Aspectos clave identificados en la entrevista a C. Gonzáles

Economic growth has become a sacred icon of the modern world. The desirability of continued expansion of the economy was subjected to sustained criticism from the environmental movement of the late sixties and early seventies, but the criti- cism was soon brushed off by the politicians, business leaders and trade unionists for whom the ideology of growth was the answer to all problems.19 The earlier proponents of limits to

5 8 H o w a r e w e t o l i v e ?

ready to extrapolate present trends into the future. As a result they predicted that we would soon start running out of resources. By making our use of energy and other resources more efficient, we have succeeded in postponing the day when we must make tougher decisions. Controlling population growth is another key to limiting the damage we do to the global ecosystem, and hence to postponing the day when irre- versible damage becomes apparent to all; but even that will not be sufficient. Sandra Postel and Christopher Flavin, researchers at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC, have in mind economic growth when they write:

If growth continues along the lines of recent decades, it is only a matter of time before global systems collapse under the pres- sure . . . Continuing growth in material consumption - the number of cars and air conditioners, the amount of paper used, and the like - will eventually overwhelm gains from efficiency, causing total resource use (and all the corresponding environ- mental damage) to rise . . . This aspect of the transition from growth to sustainability is thus far more difficult, as it goes to the heart of people's consumption patterns.30

Lester Brown, President of the Worldwatch Institute, has written:

Movement toward a lasting society cannot occur without a transformation of individual priorities and values . . . Because of the strain on resources it creates, materialism simply cannot survive the transition to a sustainable world.21

According to a Brazilian study, if fossil fuel is used effi- ciently and we make greater use of renewable resources, we might be able to provide everyone in the world with modest but comfortable homes, refrigeration for food, access to public

U s i n g u p t h e w o r l d 5 9

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transport, and occasional limited use of a car; but we will never be able to provide everyone with the more profligate lifestyle of, say, 'Americans today. As Alan Durning puts it: 'In the end, the ability of the earth to support billions of human beings depends on whether we continue to equate consumption with fulfillment'.22

The problem is that our conception of the good life depends on constantly rising levels of consumption. When the cel- ebrated Harvard economist J. K. Galbraith published The Affluent Society in 1958, no-one disputed the accuracy of its title as a description of the United States; nor did they dis- agree with the picture presented in the book of a land that had reached heights of affluence undreamt of by earlier gen- erations. Yet America has since become, in terms of material goods, considerably more affluent than it had been twenty- five years earlier. By the early eighties, Americans owned five times as many air-conditioners per head, four times as many clothes dryers and seven times as many dishwashers.2' In I960,

only 1 percent of American homes had colour television; by 1987, this had risen to 93 percent. Microwaves and video cassette recorders entered American homes in the seventies and eighties, and within a decade were to be found in nearly two-thirds of all homes.24 Despite this dramatic increase in

material goods, people felt neither more affluent nor happier. The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Cen- ter has for many years been asking Americans how happy they are. The proportion describing themselves as 'very happy' has hovered around one-third since the 1950s.25 Why has it

not risen with material levels of affluence? Essentially, because though the society was still becoming more affluent, the rate at which it was doing so had slowed:

In judging how well off we are economically . . . we assimilate new input to our 'adaptation level'. For many Americans, having

60 How a r e we to l i v e ?

one or several color television sets, two or more cars, a home in which there are more rooms than people . . . these and other features of their lives are experienced as the 'neutral point'. They do not excite us or arouse much feeling. Only a departure from that level is really noticed. Some pleasure may be afforded by our background level of material comfort, but unless we look elsewhere than the accumulation of goods for the main sources of pleasure and excitement in our lives, we are bound to be on a treadmill - one which, we are increasingly recogniz- ing, can damage our health and shorten our lives.26

Contemporary academic psychologists have explored this feature of human psychology, and found that it holds quite generally:

The phenomenon of adaptation (or habituation) to maintained states is a fundamental biological regularity, which is observed at all levels of functioning . . . At all these levels, the mainte- nance of a state and the frequent repetition of a stimulus event are associated with a decreasing response to that stimulus . . . Adaptation has two general consequences for subjective experi- ence. The first is that exposure to repeated stimulation tends to produce a neutral subjective state, or null state . . . The second consequence of adaptation is that contrast is the pri- mary determinant of experience.37

Adaptation works at a quite simple physiological level, as well as at a psychological level. If we look for a time at a theatre stage bathed in red light, a neutral mixture of red- green will appear green to us, although it would appear col- ourless to someone who walks into the theatre without any prior adaptation. In a similar way, people who have won lot- teries are, after a little while, no happier than other people who have not won lotteries. There are limits to adaptation.

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Even a long time after their accident, paraplegics are not as happy as others.28 In general, though, no matter what level

of comfort, luxury or pleasurable stimulus we achieve, it will soon cease to bring us pleasure that is any more intense than we had before.

The message is that, once we have satisfied our basic needs, there is no level of material comfort at which we are likely to find significantly greater long-term fulfilment than any other level. A 1992 Time cover story entitled 'Why the Gloom?' confirms that our judgements of how well off we are are relative to that to which we have become accustomed. From 1959 to 1973 American incomes grew, in real terms, by 2.7 percent per year; from 1973 to 1991, they grew by only 0.3 percent per year. This is still an increase: there has been no falling back below the levels of the early seventies, altRough there may have been a retreat from the debt-financed invest- ment and consumer binge of the eighties. Yet when asked , whether Americans today can enjoy the same standard of liv- ing as recent generations, two thirds of those who gave a clear answer said no. Time quotes a leading economist, Allen Sinai, as saying: 'The 1973 period marked the beginning of the decline of the American standard of living'. Whatever the

: psychological perceptions may be, it is clear that the figures

do not bear this out, unless American economists have become , so growth-orientated that they view a fall in the rate of growth Jas itself constituting a decline.29

i If we judge our success at least in part by the rate at which our living standard is improving, we also judge it by compar- ing it with our neighbours, friends and colleagues. Here too,

1 the increasing affluence of society as a whole brings no increase

i in the average sense of well-being, because as our collection of material goods increases, so does that of our neighbours. Whether people compare themselves with their own wealth the year before, or with what their neighbours have, it is clear

6 2 How a r e w e t o l i v e ?

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that for most people, most of the time, the pursuit of material affluence cannot bring happiness. That may be why the glar- ing disparities of wealth between Nigerians and West Ger- mans, or between Filipinos and Japanese, do not give rise to any differences in how people from these nations rate their level of happiness. R. A. Easterlin, of the University of Penn- sylvania, has carried out a comparative international study of the link between wealth and happiness. His conclusion is that there is very little relationship between the two: 'Economic growth does not raise a society to some ultimate state of plenty. Rather, the growth process itself engenders ever- growing wants that lead it ever onward'.30

If the world continues to pursue material affluence on the Western model, it will therefore risk environmental disaster while failing to make us happier, even if economic growth is achieved. To say this is not to be against economic growth. There is potential for environmentally sustainable growth. Often ways of doing things that are environmentally friendly are also more labour-intensive than alternatives that consume more fossil fuels or cause more pollution. The Worldwatch Institute has estimated that generating 1,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year requires 100 workers in a nuclear power plant, 116 in a coal-fired plant, 248 in a solar thermal plant, and 542 on a wind farm.3 1 Those figures partially explain, of

course, why the nuclear and coal plants produce electricity that, in straight dollar terms, is cheaper than the more envi- ronmentally friendly alternatives; but the cost to our global ecosystem is not included in the dollar figures. The same is true of a comparison between an industry based on the use of a natural resource, such as a forest or a bauxite deposit, and one based on recycling paper or aluminium cans. The use of the natural resource may be cheaper, but it uses up an irre- placeable resource; recycling will be more labour intensive and therefore costlier, but it is sustainable.

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To move towards a sustainable economy would cause unemployment in some industries, but on balance it would create jobs, not reduce them. Nevertheless, in strictly material terms, it has to be assumed that we would be worse off. Consuming irreplaceable resources is a quick and easy way of / enriching ourselves; and pouring our wastes down the global sink is cheaper than the ecologically sustainable alternatives. If we cut back on these ways of enriching ourselves, the eco- nomic loss must be felt somewhere. Products now made by consuming irreplaceable resources or polluting the environ- ment will become more expensive, and so we will be able to afford fewer of them. That may include cars, consumer goods, the use of energy for air-conditioning, heating and transport, and even food, like feedlot beef and intensively farmed pork and poultry, produced by methods that are extravagant uses of energy, soil and water.

If we retain our narrow view of our own self-interest, par- ticularly the conception that has been moulded by the devel- opment of consumerism since World War II, we will see the reduction in material affluence as nothing but a setback. Even if we recognize that the reduction is inevitable and that the present economy cannot be sustained, we will consider it a regrettable necessity, desirable in the interests of the world as a whole, but bad in its impact on our own lives. But if we have a broader view of self-interest we will welcome the change, not just for the good of the global environment, but also for ourselves. Walking, riding bicycles and using public transport may use fewer resources than sitting in slow-moving traffic in one's own air-conditioned car, but does the lower use of resources lead to less overall satisfaction for those who walk, cycle or take the train? This is just one way in which the size of a nation's Gross National Product is no guide to the level of welfare of the population.

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of self-interest; but there is another, which goes deeper. For centuries Western society has sought satisfaction from the holy grail of material abundance. The search has been excit- ing, and we have discovered many things that were well worth finding, but in so far as our goal was ever a sensible one, we reached it long ago. Unfortunately we have forgotten that there could be any other goals at all. What is there to live for, other than to be richer than others, and richer than we were before? Many who are outstandingly successful in terms of the materialistic conception of success find that the rewards for which they have worked so hard lose their appeal once they have been achieved. Adam Smith would not have been at all surprised. The search for happiness through material wealth is based on a deception. Considered just from the standpoint of our own real interests the case for changing our conception of the good life is very strong. Now we can also see, moreover, that this conception has to be changed for quite different reasons. It was constructed and became entrenched during a period when no-one thought of limits to material wealth or consumption. As the idea of unlimited growth has become untenable, so too has our conception of the good life. So what should our goals be? The pressing ecological need to change our economy offers us the best opportunity for centuries to reflect on this question, and to find out what it really is to live well.

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