To: letters@independent.co.uk
Re: Hamish McRae's unsustainable economics
Date: Sunday, 1 January 06

Dear Sir/Madam,
 
The Independent is a liberal, left-leaning newspaper for progressive thinking people. Right?
 
Well, you can't get more progressive than me (certainly not in my opinion), and although I agree with some of your attitudes, others I fundamentally disagree with. In particular, I disagree with Hamish McRae, your principal economic commentator, giving priority to the economy (the household of man) instead of to ecology (the household of our planet), as we have to do, if we want our children and coming generations to have a future worth living on our finite and vulnerable planet, Spaceship Earth. 
 
The following extracts from Prof. McRae's recent article, "Why do we ignore the crucial issues and agonise over much less important ones?" (Wednesday, 21 Dec. 05) illustrate, I think, what I mean:
"There is a strange disjunction between what seems to matter in British politics and what matters in the world economy - and hence ultimately to our prosperity and our influence in the world".
 
In the debate over education, little is said about "the quality of our schools by international standards, the changing needs for different sorts of skills, the global performance of our universities. Yet these are the huge issues that will determine the extent to which the UK remains competitive in the world".
 
We should be "asking how best to craft our education system to remain competitive against the two huge workforces of China and India that are now changing the shape of the world economy".
 
"Some of the most important skills that will determine success in the world economy have nothing to do with the skills learnt through a conventional education. Sir Richard Branson dropped out to devote more time to his business career."
 
"The key point, though, is to recognise our your young people will not be competing against other young Europeans.  The competition is the world beyond."
 
". . . . the more Europe rejects reform the further it will slip down the global growth table."
 
Tremendously important for Europe's future is the question as to whether "German, Italian and Spanish welfare policy [is] partly responsible for the very low birth rate in these countries."
 
". . . . Britain ought to be able to help Europe lift its economic performance."
 
It's the economy, stupid, and the need to be competitive, which is given absolute priority.
 
Why? Because it provides the money that makes everything else possible. If we want a higher standard of living, better schools and hospitals, if we want to clean up the environment, tackle third world poverty and global warming, etc. etc., money is what we need to do it.
 
That's the logic. Only it's misconceived, because the household of man can only  function within the limits of the household of our planet. We are deceived by the fact that it has worked up until now, and have difficulty (i.e. find it impossible) comprehending it not continuing to do so; but never before have such huge drains and strains been placed on Earth's finite resources and carrying capacity, and for the first time on a global scale we really are approaching these limits. Only we don't want to face up to this simply and - if we weren't in a state of collective denial - obvious fact.
 
Prof. McRae's obsession with economic performance reminds me of Stalin's obsession with military power (exemplified in his question about the number of divisions disposed over by the Vatican). If you are threatened by someone striving to dominate you, of course, military power is important, but military power for its own sake, or for the purpose of dominating others, is rightly abhorred as militarism. What we tend to overlook is that the desire for economic power and dominance merely gives more civilised expression to the same primitive behaviour (rooted in our animal nature), and boils down to very much the same thing (money, the most versatile form of power, taking the place of guns), and is driving us towards the limits of our planet's carrying capacity - and global catastrophe.
 
More than a week has now passed since the article I'm referring to was published. Yesterday was New Year's Eve and you published a list of things that we already know about the coming year. What caught my eye in particular was that 350 billion dollars will be spent on advertising, most of it on encouraging people who already have enough (or more than enough) to want even more, thus stoking the fires of desire and consumption in order to keep the wheels of the global economy turning as fast as possible.
 
We are living in a mad house, but because we are so dependent on it and it is so familiar (we have never known anything else), we do not see it as such. It is a terrifying reality to wake up to, which is why we are so reluctant to do so. But unless we do - and pretty quickly - we are doomed.