Saturday, February 10, 2007
The Growth Paradigm: BioFuel and folly vs. progress
Don Chisholm
Recent statistics tell us that Canadians are worried, very worried, about global warming. Across Canada and USA farmers are very happy to learn of government incentives to produce bio fuels, such as ethanol from corn.
Subsidies will flow to industrial producers, people will be employed, tractors will till the soil and our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will grow making economic news look good. We're told this will help reduce carbon dioxide, while we have started to save the environment.
But independent scientists tell us this scheme is pure folly. In North America bio fuels require more energy to produce than they return - wasted Human Activity. The process attempts to sustain the myth that economic growth can last forever.
The, “Human, of Human Activity, is population in total numbers: “Activity”, is resource/energy throughput. Global population grew from 1.1 to 6.5 billion humans in the 20th century, along with about proportional resource throughput. Can such growth can last forever?
Other scientists tell us that about 50 years ago Human Activity exceeded the regenerative carrying capacity of our planet: we now deficit spend our children's ecological future. Global warming, massive forest loss, species declines and extinctions, rapid desertification, the ozone-hole-problem, etc., result from excess Human Activity.Related problems are peak-oil, gas reserve uncertainty, resource wars, etc.
The recent sudden greening of Prime Minister Steven Harper was tempered with his assurance that he would not let green influence interfere with economic growth: i.e., full speed ahead with Human Activity growth! Only enlightened courageous voters can change this destitute paradigm.
A sane world would be guided by our natural spiritual affinity toward nature and by science: not driven by blind economic growth. There are many things that we can do to carefully reduce the human footprint while maintaining essential industrial/economic activity. This would lead toward a sustainable civilization with a steady state economy. We will require a determination commitment-level equivalent to that of our parents going into WWI or II.
Regarding population, Canada can restrict immigration and provide incentives for reduced fertility. Regarding Activity, we can start by severing international trade agreements that limit our ability to protect our environment. A major bold but essential step would be for our government to abide by the spirit of the Canadian Constitution and to re-enable only the Bank of Canada (BoC) to create money, and then shift all existing federal, provincial debts back from private commercial banks, to BoC (as intended long ago), where they would be interest free. Interest payments to banks now absorb 33% of our hard earned tax money. Debt-based money creation by corporate banks is a contributory reason for the old song, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer!”, another significant part of today's problems.
The 33% of tax money than now flows to private hands can be used to sustain and reorient communities of people in industries, such as, derivative stock traders, forestry or automotive that will be significantly reduced in the paradigm of survival. Many of today's apparent problems would vanish if citizens demanded end to the growth paradigm. Growth driven development over prime farmland would be eliminated; the same for new roads and civic infrastructure. Real green energy, such as wind or solar, along with existing facilities would carry the diminishing load.
Needed social/political change will present problems with difficult solutions: continuance of the growth paradigm presents problems with NO solutions. For the sake of our children, never again vote for a political party that promises economic growth!
Don Chisholm is President of the Gaia Preservation Coalition His 'Big Picture' articles are featured on the safewatergroup website
