Humanity’s Greatest Challenge
Aiden Lloyd
A review of ‘Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet’: Tim Jackson (Earthscan publications)
This book looks to our future viability, indeed our very survival, and in doing so presents a number of
harrowing dilemmas. How do we reinvent an economic system that is leading us towards the
destruction of life on the planet? How do we break our obsession with material goods? And do we
have governmental systems strong enough to embark on the massive transformative processes
required to steer us away from environmental destruction?
At a time when we are still anxious to find culprits, rather than systems, to blame for economic
collapse Tim Jackson is forthright in pronouncing the unsustainability of growth-led models of
development. He begins by stripping capitalism down to its technical core, a system whereby people
invest their labour and savings in businesses in return for an income; this in turn provides the capital
required to produce goods upon which people spend a portion of their income and thus complete
the cycle. The problem arises from the sheer efficiency of capitalism, which will eventually require
less labour (and greater output) necessitating continuous expansion to create new jobs. This
introduces the first dilemma. Growth is necessary for employment but utterly unsustainable in
climate change terms. Growth is also a core requirement for third world countries. Here Jackson
uses the evidence of Wilkinson and Picket1 to illustrate how growth is necessary to raise the health
and well-being of millions in these countries - until it levels off as core requirements are met. But
why do advanced industrial countries, which incidentally produce most of the earth’s carbon
emissions, need to maintain this level of growth? The answer is linked to the human condition and
the appetite for novelty.
It appears that humans are not just mindless consumers of labour saving devices and gadgets but
actually use material goods to carry out a social dialogue - to assert status, express aspiration, define
and convey who they are, etc. When this is added to the ‘creative destructiveness’ of capitalism –
the continuous overthrow and replacement of technical processes and products – we have the
ingredients that maintain long-run growth. The obsessive entrepreneur and the pathological
consumer are at the nub of the problem, but there is another influential player, one, hopefully,
without obsession or pathology.
Jackson contends that novelty-driven consumption is almost entirely socially constructed. While the
needs that are met through consumption may be innate, the patterns of behaviour that we adopt to
meet these needs are set by institutions; and institutions are set by the state. The majority of
democratic states govern within an understanding of the social contract. This involves individuals
yielding up some of their individual freedoms for the protection and common good that the state
provides. In return the state introduces rules and regulations to protect and enhance the commonly
accepted virtues and aspirations of society. If we take the premise that individuals tend to be shortsighted, capricious and acquisitive then rules and regulatory institutions protect us from the follies of
1
The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better: Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett. Alan
Lane 2009
impulse and instability – marriage, health and, dare one need reminding, banking, are illustrations of
this. The problem is that the state has taken on the prioritising of economic growth as the provider
of common wealth and well-being and has contoured institutions to promote novelty and
consumption, while simultaneously setting ecological goals: Jackson points to the UK’s widely
acclaimed Sustainable Development Strategy sitting within one of the most extreme liberal market
economies in the world as an example of this paradox.
So what of the solutions? How do we delink development and prosperity from destructive growth?
In drilling down for answers, Jackson assembles a compelling package of measures that we need to
adopt. Many are not new, but it’s the comprehensive nature of the package that makes it different.
Encouraging an alternative hedonism directing us towards sources of satisfaction and social
fulfilment that lie outside the conventional market would free us from material consumption.
Promoting social enterprises capable of delivering social and economic goals would also reduce our
blinkered focus on profit as the sole motivator. Breaking our dependence on carbon energy sources
and investing in alternative sources and energy efficient buildings and transport is another.
Facilitating investment in different forms of productive activity, where yields will be smaller, more
long-term or even unquantifiable in monetary terms, is another change that will require a much
greater presence of the state in financial and commercial activity.
Jackson is upfront in laying out the complex interplay of economic, social, political and
environmental dynamics that need to be factored into solutions, and in indentifying the scale of
transformation and sheer endeavour required to divert us from destruction. He pins most of his
hopes on governance, and the capability of states and global networks to make decisions that
protect our long term interests. But is this within their capabilities? In terms of the potential of the
nation state only the USA is influential enough to provide leadership, and it may be too tightly locked
into an ethos of individual freedom to be a torch bearer. Global networks and institutions do not at
first glance seem like a better proposition – Ruanda, events in the former Yugoslavia and the inability
to alter the dynamics of famine and imbalanced development cloud any hopeful perspective. Yet
there are some indicators of hope for audacious interventions of the required scale. For instance, in
this, the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, governments have committed
$7trillion to save the global banking system, a truly massive collective undertaking. Are we capable
of an even more profound intervention?
This is a compelling book, if not an easy read at times - particularly when it gets into macro economic
theory and in driving the reader to engage with new concepts - but it is worth bearing with for its
analytical honesty and its ability to maintain a direct line between problem and solution. It is
particularly important for those involved in working with the materially poor, the socially excluded
and those who experience inequality, for it is they who will first bear the brunt of climate change. I
believe this is a most important book of our time – merging as it does the issues, concerns and
insights essential for the transition to a new sustainable and equitable society. The responsibility
now rests with environmentalists, community workers and social activists to carry these frameworks
of understanding out to a wider constituency, preparing the way for the more intense participative
dialogue that will be required between state and society if we are to be consensually directed
towards our very survival.
Aiden Lloyd is Coordinator of the European Anti Poverty Network Ireland