Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
All this would mean major institutional changes - delinking income from work,
the reform of financial services, taxes at the origin of extraction, and the reduction
of energy and material resources by societies in the North, and the refusal of the
South particularly to be the supply ground for cheap commodities for the consumption
of the already affluent. For some analysists (Kerschner, 2010; Martínez-Alier
et al
.,
2010) degrowth in the North combined with a decrease in world population might
actually be a path towards a global steady state economy. We know how much
energy we have used in the past to create what we have now and we also know
what energy we can use in the future to ensure, as Odum and Odum (2001) put it,
'a prosperous way down'. In
Farewell to Growth
, Latouche (2009) outlines a political
programme showing how degrowth will improve people's quality of life, restore a
degraded environment, create free time, conviviality, better health, social equity,
encourage community participation and enhance cultural wealth. The process of
civilized contraction will revolve around the '8 Rs' of: Re-evaluate, Reconceptualize,
Restructure, Redistribute, Relocalize, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. For this degrowth to
occur, knowledge and information will need to be shared, and decision-making
become transparent and inclusive. For Joan Martínez-Alier (2009) these are feasible
propositions and would find allies among progressive groups in the North and
environmental justice movements in the South. He writes:
There could be a confluence among conservationists concerned with the loss of
biodiversity, the many people concerned with climate change who push for solar
energy, the socialists and trade unionists who want more economic justice in
the world, urban squatters who preach 'autonomy', agro-ecologists, neo-rurals
and the large peasant movements (as represented by Via Campesina), the
pessimists (or realists) on the risks and uncertainties of technical change (post-
normal science), and the 'environmentalism of the poor' that demands the
preservation of the environment for livelihood.
(2009: 1117)
However, despite the repeated failures of development to be sustainable and the
obvious problems confronting contemporaries' societies, not least of which is climate
change,
decroissance
(degrowth) is not a concept that inspires the world's economic,
political and business leaders. There is no 'incentive' in a degrowth policy. Thus,
perhaps like sustainable development or at least an ecologically compatible capitalism
- 'the Green Economy' - degrowth is conceivable in theory but unrealistic in practice.
However, continual economic growth is not realistic either.
Capitalism for ecology
Paul Hawken (1994), Hawken
et al
. (1999), Lester Brown (2001, 2006), Jonathan
Porritt (2005) and many others have argued that business in a modified capitalist
environment is part of the solution. Brown offers a vision of an eco-efficient economy
and ecological modernization. There is a need for more accurate accounting proce-
dures that fully recognize environmental and financial costs. Hunter and Amory
Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado have vigorously promoted the
need for an eco-efficient 'natural capitalism'. This approach to economic and business
