BILL MCKIBBEN: The environmentalist author argues that growth as an economic principle must be abandoned to save Earth.
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The April issue of Scientific American includes an exclusive excerpt from Bill McKibben's new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, plus an interview that challenges his assumptions. Expanded answers to key interview questions, and additional queries and replies, appear here.
McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and is a co-founder of the climate action group, 350.org. He argues that humankind, because of its actions, now lives on a fundamentally different world, which he calls Eaarth. This celestial body can no longer support the economic growth model that has driven society for the past 200 years. To avoid its own collapse, humankind must instead seek to maintain wealth and resources, in large part by shifting to more durable, localized economies—especially in food and energy production.
[A Scientific American interview with McKibben follows.]
You entitled your book Eaarth, because you claim that we have permanently altered the planet. How so? And why should we change our ways now?
Well, gravity still applies. But fundamental characteristics have changed, like the way the seasons progress, how much rain falls, the meteorological tropics—which have expanded about two degrees north and south, making Australia one big fire zone. This is a different world. We underestimated how finely balanced the planet's physical systems are. Few people have come to grips with this. The perception, still, is that this is a future issue. It's not—it's here now.
Is zero growth necessary, or would "very slight" growth be sustainable?
A specific number is not part of the analysis. I'm more interested in trajectories: What happens if we move away from growth as the answer to everything and head in a different direction? We've tried very little else. We can measure society by other means, and when we do, the world can become much more robust and secure. You start having a food supply you can count on, and an energy supply you can count on, and know they aren't undermining the rest of the world. You start building communities that are strong enough to count on, so individual accumulation of wealth becomes less important.
If "growth" should no longer be our mantra, then what should it be?
We need stability. We need systems that don't rip apart. Durability needs to be our mantra. The term "sustainability" means essentially nothing to most people. "Maintenance" is not very flashy. "Maturity" would be the word we really want, but it's been stolen by the AARP. So durability is good; durability is a virtue.
In part, you're advocating a return to local reliance. How small is "local"? And can local reliance work only in certain places?
We'll figure out the sensible size. It could be a town, a region, a state. But to find the answer, we have to get the incredibly distorting subsidies out of our current systems. They send all kinds of bad signals about what we should be doing. In energy we've underwritten fossil fuel for a long time; unbelievable gifts to the "clean coal" industry, and on and on. It's even more egregious in agriculture. Most of the United States's cropland is devoted to growing corn and soybeans--not because there's an unbelievable demand to eat corn and soybeans, but because there are federal subsidies to grow them—written into the law by huge agricultural companies who control certain senators. Once subsidies wither, we can figure out what scale of industry makes sense. It will make sense to grow a lot of things closer to home.
It's plausible to "go local" in, say, your home state of Vermont, where residents have money and are forward-looking—and their basic needs are met. But what about people in poor places; don't they need outside help?
Absolutely. The rich nations have screwed up the climate. It's our absolute responsibility to figure out how to allow poor people to have something approaching a decent life. What happens to the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world? They get dengue fever. The fields they depend on are ruined by drought or flood. The glaciers that feed the Ganges will be gone, yet 400 million people depend on that water. We are not helping the poor by destabilizing the planet's systems. Meantime, what works best for them? Local, labor-intensive, low-input agriculture: It provides jobs, security, stability and food, and helps make local ecological systems robust enough to withstand the damage that's coming.
U.S. debt is rising to insane levels because the country has lived beyond its means, which supports your call to switch from growth to maintenance. But how do countries like the U.S. get out of debt without growing? Do we need a transition period where growth eliminates debt, and then we embrace durability?
My sense is that all of this will flow logically from the physics and chemistry of the world we're moving into, just like the centralized industrial model flowed logically from the physics and chemistry of the fossil-fueled world. The primary political question is: Can we make change happen fast enough to avoid all-out collapses that are plausible, even likely, under the patterns we're operating in now? How do we force global changes that move these transitions more quickly than they want to move? We have an incredibly small amount of time; we have already passed the threshold points in some respects. We best get to work.
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32 Comments
Add CommentMark Fischetti , I read the Death of Economics by Paul Omeroid and books on CRM is failing, "Breaking the Growth Habit: An Q&A with Bill McKibben" as per heading is a wrong concept . We are human that have been molded in pour own ways . Like the dog's tail. Put this in the pipe it is still after years bend , similarly we are born with curiosity and want to find the rights or wrong . If two rights do not one wrong we will say, " Okay two rights will make one left. There you have human at his beat. " your statement has an subjective clause, """If humankind is to survive, it must change society's economic model from relentless, unbridled growth to maintenance of wealth and resources"""IF" I thank you I do not like ifs, at least before the credit crunch gives me back my cash I thank you Firozali A Mulla DBA
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis guy is nuts!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Meantime, what works best for them? Local, labor-intensive, low-input agriculture: It provides jobs, security, stability and food, and helps make local ecological systems robust enough to withstand the damage that's coming" So poor people will be best off being as minimally productive as possible? That's a great way to keep them poor. Has this guy ever heard of a place called South Korea? They went from poor to rich in hal a century, and they definitely didn't do it with peasant farming.
Mark I am very much against the word as you paint " IF" If humankind is to survive, it must change society's economic model from relentless, unbridled growth to maintenance of wealth and resources. I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this mean there may be some people on earth who will never enjoy a flat-screen HD TV?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis guy is not the brightest bulb in the fixture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople will deal with issues as they always have - by adapting to the new situation. When supplies of certain materials (like oil and gas) begin to become limited, market price signals will lead to the necessary investments in other energy sources and technologies.
I think this guy should read some of the predictions made in the 70's and see how foolish those predicitons now look. 30 years from now people will quote him in a similar exercise.
We tried localized economies in the past, pre-mechanical transportation days. People were left to the whims of local climates, harsh winters caused failed crops or droughts causing failed crops. Now with mechanical transportation methods and spreading out of our food sources to encompass most of the world small climate disaster no longer have to put localized populations at risk. Unfortunately this doesn't keep governments from creating false food shortages through laws limiting peoples ability to retrieve or even produce food supplies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"That's a great way to keep them poor. Has this guy ever heard of a place called South Korea? They went from poor to rich in hal a century, and they definitely didn't do it with peasant farming. " - KookFart
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd look at the money grubbing U.S. Gone from the envy of the world to economic basket case with just 30 years of Conservative Economic Borrow and spend Treason.
The facts are that 80 to 90 percent of all labour is worthless, or even negatively productive, and exists only to provide the public with a way occupy their wasted lives pushing paper or producing products that are designed to fail.
The facts are that the west will be forced to reduce it's CO2 emissions by 80 to 90 percent over the coming decades to prevent grotesque changes in the earth's climate.
The choice is therefore clear to any thinking person.
By the end of this century the average work week will be 1 man day long, and workers will be organized into a black, white, red, yellow, green, pink and blue labour force that takes cycles through a 7 day work week, each working 2, 12 hour shifts a week.
The current form of corporate slavery will thereby be abolished.
"People will deal with issues as they always have - by adapting to the new situation. When supplies of certain materials (like oil and gas) begin to become limited, market price signals will lead to the necessary investments in other energy sources and technologies. " - Soccer dad
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery true, so when energy becomes scarce, people will just turn to non-sources of energy for energy.
People will turn to cars that run on tap water, and home heating units that run off the heat of good intentions. Entire cities will be driven by the power of wishful thinking, and the world will be a Conservadopian Paradise.
"I think this guy should read some of the predictions made in the 70's and see how foolish those predicitons now look." - Socerdad
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell said wage slave... Well said...
There are a few predictable responses here. ill Mckibben is trying to figure out how we deal with the clear limits that are popping up everywhere. Sure, we'd all (or most) would like to continue growth forever but that's just not possible on a finite planet. Given that incontrovertible truth, should we start to move to different arrangements now, whilst we still have a modicum of resources and energy, or should we continue to fritter away these one-time benefits on the unrealisable dream of everlasting growth? From what I read constantly, day after day, including many incredible comments on this blog, people just don't want to think critically and rail against any notion of radical change. "More of the same", they cry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre we yeast or something with more intelligence?
Naming. While it seems like a small issue, it is not. Many of the comments above come from an interpretation of sustainability that has to do with "no more" or "no change" (or fear that zero sum means resources taken from me). No one wants anything they love to be sustainable. Durable is only slightly better - there are a lot of durable things (like plastic bags) we don't want to be durable. There's an interesting project here on the idea of thrivability - that seems to me to give the point of growth (prosperity) a more holistic and systems feel. We want to thrive, and this requires the systems we depend upon to thrive too. This kind of framing/naming matters because words and mantras turn off the very people we need to most engage in a collective effort to live well in all corners of the earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNaming (Q3 above). It seems like a small issue but it is not. Most of the negative comments here seem to share the perspective that sustainability is unchanging or that it reduces opportunity. People don't want the things they love to be just "sustainable." I'm not sure "durability" is much better - it too suggests a diminished need to reinvent (and there are some really durable things we wish were not - like plastic bags). Here's a project built on the idea of "thrivable" http://www.slideshare.net/NurtureGirl/thrivability-a-collaborative-sketch-3406586. Thrivability incorporates point of growth (prosperity), but in a way that's multi-dimensional and systems focused. We do want to thrive. And we're dependent upon a bunch of systems that also need to thrive. That's more difficult to reject. And if we are really going to thrive, we need to engage a whole lot of people who will never get past the word sustainability. (Full disclosure: I'm not involved with the project, but I did help help sponsor it).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow. the quality of comments here is almost as bad as on utube.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hope none of you guys are scientists or were doomed.
Sorry for the duplicate, Firefox crashed just as I submitted. Thought it was lost, resubmitted, now there are two similar entries. Phooey.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisplease welcome communism
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur planet is running short of many resources already so there is no doubt changes in the way we live must be made. However, the advances in nano and bio tech as well as material sciences do hold a great deal of promise. I think our current growth based economy is probably unsustainable but it is undesirable for other reasons as well. Is the future for humanity to be billions and billions of tiny boxes in which people will live with their never ending stream of e-toys and pair of bio lines providing incoming nutrition and outgoing waste? Perhaps live social interaction and a thriving environment can bring more satisfaction. The Story of Stuff (http://www.storyofstuff.com/) gives a nice picture of the treadmill we are on. McKibben is almost certainly not 100% right in his predictions, no one ever is, but the fact that we are stripping the biosphere of all useful things is an observable fact to all but those who simply don't want to look.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLocal, less "stuff" focused lifestyles combined with the benefits of new technologies aimed at providing sustainable comfort and security rather than more toys might yield a better life for all. After all is said and done time is the only coin we really have to spend. I think my time would be better spent working with friends and neighbors to provide for my local community than driving an hour each way to work on something of no tangible benefit other than cash.
I'd say vendicar9 is more like yeast.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJudging by some of the comments here, my suspicions have been realized- that the hard core environmentalists, the global warmers-they want to destroy technology, and return us to an agrarian society (uh- anyone remember the Dark Ages?).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, the use of pejorative remarks, labeling, and ad hominem attacks do nothing to bolster your argument(s). If anything, they undermine them, and show you for who you truly are.
Thinkers of this type are really advocating global dictatorship of a design never defined. People are not going to agree with this type of a life if they have any chance at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose who DO agree can start today. Sell all your property and with the like-minded start a rural commune somewhere.
Your selfless example will inspire us in time!
Recent developments in paleontology and the study of human development suggest that the greatest asset of current humans is adaptibility, driven by extreme and swift climate perturbations over the last several hundred thousand years. We've been incredibly successful at thriving as a species, though not particularly astute about keeping our "nest" clean. Technology will periodically give us breathing space, but not eliminate the negative effects of wanton soiling of our living environment. "Growth" will have to accommodate sustainability or we'll slide into oblivion while ants pick at our bones. I like the concept of "thriving" for both humans and the environmental and ecological systems we depend on. Adaptive shrinking of population and physiology is well documented as an evolutionary response to change in environmental conditions and limited resources. I'd rather be proactive in responding to that sort of challenge than deny it until the hammer falls.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe concept that Bill is discussing is very much related to a steady state economy. It is one where we focus on development of our society instead of expansion of the size of our economy. Happiness, well-being, and prosperity do not require infinite economic growth. This expansion is necessary to a point, and developed nations have past this point - we're now taking from the poor countries in order to fuel continued growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a steady state economy we can maintain a sustainable way of life, eliminate wage inequality, pull people out of poverty (instead of allowing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, as we do now), and support our planet's biosphere - you know, that thing that keeps us alive?
Bill wrote a good book called "Deep Economy" on the subject of local, resilient economics. Tim Jackson (Prosperity Without Growth), Herman Daly (numerous titles), and Brian Czech (Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train) are other good authors to read on this topic.
Read more about the concept and campaign for a sustainable way of life through the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) here: http://steadystate.org. You can follow my thoughts on the topic at http://steadystaterevolution.org as well.
Technology and efficiency have their limits. You can only get so efficient, so says those pesky laws of thermodynamics. Continued growth that relies on us to live in tighter cities, eating genetically engineered "super food" (aka soylent green) is not a desirable future, either. All this because we couldn't face the question of how to live on a finite planet without growing our economy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBill hits a good point, that we should create more resilient local economies, encourage stability and durability over risk, venture, and collapse.
For the record, none of this is socialism or communism. Capitalism is nothing more than the private ownership of production. Socialism is the public or worker owned production, and Communism is a political application of socialism.
Creating a stable, sustainable, post-growth economy does not in any way require the end of capitalism or the adoption of socialism/communism. Obviously we have learned that communism doesn't work, but why do we assume that capitalism does, anyway? We've got more people, more poverty, less resources, more violence and disease - all things that growth-centered capitalism was supposed to eliminate, not encourage.
Question the system when it doesn't work. http://steadystaterevolution.org
The entire developed and developing world will be a police state within a decade due to conservative unwillingness to deal with the fact that this author is correct and the fact that a global ecological collapse will cause a resurgence of socialism to prevent starvation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA great book that relates to this conversation and this global human predicament is "The Gods Themselves" by Isaac Asimov
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is also important to define better what growth is. The gross domestic product is really no longer useful in this respect (even Joseph Stiglitz calls relying on it "perverse"). Our consumer-oriented value system needs an overhaul. Some ideas are given in State of the World 2010 from Worldwatch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhether agriculture is local or not is less important than that is based on resiliance, improved soil, better management of water resources, etc. , use of adapted crops and livestock, and away from concentrated industrial style methods.
For many, the deepest fear is that homo sapiens, by our very evolutionary and cultural inheritance, are bound to foul the nest in ways causing natural systems to cascade one after another into runaway chaotic behavior. Here we might be talking about temperatures rising 15 degrees F, enough to make agricultural production impossible over most of the earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA number of responders seem to think nature is somehow an inert aside to human culture and life, totally amenable to technological fixes. Well, let me see. For about 95,000 years of our species existence, we lived off the land, in intimate connection to it. For about 150 years we have been burning, plowing, cutting, polluting, multiplying and generally producing as if nature --the earth-- existed only to serve human needs. No amount of technological fix can remedy a sudden chaotic shift in the earth's regime.
I only wish I could be more hopeful about Bill McKibben's vision of a sustainable world. But then, with his hard work in Copenhagen, he realizes better than most the Sisyphus-like job of changing people's values, behavior and institutions. But as Carl Sandburg said, "who can live without hope?"
Bill McKibben is a true believer who thinks global changes are needed to save the world from collapsing: "Can we make change happen fast enough to avoid all-out collapses that are plausible, even likely, under the patterns we're operating in now? How do we force global changes that move these transitions more quickly than they want to move? We have an incredibly small amount of time; we have already passed the threshold points in some respects. We best get to work." Sure, if we have an incredibly short amount of time. But is this true? Nothing in this quote gives a reason for us to follow him. You are supposed to know that we are in danger of collapse because our economies are injecting so much carbon dioxide into the air that intolerable global warming is almost upon us. In his book he puts his finger on the cause - it is economic growth that has brought us to this. As a result, "The rich nations have screwed up the climate. It's our absolute responsibility to figure out how to allow poor people to have something approaching a decent life." And what is that decent life? "Local, labor-intensive, low-input agriculture: It provides jobs, security, stability and food, and helps make local ecological systems robust enough to withstand the damage that's coming." Otherwise known as pre-industrial farming. And no coal-fired power plants for sure. Tell that to someone in an underdeveloped country in Africa or anywhere else. He just wants to dismantle civilization in the holy name of saving us from global warming. Which is nothing more than a fantasy. The global warming we are supposed to fight was announced by James Hansen in 1988 when he testified to the Senate that warming had started and its cause was carbon dioxide we were putting into the air. Global temperature curves from NASA, NOAA and the Met Office indeed show a steady warming that started in the late seventies. But satellites observing global temperature during the same period simply cannot see this warming. What they do see is a temperature oscillation, up and down by half a degree, but no rise until a super El Nino shows up in 1998. What these guardians of global temperature have done is to transmogrify a horizontal temperature curve into a rising temperature curve by changing low temperatures into higher ones. You can find out how it was done from "What Warming?" available on Amazon.com. This is a scientific fraud and since it involves three organizations it is also a criminal conspiracy that should be internationally investigated. A climate Nuremburg perhaps?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRight on, Bill!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm amazed at many of the responses here. Why isn't it patently obvious that continual growth in a finite environment isn't possible?
Stephen Hawking said that on our current trajectory, by the year 2500, human beings will stand shoulder-to-shoulder across every inch of dry land, and the planet will glow a dull red from their dissipated energy use.
Now of course, that is not possible. Something must break well before then. Wonder what it will be, and when it will happen. Malthus was not wrong, Ehrlich was not wrong -- they were just early.
So many factors are coming together in a "perfect storm." The financial collapse, global warming, peak oil. I'm betting on a crash in the next 20 years or less.
We're trying to do something about it, but we need help: http://www.EcoReality.org/wiki/Land_purchase_fund_drive and http://www.ecoreality.org/wiki/images/7/7f/Farm_For_Sale.pdf
McKibben is 100% right in determining the problem but his solutions cannot be achieved in current democratic system. This is obvious by only looking into majority of comments here. Eventually, people votes for leaders who promises more and, more is always obtained by stealing from nature and future generations. Politicians rely on the fact that the rate of collapse of nature is not sensible by voters during their life span.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDemocracy on the world since over 100 years resulted big achievements in science&art through widespread education and added a lot to human rights and freedom. However, end result 10 billion people wont have any healty water, earth and air soon.
We have to develope a system that defend the rights of Nature on top priority. We should understand that "sovereignty of people" (democratic system) idea is not sustainable.
We sould amend our constitutions to start with 1-Nature has the right to exist and no human activity can be allowed to harm it. 2-Every person should have the right to demand the recognition of Nature rights in courts. 3-Production and urbanization are only allowed if the wastes produced are proven to be stabilizes in nature in 10? 20? 30 max? years.(tbd but should be certainly less than one human generation life span)
Do you think that humanity can ever develope such a system maybe to be called "Naturaman"? Can we evolve to such a stage that, considerate on our coming generations as much as ourselves?
The planet Earth isn't subject to growth. Only improved technology can ensure that the current pool of ressources be more efficiently spread around, enriching poor peoples lives while improving the quality of life of the rich in other ways than through monetary glut.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter reading the majority of the comments above (exceptions noted), I am leaning toward yeast. I would like one of the above commenters critical to Mr. McKibben's ideas to explain exactly how we continue infinite growth in a finite system. Technology will save us? Technology has caused many of the problems we currently have. The Green Revolution has caused the earth's nitrogen cycle to be way out of whack, resulting in dead zones in the ocean, and our burning of fossil fuels is turning the ocean to acid and skewing the carbon cycle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese are the last gasps of a dying paradigm.
Firstly, I'm saddened by Sci Am's trend in recent years: More politics than science, particularly on big-picture social topics such as poverty, climate, environment, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecondly, while the 'Breaking the Growth Habit' excerpt (April 2010 print) was mostly political/social opinion and at times completely at odds with rational thought, the 'McKibben, Challenged' follow-up article is a farce. Far from asking tough questions, staff editor Fischetti just lobs some easy ones to McKibben and lets him go on about his erratic arguments, rants, and non sequiturs.
As to the merits of McKibben's statements, I will only address a couple: A) He is precisely correct in that gov't subsidies create all sorts of distortions (unintended -- and unwanted -- consequences), causing more harm than good;
B) as for local food production, creating more jobs is a lousy thing from an economic standpoint, and especially if those jobs are relatively low-paying such as ag labor (civilization only advances by job obsolescence);
C) local farms "reaping more of the revenue" by cutting out middlemen sounds nice, but ultimately any windfall or extra profits are capitalized into the value/cost of land, eliminating the windfall; and,
D) factually incorrect and/or misleading: "Good soil is precisely what low-impact, low-input, local agriculture builds, and precisely what industrial agriculture destroys." Down through the millenia: low-input, local, 'organic' agriculture has -- virtually without exception -- destroyed its soil, by allowing it to be eroded by wind and water when bereft of vegetation and mulch cover (usually a result of tillage, burning, fodder removal, etc), by degrading the soil structure directly with inadequate cropping intensity (not enough vegetation throughout the year) and tillage, and by mining its native nutrient supplies, including plundering of the soil organic matter. (Morocco and Libya were net exporters of food in Roman times, but the land was destroyed in the process. The same is true for most of Italy, Lebanon, Syria, etc.)
Only with no-tillage cropping, with high vegetation levels (high cropping intensity, vigorous crops), can these soil degradation problems be averted. To truly be sustainable over centuries, cropping of annual plants may need to be interspersed with perennial species in phases to provide the replenishment of soil carbon deep in the profile (stable soil OM from 10 - 60 inch depths).