To: op-ed@nytimes.com
Re: Towards an Economic ToE
Date: Mon, 5 January 2004

 

After reading Brian Greene's fascinating contribution, "The Time We Thought We Knew", in last Thursday's NYT, I went out and bought his book, "The Elegant Universe".

In Chapter 2, Prof. Greene explains why it is that Einstein's view of physical reality (first presented to the world in his Special Theory of Relativity almost 100 years ago) is so difficult for most of us, even after all this time, to understand; namely, because it is counter intuitive, contradicting our normal experience of and assumptions about reality. Mathematicians and physicists may have no trouble working with the strange world of Relativity and the quantum professionally, where they have experimental data and mathematics to support them, but in their day-to-day lives they too continue to assume the validity of and to live in a Newtonian world, just like the rest of us.

If it were not for all the useful, terrible and amazing things with which, through the application of their incomprehensible theories, physicists have transformed our lives, we would consider them mad and pay them no attention.

It struck me that just as relativistic and quantum effects are encountered in a realm beyond normal human experience, thus making them extremely difficult to comprehend and accept, so too are the - likewise quantum - effects which the activities of billions of people are having on our planet, Spaceship Earth. When an individual heats his home, discards his waste, drives his car, flies off on holiday, etc. it has no discernable effect on the planet, just as quantum and relativistic effects have no discernable effect on the physical world we experience. Nevertheless, and despite our difficulty in comprehending it, they both have very profound consequences.

Physicists have provided us with countless, often indispensable, good reasons to believe, even if we cannot comprehend, what they say about the nature of reality.

But for those, like myself, trying to point out the fundamental non-sustainability of modern human activity on a planet with bountiful, but nevertheless, limited natural resources, delicately balanced climate and ocean currents, vulnerable life-supporting ecosystems, and a finite carrying capacity, it is much more difficult to convince people of the validity, importance and urgency of what we are saying. This is because, as yet, we have so little to offer in the way of really convincing evidence. Even the effects of global warming are, for the moment, at least, relatively easy to ignore. And by the time the evidence of our senses becomes irrefutable (a catastrophic rise in sea levels, for example) it will be too late to do much about it.

Because of the vast differences in scale, what took just seconds to become apparent when Apollo 13's life-support systems were damaged on its way to the Moon in 1970, is taking years (decades) aboard Spaceship Earth. For those with eyes to see, the signs are clear enough, but most people do not want to see. Instead they behave as some do when confronted with the symptoms of a life-threatening disease: by either denying them completely or by playing down their significance.

Just as many physicists in the late 19th and early 20th Century fought tooth and nail to preserve the old Newtonian order, with which they were so comfortable and familiar, by refusing to accept mounting evidence that the speed of light was constant for all observers, so too modern economists are still refusing to accept that there are limits to economic growth and material wealth on our planet: because to do so would undermine the very foundations on which their science - theoretical and applied - is based.

Economically we continue to live, so to speak, in a Newtonian world, in which economic growth and ever-increasing material wealth for ever-increasing numbers of people remain a fundamental and, for many, still unquestionable, principle of human endeavour, refusing to accept that there are limits to the numbers of millionaires, car owners, air travellers, i.e. archetypal American success stories and their imitators, that our planet can support.

Everyone has heard about "the straw that broke the camel's back" - and some, perhaps, have wondered, "whose straw was to blame?"

Paradoxically the answer is, "no one's and everyone's". That is assuming, of course, that everyone placed just a single, or the same number of straws on the camel's back. 

The answer is rather different if some people place more straws on its back than others.

Let the camel represent Earth's finite carrying capacity, on which we all have to place a certain number of straws in order to live. Although we do not know exactly how many it can carry, we do or should know by now that there is a limit - which will be exceeded if increasing numbers of people continue to pile on more and more straws.

Insanely, this is exactly what we are doing. Everyone, once they can afford it, wants their own car and to be able to fly in an aeroplane as often as they wish, not to mention all the other goods and services produced using non-renewable resources, with little or no concern for their long-term environmental impact, which our amoral, growth-dependent economy is only too eager to sell us.

At the moment, everyone can pile as many straws onto the camel's back as they have (or can borrow) the money to pay for, and are encouraged to do so, not just by their own materialistic inclinations, but by the whole social and economic system, which depends on it (would otherwise go into recession) and has multibillion dollar credit and advertising industries devoted to promoting it.

It is very difficult for us to recognise the insanity of a situation we have all grown up in, are so dependent on (for our incomes, lifestyles, aspirations etc.) and cannot help but experience as being perfectly normal.

Most of us can afford to be complacent about our lack of understanding of physical reality (i.e. of Relativity and quantum theory). What we cannot afford to be complacent about (not if we care about our children and coming generations) is our blindness to the non-sustainability of Western civilisation, i.e. its economy and lifestyles, and the values, attitudes and aspirations on which they are based.