C6 of The Great Disruption - The Year That Growth Stopped

In this chapter Gilding argues that 2008 was the year that The Great Disruption started - that these two "crash" indicators occurred...

• Resource limitations forced prices up
• Ecosystem hit tripping points

He also recounts reactions to his arguments.

Ecosystem tripping points

• Melting of northern icecaps accelerates, exposing dark blue ocean which heats faster which accelerates ice melting.
• Melting of frozen tundra accelerates the release of large quantities of methane which is a greenhouse gas which traps heat which accelerates release of methane.
• Ocean acidification increases which reduces the ocean's ability to absorb CO2 which prevents shellfish from forming shells and coral reefs from growing and heats the atmosphere.

Prices Going Up

• Oil becomes increasing difficult to extract - easily accessible oil has all been found, is being used - meaning "peak oil" has or soon will happen. Oil price goes up. (The "new normal" for gas is well over $3 gallon.)
• Global food prices go up (the "new normal" for a meal in a decent dinner is now $10) - because...
there are more people demanding more
there is less arable land (due to development, overpumped aquifers, falling water tables, overallocated rivers, diminishing crop yields, expanding deserts, etc.)
rich people (us) eat more and better food,
corn is diverted to biofuel instead of food.

Reactions

• When he first started presenting his story to social and business leaders Gilding was regarded as "intellectual entertainment" - written off as an "extremist and merchant of doom". Gilding's theory is that these are good people who have invested their professional and personal lives in the notion of growth. It had become a given, a fact of life not to be challenged.
• After the crash of 2008 was well under way, Gilding got different reactions. The same leaders mentioned above felt that something was going - some change had happened. Many agreed in principle with Gilding - in the direction that things were heading, but were more optimistic that something could be done to forestall the ultimate collapse.
• Gilding quotes Thomas Friedman (Flat Earth guy)... "What if the crisis of 2008 represents something more fundamental than a deep recession. What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall - when Mother Nature and the market both said, 'No more.' "

Personal aside

I wonder if the current debt ceiling crisis is not a semi-unconscious reaction to the start of The Great Disruption. Both sides still talk about maintaining growth. Liberals say that we can spend our way back to 2.5% GDP growth and 8% unemployment. The semi-crazy tea party people claim that halting the growth of government will foster economic growth - maybe even a return to a pre-modern utopia where Billy Grahm and The Beaver reign supreme. However I get a sense that the craziest tea party people, the ones with the wildest eyes, those willing to go to the wall know in their non-sentient souls that more going on.

Related books

The smart systems at Amazon tried to sell me these books...

• Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson
• Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Donella Meadows
• Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development by Herman Daly

C3 of The Great Disruption

In Chapter Three of The Great Disruption, Paul Guiding notes that people have trouble understanding dire forecasts of global ecosystem studies because for the most part things look pretty good - at least in the developed part of the world. We are biologically programmed to respond to immediate threats. We don't naturally have the mental equipment to understand anything not happening in front of our noses; such insight has to be acquired. Guiding concludes the chapter by nothing that if we don't accept the science (which is about as unanimous as science gets) and wait for evidence that we can see it will be too late. The great disruption/collapse whatever will be on us. I think he will say in Chapter four that it almost is.

C4 of The Great Disruption

Changing economic/environmental practices has always been framed as a choice. If we change this thing we will avoid that thing - cause something else to happen. We always had a choice. Gilding's point is that the time of choice has passed. We didn't choose and now the results are on us. The changes required at this time are too great - the inertia of systems against change cannot be practically overcome. He says, "This means any hope that we can mobilize the massive intervention required to avert the crisis is a false hope. In combination the evidence all points to one conclusion. We cannot now avoid the the crisis of the Great Disruption."

C5 of The Great Disruption - Addicted to Growth

Gilding quotes a professor named Tim Jackson....

"The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100."

(Yesterday, Bruce the leader of The Thinking Men - our semi-sober book club - and the voracious reader who suggested The Great Disruption sent around one of those email lists comparing things then and now. No air conditioning then, one or two lights per room, one car, no clothes dryer, manual push mowers, one small TV, etc. That's how it was a half century ago.)

Gilding's point is that such expansion cannot continue. It will hit the wall - several walls - the walls of finite reality. (In the last chapter Gilding cited a study which says that we are presently consuming resources at the rate of 1.4 planets.) The underlying issues are the loss of global biodiversity and changes to the global ecosystem. But the one that will grab us (by throat or crotch - pick your sensitivity) is the end of growth.

We are wedded to growth and its paired drivers, consumerism and stuff. Stuff, in quantity and quality, defines us. It is how we judge ourselves and other people - the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, where we eat, where we shop (Harris Teeter -vs- WalMart!). Growth is key to economic policy. An economy that does not grow at least two percent a year is a failed economy. Business is predicated on ever-increasing demand. Expanding populations require growth to create new jobs for new entrants into the workforce. But the demands of efficiency push automation which reduces the available jobs.

It is like a giant, system-wide Ponzi scheme that is about to collapse. It will probably go down in a non-linear fashion (maybe precipitated by a "Black Swan" event - maybe what is going on right now in Washington is that event) because that's how the curve goes - slow on the way up and fast on the way down with random stutter at the end - not a neat bell shape at all.

The other point Gilding makes is that none of this will be easy. He says that we are essentially addicted to growth and that like any addict will not willingly give up our drug. We will lie, fight, deny the reality in front of our noses. We will have to hit the walls of finite reality several times, really mess ourselves up before the truth penetrates our bloody, battered, dim-witted heads.

Multiple studies have shown that after basic needs are met (about $15K Per capita) increased wealth does not buy happiness.

A British study indicates that the "loneliness index" goes up with increased wealth.

Founders of economics did not propose continual growth. John Stuart Mill said that a "stationary state of capital and wealth... implies no stationary state of human improvement". John Maynard Keynes thought that the "economic problem" would be solved and that society would then "prefer to devote further energies to non-economic purposes".

And some quotes from Homer-Dixon's Upside of Down (another book read by the semi-sober Thinking Men - a much more elegant book in my estimation - the language of which makes you wonder where Gilding got the idea for The Great Disruption):

"Despite the fact that our lives are saturated with stuff, that we've already reached a level of material abundance unimaginable to previous generations, and that more money and possessions add little to our happiness, we must be made (by business) to feel chronically discontented with our lot."

"Our economic role in this culture of consumerism is to be little more than walking appetites that serve the function of maintaining our economy's throughput."

"Our psychological state is comparable to that of drug addicts needing a fix: buying things doesn't really make us happy except perhaps for the moment after the purchase. But we do it over and over anyway."

"Why? There are many reasons. But the central and often overlooked one, I think, is that consumerism helps anesthetize us to the dread of empty lives - lives that modern capitalism and consumerism have themselves helped empty of meaning."