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| The late Donella Meadows. |
Arising from their recent Sydney meeting was a pledge to develop “ambitious but realistic” policies to add more than $US2 trillion to global gross domestic product over five years.
That pledge, if you take note of the realities described by the Club of Rome in its 1974 book “Limits to Growth”, is not only unsustainable, but wholly irresponsible.
The late systems analyst, author, environmental scientist and teacher, Donella Meadows, examined and explained the finitude of earth’s resources, considered present and likely usage, population growth, wrote about her findings and warned the world of difficult times ahead.
Meadows’ work was acclaimed by those aware of the world’s unfolding social and resource difficulties, but subjected to a barrage of criticism from many.
Ms Meadows penned the book in the 70s and although there was then an understanding of the damage caused to our atmosphere by fossil fuels it was not until the eighties the American scientist James Hansen spelt the complications of human activities linking it irrefutably to market-driven growth.
Mr Hockey, his fellow finance ministers and central bankers have, in signing up to boost world growth have simply worsened difficulties the world already faces.
The G20 pledge is populist in that it fits neatly with what has become human nature to have more, but today we know that “more” in its modern sense equates with a damaged climate, manifested as weather foreign to what most are familiar with and upon which humanity depends.
Rather than align themselves with the brutality of unfeeling growth, those who attend such events as the recent G20, need to be considering how nations understand and deal with the certainty of contraction and a world in which resources will become rarer and subsequently more expensive.
Rather than exhorting people to seek solutions to what ails them through growth, they need to work at understanding the “Limits to Growth” and lead a discussion about how people of the world can find contentment through living a more restrained life.
Such a conversation is contrary to the urgings of the market-driven system, but it is a necessary one for if we continue with business as usual and such things as the G20 Pledge, humanity’s grip on this rather slippery slope will be weakened even more.
The courage to address such ideas is in short supply for it demands a break with what exists and a willingness to take society in a fresh and safer direction; a challenge that is beyond most world leaders who do nought but muddy facts through the proselytizing of fallacies.
