We must reduce demand and not boost it for the sake of the Planet
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Governments and the International Labor Organizations are saying that we must boost demand to stimulate and grow the economy. That, however, is not sustainable.
The Planet is finite, and this is a fact that everyone has to come to realize and understand and it cannot grow. Thus we must create a constant economy and not a constantly growing economy. It is as simple as that.
Governments and economists of the “growth school” do not seem to understand and appreciate, and neither, it would appear, do most ordinary people, that constant growth cannot be sustained and that it will destroy the environment upon which we depend and thus us.
It is important for survival that we get away from a demand-based and -lead economy and adopt a resource-based economy.
The demand-based economy is no longer sustainable, not that it ever really has been, and we must replace it, forthwith, with a resource-based system.
The problem is, though, that the “market” and the people, does not and do not understand this kind of system and people have, over the decades, been so conditioned into consumerism and consumption that the transition to such a resource-based system will be a difficult undertaking for many of them. But it is a journey that we all must make and we better start on it now.
We cannot, however, continue on the path of continual economic growth considering, as already indicated, that the Planet and the non-renewable resources are all finite. Neither the Planet nor they can grow and reproduce.
We cannot grow a larger Planet nor can we grow any more oil, gas or coal and the same goes for minerals, rare earths and such like.
Therefore we must reduce demand and live within the means of the Planet and, in a way, within our own means. At the same time we must demand that the products that we buy are created sustainably in the way that they are also repairable and upgradeable, ideally by DIY. And, at the same time, we must learn to be contend with what we have rather than being conned by advertising into believing that new is always better.
We owe this to ourselves, our children and the Planet. We need a new system, economic, as well as political, and the economy must be based on the resources to hand and not on created demand.
© 2012
