Civic Unreasonableness

Dear Friends,

In its September/October 2008 article about James Gustave Speth, Orion
Magazine (www.orionmagazine.org) comments, "If America can be said to have a
distinguished elder statesman of environmental policy, Speth is it." His
career includes leadership of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the
World Resources Institute, the United Nations Development Programme, and the
Yale School of Forestry.

It is this very life-long commitment to the environment that has turned Gus
Speth into an eloquent spokesperson for a "new economy." In the essay below
he argues for the urgent transformation of old and failing economic systems
if we hope to achieve a sustainable and equitable future.

Our thanks to Gus Speth for letting us share his essay with you.

You can also hear Gus Speth on NPR.

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Barbara Wood, and Arthur Zajonc.

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PREAMBLE: NEW ECONOMY, SUSTAINING ECONOMY
by James Gustave Speth
May 28, 2009

The economic crisis has stimulated much soul searching and, more generally,
searching for something better. Along with the environmental crisis, it has
exposed the severe shortcomings of business as usual and the current order.

A great imperative Americans now face is to build a new economy – a
sustaining economy. Sustaining people, communities and nature must
henceforth be seen as the core goals of economic activity, not hoped for
by-products of market success, growth for its own sake, and modest
regulation.

We are told to seek a strong economy. We know now that we should seek first
a strong society, a strong nature, and a strong democracy. Today's economy
offers little help in these regards. We must move beyond it. We need to
reinvent the economy, not merely restore it.

Political action must embrace a profound commitment to social justice and a
powerful assault on economic privilege. It must embrace a sustained
challenge to consumerism and commercialism and the lifestyles they offer, a
healthy skepticism of growthmania and a redefinition of what society should
be striving to grow, a challenge to corporate dominance and a redefinition
of the corporation and its goals, and a commitment to deep change in both
the functioning and the reach of the market.

Economic growth may be the world's secular religion, but for much of the of
the world it is a god that is failing – underperforming for most of the
world's people and, for those of us in affluent societies, creating more
problems than it is solving. The never-ending drive to grow the overall
U.S. economy undermines families, jobs, communities, the environment, a
sense of place and continuity, even mental health. It fuels a ruthless
search for energy and other resources, and it rests on a manufactured
consumerism that is not meeting the deepest human needs.

Before it is too late, America should begin to move to post-growth society
where working life, the natural environment, our communities, and the public
sector are no longer sacrificed for the sake of mere GDP growth; where the
illusory promises of ever-more growth no longer provide an excuse for
neglecting to deal generously with compelling social needs; and where a
truly democratic politics is no longer hostage to the primacy of powerful
corporate interests.

Needed Policy Initiatives

America's open-ended commitment to aggregate economic growth is consuming
environmental and social capital, both now severely diminished. At the same
time, it is abundantly clear that American society and many others do need
growth along many dimensions that increase human welfare, now and in the
future: growth in good jobs and in the incomes of the poor; growth in
availability of health care and the efficiency of its delivery; growth in
education and training; growth in security against the risks of illness, job
displacement, old age and disability; growth in investment in public
infrastructure for urban and inter-urban transport, water, waste management
and environmental amenity; growth in the deployment of climate-friendly and
other green technologies, as rapidly as possible; growth in the replacement
of America's obsolete energy system; growth in the restoration of both
ecosystems and local communities; growth in non-military government spending
at the expense of military; and growth in international assistance for
sustainable, people-centered development for the half of humanity that live
in poverty, to mention some prominent needs. Even in a post-growth society
many things need to grow.

We need targeted policies that directly address these objectives and
America's compelling social needs – policies, for example, that strengthen
families and communities and address the breakdown of social connectedness;
that guarantee good, well-paying jobs (including green-collar ones); that
provide for universal healthcare and alleviate the devastating effects of
mental illness; that provide a good education for all; and that ensure care
and companionship for the chronically ill and incapacitated.

Of particular importance are government policies that will temper growth
while improving social and environmental well-being, such as: shorter
workweeks and longer vacations; greater labor protections, job security and
benefits; restrictions on advertising; a new design for the
twenty-first-century corporation, one that embraces rechartering and
stakeholder primacy rather than shareholder primacy; strong social and
environmental provisions in trade agreements; rigorous environmental, health
and consumer protection, including full incorporation of environmental and
social costs in prices; greater economic and social equality, with genuinely
progressive taxation of the rich and greater income support for the poor;
heavy spending on public services; and initiatives to address population
growth at home and abroad.

If the market is going to work for the betterment of society, environmental
and social costs should be incorporated into prices. Honest prices will
ensure that people take into account the environmental and social impacts of
their purchases, whether they're environmentally conscious or just minding
their pocketbooks. High prices are a problem not because they are high but
because people don't have the money to pay them and alternatives (e.g.,
truly fuel-efficient vehicles) are not readily available. Honest prices
would be higher prices for many things, but that does not mean Exxon should
pocket the difference or that equity issues should remain unaddressed.

Responsibly high energy prices, driven for example by a declining cap on
carbon dioxide emissions, will help protect the earth's climate, increase
demand for efficient vehicles and public transportation, spur new renewable
energy industries, decrease the supply vulnerabilities and international
entanglements of imported oil, strengthen local communities and encourage
localization rather than globalization. But honest energy prices must be
accompanied by measures that make them affordable by those on whom they
would otherwise impose a serious hardship.

Conventional wisdom on the clash of economy and environment is that we can
have it both ways, thanks to new technology. We do indeed need a revolution
in the technologies of energy, transportation, construction, agriculture and
more. This ecological modernization can be driven by quantitative
restrictions that ensure extractions from the environment do not exceed
regenerative capacities and discharges to the environment do not exceed
assimilative capacities. But the rate of technological change required to
deal with environmental challenges in the face of rapid economic growth is
extremely high and rarely achieved. If pollution from an industrial facility
is cut in half but growth spawns another similar plant, there is no net
gain. Housing, appliances and transportation can become more
energy-efficient, but the improvements will be overwhelmed if there are more
cars, larger houses and new appliances--and there are. There's a limit to
how fast and far new technology can take us; technological change alone is
not enough.

Economic Crisis and Beyond

Americans are struggling with the combined impacts of crumbling financial
assets, tighter credit and layoffs. These problems are associated with a
slowdown in GDP growth, but the failure of growth is not truly their cause,
and they will not necessarily be cured by more growth. We have had jobless
growth before. As is now appreciated, the current economic crisis is the
result of government failing to intervene appropriately in the
marketplace--in financial markets, in housing markets, in labor markets and
elsewhere. We are today on the receiving end of misguided policies,
including massive deregulation, that have led to deep structural maladies.
Major corrections are needed.

The economic crisis should also teach us to live more simply and focus more
locally. It is time to move beyond our consumerism and hyperventilating
lifestyles. There has been too little focus on consumption and the mounting
environmental and social costs of American "affluenza," extravagance and
wastefulness. Being less focused on getting and spending (initially, in
part, because there will be less to spend) can help society rediscover that
the truly important things in life are not at the mall nor, indeed, for sale
anywhere.

Psychological studies show that materialism is toxic to happiness and that
more income and more possessions do not lead to a lasting sense of
well-being or satisfaction with life. What makes people happy are warm
personal relationships and giving rather than getting, things that are
possible at a human scale. The good news is that more and more people sense
that there's a great misdirection of life's energy. In a survey 83 percent
of Americans say society is not focused on the right priorities, 81 percent
say America is too focused on shopping and spending, 88 percent say American
society is too materialistic, 84 percent want to spend more time with family
and friends. These numbers, even if half right, suggest there's a powerful
base on which to build. More and more people are saying: Confront
consumption. Practice sufficiency. Create social environments where
overconsumption is viewed as silly, wasteful, ostentatious. Create
commercial-free zones. Buy local. Eat slow food. Downshift. Public policy
should support these directions, and it should devise new measures to track
improvements in social welfare, a purpose for which GDP is a miserable
failure.

Building a Unified Progressive Movement

What circumstances might make deep change plausible? A mounting sense of
imminent crisis, occurring at a time of wise leadership, accompanied by the
articulation of a new American narrative or story and the appearance across
the landscape of new and appropriate models, all these would help. Most of
all, we need a new politics and new social movement powerful enough to drive
change.

We live and work in a system of political economy that cares profoundly
about profits and growth. It cares about society and the natural world in
which it operates mainly to the extent it is required to do so. It is up to
us as citizens to inject values of fairness, solidarity and sustainability
into this system, and government is the primary vehicle we have for
accomplishing this. But mainly we fail because our politics are too
enfeebled and government is more and more in the hands of powerful
corporations and great wealth. Our best hope for real change is a fusion of
those concerned about environment, social justice, and political democracy
into one progressive force. We are all communities of shared fate. We will
rise or fall together.

Environmentalists and social progressives must join to address the crisis of
inequality unraveling our social fabric and undermining democracy. It is a
crisis of soaring executive pay, huge incomes and increasingly concentrated
wealth for a small minority while poverty approaches a thirty-year high,
wages stagnate despite rising productivity, social mobility and opportunity
decline, the number of people without health insurance soars, job insecurity
increases, safety nets shrink and Americans have the longest working day of
all the rich countries.

Progressives of all stripes must also join in seeking to reform politics and
strengthen democracy. America's gaping social and economic inequality poses
a grave threat to democracy. We have seen the emergence of a vicious circle:
income disparities shift political access and influence to wealthy
constituencies and large businesses, which further imperils the potential of
the democratic process to act to correct the economic disparities.
Corporations have been the principal economic actors for a long time; now
they are the principal political actors as well. Neither environment nor
society fares well under corporatocracy. We need to embrace public financing
of elections, lobbying regulation, nonpartisan Congressional redistricting
and other reforms as a core of our agenda.

For the most part, we have worked within our current system of political
economy, but working within the system will in the end not succeed when what
is needed is transformative change in the system itself. George Bernard
Shaw famously said that all progress depends on not being reasonable. It's
time for a large amount of civic unreasonableness.

* * * * * * * * * *
James Gustave Speth is author of "The Bridge at the Edge of the World:
Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability"
(Yale Press, 2009 paperback edition) available through your local
independent bookseller.