Tuesday, November 23, 2004
The lifecycle of a Christmas cracker

Growth Fetish by Clive Hamilton

"I just don’t know what to get him for Christmas. He is simply impossible to buy for!"

As we head into another festive season of financial blowouts, there are three inevitabilities: Firstly, community groups will warn of the pitfalls of burgeoning household debt; secondly, regardless of the fact that you said you were not going to buy so many presents this year, you do; and thirdly, a month later, most gifts you buy will be safely shut in a dusty drawer somewhere, never to be used or seen again. By the time the January sales have been exhausted we will have been reinvigorated and can begin the annual cycle all over again, only vaguely aware that the market has failed to satisfy our insatiable appetite for all things useless.

The Christmas cracker perhaps epitomises this festive over-indulgence more than anything else. Assembled in Vietnam from various plastic objects, aluminium foil, paper and card, packaged up more elaborately than an Easter Egg, shipped 10,000km, delivered to a distribution depot, redistributed to the retailer, popped - earning one moment’s attention - discarded and then transported again, most commonly, straight to landfill.

Clive Hamilton’s book, "Growth Fetish", challenges this inane and rampant consumerism. It is a direct attack on the politicians who are held in hoc to business and who pursue policies that promote economic growth at all costs. GDP growth is the stick with which politicians are beaten. It is the answer to all things. According to the right, it draws people up and out of poverty (to hell with growing inequalities) and for the left, economic growth leads the battle against exclusion. 4% growth is always better than 3% and whatever holds us back to 3%, should be swept away.

Hamilton is dead right in identifying this culture as a fetish*. George Bush’s (and John Howard’s) reluctance to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change is in part based on the conviction that limiting CO2 emissions would jeopardise US economic growth. This may be true (though even this is contested), but a sense of proportion is required. Bush’s advisers believe that signing up could wipe 1% off US GDP by 2012. Assuming that over this period the US economy grows at 3% pa, GDP would have risen by 40% in 2012. If the protocol is ratified, by that date, US GDP would be just 39% greater and so, instead of being 40% richer on January 1st, 2012, that level of wealth would not be attained until April of that year. Such a profound attachment to GDP growth is indeed a fetish.

It is promoted by politicians and it is fuelled by advertisers. For business, growth acts as an empirical truth, like the laws of physics, which cannot be questioned by anything as subjective as 'values'.

Not satisfied with your lot? Well, of course you are not; greed is the mother of growth and it is the citizen’s role to be greedy. If consumers were ever satisfied they would be reluctant to consume more than they need and the whole growth logic would be undermined. The capitalist market does not serve to satisfy human desires, it self-serving and endeavours to keep consumers perpetually dissatisfied. This is the giant fraud being perpetrated by capitalism.

Unquestioningly, business organisations are afforded special reverence by their political underlings as business is seen as the key to a growing economy. This homage is apperent in both electoral cycles and through the daily cut and thrust of the global economy. Governments are incessantly judged by the market and global traders will unflinchingly punish recalcitrant states with capital flight and threats of disinvestment, the moment their interests are under threat. Amd, after crashing out of the recent Australian federal election, the ALP went out to consult with business – not the community - to find out just why it did not gain its support.

But even GDP growth can be hidden behind the mendacious rhetoric of politicians; lies, damn lies and statistics. For example, in the year to July 2004, the Queensland economy grew at 4.6%, an impressive rate. Yet, as the population of Queensland grew at 2.4%, this increasing wealth had to be shared out amongst more people. Individually, people experienced a rise in GSP? of just 2.2%. But on top of that, inflation ran at 2.3%. Therefore, all increase in GSP is accounted for by the increase in population and an increase in prices. In fact, on average, individuals became worse off according to this statistic.

Clive Hamilton argues that this incessant drive for economic growth has alienated people from their work, their families and even their own identities. People exist in a ‘false consciousness’ – our identities are controlled by brand managers who tell us that what we wear, eat, drink and drive defines who we are. Most certainly it is chronically debilitating for the environment.

It is this impending environmental crisis that gives the greatest impetus to restricting economic growth. All organisms impact on their environment but in most cases these impacts are mitigated by negative feedback and so the species always remains in balance with its surroundings. Through technological and cultural advances - and being efficient in drawing down on the Earth’s capital resources at the expense of future generations - Homo Sapiens has transcended these natural checks.

As a result, the species’ malign impact continues to escalate, appropriating an ever-increasing proportion of the Earth’s resources, to the detriment of the long-term survival of other species. We now appropriate some 40% of the Gross Biotic Product (that is 40% of all photosynthesis) and rising. In addition, energy is continually extracted and waste is continually dumped. Not only is the population is growing but it is consuming at an ever-faster rate per capita. Exponential growth means that we are actually accelerating towards any ‘carrying capacity’ Nature may have prescribed. (We may, of course, have already surpassed it.)

Oddly, Hamilton places great faith in the consumer bringing salvation. He argues that a new ethic must arrest our excessive consumption. Already, he has detected subtle changes in attitude: the French government has mandated a 35-hour maximum working week and there is a growing proportion of workers who have taken a hit on their income for a change of pace. But contrary to this bourgeois bludging, macro-economic evidence purports to ever increasing levels of consumption and longer working hours. This super-consumptive society is now pervading aspiring South and East Asia economies. It seems the ecological satisfied consumer is still an insignificant minority, afforded only to those wealthy enough to shun that lifestyle.

Hamilton contends that people are more inclined to assess their wealth in comparison to others. As a result, we will never own enough stuff, as there is always someone else with more. Breaking this cultural obsession with perpetual dissatisfaction is the first step towards a post-growth society. This is true, but people also seek to secure ever-increasing wealth for other reasons and Hamilton’s zero growth utopia has difficulty in reconciling this. A major motivating factor, not recognised by Hamilton, is security of wealth - in old age and in sickness – and attaining plentiful resources to pass on wealth to the next generation. Science and art also are also reliant on a constant growth of output from a thirst for greater understanding and the more innovative. Creativity and discovery cannot just stop.

As a result, a more complex, ecological systems approach is required to avert ecological meltdown. It is not that consumption is 'bad' – it is the type of consumption that is of importance. All organisms consume a certain proportion of the energy made available to planet Earth, given to it by the sun or geothermal processes. But energy consumption based on extraction of fossil fuels is frittering away the planet’s capital and disrupts climate processes.

The environment has long been a sink for waste, but growing evidence suggests that its ability to process emissions is nearing capacity. So more specifically, human society should pursue policies of zero extraction of fossil fuels, zero waste (zero emissions, zero ore extraction and zero solid waste) and, controversially, zero population growth. It may transpire that an ecologically balanced footprint, with ample opportunity for the wider environment to secure a fair proportion of energy, results in a zero GDP growth rate, but this should not be the primary goal.

Zero extraction would entail the phasing out of all non-renewable energy sources. Zero waste would close the loop. All materiel currently within the system must remain as a recyclate, fertilizer or a further source of energy. All energy must be obtained from the sun (including biofuels), the rotation of the Earth or geothermal sources. Human impact of the environment would once again become balanced and we would no longer be drawing down on the Earth’s capital resources. This is what is truly meant by sustainability. Within this closed loop system the imperative for technological advancement would become stronger, as would the drive to remove all inefficiencies from economic processes. It would also entail a big shift in our assumptions about our place on the planet.

This stable state project cannot be separated from the broader re-distributive goals of the left. Here, again, Hamilton assumes that the benign influence of the modest consumer would create a fairer market where inequalities would wither away. As the poor only continue to get marginally more wealthy as greater amounts of the Earth’s Gross Biotic Product becomes utilised, a more closed system human ecology, relying only on technological and cultural advances for the improvement of human life, could see inequalities exacerbated by the operation of a free market.

It maybe that in the future, the rhetoric that supports continued GDP expansion performs a volte face. GDP growth – as a result of - say - building a new road or a new power station would not be considered as progress but would be viewed as policy failure. A new road would be indicative of poor urban planning and a new power station as a failure in promoting energy efficiency.

Voters, aware of the environmental impacts of continued consumption would punish governments and business for their wastefulness and inefficiency. Being innovative in how our finite resources are managed would be the measure of success, not growth in energy consumption. However, until the terms of the debate surrounding the use of GDP as an indicator of improving wellbeing is challenged, we will continue to see its growth as an unquestioned logic. But Clive Hamilton has certainly kick-started the debate.

* Defined as ‘an object of obsessive concern’ by the OED

It is a broadside against the underlying values of contemporary consumer capitalism… [and] bound to trigger major controversy.

(Journal of Australian Political Economy)

Clive Hamilton’s work is just silly, dangerous, left-wing crap.

(Michael Egan, NSW (Labor) Treasurer)

About Clive Hamilton >

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