A few years ago, a special issue of New Scientist magazine was dedicated to the steady-state economy. In it, Herman Daly, a leading guru behind the movement, explained that in his new ideal “sustainable economy,” “scientists set the rules.”
Translation: If the ecologists don’t like an idea, that idea is out. Daly’s hardly the only person out there imagining a kind of Plato’s Republic where the philosopher-kings are replaced with environmental and climate scientists. The 2007 book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy makes a similar argument, though its enemy is liberal democracy rather than economic growth.
Either way, the problem becomes clear: When people start talking about capping, halting, or managing economic growth, what they really mean is capping, halting, and managing freedom. Hence Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and avowed envier of China’s authoritarian regime, declares that “The Earth Is Full” and we must therefore embrace a version of the steady-state economy.
Economic growth is an enemy of all central planners for the simple reason that growth jumps the guardrails of The Plan; it changes the aesthetically appealing flat line of the steady state and makes it jagged. Growth creates new products, destroys old ones, and allows people to behave in ways that render PowerPoint projections dismayingly obsolete. Worse, it takes power from the planners.
These same anti-growth philosopher-kings use words like bucolic, unspoiled and vibrant to describe poverty-stricken places on earth where there is no electricity, running water or sewer systems.
They wouldn’t last a month in such a place!
Here’s a quote from Prince Charles:
Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse.
The ‘age of convenience’ is over.
You know what he did next, right?
Jumped back into his limo and was chauffered to one of his palaces.
Remember the Copenhagen ”stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off” summit?
More than 1200 limos….not one of them a hybrid.
So many jets that most had to fly to Germany and Sweden just to park.
Imported and un-green foie gras along with every other delicacy.
Stunning isn’t it?
Everyone with common sense should be very worried when ‘science’ becomes interwoven with ‘Politics’. Nothing good can ever come of this… Oh, Wait. Yes, something good can come of it if ‘you’ are on the Political side of ‘science’… I think the ‘ good’ is in the form of $$ at the mere Peasants expense…