then, for a contraction in economic growth or,
more accurately, in what economist Herman Daly calls throughput
(1992, p. 36). The components of throughput are resource depletion,
production, depreciation (involving consumption) and pollution. Of
these four components, it is probably production that receives most
attention when commentators consider the bases and implications of
the sustainable society, but consumption provides the most useful start-
ing point for discussion. In the first place, this is because the other three
terms are founded on the existence and persistence of consumption:
The sustainable society 71
consumption implies depletion, which implies production, which implies
waste or pollution. And second, the picture of the Good Life that the
political ideology of ecologism paints for us is differentiated from most
other pictures precisely because of its arguing for less consumption
for some.
An increasingly common way of thinking about our differentiated
impact on the environment is through the idea of the ecological
footprint . Nicky Chambers, Craig Simmons and Mathis Wackernagel
write that:
Every organism, be it bacterium, whale or person, has an impact on
the earth. We all rely on the products and services of nature, both
to supply us with raw materials and to assimilate our wastes. The
impact we have on our environment is related to the quantity of
nature that we use or appropriate to sustain our consumption
patterns.
(Chambers et al., 2000, p. xiii)
The ecological footprint is an expression of the quantity of nature we
appropriate to sustain our individual and collective lives a time-slice
indicator of a human community s metabolistic relationship with the
goods and services provided by its natural environment (Dobson,
2003, p. 100). Every animal, including the human animal, has an
ecological footprint, and so there is nothing new in general in the
idea that humans have ecological footprints. The difference now
though, say greens, is that humanity s ecological footprint has become
so large that it threatens the continuing provision of nature s goods and
services.
The ecological footprint notion focuses our attention on the con-
sumption stage of the reproduction of human life, and it also has the
capacity to make us aware of globally unequal shares in nature s goods
and services. We could take the example of CO2 emissions:
assuming a global target of 11.1 gigatonnes CO2 emissions is
required to maintain climate stability by 2050, and assuming that the
global population in 2050 is 9.8 billion, the per capita environ- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]