At his Let's-Accelerate-Global-Warming Conference Bush said efforts to limit emissions should not limit economic growth. In other words, the major cause of climate change should be left untouched.
Uninhibited growth is malignancy. We know that. We know that constant growth in any functioning system cannot be sustained indefinitely without the system collapsing. Yet our entire economy depends on this pathology -- on eternal expansion of the GDP. What Bush and other economists are saying is that withdrawal symptoms must never be allowed to happen.
It would be nice if this endless "growth" simply meant that the living standard of the poor of the world would be improved, but of course it doesn't mean that at all. Our economy is dependent on "consumer confidence" -- on the "haves" of the world being eternally willing to buy more and more stuff. To what end? So every middle-class person can have five homes and 20 cars and 16 entertainment centers, weigh 700 pounds, have 15 different gadgets for communicating at a distance, and 20 different gadgets for avoiding contact with the outside world altogether?
Long before we're buried in the junk we keep manufacturing, our planet will cease to support human life, and the endless expansion will cease. This is the planet's solution -- necessary for it to survive as a viable living system. It will have to slough humanity and its social subsystem in order to heal itself. We are, after all, newcomers to the third rock, and seem hell-bent on proving ourselves an evolutionary mistake, destined to wind up in the planet's recycling bin with the mastodon and the dodo.
For to say a system must have infinite growth in order to survive is to say that system is infinitely diseased. The concept of chronic economic growth is symptomatic of our failure as a species. Instead of adapting to the larger system in which we find ourselves, we've allowed our egos to hypertrophy in a way that mimics precisely the social phenomenon of eternal economic expansion. Our compulsive need to aggrandize ourselves -- a neurotic trait that our society has sanctified as the most sacred of virtues -- has no end point, as we can see in the proliferation of billionaires in the world. For the addictive personality there is no such thing as enough. The terrified ego knows no safety, but must always seek continual reassurance. It's sole mantra is "more."
This is not an argument against capitalism. The market system of distribution is the oldest, most efficient, and most democratic one there is. But any system, to be viable, must have limits. And in every other form of human activity, we accept this as given. We know that human motives, if unconstrained, lead to disaster. In games we have rigid rules to constrain competition within acceptable bounds. We constrain aggression, feeling that expressions of anger should be limited to verbal ones. And yes, we do have rules to constrain greed. But greed is unique in our society as the one patently anti-social motive that is not only accepted but honored by our government, our media, and our economic institutions -- to the point where every effort to constrain it, or prevent its ill effects, is attacked as evil incarnate, and un-American as well.
We feel strongly that a man who sits down to dinner with his family and friends should not be allowed to gobble up all the food for himself, but should be limited to his reasonable share. If he became obese at these dinners while others at the table were going hungry, we would consider him an abominable human being, and a sick one. We would want to curb his greed not only for the sake of others, but for his own health.
Yet if we were to apply this thinking to our economic system -- to suggest that a cap be placed on individual incomes through taxation, for example -- one can imagine the thundering denunciations that would ensue. Socialism! Or even -- horror of horrors -- Communism! Economic greed must have no limits placed upon it.
In the NFL there's a salary cap, in recognition that if competition is to be fair, there must be limits on individual teams. No such recognition exists in our larger game.
The pathologically greedy always find ways to get around laws. We accept this because we recognize that some people are neurotic, and will feel deprived and needy no matter how much they have. But that's very different from our present situation, in which we actually admire the sickest members of our society, and look up to them. The desire for unlimited wealth is a disease, and until we recognize it as such we will be headed for extinction.
We exist within, and are dependent upon, a larger living system. Our
species prides itself on its intelligence and knowledge, but it's an empty boast if we don't have enough brains to manage our own survival.