Busting the growth myth

ONE per cent of the world's population owns 50 per cent of the wealth.

That sounds bad enough, but said the other way around, it means 99 per cent of the world's population shares the remaining 50 per cent. When looking at how that 50 per cent is shared, it is obvious it isn't fairly distributed either.

I have a lot of difficulty in understanding how that 1 per cent thinks it is entitled to such a share, considering that it requires the remaining 99 per cent to build, buy and pay interest to support them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

What has this to do with conservation, you may ask?

As most of us are now aware, both through science and observation (droughts and storms, for example), climate change is happening, and is now accepted as being man-made. It is quite easily shown that this has come about through burning millions of years' worth of carbon in oil and coal.

This fossil fuel has been used to create much of our current lifestyle and wealth. It could be argued that up to 50 per cent of the world's wealth is being diverted to those who already have quite enough and it would seem that they are treating the rest of us with contempt and, worse, to a world with increasingly unstable weather.

The two myths, of the need to "increase wealth" and that "we must have growth", underlie why we are driving the planet into climate change.

Growth in itself is not the problem - trees do it all the time - but the exponential form of economic growth is a flawed philosophy. I have yet to have anyone, economist or banker, explain how exponential growth can continue indefinitely without running out of resources and space, without the negative effects of environmental degradation, and not expect climate change putting the brakes on this growth.

At every turn, when suggestions were made that our attitudes to the economy needed to change, the excuses to do nothing were that the costs were too much and would slow growth. The stupidity of this argument is that if you look at New Orleans after cyclone Katrina, and Vanuatu after cyclone Pam, they show that although there are increases in GDP, the average person does not feel better off - let alone the huge cost.

The buffer of wealth from the real world by this rich 1 per cent means their empathy for the rest of us and the environment is damn near impossible to imagine, as their ivory tower is so high.

The environment is so closely related to the economy, and cannot be treated as separate, and, if we do, can only delay what we must do to avert the worst effects of climate change.

To go back to the metaphor of a tree's growth, the myth of exponential growth can be seen if we imagine that this tree continued to grow at the rate of economic growth - it would soon collapse under its own weight, if it didn't get blown over in a passing cyclone.

-John Milnes is a lover of this planet, and fairness, his family and future generations. He is a past Green Party candidate for Whanganui and trustee for Sustainable Whanganui.