The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality (53 page)

25. See, for example, Daly and Farley, Ecological Economics.

26. When a non-renewable resource is essential and substitution is very difficult, depletion should proceed no faster than we can develop renewable substitutes. We should capture the unearned income from the extraction of such resources (also known as rent or windfall profits, e.g. Exxon’s $46 billion in profits in 2008) and invest it in renewable substitutes.

27. Another way to say this: Waste emissions cannot exceed waste absorption capacity.

28. Lietaer, TEDx Berlin lecture, on
lietaer.com
. As economists define efficiency, it boils down to a maximization of monetary value, determined by willingness to pay. Converting corn to ethanol for Americans to drive their SUVs is more efficient than using it to feed malnourished Mexicans if Americans are willing to pay more. Perhaps we need to redefine efficiency as the satisfying the greatest number of human needs at the lowest ecological cost. Since GDP is a good proxy for ecological costs, it should go in the denominator of national welfare accounts.

29. Organizations studying and promoting ecological economics include: The International Society of Ecological Economics, The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, The New Economics Institute, New Economics Foundation, The Capital Institute, and The Gund Institute.

30. Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth (London: Earthscan, 2009).

31. D. Woodward and A. Simms, Growth Isn’t Possible (London: New Economics Foundation, 2006), available online at
neweconomics.org
.

32. Herman Daly, “A Shift in the Burden of Proof,” The Daly News,
steadystate.org/a-shift-in-the-burden-of-proof/
.

33. Herman Daly, “Uneconomic Growth in Theory and in Fact,” the first annual Feasta lecture, at Trinity College Dublin, April 26, 1999.

34. Serge Latouche, Farewell to Growth (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009).

35. Frederick Soddy, Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926).

36. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Boston, 1854); Scott Nearing and Helen Nearing, Living the Good Life (New York: Schocken Books, 1970).

37. Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity (New York: HarperCollins, 1981); Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992).

38. Henry George, Progress and Poverty (New York: Doubleday, 1879); The Henry George Institute.

39. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: Macmillan, 1899).

40. Some other organizations and websites include the New Economics Institute, Capital Institute, New Economics Foundation, Third Millennium Economy, Real World Economics,
paecon.net/PAEReview/
, and
ethicalmarkets.com
.

41. Herman Daly, Steady-State Economics (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1991), p. 17.

42. Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy (CASSE),
steadystate.org
.

43. Brian Czech, Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

44. Peter Victor, Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2008); also Rob Dietz, “The ‘Good New Days’ in a Non-Growing Economy,” Energy Bulletin, posted October 25, 2010.

45. Susan Arterian Chang, “Moving Towards a Steady-State Economy,” The Finance Professionals’ Post, a publication of the New York Society of Security Analysts, posted April 12, 2010.

46. “Eco-Municipalities: Sweden and the United States,”
knowledgetemplates.com
,
knowledgetemplates.com/sja/ecomunic.htm
.

47. Daly and Farley, Ecological Economics, pp. 178–179.

48. Daly and Farley, Ecological Economics, p. 180.

49. Douthwaite and Fallon, Fleeing Vesuvius, p. 142 and following.

50. Douthwaite and Fallon, Fleeing Vesuvius, pp. 89–111; Daniel Fireside, “Community Land Trust Keeps Prices Affordable — For Now and Forever,” I, posted July 29, 2008; “Land Trust Success,” Land Trust Alliance,
landtrustalliance.org
. Brazil already does this, and has also imposed an additional tax on foreign investments in their stock market.

51. Hazel Henderson,
hazelhenderson.com
.

52. Hazel Henderson, “Real Economies and the Illusions of Abstraction,” Energy Bulletin, posted December 8, 2010; CDFI: Coalition of Community Development Financial Organizations,
cdfi.org
.

53. Joel Bakan, “The Corporation,” documentary movie, Big Picture Media Corporation, 2003.

54. Green America,
greenamerica.org
.

55. International Co-operative Alliance, “Statement on the Co-operative Identity,” ica .coop /coop/principles.html.

56. For expanded discussion of these points, see discussion of GNP in Arne Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

57. William D. Nordhaus and James Tobin, Is Growth Obsolete?, Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper 319 (New Haven: Yale University, 1971).

58. Unfortunately, the organization Redefining Progress seems to have become a casualty of the economic crisis.

59. Harvard Medical School Office of Public Affairs, “Happiness is a Collective — Not Just Individual — Phenomenon,” news alert, web.med.harvard .edu/sites/RELEASES/html /–christakis_happiness.html.

60. Jamie Smith Hopkins, “Putting a Dollar Figure on Progress,” The Baltimore Sun, September 11, 2010.

61. Joseph Stiglitz, Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Report on the CMEPSP (September, 2009), p. 7.

62. The phrase “Green National Product” is from Clifford Cobb and John Cobb, The Green National Product: A Proposed Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (Minnesota: University Press of America, 1994), pp. 280–281.

63. Derek Bok, The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn From the New Research on Well-Being (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

64. “David Cameron Aims to Make Happiness the New GDP,” The Guardian, November 14, 2010.

65. “Seattle Area Happiness Initiative,” Sustainable
Seattle.org
,
sustainableseattle.org
.

66. “ABAC Poll: Thai People Happiness Index Rose to 8 Out of 10 Points,”
eThailand.com
, posted December 6, 2010.

67. “Coronation Address of His Majesty King Khesar, the 5th Druk Gyalpo of Bhutan,” Gross National
Happiness.com
, November 7, 2008.

68. Cliff Kuang, “Infographic of the Day: Happiness Comes at a Price,”
fastcodesign.com
, posted December 8, 2010;
happyplanetindex.org
.

69. Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Gorelick, and John Page, “The Economics of Happiness,” a documentary movie, International Society for Ecology & Culture, 2011.

70. Lester Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009).

71. Lester Brown, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011).

72. The book also discusses Tradable Energy Quotas, a consumer- and market-driven cap-and-trade fossil fuels quota rationing scheme now being evaluated by Parliament in the UK. Richard Heinberg, The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (–Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2006). See also David Fleming and Shaun Chamberlin, “TEQs Tradable Energy Quotas: A Policy Framework for Peak Oil and Climate Change,” Energy Bulletin, posted January 18, 2011; TEQs: Media Coverage and Launch,
teqs.net
,
teqs.net/report/media-coverage-and-launch-event/
.

73. Albert Bates, The Biochar Solution (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2010).

74. Alan S. Drake, “Chapter 1: Electrified and Improved Railroads,” from An American Citizen’s Guide to an Oil-Free Economy, Energy Bulletin, posted October 27, 2010.

75. William N. Ryerson, “Population: The Multiplier of Everything Else,” in The Post Carbon Reader, Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch, eds. (Healdsburg, CA: Watershed Media, 2010), p. 153.

76. Roy Morrison, Ecological Democracy (Cambridge, MA:South End Press, 1995).

77. Joe Roman, Paul R. Ehrlich, Robert M. Pringle, and John C. Avise, “Facing Extinction: Nine Steps to Save Biodiversity,” Solutions 1, no.1 (February 24, 2009), pp. 50–61.

78. Richard Heinberg and Michael Bomford, “The Food and Farming Transition,” available online at
PostCarbon.org
, 2009.

79. The cultural, psychological, and institutional barriers to solving our 21st-century survival challenges are being addressed by the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior. Stanford University, “Millenium Assessment of Human Behavior,” mahb .stanford.edu.

80. This is a slight rephrasing of Winston Churchill’s famous remark that “[t]he United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.”

81. Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich, New World New Mind: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution (Cambridge, MA: Malor Books, 2000).

82. Peter C. Whybrow, American Mania: When More is Not Enough (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005).

83.N ate Hagens, “The Psychological and Evolutionary Roots of Resource Overconsump-tion Revisited,” The Oil Drum, posted June 25, 2009,
theoildrum.com/node/5519
.

84. Kurt Cobb, “The Extremely Leisurely Pace of American Democracy and the Urgency of Our Predicament,” Resource Insights, posted January 9, 2011.

85. There are long and deep traditions valorizing voluntary poverty in Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist societies and literature. Many pre-agricultural societies were organized around a “Big Man” who gained prestige by giving away all his material possessions. See Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson, Cultural Anthropology, 7th ed. (Pearson, 2006), pp. 172–175.

86. Whybrow, American Mania.

Chapter 7

1. Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (New York: Viking Books, 2009).

2. Lewis Aptekar, Environmental Disasters in Global Perspective (New York: G. K. Hall, 1994).

3. See James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (New York: Free Press, 1994); and Gregory Greene, “The End of Suburbia,” video documentary, The Electric Wallpaper Co., 2004.

4. Wikipedia, “Transition Towns,”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns
.

5. Rob Hopkins, Transition Handbook (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2008).

6. Hopkins, Transition Handbook, p. 15.

7. Formerly archived at:
transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/CheerfulDisclaimer

8. Transition Town Totnes,
transitiontowntotnes.org
.

9. Rob Hopkins, “Ingredients of Transition: Strategic Local Infrastructure,” Energy Bulletin, posted December 15, 2010.

10. Common Security Clubs,
commonsecurityclub.org
.

11. “Discover Tools for Facilitators,” and “Common Security Club Forum,” Common Security Clubs,
commonsecurityclub.org
.

12. Sarah Byrnes, “Learning to Live on Less,” YES! Magazine, posted December 23, 2010.

13. Community Action Partnership,
communityactionpartnership.com
.

14. I suggest the term “laboratory” because the sorts of efforts and enterprises that will best serve communities under rapidly evolving economic circumstances may not be apparent or even knowable at the outset — we will have to experiment. However, it is by no means essential or even important that the entities envisioned adopt this suggested title. Some communities may prefer slightly different names for political reasons: a Local Enterprise Laboratory, for example, might fare better in red states.