Article 3

Cycles and Growth in Nature and Human Economies

The earth is for all practical purposes a closed and limited physical system. It receives energy from the sun and radiates energy into space. Except for occasional meteorites and rockets, no physical material either enters or leaves the earth.

God’s miracle of life has used the sun’s energy to create increasingly complex communities of life that interact with one another and with the earth itself in self-sustaining and transforming ways. Water circulates throughout ecosystems, as does carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the other physical constituents of the ecosphere. While the law of the jungle—and of modern corporations—may be “eat or be eaten,” the law of self-sustaining life is “eat and be eaten,” which is to say that everything is recycled. Life is sacrificed so that new life can be created. Every critter’s wastes and remains become some other critter’s food.

Everything either remains in balance over time, or changes over time until a balance is created. That evolving life has participated in creating a resilient and evolving balance on earth over several billion years is part of God’s timeless miracle. What sacrilege could be greater than to knowingly participate in the unraveling of the fabric of life without trying to stop what is happening?

Growth and Adaptation in Nature

Life’s capacity for self-reproduction entails an inherent potential for population growth. It also entails a contrasting potential, on which life’s survival depends, for adapting to environmental limitations and participating in complex ecosystems. Single-cell organisms that reproduce by cell division double their numbers with every generation. Repeated doublings enable populations of bacteria, for example, to expand very quickly, almost explosively—an example of what mathematicians refer to as exponential growth. Limitations of habitat, usually availability of food supply, control the population by balancing the reproduction of some by the death of others. Otherwise the expanding population may crash to extinction or decline to survive in a smaller ecological niche.

The potential for exponential growth of single-cell organisms appears to have transformed the nature of life on earth at least twice. The first was a population explosion of organisms that excreted carbon dioxide and over time created an atmosphere in which carbon dioxide was the dominant gas. The second was a population explosion of organisms that evolved through genetic mutation to consume carbon dioxide and excrete oxygen, thus creating an atmosphere with an increasing amount of oxygen. Still newer organisms then evolved, with multiple cells and increasing complexity: organisms that consume oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide, and thus a chemo- and thermo-dynamically stable atmosphere was created. Many of these new complex creatures reproduced sexually.

Sexual reproduction provides for greater genetic diversity and for evolution by natural selection through the differential production of offspring. The combination of genetic diversity (every critter’s body and behavior is not quite the same as any others’) and differential production of offspring (the genes of those who produce more offspring are more prevalent in shaping the bodies and behavior of the next generation) enables species to adapt to changing environments and to co-evolve with other species. It also provides for possibilities that two parents may have one, two, five, seven, or hundreds of offspring as part of the means by which populations of various creatures and their overlapping habitats maintain balance over time.

Growth and Adaptation in Human Culture

Culture has enabled humans to transcend the limitations of specific habitats — at least for a time. Like life itself, culture offers potentials for both exponential growth and sustainable balance. While many simple cultures seem to have developed a sustainable balance with their surrounding ecosystems over long periods of time, complex civilizations do not seem to have developed such an ecological balance. Instead they have become weakened — through expansion, gradual degradation of their land, or both —leading to collapse, conquest, and/or migration to a new location.

Today we see the physical expansion of human enterprise without any consideration of ecological balance. With no “empty places” left to settle, we face the limitations of the global habitat. Any list of environmental problems points to an underlying ecological reality: industrial societies not only fail to participate in complex ecosystems, but are causing their disintegration and destruction. We can see characteristics of exponential growth not only in human numbers, but also in the quantity of human artifacts, of our consumables and possessions, and of the machines that make them, and in the volume of the money we create to mediate between people, machinery, and possessions.

Clearly the human population cannot continue to grow forever. Nor can the amount of land humans use or the number of houses or cars or roads or factories we build. Between 1920 and the present, workd population has increased about three times. During the same period, U.S. paper consumption has increased about 12 times, withall the environmental impacts this entails. Both population and the use of energy and resources continue to increase. However, the population growth rate is declining, while public policies continue to promote economic growth as a solution to our problems, i.e., "growing the economy." Earning high rates of return on savings has become an expectation to which most citizens believe they are entitled.

Illustrative Activity

As discussed earlier in this unit, over the past 200 years the economic institutions and policies of industrialized societies have evolved in ways that promote economic expansion. This places increasing pressure on natural resources, while ignoring the inherent limits of those resources. Many people are aware of serious social and enviornmental problems that are related to economic growth, but few people are integrating ecological realities into their economic thinking.

Questions for discussion

Compare the two diagrams, the "Enhanced Circular Flow" (above) and the "Economics in its Ecological and Social Context" (below). What observations can you make about their similiarities and differences? What questions do the similarities and differences raise for you?

Specific questions and key points about the "Enhanced Circular Flow"

* Note that the role of government and finance is included in the circular flow, but there is nothing in it about national debt or about international trade and nvestment. Ask how national debt and international trade and investment might affect circular flow.

* Note that there is nothing in the diagram that shows energy and material resources coming into the circular flow, or that shows anything leaving it.

Explain that the biosphere is that part of the atmosphere and the earth inhabited by life, and the lithosphere is the earth's crust below the level inhabited by life.

Ask what economic activities can increase without causing a direct or indirect increase in the flow of concentrated energy and/or material from the biosphere or lithosphere into the system and of dissipated energy and/or material back into the biosphere? Remind Friends that trends toward expansion are an inherent part of the system in its present form. Ask what happens to the earth as economic activity expands.

Specific questions and key points about "Economics in its Ecological and Social Context"

1. Ask what the arrows represent.

2. Note that solar energy flows into the biosphere and that dissipated heat flows out of it. Ask the following questions:

• What happens if less energy flows out of the biosphere than comes into it?
• Why might this happen?
• If material resources from the lithosphere are added to the biosphere and are used for energy, what might happen?

3. Note the following points:

Refer to the Economics in Context diagram, ask for observations, and offer comments. Key points:

• The flow of solar energy is, on a human scale, constant and fixed.
• There is a limit to how much solar energy can be captured and concentrated, and that energy must be used to capture and concentrate energy.
• If human economies must eventually run on solar energy, we need to think of economic efficiency as energy efficiency, i.e., using ingenuity and technology to do as much work (concentrating energy and materials) as possible with as little energy as possible.

4. Note that material flows from the biosphere and lithosphere into the social sphere and from the social sphere into the biosphere. Ask the following questions:

• What happens if the material flows from the lithosphere are returned to the biosphere rather than to the lithosphere?
• Is a landfill part of the lithosphere or of the biosphere? (Refer to the definition of biosphere and lithosphere if necessary.)
• What material is returned from the biosphere to the lithosphere or the biosphere?

5. Note the following points: There may be a lot of material resources in the lithosphere—ores, minerals, oil, and coal—but that, for the most part they can be removed only once.

• The resources that are easiest to get are taken first, so that as more are used increasing amounts of energy are required to obtain them.

6. Note that the material resources form the biosphere have the possibility of regenerating themselves, so that humans can use them on a continuing or sustainable basis. Ask:

• What conditions are needed if these resources are to be available on a continuing basis?
• What might lead the future supply of renewable resources to be diminished?What might be done to increase the future supply?

7. Note the following points:

• The more materials can be recycled within the social spehre, the less material will be needed from the lithosphere, and the less dissipated material from the lithospehre will be introduced into the biosphere.
• In nature, every creature's wasted and remains are another creature's resource, and tha tthe production of goods and services can be designed to copy nature.
• If material resources are limited, we need to think of economic productivity as resource productivity, i.e. using ingenuity and technology to keep them recycling in the social sphere as long as possible.
• We need to return material to the biosphere only in forms and amounts that can be recycled by renewable services.

8. Note that the diagram of "Economics in its Social and Ecological Context" does not show flows of money, in part because from an ecological perspective, the systems need to function (as they are currently not functioning) so that the incentives of money:

• Maximize energy efficiency and resource productivity.
• Minimize the use of material resources from the lithosphere.
• Limit the use of energy to the solar supply and the use of renewable resources to their regenerative capacity or sustainable yield.

Ask whether Friends have ideas about:

• How money incentives might maximize energy efficiency, resource productivity, and living within limits that protect the regenerative capacity of renewable resources.
• How money incentives might be used to invest in natural capital.

9. Note that social capital involves beliefs, values, motivations, skills, andknowledge that create social order and enable people to thrive in families, communities, and economies. Ask how market activities relate to the uses, the maintenance, and theincrease or depletion of social capital, and specifically of human capital (individual qualities) and civil capital (effective governance).

Key points about both diagrams

Neither diagram considers:

• How goods, services, and money produced by economies are distributed among members of societies.
• How the earth's nonrenewable resources are distributed among present and future generations.
• How the earth's limited supplies of renewable energy and material resources should be distributed among human and nonhuman populations.

Questions for discussion Why is simplicity not enough to bring human activities into balance with earth process?

• How can the governance of markets and money be developed so that human economies use as little energy and material as possible, and maintain the stocks of natural and social capital or even increase these stocks?
• Why is it that the American Friends Service Committee, Friends Committee on National Legislation, and other Friends organizations find dealing with economic issues to be so difficult.
• Why are there so many differences of opinions among Friends about conomics and why do Friends so rarely talk with one another about these differences?
• What do Friends need to learn more about, as individuals and as communities, in order to come to clearer understanding and greater unity about how economic policies work?
• How can we integrate concerns for relevant economic policies with our witness for peace, justice and an earth restored?

Answers to the King and the Wise Man exercise above

• Square 9: Pill cup with 256 kernels.
• Square 17: Trash can with more than 32,000 kernels
• Square 25: 1000 gallon tank with more than 8,000,000 kernels
• Square 64: 200 trillion 55 gallon barrels with more than 10 quintillion kernels!

Challenges and Ways Forward

At what point will the physical expansion of human economies, and the policies and institutions that drive expansion become recognized as a fundamental ecological problem? It is truly challenging to consider the evidence that the basic ways markets and money currently function may be underlying causes of the damages humans are inflicting on earth process. It is painful in the extreme to think of the possibility that things we have been taught are right to be doing, for ourselves, our loved ones, and society as a whole, and which we have done at some cost, are part of the problem.

This realization can be truly overwhelming. It can also take us back to the spiritual roots of our faith, to the power of corporate worship, to the conviction that if we but ask, the Spirit will lead us forward and ways will open. Three religious leaders, known to many Friends, have expressed ideas, described here in our words rather than theirs, that have been valuable to us and may be to others for coming to terms with and moving beyond feelings of despair and hopelessness.

• Joanna Macy (Buddhist author and activist) suggests that only if we open ourselves to the full extent of the devastation that is occurring, and allow ourselves to experience the pain of being open to it, we will be able to move beyond pain to meaningful action. 
• Thomas Berry (Catholic priest, “geologian” and author) cautions against thinking that our environmental problems are caused by evil people, because while there will always be evil people, our predicament comes as a result of a great many good people who have been doing a very good job of what they are expected to do.
• John Cobb (retired United Methodist minister and theologian), when asked about the prospects for the future, responded that he was not optimistic, but that he was hopeful because he believes in miracles: that with God’s guidance human beings who are faithful can do what may seem to be impossible, and that we need to do no more than to ask God for help to be faithful to our understanding of what we must do, so that the miracle may happen.

There are many ways forward that people are already engaged with, and that need to be supported. These include technologies associated with sustainable agriculture, sustainable design, and sustainable energy, and policies involving tax shifting, tradable permits, and mandatory recycling of products by their manufacturer. An essential step is to focus on how changes in our economic policies can open doors to the future without negating the efforts, accomplishments, and sacrifices that have already been made. The emerging field of ecological economics is developing models and analytic tools to integrate human economies with earth process. The diagram of Economics in Eco-Socio Context illustrates some features of these models. A central task of public policy is to determine how our full energies and best minds can become engaged in developing these models and tools, and bringing their possibilities to fruition.

We believe Friends have an opportunity, as we have at earlier times in our history, to be a witness for truth that will help make possible an essential transformation in humanity’s understanding of our place on God’s earth, our home. Only through such a transformation in understanding can progress be made toward a society grounded more fully in the collective spiritual consciousness that Jesus embodied and taught. •

<< Back to Eco-Economics page  • Article 1 "The Human Footprint and Friends Testimonies" • Article 2 "Modern Economies and Earth Process"