From How Much is Enough? (Robert Skidelsky & Edward Skidelsky, 2012) pp176-7
The Malthusian spectre was avoided by most (although not all) European countries in the nineteenth century, through a combination of rising agricultural productivity, falling birth rates and mass emigration to the New World. But it has been raised many times subsequently. The 1972 bestseller Limits to Growth predicted that world population would hit 7 billion by the end of the twentieth century, leading to shortages of grain, oil, gas, copper, aluminium and gold.? These prophecies turned out to be predictably alarmist. Specifically, the ‘green revolution’ in agriculture, which greatly increased cereal yields per hectare, staved off the threat of mass starvation, despite the close-to projected growth of population. The other scenarios of depletion also failed to materialize.* The ‘population bomb’, to borrow the title of an influential 1960s tract, turned out to be a damp squib.*
This turn of events comes as no surprise to economists. The basic flaw in Malthus’s argument has long been known to them: it ignores the joint force of prices and technological innovation. As existing reserves of any raw material dwindle, its price goes up, creating an incentive to (a) seek out new reserves, (b) exploit existing reserves more efficiently and. (c) explore alternatives. For example, the recent rise in oil prices has prompted the opening up of new fields in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico as well as investment in wind, solar and other forms of power. Given a technologically progressive civilization, which controls population growth, it is highly unlikely that our planet will run out of food, energy or the other requirements of life. The quality of life in such a planet is, of course, another matter.
But the Malthusian argument can take another, more powerful form. What if the ultimate limit to growth lies not in ‘sources’ but in ‘sinks’, not in the earth’s supply of oil and other industrial resources but in its capacity to absorb their waste products? Pollution is recalcitrant in relation to the usual market mechanisms. It is what economists call a ‘negative externality’: its ill-effects are not reflected in its price, so it tends to be overproduced relative to its true cost. If pollution is to be controlled, it must be by collective action. And this action must be global, since the effects of pollution are often felt a long distance from its source.
One particular pollutant has come to dominate public discussion. Carbon dioxide is released into the air by the combustion of coal, gas and oil, fuels which between them account for about 80 per cent of global energy. Its atmospheric concentration has risen steadily since the Industrial Revolution and continues to rise. This is worrying, because carbon dioxide is one of a number of gases that prevent heat from the sun escaping back into the atmosphere. As its concentration increases, the earth gets warmer. This is the ‘anthropogenic (or manmade) greenhouse effect’, believed to be the chief cause of global warming.
Global warming is quite unlike previous Malthusian scares, in scale and in character. Its anticipated effects include flooding, drought, plague and, on a worst case scenario, the total destruction of human life. Its elimination requires the abandonment not just of this or that luxury but of coal, gas and oil the lifeblood of industrial civilization. This provides a convenient platform to those who never liked industrial civilization to begin with. Climate campaigner George Monbiot’ has urged the governments of the rich world ‘to keep growth rates as close to zero as possible’.* In a similar spirit, sustainability adviser Tim Jackson argues that only the complete elimination of growth can save us from planetary disaster, adding hopefully that it will make us happier too.®
We agree that, for the affluent world, growth is no longer a sensible goal of long-term policy. But we regard this as an ethical truth, not as a conclusion from scientific fact. The problems of global warming, serious as they are, do not on their own require us to abandon growth. It is only on the additional assumption, usually unacknowledged, that beyond a certain point growth is inherently undesirable that the inference becomes compelling. An ethical ideal has been smuggled in under the cloak of a pragmatic necessity, a familiar ruse in our utilitarian political culture.
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