Capitalism as if the world matters

[newbie]

If you want to avoid acts of faith, then the trick is to get quantitative. The best sustainable yields/hectare I know of are from John Jeavons/Alan Chadwick's bunch, who've been doing this stuff for about 40 yrs now. They get about 10,000 sq ft per capita to feed one human sustainably, given pessimistic but reasonable assumptions about irrigation etc. We've got about twice that per capita right now globally, not all of it good land, but their method improves land very effectively over a relatively short period.

Their method is more like gardening than farming though, so you could assume about 10hrs per capita per week in food production activities.

I live in the middle of a city of 8 million people. How long is the travel time to my 10,000 sq ft?

Envisioning the move from the city/hinterland model of history to a sustainable future of evenly distributed self-regulating communities requires an act of faith.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I live in the middle of a city of 8 million people. How long is the travel time to my 10,000 sq ft?

Envisioning the move from the city/hinterland model of history to a sustainable future of evenly distributed self-regulating communities requires an act of faith.

You might want to read this. After the fall of the Soviet Union and with intensified US embargo efforts, Cuba lost most of its oil, pesticide and fertiliser imports. So they found a solution based largely around urban agriculture. it wasn't fun, but they pulled it off. source check the pdf linked at the bottom of the page for the details.

 

[newbie]

I'm not convinced that it's inherently unattainable. In my view, massive social change is a prerequisite to a sustainable society and has benefits to the majority of people in and of itself.

Global sustainability will only come about through both massive population drop and a major reduction the living standards of developed countries. To presume that the majority of people will want massive social change in this country if they understand that their living standards will drop dramatically is the sort of leap of faith I'm reluctant to take.

 

[citydreams]

Global sustainability will only come about through both massive population drop and a major reduction the living standards of developed countries.

Why do you not hold hope for technological answers to sustainability issues?

 

[catch]

Global sustainability will only come about through both massive population drop and a major reduction the living standards of developed countries. To presume that the majority of people will want massive social change in this country if they understand that their living standards will drop dramatically is the sort of leap of faith I'm reluctant to take.

Standard of living relates to personal possessions of consumer items, I think standards of living could drop while quality of life increases - i.e. you don't own a big car and drive to work 2 hours each way every day, but you have 20 more hours a week to spend at home - maybe 10 spent on gardening instead according to Bernie, and you can borrow a car for holidays from local library. You don't have a desktop at home and work, plus a laptop, but you don't need them because your job was selling plastic tomato punnets all day and people have decided to save the petroleum and spend the labour on producing food locally to minimise packaging and transportation costs.

Slight changes in engineering could increase the lifespan of consumer durables many times over - resulting in a fraction of both labour and resource useage. In other words a lot of things could be done to reorganise labour and production - massively reducing what's used, but getting much more out of it. There's loads of potential for this before anyone notices much of a drop. Things would change yes, but not necessarily get worse.

 

[newbie]

Why do you not hold hope for technological answers to sustainability issues?

technology is in the hands of capitalists. It's in their interests to convince us to use ever more of it (as totaladdict put it "wants are manufactured in a manner that creates an insatiable hunger for more"). Maybe the upshot of that will be a reduction in our overall environmental impact, maybe it won't: cars are getting cleaner but there are ever more of them.

Is technology part of the soluton or merely part of the problem? I don't really know..

 

[Bernie Gunther]

technology is in the hands of capitalists. It's in their interests to convince us to use ever more of it (as totaladdict put it "wants are manufactured in a manner that creates an insatiable hunger for more"). Maybe the upshot of that will be a reduction in our overall environmental impact, maybe it won't: cars are getting cleaner but there are ever more of them.

Is technology part of the soluton or merely part of the problem? I don't really know..

Technology can be really helpful, but only if it's used in the interests of sustainability rather than otherwise. For example, the UK population was stable around 3 million for the best part of 1000 years, if we want to do better (we currently have 60 million) then we'd better get clever.

 

[newbie]

we're getting clever. The first PC was introduced in 1980 when UK electrical consumption was 258kWh. It's now 375. Has the technology of computerisation improved sustainability or merely shifted aspirations so that I'm sitting here and you're sitting there consuming power instead of reading a book (or sleeping).

http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/inform/energy_stats/electricity/dukes05_5_1_3.xls

 

[citydreams]

technology is in the hands of capitalists...

So when you were saying earlier..

Global sustainability will only come about through both massive population drop

you mean that this is the only way capitalism can cope with green issues.

 

[newbie]

not really, no. I don't think sustainability is realistically achievable at all, because the preconditions are both massive population drop and a major reduction the living standards of developed countries. Capitalism (as shorthand for the gobal dominant economic system) seeks neither reduced population (fewer consumers) nor reduced living standards (less consumption).

Technology may marginally influence progress towards sustainability, sometimes for the better, sometimes the worse, but in the hands of capitalists will never be a tool of a properly green agenda.

 

[catch]

The first PC was introduced in 1980 when UK electrical consumption was 258kWh. It's now 375. Has the technology of computerisation improved sustainability or merely shifted aspirations so that I'm sitting here and you're sitting there consuming power instead of reading a book (or sleeping).

But we can communicate without using paper, glue, motor vehicles to send letters through the post (not that mail hasn't increased, but most of it's due to capitalism - junk, pizza delivery fliers, bills). We can download music/film instead of buying it on vinyl, or tape, or CD/DVD (although I still prefer vinyl). Can transfer data on memory cards instead of hundreds of floppies. LCD screens have lower power consumption than CRTs. There's a lot of potential for sustainability - but it's not used to its potential I'd agree with that.

 

[sparticus]

The title of the book is an oxymoron.

Capitalism requires continuous growth in order to survive and continuous growth is unsustainable and so without removing debt based finance that acts as the driver of continuous 'growth' capitalism (or corporate gangsterism to be more accurate) can never act as if the physical limits of the world matter

 

[chooch]

The title of the book is an oxymoron.
Capitalism requires continuous growth in order to survive and continuous growth is unsustainable

The natural capitalism type line is that throughput of materials and energy must be limited if you want to sustain the capacity of the environment to support lots of people beyond not very many years. But growth of GDP may not necessarily rely on increased throughput of materials and energy at least until a limit where adding value comes from the smallest possible change.
Defra talks lots about decoupling growth in GDP from CO2 emissions as has allegedly happened here, and all that guff about dematerialisation and the information economy, which quietly ignores impacts at one remove.

 

[sparticus]

Hi Chooch

I'm familiar with the official guff regarding sustainable development but they are plain ignoring the evidence of environmental crisis that surrounds us. And whilst it is true that competition, resource scarcity, environmental costs and pressure from campaigners is forcing markets to adjust and produce more using less resources, this still does not get round the fundamental requirement of capitalism for CONTINUOUS growth caused by debt based finance. And continuous growth is unsustainable, hence the title of Porritt's book is an oxymoron

This book is an excellent explanation as well as blueprint for the alternative.

From the intro....

It is not widely known that almost all the money we use comes into existence, not by governments creating it, but as a result of a bank agreeing to make a loan to a customer at interest. Only about 3%—the notes and coins—is government-made. The other 97% comes into existence as a debt owed by a customer to a bank. We cite authorities such as James Robertson, Richard Douthwaite and Michael Rowbotham to show that the effect of this is that our economies have to grow in order to avoid financial collapse. The debt-money system is thus the driving force behind the Global Monetocracy. The risk of collapse forces governments to give priority to policies that serve the money growth imperative; and in turn, these policies produce the unjust and unsustainable form of globalisation that we have today.

This article on the History of Money is a good introduction as to how we ended up with a debt-based money system that serves bankers and not people.

And whilst articles like this one are close to the mark, they plain ignore the actual history of banking and the fact that banking (and hence capitalism) is actually run by corporate gangsters in suits who are accountable to no one. Understand banking and the unsustainability and criminality of capitalism becomes evident (without the need to get us all to sign up to the SWP)

 

[chooch]

Understand banking and the unsustainability and criminality of capitalism becomes evident (without the need to get us all to sign up to the SWP)

I read this:

a while back so that's all familiar ground. Difficult to see a way out though, as ever.