The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment by Chris Martenson Page B
Authors: Chris Martenson
Tags: United States, General, Economics, Business & Economics, Economic Conditions, Forecasting, Economic forecasting - United States, Economic forecasting, Development, Sustainable Development, Economic Development, Sustainable Development - United States, United States - Economic Conditions - 2009
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reflection of our access to abundant energy and other concentrated resources that we can transform into useful products and services. As long as those resources can continue to be extracted from the earth in ever-increasing quantities, then our economic model is safe and sound. And that is where the trouble in this story begins.
1 Some use “the Rule of 72,” which is more accurate in some circumstances, but less easy to calculate in our heads, so we’ll stick to 70 for now, as it is perfectly accurate for our purposes.
CHAPTER 6
An Inconvenient Lie
The Truth about Growth
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
Unless we are careful, we might accidentally pursue growth when what we really are seeking is prosperity. The problem is that prosperity has so often accompanied growth that it has become easy to confuse the two.
Growth appears to solve many problems. Growth creates jobs and adds new money to strained government coffers. At the same time that growth occurs, new opportunities often arise. Growth is so central to our economic models and thinking that many economists will, with completely straight faces, refer to recessions as periods of “negative growth.” If that doesn’t reveal a bias toward growth, I don’t know what does. It’s impossible to listen to a presidential press conference on the economy without hearing about growth and how important it is that we create more of it. Economic growth is unquestionably assumed to be desirable, and that’s pretty much all there is to the story.
Anybody who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
—Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) 1
The type of growth upon which our economy depends, exponential growth, is completely unsustainable and will therefore someday stop. Nothing can grow forever, at least nothing that consumes finite resources to fuel its growth. It is my view that this shift to no growth or even negative growth (to use that odd economic term) will happen within the next 20 years, although a transition could happen much sooner, if it didn’t already begin in 2008. Whenever it happens to occur, it will be destructive to wealth and unpleasant for most people. This means that the paradigm of economic growth, along with its presumed necessity and even desirability, needs to be hauled out into the bright light of day and carefully examined.
The imperative for growth is only very rarely questioned, and it’s usually reported in the news as though it were just another necessary component of life. So few people ever question the importance of economic growth that it has become culturally elevated to the same top tier of the winner’s podium as other “essentials” such as supermarkets and gasoline stations. From this, we might be led to conclude that economic growth is truly an essential feature of our economic landscape.
To give you a good example of this assumption, look at how embedded the concept of growth is in this short passage in a 2010 New York Times editorial by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner:
The process of repair means economic growth will come slower than we would like. But despite these challenges, there is good news to report:
Exports are booming because American companies are very competitive and lead the world in many high-tech industries.
Private job growth has returned—not as fast as we would like, but at an earlier stage of this recovery than in the last two recoveries. Manufacturing has generated 136,000 new jobs in the past six months.
Businesses have repaired their balance sheets and are now in a strong financial position to reinvest and grow .
Major banks, forced by the stress tests to raise capital and open their books, are stronger and more
1 Some use “the Rule of 72,” which is more accurate in some circumstances, but less easy to calculate in our heads, so we’ll stick to 70 for now, as it is perfectly accurate for our purposes.
CHAPTER 6
An Inconvenient Lie
The Truth about Growth
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
Unless we are careful, we might accidentally pursue growth when what we really are seeking is prosperity. The problem is that prosperity has so often accompanied growth that it has become easy to confuse the two.
Growth appears to solve many problems. Growth creates jobs and adds new money to strained government coffers. At the same time that growth occurs, new opportunities often arise. Growth is so central to our economic models and thinking that many economists will, with completely straight faces, refer to recessions as periods of “negative growth.” If that doesn’t reveal a bias toward growth, I don’t know what does. It’s impossible to listen to a presidential press conference on the economy without hearing about growth and how important it is that we create more of it. Economic growth is unquestionably assumed to be desirable, and that’s pretty much all there is to the story.
Anybody who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
—Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) 1
The type of growth upon which our economy depends, exponential growth, is completely unsustainable and will therefore someday stop. Nothing can grow forever, at least nothing that consumes finite resources to fuel its growth. It is my view that this shift to no growth or even negative growth (to use that odd economic term) will happen within the next 20 years, although a transition could happen much sooner, if it didn’t already begin in 2008. Whenever it happens to occur, it will be destructive to wealth and unpleasant for most people. This means that the paradigm of economic growth, along with its presumed necessity and even desirability, needs to be hauled out into the bright light of day and carefully examined.
The imperative for growth is only very rarely questioned, and it’s usually reported in the news as though it were just another necessary component of life. So few people ever question the importance of economic growth that it has become culturally elevated to the same top tier of the winner’s podium as other “essentials” such as supermarkets and gasoline stations. From this, we might be led to conclude that economic growth is truly an essential feature of our economic landscape.
To give you a good example of this assumption, look at how embedded the concept of growth is in this short passage in a 2010 New York Times editorial by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner:
The process of repair means economic growth will come slower than we would like. But despite these challenges, there is good news to report:
Exports are booming because American companies are very competitive and lead the world in many high-tech industries.
Private job growth has returned—not as fast as we would like, but at an earlier stage of this recovery than in the last two recoveries. Manufacturing has generated 136,000 new jobs in the past six months.
Businesses have repaired their balance sheets and are now in a strong financial position to reinvest and grow .
Major banks, forced by the stress tests to raise capital and open their books, are stronger and more
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