I'd like to second Ashwani's comment from the email below: "I really do think Jared Diamond's basic point is, if we want to take a honest crack at "solving" carrying capacity issues, we need to be looking in our own homes first. If that's true, I agree with him." =20 And I'd like to extend this basic principle to ESA and suggest that as we develop a policy statement on economic growth we include a strong and clear section derived from=20 self-reflexive and self-critical understanding of our own role=20 in perpetuating the problematic growth paradigm. ESA is one "home" that we need to look to first for both understanding the root cause of our current ecological crisis and finding the=20 solution. In ESA, as in likely most of our individual homes, universities, agencies, offices, organizations, corporations, including my own, the growth paradigm is present in almost every thought and action. We talk, plan and act to grow our membership, to grow our journals and publications, to=20 increase our funding, to increase our power and influence, to increase our material research capacities, to increase=20 our data and monitoring systems, etc. etc. Caught up in this same cultural mindset, I work to increase my publications, research projects, grants, students, income, retirement funds, etc. It is all about growth and increase, and this systemic fundamentalist goal becomes the basis for rationalizing all manner of consumption, waste, rushing, short-cuts, lack of full accounting, short-term thinking, competitive anxiety, etc. We rationalize and compare to other sectors and say that we must compete and grow or else the non-ecological or non-science or various "other" sectors will get the upper=20 hand. We criticize agriculture and energy and transportation and housing and cities and planning and every other sector. But we are just as consumptive and just as growth oriented. =20 Stephen Covey of "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"=20 fame wrote (paraphrased if not verbatim) "Any time I think=20 the problem is 'out there', that thought is the problem." =20 We could make ESA a microcosm of the sustainable=20 future. We could look inward and solve the climate, growth, and other environmental crises at home first, and then lead by example. Solving the problem in-house is likely the=20 harder part! This could be another reason we like to spend more time looking outward and elsewhere. Even admitting this does not make it easy - it is still wicked hard to go against the great rushing torrent of the mainstream. For this issue of scale I think we need to look for strength in=20 numbers and in positive feedback - I think we need to find ways to convert to the non-growth, (dynamic) steady state,=20 descent path as whole communities and networks and as networks with full circles including social functions like=20 funders, researchers, publishers, educators, government. These kinds of social "trophic" groups form full circles to fund, conceive research, carry out, test results, report,=20 publish, promulgate and educate, apply and implement=20 technology, policy and management relative to ecological=20 knowledge. If ESA alone tried to change paradigms away=20 from growth, we might get swept away by all these other=20 partners if they did not join in our 180 degree course=20 correction. But if a set of partners from all of these sectors=20 could change in concert, we could run the entire enterprise=20 in a new way. =20 One last thought is that if we see ourselves as caught in a "vicious cycle" and find ourselves thinking "I can't change the system", it may help to try to band together to re-wire or re-route our social networks into new=20 cycles - like a "glorious cycle", or a "soft landing cycle"=20 or some other such beneficial type of collective=20 self-reinforcing culture, mindset and action plan.
Maybe...some dreaming "out loud", on the eve of Martin Luther King day. I could be off, but it's some honest 2 cents worth of rough ideas and hopefully good intentions... =20 Dan Fiscus, still unsustainable after all these years =20 =20 ________________________________ From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news on behalf of = Ashwani Vasishth Sent: Sun 1/20/2008 7:05 PM To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: Population, Consumption and Economic Growth Ganter, Philip F. wrote: > I am always confused by the message in stating the inequality between = consumption between the developed and developing economies.=20 > =20 Whether one goes to Ehrlich & Commoner's I=3DP*A*T or to Robert Kates' "Population, Technology and the Human Environment: A Thread Through Time," I think the basic point of such stories is to emphasize that population is only a part (some of us would say a relatively small part) of the carrying capacity plot line. As a Third Worlder, from India, whenever I hear the population drum being beaten, I flash to the idea of "there go those over-breeding heathen." Thing is, I'm really, really glad the Ehrlichs wrote The Population Bomb. If they proved wrong in their prognostications, its only because we live in an evolutionary, responsive world. They poked at the world, and the world responded. I was in India. I saw the massive family planning efforts in the 1970s. But I also saw the forced sterlization camps, and the men and women herded into "health clinics" to meet the quotas imposed on civil servants by a remote and removed central government. Some things come with a high cost. Or take China. One child per family. And what happens? We come today to a world in which there are, what?, fifty million more men than women in China? And Tibet then becomes the "seeding ground" for a new generation of Chinese, with massive, widespread impregnation of Tibetan women? Who will take responsibility for these ignominies? Over-population is a Third World problem. Over-consumption is a First World problem. Let the Third Worlders find a solution to their problem. We should look to our own sins. We don't. I really do think Jared Diamond's basic point is, if we want to take a honest crack at "solving" carrying capacity issues, we need to be looking in our own homes first. If that's true, I agree with him. Cheers, Ashwani
