Can Ecological Economics Provide a Plan of Actions to Change the Direction of Our Overshoot Culture?

No, and sorry about that

The context of this note is: Climate Change, Overshoot and the Demise of Large Cities, by William Rees

Compared to conventional economists, Herman Daly, Robert Dietz, and Brian Czech are far better at thinking ecologically than conventional economists (which isn’t saying much). They are well known as ecological economists and have offered 15 policy recommendations that will “keep our counties great” provided the counties agree to make ecological economics the default policy provider to guide each county (a geographic area within a state or country that is used for administrative purposes) or country (a distinct geographical area with its own administrative government and people) “onto the straight path of a steady state economy.”

I’m not an ecological economist nor supporter, but I did attend one ISEE (International Society for Ecological Economics) convergence in Puebla Mexico in 2018. William Rees has taught ecological economics but was not in attendance.

I view conventional economics as a “pretend science.” Read Bill Rees’ article in MAHB: David Suzuki Is Right: Neoliberal Economics Are ‘Pretend Science’. In 2018 I brought this article to Charlie Hall’s attention and he commented in support (he knows Bill, bias noted).

Hall is founder of the only non-pretend science of economics I know of (BioPhysical Economics). He failed to bring ecological economists around to a better view (much less other conventional economists). His mentor (Howard T. Odum) had failed to bring conventional ecologists around to a better view of an energy-based systems ecology.

The ISEE folks do not view conventional economics as a pretend science as they are the ecological faction within conventional economics, the one that all other conventional economists mostly ignore, as do the politicians and policy makers they serve with to help grow the economy.

There is no one on the political spectrum demanding rapid economic contraction to a steady state (as distinct from an imagined transition to a steady state) economy who couldn’t be run over like an ant by a semitruck.

If Herman Daly had been made World Dictator in 1972, when we knew enough to slam on the brakes, the world maybe could have transitioned to a near steady state economy followed by barely noticeable degrowth/contraction of the global economy over the coming millennium.

Why? Because in 1972 we were already in overshoot. How far into overshoot depends on when we went into overshoot (experts can guess, but none determine when — only Nature does). Some think we went into overshoot about 1970. But that means you think that the 1970 population of 3,694,683,794 times the per capita consumption of energy and stuff then (in US, per capita energy consumption, over 80% fossil fuels then as now, peaked in 1979) is sustainable without any fossil fuel use or mining of metals, most minerals and materials.

Sorry, but such a 1970-centric view is biophysically delusional, i.e. not even wrong. Even if we could stop population growth at 8.3 billion and reduce per capita consumption by 225% so P x C (population times consumption) is the same as in 1970, we cannot plan on continued P x C at a 1970 level, nor long term of any mined materials with a few exceptions such as salt mined from evaporation basins filled at king tides and allowed to evaporate (it will be a no fossil fueled world) to then be mined from the salt flats (think mostly men with Chinese wheelbarrows moving bags of salt to a ship that sails to a port as distribution hub). Wherever the salt is consumed and excreted, it eventually ends back in the ocean, so such salt production is sustainable at a steady state limited to salt evaporation area and rate of evaporation.

If ISEE was actually ecological (ecolate, systems ecology literate), they would plan to reduce human population to a level that both caused no species extinctions nor prevented new species from evolving to replace those already lost to the Anthropocene mass extinction event.

This is the precondition for not degrading environmental productivity of the system for all life, i.e. of being under carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is not the maximum human population that can be supported by diverting all possible environmental productivity towards supporting humans, unless you think modern humans get to define carrying capacity.

20k years ago there were no domesticants except a few dogs and early modern humans whose biomass was less then today’s remnant elephant biomass.

If the presence of humans within the biosphere is to cause no environmental degradation, then the maximum human population is in the 7 to 35 million range per best guess application of systemic management principles. I’m guessing the ISEE will side with conventional ecologists whose salary prevents them also from understanding metastatic modernity.

We all live in, and are products of, a monetary culture.

We cannot transition to a steady state economy to avoid overshoot. We are well into a condition of overshoot which has no solution that would be considered acceptable to modern humans. It has an outcome — persistence or extinction (and Gaia won’t ask modern humans to vote on what their outcome should be).

We are mostly all products of a car culture, so allow the Beloved One, Car, to help you understand overshoot. Overshoot is analogous to stopping distance, the distance you will go in a car under full braking before stopping. In ideal conditions a car might stop in 300 ft. if traveling at a speed of 65 mph.

So if you are 301 ft. from a concrete wall when you slam on the brakes, you may be able to back up and continue on because you did not exceed carrying capacity (stopping distance). If at 300 ft. from the wall you realize you have a problem and slam on the brakes at 285 ft. from the wall due to reaction delays, you will hit it, but thanks to your quick actions and having functioning airbags with your seatbelt on, you may walk away from the wreckage. The car may even still be running and drivable.

But let’s say you, the bus driver, are not Howard T. Odum. Someone in the back of the bus by the name of Thomas Malthus tells you you have a problem when you are 300 ft. from the wall and you say, “What problem?”

You are about 65 ft. from the wall when Paul Ehrlich and Donella Meadows note that there are too many people consuming (and polluting) too much stuff, and you should really slam on the breaks. So you form a group of ecological economists to propose that a decision be made on the braking issue.

You are 13 ft. from the wall when William Rees notes that we seem to be too clever by half and not nearly smart enough to even tap on the brakes. A tenth of a second passes and you have a clever reply when, about four words into your reply, our MTI (modern techno-industrial) society bus hits the wall while almost everyone is distracted by important questions about who gets to sit in which seat, and for how long, to be fair and equitable.

Welcome to the modern metastatic human predicament.

[PS: The only reason I have to string words together is as click bait to lure readers to click on links to stuff that may matter, so feel free to scan and just click on links.]

CASSE (Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy) top 15 policy recommendations: [as copied from CASSE]

1. Formally adopt the steady state economy as the overarching economic goal. In the USA, for example, this should be specified in legislation, namely a Steady State Economy Act.
2. Maintain a network of conservation areas sufficient in size and diversity to ensure the long-term provision of vital ecosystem services.
3. Stabilize population, and aim for a long-term population size that enables a high standard of living for everyone without undermining ecological systems and the life-support services they provide.
4. Gradually reset existing fiscal, monetary, and trade policy levers from growth toward a steady state. For example, manage the money supply and redevelop the tax code with the new macroeconomic policy goal as a guide.
5. Limit the range of inequality in income and wealth, including both a minimum and maximum allowable income. Implement tax reforms to tax “bads” (e.g., pollution and depletion of natural resources) rather than goods (e.g., income from wages).
6. Employ cap-auction-trade systems in the commons sector for allocating basic resources. Set caps based on biophysical limits. Use auctions to distribute rights to extract resources. Equitably redistribute auction payments through public trusts. Implement a trading system for extraction rights to achieve efficient allocation of resources to those uses with the highest demand.
7. Establish a more flexible working day, week, and year to provide more opportunities for people to decide how to use their own time and to alleviate employment pressures.
8. Overhaul banking regulations, starting with gradual elimination of fractional reserve banking, such that the monetary system moves away from a debt structure that requires continuous economic growth.
9. Adjust zoning policies to limit sprawl and promote energy conservation.
10. Continue to monitor GDP, but interpret it as a measure of the size of the economy and an indicator of environmental impact. Use other indices to measure economic welfare and social progress, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator.
11. Prevent unconstrained capital mobility so that financial resources are more directly tied to the real assets they represent.
12. Work toward full internalization of costs in prices (e.g., costs associated with environmental protection and fair labor laws), and adopt compensating tariffs to protect efficient national policies of cost internalization from standards-lowering competition from other countries.
13. Institute policies that move away from globalization and toward localization to conserve energy resources, provide high-quality local jobs, and maintain local decision-making authority.
14. Limit the scope of advertising to prevent unnecessary demand stimulation and wasteful consumption.
15. Establish a Bureau of Population and Consumption to replace the Council of Economic Advisers and to report on sustainability criteria.

‘What is the general answer? Eject economic expansionism, stop growth, use available energies for cultural conversion to steady state, seek out the condition now that will come anyway, but by our service be our biosphere’s handmaiden anew.’ — Howard T. Odum, Energy, Ecology, & Economics, 1973

Given that 52 years ago we weren’t listening to Nature who has all the answers (and still aren’t), to update, “… stop growth, contract the human population/economy, use available energies for….”

Odum guessed, in the 1960s, that a sustainable human population, if all planetary environmental productivity was diverted to support humanity, was maybe 500 million, so he coulda, woulda, shoulda noted that degrowth will need to precede conversion to a steady state. But doing so would have caused too many amygdalas to hijack too many prefrontal cortexes. He never published his maximum human population best guess.

Should Earth’s biosphere exist to serve human short-term self interests? If you think so, then you are a metastatic modern human. If not, then 15 million renormalized human animals leaving room for Nature, for maximum empower of the Gaian system, would be way eudemonic to consider.