Lorna Green lives close to nature and is the author of the recently published Earth Age, Paulist Press.
MANY ECONOMISTS FREELY ADMIT THEY do not understand economics. Perhaps this is because economists have never understood the Earth, the very source of our wealth, and they have seldom factored the Earth into their accounts.
A recent New York Times article asked if the human race was doomed to extinction.
If present practices continue, we are. We require new ideas, and new practices, if we are to survive here.
We live in a unique moment of history, a moment of grace for ourselves and the planet. Past economic thinking has resulted in a civilization bent on destroying the planet. Our task now is to reconcile human civilization with the planet. That requires economists to completely rethink economics, in accord with what we know about the reality of the Earth. The challenge is a great one, for the future of human life on Earth is in the balance.
When the premises of economics were laid down, little was known about the Earth or our relationship to it. Earth was said to have been formed in 7 days, to be "Matter", a linear, atomic array of objects, all disconnected from each other. Humans were the "highest" beings in creation, the only ones "made in the image of God", meant to "have dominion over the Earth and subdue it". We were, in fundamental ways, separate from everything else, of a loftier cast. We were "lords and masters" of the planet, which was made expressly for us, to do with what we would.
These basic ideas about Earth and ourselves have fuelled economics and brought us into the present crisis on the planet. That crisis, like the negative result of an experiment, calls these ideas into question.
Modern science has a new story about the Earth. The universe is believed to have originated in a gigantic explosion some 20 billion years ago, and to have evolved to its present state of complexity through gradual changes. The Earth has been evolving for 5 billion years, complex forms emerging from simpler. The immense time of the process has ennabled the planet to achieve a magnificent inter-balanced, inter-connected, interdependent array of living beings of all kinds.
The planet has done all this without any help from us. If the whole 5 billion years of evolution is plotted on the course of a single day, human beings arrive on the planet at 11 seconds to midnight. We are the newcomer here, who does not know its rightful place. We have been in an identity crisis ever since we arrived here, laying waste to everything around us, a poor credential for industry's call for "managing".
The modern crisis is turning previous conceptions upside down. When the toxins we put on the land in order to get more than the land can naturally provide, return to us in our food and drinking water, we know we are not "separate" from creation, but we are deeply connected to the Earth. Far from being lords of the planet, we are the most vulnerable, absolutely dependent animal of all, at the top of all food chains. Our poisons are concentrated millions of times by small organisms and passed up the food chains to us. The planet is essential to our survival. We cannot be healthy without a healthy planet. The well-being of the Earth is the bottom line on all corporations.
The crisis we have caused for the Earth challenges economists to revise the ideas of traditional economics to take into account the new, emerging understanding of the nature of the Earth, and our relationship to it.
I will offer six guiding principles about the Earth to be considered in any fundamental rethinking.
First: The Earth is not a linear, atomic collection of objects, but an organic whole, in which every part is related to, and dependent on, every other part. If you poison one species, the poison is spread to all species. James Lovelock, a British scientist, proposes that the entire planet is one living organism. It self-regulates, self-teaches, and to a point, can self-heal. It can die. Human beings are part of that organism, cells in the body of the Earth, utterly dependent on its integrity for survival.
Second: This beautiful sapphire planet is small. It has limits of tolerance to damage, as do all living beings. Its goods are abundant, but they are limited and if we are to have them, we have to respect the Earth's seasons, its cyclic activities, its needs to lie fallow. "Growth", conceived of as "more of same", is inappropriate on such a planet. The planet cannot support any more of suburbia. The concept of "growth" needs to be rethought, and better measures found for the true wealth of a nation, the hours of joy its citizens experience, and not their possessions.
Third: The human alone does not seem to have been the goal of evolution, but the whole inter-connected array. We need to cultivate an appreciation for the other species who share the planet with us. Every species is the best there is at something, birds at flying, antelopes at running.
Fourth: Living systems are time-developmental, and that development is irreversible. What we are doing cannot be undone, and every action we take has consequences for the future. Species lost will disappear forever. It took the Earth 60 million years to create rainforest; we have destroyed it in 60. It will not return. Moreover, we are changing the chemistry of the planet. In all of the five billion year evolution of Earth, it has never experienced our poisons. Will it know how to degrade them? We may be irreversibly poisoning the planet, weakening all life forms for generations to come.
Fifth: Economists need to know something about entropy. Entropy is a measure of the irreversible disorder of a system. Living things create order, decreasing entropy. Overnight we are converting the energy-rich beings of the planet, millions of years in the making, into unusable junk, increasing entropy planet-wide.
Sixth: Reciprocity is the law of life, give and take. The human attitude to the planet has been merely: take. Take whatever we can for ourselves.
We are part of the planet. The planet evolved this rich biodiversity without any help from human beings, and knows how to "manage" itself. Only the Earth knows how to make a rainforest. We are the late newcomer, who has yet to learn how to fit in with the other species who already know their place.
The planet is primary, the human is secondary. Economics needs to turn from its human-centered perspective on everything we do, and make a 180 degree shift to an Earth-centered perspective on ourselves. Traditional economics needs to be revised from this new perspective.
The crisis in the Earth calls economists to be planetary, to serve not just the human, but every species living here.
At this point, the human task is to bring our civilisation into balance, into harmony, with the limits of the living Earth. Many think we can continue forcing the planet to meet our demands, imposing upon it human notions of right order. "The forest would look better tidied up;" "Wilderness would look better paved." This is not possible. The Earth is our life-support system. We are too recent an arrival here to have the wisdom to "manage" the planet. The call for "sustainable economies" is a call for the human to develop sustainability here. That means our human economies have to fit in with, to imitate, the Great Economy of Earth.
In the Great Economy of the Earth, nothing is wasted, the waste from one organism is food for another. In this economy, life processes are clean, energy-efficient. This economy benefits every species, on the planet, not just the human.
Developing sustainability requires setting limits on ourselves. In nature, only cancer cells grow without limit.That means knowing our real needs for the Earth's resources. On a living planet, every being plays some role, some function for the whole. When we look at old growth, we think only in terms of board feet. But indigenous people everywhere have prophecies that when the old growth forest is gone, the planet will die. Why? Because the old growth is like the native elders, it contains the wisdom of the entire biosphere. To us, the forest means a few dollars; its value to the planet is beyond price.
So we must ask, before we cut, net or shoot something: what part is it playing in the overall economy of the planet? A cyclical, rather than a linear economy, can cut down our requirements for raw materials. Industries have to use each other's wastes. We need to reduce, reuse, recycle and refuse at every level.
Sustainability means knowing the true cost of manufacturing an item. Such includes its damage to the environment. If the true cost of an aerosol can had been calculated, it would never have been made in the first place.
Sustainability depends not just on the continuous development of new technologies, but the development of green technologies. The German experience suggests that green, clean, efficient technologies, imitating nature's ways, are actually cheaper.
Paul Hawken (The Ecology of Commerce) argues that no system is fully sustainable. We are either degrading the planet or restoring it. Up until now, we have been "taking". Our planet is seriously degraded. We need to start restoring to give energy back to the planet. We have to allow Earth time and space to heal itself, assist forest regeneration, wetland regeneration, and so on.
Our attitudes must follow from the fact the planet is small. Quantitative, material goods are limited, but the qualitative goods, the joys of going to symphonies, walking in the woods, are infinite. On small planets, nothing can be "thrown away". Corporations can no longer "cut and run",' there is nowhere to run to. Earth is our only home here in the darkness of space, it is time we settled down as though we meant to stay here. "Ecology" and "Economics" have the same Greek root, oecos, meaning "home". If we managed our businesses the way we have "managed" the planet, we would be bankrupt by now.
Present economies depend on inflaming human appetites out of all proportion to basic human needs. Ghandi: "There is enough for everyone's needs, but not for everyone's greed". Thoreau thought economics merely a means to the end of "keeping in the warm" - food on our plates, clothes on our backs, shelter over our heads. After that, we could get on to the true creative and spiritual goals of human life. Today, economics has become the whole of human life, and ravaging the planet its first priority. What are human beings meant to be doing on the organic Earth? Certainly not, like a cancerous cell, consuming its own host! A sustainable economics has to mirror the Great Economy of Nature in satisfying human needs, not human greed.
Let economists become planetary. Design economies which will satisfy human needs and nature's needs at the same time, economies which benefit both the human and the Earth, in which the needs of every species on the Earth are satisfied. Work creatively with the limits of a living planet, to truly "care for the home", which belongs to others, as well as ourselves.
If our present practices continue, three scenarios are possible for life on Earth. First, the human race may well become extinct, like the dinosaurs who were once supreme on this planet. Second, the Earth itself may die. Third, both the planet and ourselves may persist in a highly degraded state.
None of these scenarios is attractive. And none needs to be. The means are there to limit population; the sun and wind can provide clean energy; green technologies are emerging; fuel-efficient cars are ready for market. And the new ideas we need are beginning to appear.
We were not meant to consume the planet. We were meant to be the animal that celebrates, revels in the glory and beauty of the Earth, and in each other, and to nurture both.
Let us turn away from our self-centered cities, the regimen of the work-day, the human fabricated order, into that greater Order which God, not human beings, has made, with which the human has now to align itself. Let economists remember how much they really love this planet, and let them re-design economics accordingly.
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