Quaker Eco-Bulletin
Quaker Eco-Bulletin (QEB) is published bi-monthly by Quaker Earthcare Witness as an insert in BeFriending Creation.
The vision of Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) includes integrating into the beliefs and practices of the Society of Friends the Truths that God's Creation is to be held in reverence in its own right, and that human aspirations for peace and justice depend upon restoring the Earth's ecological integrity. As a member organization of Friends Committee on National Legislation, QEW seeks to strengthen Friends' support for FCNL's witness in Washington DC for peace, justice, and an earth restored.
QEB's purpose is to advance Friends' witness on public and institutional policies that affect the earth's capacity to support life. QEB articles aim to inform Friends about public and corporate policies that have an impact on society's relationship to the earth, and to provide analysis and critique of societal trends and institutions that threaten the health of the planet.
Friends are invited to contact us about writing an article for QEB. Submissions are subject to editing and should:
• Explain why the issue is a Friends concern.
• Provide accurate, documented background information that reflects the complexity of the issue and is respectful toward other points of view.
• Relate the issue to legislation or corporate policy.
• List what Friends can do.
• Provide references and sources for additional information.
QEB Coordinator: Keith Helmuth
QEB Editorial Team: Judy Lumb, Sandra Lewis, Barbara Day
E-mail: QEB@QuakerEarthcare.org
Website: <QuakerEarthcare.org>
Projects of Quaker Earthcare Witness, such as QEB, are funded by contributions to:
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Contributions to support the work of QNL are welcome.
Quaker Eco-Bulletin
Information and Action Addressing Public Policy
for an Ecologically Sustainable World
We Need a Ladder: Avoiding Depression While Downsizing
>>Continued from page 3
Beyond Recycling to Re-use and Repair
The current focus on recycling, however necessary, is far from adequate, and obscures the essential way forward. Many products are deliberately made to wear out, and are prohibitively expensive to repair. If we were serious about “reuse, repair, and recycle,” we would eliminate much of what we currently congratulate ourselves for recycling. We would replace throw-aways with re-usables. We would make products easy to repair, and teach people how to repair them. We would make it easy to get replacement parts. We would make it cost less to repair something than to replace it. Frugality would be restored as a virtue.
We would design products to enable their components to be re-used. We would design materials to facilitate recycling, but we would only recycle the materials in those items that could not be repaired or disassembled for reuse. We would be serious about getting the most benefit from the least use of energy and material resources. The technical analysis and design for this kind of effort is available.21 We can ask our economists how to use market forces to move in these directions as soon as possible.
Re-inventing the Commons
In Who Owns the Sky? Peter Barnes asked why anyone should assume that a private entity should be entitled to profit from polluting the atmosphere when the costs are borne by everyone, indeed, by all life.22 In Capitalism 3.0 he proposed a different form of ownership as a way of “re-inventing the commons,” and “building a commons sector.”23
The prevailing mythology of capitalism that Peter Barnes refers to as “surplus capitalism” sees corporate finance, profits and property rights as its defining characteristics. Yet every modern industrial economy uses a distinctive combination of provisions for the allocation of resources, ownership of capital, management of the money supply, and governance of markets.
Re-defining what constitutes the commons and determining who protects the commons, manages the commons, and benefits from the commons is essential for reforming capitalism. This reformation must be grounded in the Earth as we now know it to be, rather than as it was construed to be several centuries ago. This is a huge task. We will need much collective wisdom to undertake it.
Rethinking Finance
Something happened in recent times to shift the common understanding of real capital from machines to money, from manufactured capital and other forms of real capital that are subject to the laws of physics, to financial capital that vested interests have managed to design so the laws of physics do not apply. Since the international gold standard was eliminated in 1972 and banking deregulation ensued, the private financial industry can create virtually as much money as the financial markets will bear.24
Richard Heinberg writes, “…it would be difficult to change the growth imperative from modern economies without also changing the national monetary systems. That is because most money is loaned into existence by banks and thus based on debt, and implies a commitment on someone’s part to pay interest on that debt. If the economy does not grow, new money would not be available to pay interest on existing loans; many of these loans will thus be defaulted upon, and a crash will occur…. If we are to achieve a reduced scale, steady state society, we will need to change our monetary system to one that is not based on debt and interest.”25
Heinberg’s view is one that Kenneth Boulding held for many years, and that an increasing number of prominent figures espouse, including Herman Daly,26 Richard Douthwaite,27 and Bernard Lietaer.28 However, orthodox theory does not view our debt-based monetary system as a primary determinant of either growth or depression. It would be preferable to devise constructive ways of downscaling within the existing monetary and financial structures. Perhaps economists will find a way to do this.
Rethinking Rights and Responsibilities
Our conceptions about human rights and civil liberties are far more rooted in the 18th century, and less suited to our current circumstances than we realize. In the 1960s, Kenneth Boulding proposed giving every person of reproductive age 10 birth certificates that could be bought or sold, and requiring 10 birth certificates in order to bear a child.29 Many Friends were outraged. He agreed that this was not a nice idea, but asked if they could propose a better way of assuring that the human population does not increase. At the time the human population was three billion. Now it is six billion. Can we really feed nine billion? Is it better just to let people starve?
Supplies of clean water are not keeping up with demand. Water tables and aquifers are being over-harvested. Purifying water is energy intensive. If everyone has a right to clean water, do we decide the amount of water to which each one has a right? How do we decide what is an appropriate share of water for other species?
A clear consensus seems to be emerging that health care is a basic right to which all should have access. Hopefully, this will soon be achieved. But it will not be possible to provide all forms of health care to everyone, so some hard choices will need to be made. The medical and pharmaceutical establishments are little scrutinized about pollution. Should treatments and practices that contribute to altering the chemical composition of the biosphere be restricted or eliminated?
Knowing that many of the things we now buy and use (like gasoline) have harmful and potentially lethal effects, how much freedom of choice can be permitted if we are to prevent ourselves from harming or killing one another? How much regulation of the way we use our money will be needed to prevent the destruction that collectively we are otherwise certain to cause?
Knowing that the imagery we are exposed to influences us in ways we are not aware of, how can we preserve freedom of speech and other forms of expression without exposing ourselves to influences that may lead us to destroy ourselves? How much censorship of what we see and hear will be needed to change our beliefs, thoughts, and impulses from wanting more to wanting less?
What Can Economists Do?
It is not easy for anyone living in the U.S. right now to imagine that these suggestions would be taken seriously. They offer a vision that is very different from the way things are now and the way we are heading.
“Rethinking Productivity” would direct many people into more time-consuming physical work. “Using Markets and the Government” would force us to make painful choices and changes without blaming politicians. “A Guaranteed Income” and “Jobs for All” may sound attractive, but for many Friends, “Restoring Progressive Taxation” to pay for them would mean significantly higher taxes. The suggestions after that become progressively more difficult to imagine in the context of society’s current mythology. There may be much better ways of accomplishing the same goals.
Structural economic violence is already increasing as our institutions become steadily less suited to our circumstances. It is impersonal and largely hidden. Unless the violence touches us personally, we can usually ignore it by crossing to the other side of the road or staying on our side of the tracks. This is as true for the economics establishment as it is for so many of us, myself included. Yet the violence will hit steadily closer to home unless it is reduced by changing the economic structures that cause it. If denial and self-interest continue until shattered by events, the effects may be overwhelming.
Using market mechanisms to help us make difficult choices seems much better than using force or to giving in to despair, as long as everyone is able to buy bread for the table and find something useful to do. Economists can suggest what markets can and cannot beexpected to accomplish, and how the framework in which they operate can best be structured. They can use their distinctive analytic toolkit to suggest changes in policies and institutions that will enable us to downsize without causing a depression. As a society we may not be willing to look down until we can see a ladder we can use to climb to safety and come to a new understanding of what it means to prosper. Perhaps the most difficult issue for economists will be adapting the monetary and financial systems to downscaling.
What Can Friends Do?
Perhaps the most difficult issue for Friends, as for people of other faith communities, will be those involving human rights and responsibilities. With all the wisdom and discernment we can muster, we must confront the difficult dilemmas of preserving freedom of belief, thought, and personal expression, while limiting the dysfunctional aspects of human communication and behavior that have created our current planetary crisis.
As Friends, we can use our distinctive spiritual toolkit, our spiritual foundations, forms of worship and testimonies, to help one another anticipate and negotiate the dislocations that will accompany downscaling. Being grounded in corporate worship, we can preserve and strengthen our spiritual vitality and help others avoid psychic depression. An essential first step, which many have already taken, is to not let fear paralyze us into inaction or keep us from imagining a life that would be materially sufficient and spiritually more fulfilling than the path we humans are on now.
We can maintain hope by believing in miracles despite the overwhelming tasks ahead. In a cocoon, imaginal cells miraculously emerge from the distintegration of the caterpillar’s cellular structure, and assemble themselves to form a butterfly.30 This gives me hope to think that some of our efforts will contribute to the emergence of imaginal cells from which human societies will form that function in harmony with the biosphere.
Once to every soul and nation comes the moment to decide….
New occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient goods uncouth.
They must upward still, and onward who would keep abreast of Truth.31
Ed Dreby is a member of Mt Holly (N.J.) Monthly Meeting. He is a former Friends school administrator and social studies teacher. He was clerk of Earthcare Working Group of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting from 1996–2007, a member of the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Working Group from 1997–2002, and a founding member of Quaker Eco-Witness and Eco-Bulletin. He is currently active with Earthcare Working Group of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Quaker Earthcare Witness, and project leader of Friends Testimonies & Economics.
References
1 Brown, Lester, 2005. “Rising to the Challenge” in Seeds of Violence, Seeds of Hope, ed. Ed Dreby, Vol I, p 28. Seeds is available online at <www.quakerearthcare.org/Projects/FTE/FTE.htm> or in hard copy from <drebymans@igc.org>.
2 Soros, George, 2008. The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means. New York. N.Y.: Public Affairs.
3 Mansfield, Margaret, 2005. “Structural Violence and Friends Testimonies,” in Seeds, Vol I, pp 20 ff.
4 Meyer, Aubrey, 2007. “The Case for Contraction and Convergence” in Surviving Climate Change, ed. David Cromwell and Mark Levene, London: Press, pp 29 ff (Global Commons Institute <gci.org.uk>).
5 Knowlton, Hollister, 2005.“Ecological Footprint Analysis” in Seeds, Vol I, p. 23.
6 Heinberg, Richard, 2004. Power Down, Gabriola Island, B.C., Canada: New Society Press.
7 Boulding, Kenneth, 1965. “Earth as a Spaceship” reprinted here p. 4.
8 Daly, Herman, 2007. “Boundless Bull” in Seeds, Vol III, p. 34.
9 Dreby, Ed and Margaret Mansfield, 2006. “Trees as Metaphors” in Seeds Vol II, p. 30.
10 Boulding, Kenneth, 1966. “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” in Environmental Quality in a Growing Society, Baltimore Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 253 ff.
11 Barnes, Peter, 2006. Capitalism 3.0, San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler, p. 25.
12 Brown, Lester R., 2008. Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Company.
13 Daly, Herman, and Joshua Farley, 2004. Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications, Washington, D.C: Island Press.
14 Barnes, Peter, 2006. Capitalism 3.0, San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler.
15 Odum, Howard and Elizabeth, 2001. A Prosperous Way Down, Boulder, Colo.: University of Colorado Press.
16 Heinberg, Richard, 2004. Power Down, Gabriola Island BC, Canada: New Society Press.
17 Cobb, John, 1996. Presentation at Drew University, October, 1996.
18 Boulding, Kenneth, 1965. Meaning of the 20th Century, New York NY: Harper and Row.
19 Brown, Peter G., 2001. The Commonwealth of Life, Montreal, Canada: Black Rose Books.
20 Boulding, Kenneth, 1992. Toward a New Economics, Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar.
21 McDonough, William and Michael Braungart, 2002. Cradle to Cradle, New York, N.Y.: North Point Press.
22 Barnes, Peter, 2001. Who Owns the Sky? Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
23 Barnes, Peter, 2006. Capitalism 3.0, San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler.
24 Dreby, Ed, 2007. “Money and Growth” in Seeds, Vol III, pp. 56 ff.
25 Heinberg, Richard, 2004. Power Down, Gabriola Island, B.C., Canada: New Society Press, p.100.
26 Daly, Herman and John Cobb, 1994. “Afterward on Money, Debt, and Wealth” in For the Common Good, 2nd edition,1994, Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press.
27 Douthwaite, Richard, 2000. Ecology of Money, White River Junction, Vt.: Green Books.
28 Lietaer, Bernard, 2002. The Future of Money, New York, N.Y.: Random House.
29 Boulding, Kenneth, “Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,” pp 404 ff
30 The Imaginal Cell Story. <theinfinitegames.org/e06/>.
31 Lowell, James Russell, 1845. “Once to Every Soul and Nation” in Worship in Song, 1996, Philadelphia, Pa.: Friends General Conference, p. 273.
EARTH AS A SPACE SHIP
In the imagination of those who are sensitive to the realities of our era, the earth has become a space ship, and this, perhaps, is the most important single fact of our day. For millennia, the earth in men's minds was flat and illimitable. Today, as a result of exploration, speed, and the explosion of scientific knowledge, earth has become a tiny sphere, closed, limited, crowded, and hurtling through space to unknown destinations. This change in man's image of his home affects his behavior in many ways, and is likely to affect it much more in the future.
It is not only that man's image of the earth has changed; the reality of the world social system has changed. As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed. In what we might call the "old days," when man was small in numbers and earth was large, he could pollute it with impunity, though even then he frequently destroyed his immediate environment and had to move on to a new spot, which he then proceeded to destroy. Now man can no longer do this; he must live in the whole system, in which he must recycle his wastes and really face up to the problem of the increase in material entropy which his activities create. In a space ship there are no sewers.
Let me suggest, then, some of the consequences of earth becoming a space ship. In the first place, it is absolutely necessary for man now to develop a technology that is different from the one on which he now bases his high-level societies. High-level societies are now based on the consumption of fossil fuels and ores, none of which, at present rates of consumption, are likely to last more than a few hundred years. A stable, circular-flow high-level technology is conceivable in which we devote inputs of energy to the concentration of materials into useful form, sufficient to compensate for the diffusion of materials which takes place in their use. At the moment we take fuels and burn them, we take concentrated deposits of iron ore for instance, and phosphates, and we spread these throughout the world in dumps, and we flush them out to the oceans in sewers. The stable high-level technology will have to rely on the oceans and the atmosphere as a basic resource from which materials may be concentrated in sufficient quantity to overcome their diffusion through consumption. Even this, of course, will require constant inputs of energy. There is no way for the closed system to prevent the increase of entropy. Earth, fortunately, has a constant input of energy from the sun, and by the time that goes, man will probably have abandoned earth; and we have also the possibility of almost unlimited energy inputs from nuclear fusion, if we can find means of harnessing it usefully.
Man is finally going to have to face the fact that he is a biological system living in an ecological system, and that his survival power is going to depend on his developing symbiotic relationships of a closed-cycle character with all the other elements and populations of the world of ecological systems. What this means, in effect, is that all the other forms of life will have to be domesticated, even if on wildlife preserves.
The consequences of earth becoming a space ship for the social system are profound and little understood. It is clear that much human behavior and many human institutions in the past, which were appropriate to all infinite earth, are entirely inappropriate to a small closed space ship. We cannot have cowboys and Indians, for instance, in a space ship, or even a cowboy ethic. We cannot afford unrestrained conflict, and we almost certainly cannot afford national sovereignty in an unrestricted sense. On the other hand, we must beware of pushing the analogy too far. In a small ship, there would almost have to be a dictatorial political system with a captain, and a planned economy. A voyaging space ship, like a battleship, almost has to be a centrally planned economy. A large space ship with three billion passengers, however, or perhaps ten billion, may have a very different social structure. Large social organizations are very different from small. It may be able to have much more individual freedom, a price system and a market economy of a limited and controlled kind, and even democratic political institutions. There must be, however, cybernetic or homeostatic mechanisms for preventing the overall variables of the social system from going beyond a certain range. There must, for instance, be machinery for controlling the total numbers of the population; there must be machinery for controlling conflict processes and for preventing perverse social dynamic processes of escalation and inflation. One of the major problems of social science is how to devise institutions which will combine this overall homeostatic control with individual freedom and mobility. I believe this problem to be not insoluble, though not yet solved.
Once we begin to look at earth as a space ship, the appalling extent of our ignorance about it is almost frightening. This is true of the level of every science. We know practically nothing, for instance, about the long-run dynamics even of the physical system of the earth. We do not understand, for instance, the machinery of ice ages, the real nature of geological stability or disturbance, the incidence of volcanism and earthquakes, and we understand fantastically little about that enormously complex heat engine known as the atmosphere. We do not even know whether the activities of man are going to make the earth warm up or cool off. At the level of the biological sciences, our ignorance is even greater. Ecology as a science has hardly moved beyond the level of bird-watching. It has yet to become quantified, and it has yet to find an adequate theory. Even to an economist, its existing theoretical structures seem fantastically naive, and when it comes to understanding the world social system or the sociosphere, we are not only ignorant but proud of our ignorance. There is no systematic method of data collection and processing, and the theory of social dynamics is still in its first infancy.
The moral of all this is that man must be made to realize that all his major problems are still unsolved, and that a very large and massive intellectual effort is still necessary to solve them. In the meantime we are wasting our intellectual resources on insoluble problems like unilateral national defense and on low-priority achievements like putting a man on the moon. This is no way to run a space ship.
Kenneth E. Boulding Papers, Archives (Box # 38), University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries.
