Letters from Dr Ted Trainer

What is sustainable development?

Mark Diesendorf’s answer to this question in the previous issue of ERA Review provided useful information on the concept and its history but did not deal with the magnitude of the problem. He did note that “…consumption of goods and services in rich countries must be reduced substantially…” however that does not convey the seriousness of the predicament or the extremely radical nature of the changes that would have to be made.

In Degrowth and Green New Deal etc. literature the predominant assumption, usually implicit, is that the big global problems threatening us can be solved without too much inconvenience and without major change in lifestyles and social systems. This would be correct if the required reductions in resource and environmental impacts were not very big and/or were largely achievable by technical advance, more diligent recycling and tighter regulation. However it should be recognised that the reductions required are enormous, and cannot be achieved without the adoption of new and extremely radical settlement for our economic, political and cultural systems.

Simple Footprint analysis using World Wildlife Fund findings indicates that the amount of productive land being used
now to provide for each Australian is around 810 times the available amount in 2050 if twothirds of the world’s productive land was shared equally by the estimated 10 billion likely to be on earth by then. If consideration of rates of use of other resources along with their declining availability is added, the picture is worse.

In other words, if one is serious about achieving a sustainable and just world order then one must face up to degrowth in rich world levels of resource consumption to levels that are a small proportion of present levels. This cannot be done while retaining present lifestyles and systems. It can only be done if there is transition to very different lifestyles.

Most obviously it cannot be done in/by the current capitalist economic system. The nature of the capitalist economic system we are obliged to work within involves constant and limitless growth in production, consumption and GDP. It is also a system which allows the few who own most of the capital to invest it in, not what is needed by society, but what will maximise their wealth. The inevitable result is skyrocketing inequality, grossly inappropriate development and most people on Earth being deprived of necessities. Most green people, and indeed most within the Degrowth movement, do not seem to confront the necessity to radically change the economic system.

Moreover, the sustainability goal cannot be achieved unless there is also extreme change in other social arrangements. Thus, most people would be obliged to live in small, highly selfsufficient and selfgoverning communities and would have to be happy to live very frugally without any desire to become wealthier. My studies (for instance of egg supply and the remaking of suburbs) detail the way these arrangements would enable the necessary huge reductions to be made in throughput, while improving the quality of life.

The Degrowth movement, let alone the Green New Dealers and most Green people, reveals little or no grasp of the
magnitude and significance of the changes that would be required to achieve their goals. Sufficient degrowth requires scrapping, eliminating most production, consumption, investment, trade and GDP. How are you going to do that in a society that craves increasing wealth and has structures that must have growth or there is chaos? This is the unrecognised “Degrowth Conundrum”.

Central to my Simpler Way Transition Theory is the firm conviction that this society is totally incapable of solving its problems. It fails/refuses to understand their nature, the way capitalism has driven us through the limits to growth. It is dominated by the capital owning class which will not tolerate any transition involving their elimination. It is fiercely committed to affluence and getting richer, precisely the things now causing all our big problems.

The system is now well into self destruction. There is no way of avoiding this now. The main causes are probably not the increasing resource and environmental difficulties and costs, including the need for resource wars, but the deterioration of social cohesion. The accelerating inequality is generating intense anger among the deplorables and thus increasing support for authoritarian leaders promising to “drain the swamps”.

The coming time of great troubles could bring the end of us, but it will open the possibility of transition to sustainable development as it forces communities to try to build local, self sufficient, cooperative, simpler systems. This is happening especially in poor countries. What is to be done is to work at raising awareness of the magnitude of the predicament, the need to abandon many current systems, and of transition to simpler lifestyles and systems as the only hope of eventually getting through.

The required revolution is actually going remarkably well. In recent years there has been rapid increase in discontent with capitalism and in the strength of the degrowth movement. We urgently need more effort going into explaining the existence and benefits of local, cooperative, self-sufficient and simpler ways. My video attempts to do this.