A New Economy?

We are now closing the year 2011, which has been remarkably like 2010. Continued global warming, continued opposition to the teaching of evolution and global warming, continued economic uncertainty, and another year with a Congress that considers its sole function to be partisan strife and the promotion of Christian fundamentalism.

But one of these years, enormous changes will have to come. As economist Kenneth Boulding pointed out decades ago, and as environmental entrepreneur Paul Gilding has pointed out in his 2010 book The Great Disruption, growth cannot continue forever in a finite world. Gilding says that our current economic system will collapse, since it depends totally on economic growth. It will have to be replaced by an equilibrium economy. Gilding points out that this inevitable transition will not occur smoothly or gradually. At some point, a critical mass of people will realize that, in a finite world in which global warming will disrupt our lives, we have to change. Many of us realize this already; and we are a rapidly growing minority.

The change will be disruptive, since entire industries (such as coal and oil) have refused to admit that we are about to collide with natural ecological limits; they will fight to keep people not just using but wasting natural resources. Big corporations will continue to demand government bailouts for their own business mistakes. They preach capitalism but demand socialism. The resulting chaos, in a world with natural disasters and scarce food, will not be pretty. One of these years—it might be 2012—will make 2011 seem like a very uneventful year.

Gilding says that we will emerge from the chaos with a new and sustainable economic system. The old economy consists of many patterns of thought, which include: We have to keep growing to avoid collapse; we have to acquire ever more stuff in order to be happy; since the economy will always grow, we can put ourselves deeply into debt; ecological issues are something that we can take care of someday when we are all rich. These are the old, destructive thoughts that have brought our economy to the brink of disaster. But there are other economic patterns of thought: Our economy can be sustainable; happiness does not require lots of stuff; we can live within our means; we need to fit our economy into ecological limits now. There are millions of people (not enough millions) who believe this second set of ideas; and there are hundreds of companies that abide by them. That is, in the world of economic ideas, there is diversity.

And then along comes catastrophic natural selection: an economic collapse. If we were all hypnotized by consumerism, then this collapse would mean extinction. However, natural selection will in this case favor the companies and individuals that are ready to pursue sustainability memes. Yes, there will be an enormous collapse; but many individuals and corporations are at least partly ready for it. There are, for example, hundreds of alternative energy companies ready to fill the void that will be left by the downfall of the petroleum industry.

This sounds like good news. I wish I could believe it, but I believe that political conservatives will prevent us from making enough changes to survive the coming collapse; they will suppress the solutions. The CEOs of financial corporations, for example, want to keep us in debt rather than to let us live without owing them money. But they cannot wipe them out. At some point, a sustainable world may emerge.

It is not just conservative politicians, but also the dominant religion, that prevent the necessary changes in our economy. Conservative Christianity tells people that God wants them to have luxuries, no matter how many poor people may suffer from our pursuit of luxuries. The churches support the current economy, because they depend on contributions from happy parishioners. And they support the politicians who resist change. The last thing that conservative churches want to see is a country where millions of people have the sort of consumer ethics that Jesus of Nazareth had.

Another thing that I believe conservative churches fear about the coming economic transition is that it will require people to think for themselves. The churches want people to simply believe what they are told, by preachers or by corporations. Once people start realizing that they can change the world, no telling where it might end up: people might realize that they have been duped not just by corporations but by churches as well.