This is a topic I have been thinking about for a long time. It first came to my awareness in a significant way when I read Mark Kurlansky's wonderful book Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, which I highly recommend. Don't let the idea of a whole book about a fish deter you from reading it. It is both entertaining and instructive.
The idea of nature's bounties being inexhaustible is an old one and buried deep in our collective psyche. As a culture, we can observe that many people have ceased to be grateful for nature's bounties. Many have ceased even to be complacent about them. We have, in large part, ceased to be aware of it. We have simply built our way of life around the assumption that no matter what we do, we will always have clean air and clean water; that we will always have in abundance food, electricity, minerals, petroleum, wood, the raw materials to feed our economy, the space to store our garbage, and a million other things.
Only recently have we started to become aware that nature is not inexhaustible. We have seen how we can visibly foul our air with pollution. People are less inclined to believe, because it cannot be seen with the eyes, how we invisibly foul our atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Everyone has seen, either in person, or in images, waterways fouled by industrial waste. Everyone has heard of landfills filling up. Not everyone is aware how we have harvested certain species of fish until they were at the brink of extinction.
It appears that Nature is like the goose that lays the golden eggs. If we kill the goose in an attempt to extract ever more gold, then we will have no more gold.
We often hear talk about our being addicted to oil. This is misleading and only tries to accomplish one thing: to somehow make us feel guilty and therefore use less oil. The problem however is deeper, and not amenable to be solved by guilt. The real problem is that we have built enduring institutions based on the assumption of inexhaustible abundance. Here are some examples of this:
The idea of nature's bounties being inexhaustible is an old one and buried deep in our collective psyche. As a culture, we can observe that many people have ceased to be grateful for nature's bounties. Many have ceased even to be complacent about them. We have, in large part, ceased to be aware of it. We have simply built our way of life around the assumption that no matter what we do, we will always have clean air and clean water; that we will always have in abundance food, electricity, minerals, petroleum, wood, the raw materials to feed our economy, the space to store our garbage, and a million other things.
Only recently have we started to become aware that nature is not inexhaustible. We have seen how we can visibly foul our air with pollution. People are less inclined to believe, because it cannot be seen with the eyes, how we invisibly foul our atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Everyone has seen, either in person, or in images, waterways fouled by industrial waste. Everyone has heard of landfills filling up. Not everyone is aware how we have harvested certain species of fish until they were at the brink of extinction.
It appears that Nature is like the goose that lays the golden eggs. If we kill the goose in an attempt to extract ever more gold, then we will have no more gold.
We often hear talk about our being addicted to oil. This is misleading and only tries to accomplish one thing: to somehow make us feel guilty and therefore use less oil. The problem however is deeper, and not amenable to be solved by guilt. The real problem is that we have built enduring institutions based on the assumption of inexhaustible abundance. Here are some examples of this:
- We replaced a relatively efficient railway infrastructure in favor of individual automobiles.
- We have built and continue to construct ever more far-flung suburbs that require people to commute many miles to their place of employment.
- We have established an economic system that relies heavily on an endless cycle of creation and consumption of new goods.
- Companies, to survive, must produce products that are engineered for a limited lifespan. These are then discarded and replaced with new items that will have to be replaced in a relatively short time.
- For profit, companies will exploit a natural resource until it is exhausted. We have seen this many times with polluted rivers; fish harvested past their threshold of viable reproduction; strip mining; fracking, which permanently fouls immense quantities of water; and manufacturing methods that produce a lot of waste.
- Entire industries, on which depend many thousands of workers for their livelihood, exist for the sole purpose of making products whose use brings transient pleasure in the short run, but which ultimately bring only harm to people: tobacco, alcohol, junk food, pornography.
- Some companies engage in practices which do not start out with the intent to harm consumers, but even when it becomes clear that products and practices are harmful, they cannot easily discontinue them because they have built their prosperity on the foundation of those products. See High Fructose Corn Syrup and Trans Fats as two examples among many.
I do not intend for this to be a diatribe against large companies. I don't think that they are inherently evil. They provide the means by which most people live decent lives. However, they are another example of an enduring institution we have built on the assumption of inexhaustible abundance. Public companies exist to make a profit for their shareholders. In fact, they are in fact required by law to direct all their activities to that end and no other. This very fact gives public companies a strong incentive to squeeze that golden goose as much as possible.
Government is also not guilt-free. To prolong prosperity, and thus garner votes, or in response to political pressure, we subsidize industries even when it is clear that their effects are harmful. Ethanol, oil, pharmaceuticals, are just a few examples. The government also manipulates monetary policy to encourage more consumption of goods and services.
I'm not sure what to do about these things, but awareness of a problem is the first step toward solving it. Enduring institutions can be very good. The Rule of Law, the Bill of Rights, mandatory public education, universities, good public health institutions, innovative companies that responsibly produce valuable goods and services are just a few examples among many of good, enduring institutions. But if such institutions are built on unsound foundations, they will cause problems while they persist and will eventually crumble, causing even more damage.
So, not to end on a negative note, here are some examples that we are starting, slowly, slowly, to become aware of the plight of our golden goose, and are starting slowly, slowly to do something about it:
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