On our problems and their (hypothetical) solution

1. The overall situation

I have the word ‘hypothetical’ in the title of these pieces because I doubt the problems of the world will be solved before the ecological and human disasters already happening in Africa and India and parts of China become more widespread. Part of the trouble is that the problems are not universally acknowledged. Denial cannot  lead to solutions. The will to solve them is lacking at both the political and social levels. How widespread and serious the problems become before serious efforts are made to address them is an open question. Despite this, it seems worthwhile to think about how they could be solved. Maybe some of the ideas will be useful to someone.

Large numbers of people, especially among the educated classes — those the conservative (‘right wing’) press calls the chattering classes — are well aware of the problems that humans have generated for themselves and this planet. We know that the way we live now is unsustainable: we’re using renewable resources faster than they can be replaced – destroying fish stocks and forests and using up non-renewables, ­like oil and phosphates for fertilizer, without putting enough effort into solving the problem of what we will substitute for them when they’re all used up. We also know about the consequences of unbridled resource use, in terms of pollution and land degradation and, among the nastier results of human behaviour, the gross pollution of the world by plastic — thrown away to degrade the land and float in the oceans as millions of tons of long-lived garbage, killing huge numbers of sea birds and turtles and dolphins that ingest it.

Most of those who know about all this are worried by it, and there are indications that their numbers are growing, but they’re still small compared to the number of those who don’t understand the consequences of human behaviour or, in many cases, don’t want to know. Many people also realise that unbridled materialism —the accumulation of possessions and indulgence in the luxurious lifestyles that the well-to-do in developed countries take for granted — is not necessarily conducive to happy and contented lives. To a large degree it’s those luxurious lifestyles that are responsible for the pollution and ecosystem degradation; to maintain them demands inputs of energy and resources at greater rates than the world can sustain. Consumerism and luxurious living are the hallmarks of success in our societies; the idea that people should forego buying anything they want has been anathema until recently. A ‘quotation of the day’ in the New York Times, recently, provided a neat summary of the situation: "It was nothing to buy whatever we wanted. Now we just think about what we really need.” Clearly it’s time that everyone thought about what they really need.

None of that will be news to most people. The problem is: how to break the pattern and change the model. Humans being what they are, there’s no point in proposing solutions that would be unacceptable to all but the most idealistic individuals. Nevertheless, the solution — insofar as there is one — must lie in reducing our standards of living, and altering the way the economies of the developed world function. And that has to be achieved without reducing the opportunities for everyone to find what is called ‘gainful employment’; work that pays them enough to keep themselves and their families in reasonable comfort in terms of housing, food and clothing. What constitutes ‘reasonable comfort’, and how much more than that we can expect will certainly be matters for argument, but it’s probably realistic to assume that those whose jobs in themselves offer satisfaction are likely to be content with less in the way of material possessions than those whose work is nothing more than a means to an end. Unfortunately, for most people work is, in varying degrees, tedious, tiring drudgery or, at best, an acceptable way of passing the time with the benefit of providing an income. Ideally, it should be fulfilling and rewarding, providing a sense of accomplishment, of something worthwhile achieved on a timescale satisfying to the individual.

Politicians tend to be sensitive to joblessness and, when the numbers of people without jobs get too high — as is currently the case in the United States, where the jobless rate is around 9% (exactly how that is calculated is not clear to the general public) — there is much pontificating about the need to create jobs, although how this is to be done usually remains opaque. The usual approach is to try to generate more (conventional) economic growth, more consumption. The same old, same old story. But, besides the fact that ever-increasing consumption is unsustainable, the advocates of economic growth tend to ignore the fact that, in the United States and much of Europe in recent years, it has been funded by excessive borrowing, and the resulting debt and has got those countries into serious difficulties. So we need to think again. The aim must be to create millions of satisfying jobs that that lead to more contented and equitable societies and are consistent with reduced consumption of energy and resources. This alone will need a considerable re-think about economics.

I don’t accept the bland (and, in my view, stupid and shortsighted) assurances of various economists, right-wing commentators and red-necked conservatives that all will be well if we can maintain economic growth and consumer spending. The idea that economic growth can continue indefinitely, which is the assumption underlying the way most modern societies are run, is completely unrealistic. Economic growth reflects the capacity of the economy to produce goods and services. It therefore reflects the consumption of energy and materials, as well as human inputs as services. It is modern consumption of raw materials and energy that cannot be sustained.

In seeking solutions for the world’s problems it is sometimes tempting to entertain the idea that we might free ourselves entirely from the tyranny of economics, but that isn’t a useful approach: economics (which should not be confused with economic growth) is a system of assigning values to goods, services and labour; human interactions have been governed by economic systems for millennia. But it’s not an inviolate set of rules; the values assigned to particular goods or activities change with time and from place to place. We have to bring about changes in our economic systems that are based around the re-ordering of values. For example, we will have to change the — generally very low — values we assign to environmental services. We will also have to re-value upwards (i.e. make much more expensive) goods  that use a great deal of energy in their manufacture, including plastics made from oil.

This will require political action as well as changes in consumer demand, neither of which will come easily. Nevertheless, it seems worth thinking about the sort of changes and action that are required. It’s also worth thinking about the procedures we would need to follow to make progress; I have some comment on that later in this piece. At the moment there’s no indication, in any developed society, that the political will to restructure society exists; most politicians are concerned primarily — if not entirely — with their own influence, prosperity and political survival. These are seen to depend on pandering to their electorates and being seen to be acting in the (perceived) best short-term and selfish economic interests of those electorates. Leadership and vision are conspicuously lacking in virtually all the developed world —at least in the democratic countries, where focus groups and opinion polls substitute for political leadership. In the United States the whole political process is distorted by the financial power of special interest lobbyists.

Following on from that, it is also essential that international banking and finance systems, with their arcane and complex packaged securities, bonds and derivatives and structured debt packages, be brought under control to halt the distortion of markets that they cause. The behaviour of these institutions has undoubtedly contributed to the extent of current problems, since they represent and enhance the delusion that money and materialism are the ultimate arbiters of value.