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Society is faced with a profound dilemma – one that is sharpened considerably by the twin threats of financial crisis and climate change. The dilemma is this: to resist economic growth is to risk economic and social collapse, but to pursue it is to endanger the ecosystems on which we depend for long-term survival.
For a long time this problem has gone unrecognised in mainstream policy or in public debate. When reality begins to impinge on the collective consciousness, the best suggestion offered has been to somehow separate growth from its material impacts (and continue to do so while the economy expands exponentially.)
But this proposition has to be tested. Against historical reality, technological possibility, demand for future resources, ecological targets, and the social and economic forces that drive society forwards.
The analysis by Chris Goodall described in the Guardian this week is an essential starting point to address the most critical question of all: can a society based on growth really make that separation fast enough to avoid ecological catastrophe? This is exactly the kind of analysis that is often sadly lacking at policy level and desperately needed as the basis for a green economy.
It's comforting to believe that we've weaned ourselves from an addiction to material stuff. But historical analysis shows that any declines in UK material consumption are mostly rather small: a matter of a few per cent over a decade or so. In many cases, these numbers are smaller than the margins of statistical error in the measures themselves. And, when you factor in increasing carbon intensity in import partners such as China, they disappear altogether.
There are other reasons to be sceptical of the rosy "peak stuff" message. For instance, much of the UK's growth through the boom years was built on financial sector expansion that was either illusory in terms of real wealth, or built on extracting rents from global commodity markets. In other words, not only was the growth unsustainable in ecological terms, it was directly responsible for the crisis itself, and has left us poorly equipped even for economic sustainability. One way or another, extracting and using more resources abroad is still the basis for our home lifestyles. The underlying model for the globalised economy remains unchanged.
The net impact of that globalised economy is barely contestable: global resource extraction is rising inexorably in almost all categories. Building infrastructure in the UK may well have declined, but global cement extraction just before the financial crisis was more than 125% above its 1990 level; iron ore was almost 100% higher; and bauxite, copper and nickel more than 70% higher. Carbon emissions were 40% higher than their 1990 levels. The only commodities in retreat (such as phosphates) are those where scarcity is already a real issue.
In short, it's quite clear that there is considerable potential for technological change. And we already have at our disposal a range of useful options: renewable, resource-efficient, low-carbon technologies capable of weaning us from our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels. These options have to provide the platform for the transition to a sustainable economy. But the idea that they will emerge spontaneously by giving free reign to the market is patently false. So while Goodall's analysis is valuable, there is only cold comfort in these statistics.
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