Dear Joe Biden and Kamala Harris: Build Forward — to a Sustainable Future

This is the beginning of the end for the paradigm of infinite growth.

Dear Mr. President and Ms. Vice President:

The world is watching as you assume U.S. leadership with the promise to “build our country back better than it was before….” Your Jobs and Economic Recovery Plan states:

“This is no time to just build back to the way things were before…. This is the moment to imagine and build a new American economy for our families and the next generation.”

We couldn’t agree more.

There are crises at hand demanding we imagine and build a newer and better society. We want to point these out and recommend appropriate action. Donald Trump said the “Biden agenda” will “kill everything.” The actual fact is, the prior administration’s prioritization of economic growth and corporate profits over sound environmental stewardship has already been killing everything. We’re in the midst of record-breaking mass extinction of other species, and that extinction appears likely to also swallow humankind — if you don’t lead an unprecedented course correction.

We depend on nature to survive. Nature is telling us we’re violating that basic reality — through increasing climate chaos, pandemics, species loss, freshwater crises, soil loss, deforestation, ocean acidification, and pollution of all kinds. We encourage you to acknowledge these global existential environmental crises.

THE FUTURE: BLEAK OR BEAUTIFUL
The failure of policymakers the world over to address these crises’ root causes is effectively checking the box next to “bleak future” for all our children. We think you know this is no time for a continuation of “business as usual.” But the needed corrections go far beyond solar panels and protection of wildlands. We want to be sure you know just how dramatic the course correction must be.

WE CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH
(it’s much more inconvenient than we thought)
A LOT about the way we’ve organized modern society is unsustainable. It’s past time to acknowledge this, and for industrialized nations to adjust goals and policies to match this reality.

SUSTAINABILITY: Behaving in a way that preserves the ability of all future generations to access nature, meet needs, and live decent lives, equal to or better than that of the current generation.

It’s pretty hard to get elected or re-elected if you tell the full truth about the changes we all need to make. That should only be an issue in this time of crisis because sensible goals and policies must continue beyond four years. The more immediate concern is that advancing the dramatic policy changes required today will result in congressional gridlock and massive public resistance. People just aren’t ready for the full truth.

Still, dramatic policy shifts that recognize the impossibility of perpetual economic and population growth are ultimately essential, if the human experiment is to continue without catastrophe. So what the world, the country, and our children need you to do is spend the next few years educating the public, congress, pundits and journalists about the serious nature of our predicament and the rational response. YOU need to understand all this, so you can LEAD us out of the wilderness. Change the national conversation.

OVERSHOOT:
The scale of human civilization has outgrown the ability of the planet to sustainably meet our needs. Policymakers don’t acknowledge it, and are probably blissfully unaware. The size of the global economy and world population are today at unsustainable levels. Goals and public policy for every nation, including the U.S., should be informed by this.

Numerous scientific studies and papers are documenting overshoot. Read up on this, and seek advisors who will speak truthfully about it. It’s high time for policymakers to heed what science is telling us. If your economic advisors insist that economic and population growth can, and must, go on, it’s time to get new advisors.

Recommended reading:
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future — by 17 respected scientists
The Climate Emergency: 2020 in Review — an assessment by five leading scientists, published in Scientific American
Living Planet Report (2020)
Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 (2020)
World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency (2019)
World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: Second Notice (2017)
Earth Overshoot Day — Global Footprint Network
The Limits to Growth — MIT/Club of Rome Study

ECONOMIC GROWTH
When you’re in overshoot, robust economic growth is not a healthy pursuit. The healthy economy of the 21st century is one that meets everyone’s basic needs — without breaking the back of our planet’s critical, life-supporting ecosystems (including disruption of the climate). Celebration and pursuit of GDP growth must end. The global economy needs to contract back to a sustainable level, and that means all the industrialized, high-income economies of the world must contract.

GDP is not a meaningful metric for the goals of a healthy 21st century economy. Talk to enlightened economic advisors about better measures — among them, Genuine progress indicators (GPI), Happy Planet Index (HPI), Sustainable National Income (SNI), Human Development Index (HDI). Start changing the national conversation by eliminating “grow the economy” from your vocabulary. Replace it with “create a healthy economy.” Alert your communication team.

Recommended Reading:
Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet — by Tim Jackson
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist — by Kate Raworth
Managing Without Growth — by Peter Victor
Going beyond Gross Domestic Product as an indicator to bring coherence to the Sustainable Development Goals
A Steady-State Analysis of the 2020 Presidential Election — by Brian Czech

POPULATION GROWTH:
You really have to understand this issue to make informed policy decisions or to talk about it. The basics:

• World population is still growing, about 1% annually (80 million), adding another U.S. population to the planet every 4 years.
• U.S. population is also still growing. Pre-COVID, we were adding about 30,000 per week.
• Birth rates are what have been dropping — almost everywhere.
• Educating and empowering women, an important goal in itself, will result in even lower birth rates, but we need to do more.
• The world is overpopulated. Most countries are, too.
• If a nation’s ecological footprint exceeds its biocapacity, then it’s overpopulated (unless it’s in the process of scaling back everyone’s lifestyle to a sustainable level).
• Dropping birth rates don’t immediately translate into contracting population numbers. Eventually they do.
• A contracting population on an overpopulated planet is exactly what we need (in spite of the relatively minor challenges they present to our Ponzi economy).

Growth-addicted economists, stuck in 20th century thinking, will raise alarms about a contracting population inhibiting economic growth. Please resist those alarms. An economy needs only to be sized to meet the needs of the population. A smaller population can be well-served by a smaller economy. If we don’t embrace contracting population, then we all must vow to live like paupers in order to avoid destroying our planet’s critical, life-supporting ecosystems. Seek and celebrate a contracting population resulting from informed and freely made family-size choices. Young people today are moving in that direction. Support them because this is a trend we must welcome.

END OF GROWTH — BY DESIGN OR BY DISASTER
There is little doubt that in this century we’ll see the end of growth. It can’t go on forever, and the evidence is overwhelming today that if we don’t adjust our goals and behavior to embrace the end of growth, nature will bring it about in a far less pleasant manner.

Recommended reading:
The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality — by Richard Heinberg
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet — by Bill McKibben

Our people do need to hear the truth, the one told by our scientists. Please spend your time in the White House changing the national conversation, so that by the time you’re ready to leave, we’ll all be embracing the truly dramatic changes we need to make.

“Things are much too bad for pessimism,” according to James Gustave Speth (a White House advisor to multiple presidents; his The Joyful Economy is another important read). I can think of no better way to close than to quote Speth:

“Things are much too bad for pessimism….we desperately need a new American Dream — a dream of an America where the pursuit of happiness is sought not in more getting and spending but in the growth of human solidarity, devoted friendship, and meaningful accomplishment; where the average person is empowered to achieve his or her human potential; where the benefits of economic activity are widely and equitably shared; where democracy and civic participation flourish at all levels; where the environment is sustained for current and future generations; and, where the virtues of simple living, community self-reliance, good fellowship, and respect for nature predominate. These traditions do not always prevail today, but they are not dead. They await us, and indeed they are currently being awakened across America.”

Dave Gardner is executive director of World Population Balance. He co-hosts the GrowthBusters podcast about sustainable living and The Overpopulation Podcast. This essay was also published at worldpopulationbalance.org