Hello Mr. McKibben. Good to see you here.

Just wanted to chime in and say that I recently read your new book "Deep Economy", and I highly recommend it.

destor23, that's only part of the problem with GDP. The rest of the problem has to do with what it measures ... and what it doesn't measure.

For example, if there's a toxic waste spill, that's good for the GDP. The clean-up, the legal costs, the medical bills for the people harmed, and so on and so forth are all counted as "production" for the purposes of calculating the GDP.

But volunteer work, or people caring for their children (and/or aging parents), or countless other things that improve everyone's lives aren't counted toward the GDP. (Or even essentially count negative, as when stay-at-home parents don't add to the GDP with so-called "real" jobs.)

I don't want more of a share in something that's so screwed up. I want more people to have bigger shares in something better.

The problem is that there are no good economic ideas on what a post-industrial society would look like. Current discussions are always about how to make growth "better". Even the ecological economists such as Herman Daly and Robert Costanza get a bit vague when the discussion moves from the analysis of what's wrong to how to fix it.

I'm afraid that Bill McKibben also has the same difficulties. Switching to local production and using renewable resources is only a slight modification of what is the current model.

I have proposed a steady-state economy. The problem is that capitalism requires growth. This is the only way that the money borrowed to create a new enterprise can be repaid with interest.

We do have models to look at. During most of the history of mankind people lived in steady-state economies. They consumed as much as the environment could produce. If the population went up the only solution was migration or famine. There are things that people can do besides acquire and use "stuff".

The other issue that pundits are unwilling to address is overpopulation. We already have more people on earth than can be accommodated with a decent standard of living and this is expected to increase by another 3 billion by mid century. Even the most aggressive proposals only yield a slowing in growth. Those societies which are facing an actual decline (like Japan and Italy) are desperately searching for ways to increase the birth rate. This shows the paucity of thought available in this area.

For those who want to read my 2 cents on the topic:

Planning for a Steady-State Economy

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

PS For those not familiar with Kenneth Boulding, a good introduction is his 1966 article "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth"

http://www.panarchy.org/boulding/spaceship.1966.html

or http://tinyurl.com/28yu6t

Here in Taos, NM we build "earthships", started by Michael Reynolds and now constructed worldwide. Not sure who coined that phrase first. I recollect Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Speaceship Earth" was about the same vintage

while I totally agree, the problem is that, as the nytimes recently pointed out, people are fatter than ever even though we know a lot about micronutrients and vitamins.

that is, math and science are important because of what other people could produce with them (i.e., a fit body). yet many people study them and/or how to teach them and get no results.

to be less mystical, money can be squandered or invested and math can be squandered or invested.

for example, Schrodinger invented parts of calculus and differential equations as he needed them. today, the mathematics that we learn are the skeletons of past achievement.

so the question is, how do we achieve the achievements that leave behind the sort of skeletons that people will be inspired to study?

I stopped studying math in the classical ways and started pulling it out of context since that's what the innovators did. of course, I'm waiting to see how successful I'll be with that approach but I'm feeling happier than ever since my studies come from the needs of my heart, not out of a desire to fulfill the needs of my heart...

First, we all know that money doesn't buy happiness.

It's actually a little more complicated than that. Up to a certain point money can buy things that do result in increased happiness -- food, shelter, education, health care, a few small "luxuries", and so on. But after some point, the effect of additional money on happiness tends to level off.

The problem is that many don't realize when we pass that point (and we're repeatedly told in lots of ways that we need to keep going). Mr. McKibben covers some of that dynamic in his book.

I tend to think growth is essential because it increases the opportunity to make positive changes and lessens peoples' tendency to set against one another.

I'll be curious to see how this "local economy" argument shakes out.

Will I still be allowed to enjoy french wine or real parmesan reggiano from Italy or to buy a Toyota instead of a Chevy?

I know that sounds facetious but I have access to a lot of things that I, you know, like.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

my take would be the GFE experience (Wikipedia) since, all to often, the orgasims in life are faked to save face.

I think you'd be interested in an article by David Graeber called "Army of Altruists" that appeared in Harper's a few months back. I really can't do it justice, but he talks about how many working-class kids join the army because it's their best opportunity to make a difference in the world. Along the way, the essay also discusses the relationship of religion and market economies, and offers what I think might be the best Grand Unified Theory of Republicanism (i.e. how the big business and religious right wings intertwine) that I've ever read.

http://www.sleepykid.org/blog/2007/01/13/army-of-altruists/

First of all, can I jsut say how weird it is to check in for my daily afternoon dose of tpm and see my mug staring back at me?

Many thanks to all for smart comments,some of which i'll try to answer in later posts. For the moment, suffice it to say that while i much appreciate the wisdom of the comments about how hard it might be to break away from the growth model, how we've always known that wealth doesn't make you happy and yet acted as if it did, and how growth has real benefits,  I still think that we live in a moment when we're going to have to think about this question anew.

 That's why the ecological part of the argument is crucial.  Plan A is less of an option than it used to be. The casual thought that eventually all the world will grow to resemble the middleclass of the US, or even that that middle class will be able to maintain its 'lifestyle' seems less likely than, say, five years ago. We understand more now what a precipice we stand on with climate change--and we also start to sense the underlying problem with the Chinese economy expandingfor another fortyyears at anything like its current rate. If it did, the Chinese would be as rich as we are, and if they consumed anything like we did--well, to give you an idea, the 800 million cars currently on earth would be joined by 1.1 billion Chinese ones. And then those Indians...

So the moment might be right for the kind of rethinking thatperhaps we'll get to talk ore about in the course of the week. --bill 

Now I may not have a MBA in economics and be a CPA, but as a typical middle of the road American I do know that the price of "milk" is greater than a gallon of "gas." So, if I want to buy the gallon of milk I have to get in my car and drive down to the market, but I used 2 gallons of gas to buy that 1 gallon of milk! Now you tell me what is wrong with this equation?

On that same note, jobs are gone to lower wage country's with no accountably to the large corporations that take American pride in order to boost large CEO's pay. Its the companies that I am starting to rebel against by not purchasing their products! They are the ones who are anti American, not supporting our over seas military by profiting on their death!

The economics of this country are misrepresented and fixed with their own numbers! Just like everything else in the current Administration they put the wrong person with the lease experience in the wrong job; and the result is cover up after cover up in order to cover the screw up!

Hi Mr. McKibben -

I'm really glad to see you here discussing your new book. I haven't read it yet, but I have read and enjoyed your essay about Christianity in Harper's, "The End of Nature," and "Enough." I look forward to joining the discussion!

I finished college a year ago with a degree in Environmental Policy and Environmental Science, and wrote my thesis on the subject of your book, more specifically on the statistical relationship between changes in income and other employment traits on subjective well being. As eye-opening as that project was, what was even more amazing has been transitioning into the workforce.

I have been working as a professional for nearly a full year, and I am amazed at how powerless I have felt against making the exact mistakes that I feel so strongly are the biggest structural problems with the American economy - there is no middle ground between insufficient income and too much work! Of course, I mean work in the shirt-and-tie variety, which provides not enough room for self-actualization and demands too much time. This is no knock against my employer - it is a structural problem with the American economy: 1) it seems impossible to compete as a small business without wringing out your workers, and 2) there are not nearly enough protections for non-managerial professionals. No unions, no overtime, no mandatory vacation.

I am a strong proponent of reorganizing our economy to be more like France's - sluggish but with outstanding worker protections. My question to you: How shall we go about reorganizing the economy? Is there a realistic way to overcome the ruling-class opposition to an economy based around happiness? Are we nearing a revolution in the way we think about Utility?

I look forward to your thoughts!

More important than all these, the whole issue is bogus. People are unhappy because they live on the border. They have a hard time hacking it, they commute for hours or hold two jobs with little leisure, they are constantly at risk of losing a job, healthcare, and baseline of income. Telling them they work so hard because they're greedy and can live better in small-town America isn't just talking like a luddite. It's talking like an upper middle class luddite who can afford the isolation and hasn't talked to human beings.

John, I don't think the point is that people are unhappy because they are greedy, but they are unhappy because they have been drafted, in effect, into a fanatical economic army devoted to ever-increasing levels of production, and that they have increasingly few choices about the way they organize their lives, or about the draining and ever more stringent requirements they must fulfill in order to be granted a decent way of life by their masters.

They may be able to purchase more stuff than their ancestors, but as you suggest yourself, many of the things they purchase are things that they are in effect required to purchase in order to fill various work and social demands that they have not really "chosen" but have been forced upon them.

You mention the case of the blackberry, laptop and cell phone. Why do people "need" to buy them? Presumably because they now have bosses and business requirements that demand that they conduct all sorts of formerly leisurely, office-related business in a highly efficient and astonishingly prompt way, wherevever they happen to be, and that they also be available at all times. So they have to work many highly productive and stressful hours so they can afford to buy the tools they need to fulfill their other high productivity, high stress work requirements.

Or they might have a job that is detrimental to their physical health. So they must purchase a health club enrollment so that they can consume "leisure" hours maintaining the level of health and vitality needed to perform in a job from which they will be dropped if they lose their health. Or they might be required to purchase clothing that they would never wear were it not required as the unofficial "uniform" of their profession, or they must purchase extra luggage or extra cars or extra Advil or extra caffeine and all sorts of other extras in order to maintain the necessary levels of performance.

The contemporary system seems designed to squeeze ever higher levels of productivity and time investment out of workers, while reducing their benefits and security. Insecurity based on competition is in fact the very lifeblood of the system. It's the insecurity itself which produces so many of the needs that drive the demand that fuels more production that fosters more competitive insecurity which produces more needs, etc. etc. Since the system is so competitive, there is no limit to the needs that are created, since there will always be a demand for products that give their users the "edge" they need so that they don't fall behind and fail. People don't need these products to make their lives and jobs better. They need them just to keep up, so that their existence just doesn't get worse.

It also seems to be the case that as productivity increases, our economic institutions are not geared to produce the same output with less work per worker. Instead the response is to produce the same or increased output with fewer workers.

Unfortunately this post does not do justice to just how influential and revolutionary McKibben's writings have been. The End of Nature was the canary in Gore's coalmine. It also presents the most comprehensive analysis of how climate change could affect us that I have read. McKibben deserves a Pulitzer for his work.

So, if I want to buy the gallon of milk I have to get in my car and drive down to the market, but I used 2 gallons of gas to buy that 1 gallon of milk!

if you're implying that it takes oil to transport goods across the ocean, Stirling Newberry who used to blog here noted that ships use, essentially, waste oil left over from making gasoline so that's why it's cost effective to ship things halfway around the world.... I should also note that shipping things by water is very, very efficient!

here is "the proof," (if the internet data is accurate):

Number of miles one ton can be carried per gallon of fuel:

59 miles by truck;
202 miles by rail;
514 miles by barge;

data source

so, really, labor is the controlling cost since today's ships require skeleton crews.

I am starting to rebel against by not purchasing their products!

that's what Ghandi did and I follow his example somewhat by not boycotting stores like wal-mart but not consuming their products either since I've learned to live without them.

if you can buy clothes or other items at a second hand store, that's even better!

Growth in populations is the easiest way to sell more toothpaste -- more teeth, more toothpaste. So I agree with others who say that population is one of the most important factors.

As we run out of resources, and our population gets too wieldly, it's only natural that we'd have a decline in happiness, and increases in war and violent crime.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the social security pyramid scheme. If it ever does go bankrupt, we'll be living in a society that will need to bring Kervorkian out of jail to start a Solient Green program of doctor assisted "retirement." I think this is where we are headed.

I think one solution that might make some sense is local ownership. By that I mean companies who's owners are all employees. Privately held corporations, who's stock holders all work for the company, and where the company pays in stock ownership as well as salaries and benefits. Such companies would be more desireable to work for, and theoretically anyways, the top talent working for those companies should be able too be more productive and allow the company to survive.

If you worked for a privately held company, you'd be getting your fair share of the profit from the company. It would not be going to someone sitting in an arm chair reading Fortune magazine. And since you'd be paid in both stock dividends and salary, if the company was successful enough, you and the other employee-owners might have more say in deciding to pursue a costly energy efficiency or pollutiion reduction investment than if the arm chair owners were the ones with the decision making power. Actually, it's the CEO and board members who make the decisions, but they are pressured by wall street realities, which are dictated by the multitudes of arm chair stock holder owners who in most cases do not keep abreast of the ethics of the decisions of the company, or even of the decisions of the company, but who are singularly concerned with stock price and dividend payoff.

This pressures the CEO's and board members to only consider the short run. And consideration of the short run is rarely a decision that favors the environment or the populace.

I believe capitalism is a great system, but that it will need to fine tune itself in this way (of privately held employee owned companies) or else it may eventually implode on itself, fulfilling Marx's pessimistic predictions.

Along with privately held employee owned corporations, I wish for other thinking outside of the box solutions such as cooperative home (and car, etc.) ownership. With the price of housing getting out of reach for many, I would think one natural reaction, assuming the populations don't suddenly reverse direction, would be for friends to join forces and split the costs of ownership of things such as homes, cars, appliances, etc. Mini communal arrangements, which would not represent a switch to a communist economic system, but co-ownership partnerships within the overall system of capitalism. This might be two couples or two familes for instance. There is less risk of defaulting on the mortgage with more income sources, so it should be a no brainer for the banker to approve the loan. The families should be able to live in a good neighborhood, able to raise their children in a safe environment and send them to productive schools. Perhaps one person of the four adults stays home to raise all of the children from both families, which allows for the three others to have jobs to be able to pay the bills. Privacy will be reduced, but you can't have it all.

This actually does take place in a different way, with more homeowners buying condos and townhomes than houses, which is private property but shared common resources such as the yards and common walls, and the square footage is divied up into smaller portions per family.

But cooperative ownerships I think would be an interesting solution to reducing resource useage. And I'm surprised we aren't seeing more of it by now. It may be that most people don't think of it.

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By the way, research out of sweden found that it's the achieving, not the achievements, that make us happy. But only if the work suits our strengths. And relationships make us happy as well. So those who rest on their laurels are in for a bit of a surprise. We should never stop achieving and we should never stop socializing if we want to be happy.

And achieving doesn't need to be self centered. It can be other centered achieving - the so called "making a difference for others." Volunteerism, community service, raising your own children well, and the like.

I would not have added anything to this discussion if I hadn’t read your comment. I have no expertise in economics. But I found it charming to think of someone like you, just starting out in the world. So I’d like to share with you a suggestion on how to answer your question “How shall we go about reorganizing the economy?”

The answer to your question will be found in your imagination. I’m not talking about the imagination that produced the miniaturization of telephone, camera and general purpose computing device into the thing we call a blackberry. That’s what the ancients called “tekne,” just another kind of work. I’m talking about the other kind of imagination, the one that leads to wisdom or excellence, what those ancients called “Sophia” and “arête.” This may sound a bit esoteric but I have to tell you that I had this whole conversation about capitalism and economics and their discontents when I was younger than you are now, and certainly less informed, in 1964 in a coffee house on Haight street in San Francisco. We could describe the status quo, its inherent problems, the prognosis for the future, potential solutions and the arguments pro and con for each of those solutions. All we had going for us in those discussions was the optimism of youth and a romantic belief in the power of our own imaginations. We did have Marx and Malthus and C. Wright Mills and history books but I’m sure you’ve already forgotten more real facts than any of us ever knew. My point is we were not special or gifted or any such thing. We looked at what was right in front of us with our whole consciousness, including the nobler part, our imagination. To be sure we started from a premise that something was wrong but what we also did is not prejudice the discussion by rejecting anything as impossible. The imagination sat at the head of the table, nothing was discarded out of hand and everyone had a voice. Here’s a thought from those conversations.

Capitalism is not a philosophy. It is just a collection of aphorisms. It is a lot like astrology. It does not exist anywhere except in my imagination and I could imagine it different. In fact it is used to mean different things at different times to the point that it should be obvious to anyone that “capitalism” is not anchored in anything beyond imagination. I suppose clichés like free enterprise and competition are two of those aphorisms. Libertarians will tell you that free enterprise is the ideal state of nature where the individual has the opportunity to maximize his/her existence. But what happens to Mr. Fountainhead if the garbage men go on strike? In about two weeks he is going to have to forget his grand campaign for more mundane concerns like water born disease and rats. Free enterprise can only exist within the context of a very rigorously maintained absence of choice, the social contract, except of course in the imagination of the Libertarian.

As to competition, any sportsman will tell you that the sine qua non of competition is the referee. Without rules enforced by someone not involved in the competition, there can be no competition, only chaos. ENRON wasn’t a disaster because it defrauded people and governments. It was a disaster because, allowed to continue or worse - spawn a few more ENRON’s, the whole system – the stock market, contracts, fiduciary obligation – in a word – capitalism – would collapse. To have capitalism you must have a referee. One must imagine a consciousness outside the game. So it is with all the other little bric-a-brac notions that make up the idea of “capitalism.” I say if everyone else can imagine their own version of “capitalism, why can’t I?

DeTocqueville foresaw the gravamen of the problem in “Democracy in America.” Observing that the essence of the American spirit was individualism, he worried about what would happen when the continent had been subdued and Americans would be forced to adopt a more cooperative ethos. The challenge for the future is to imagine that ethos and the polity based on that ethos. The economy will follow along like a faithful hound. So let imagination sit at the head of the table, discard nothing and give everyone a voice.

Re: In recent years, conservatives seem to have won the population debate, and Democrats are now terrified of going near it.

All over the world, people are having fewer children and we are fast approaching zero population growth. Some countries, inclduing some third World countries, in fact are below the replacement rate. Moreover births have fallen fastest in those parts of the world that use the most resources. The population bomb is a dud. Nobody "won" the debate on this. Circumstances have overtaken the debate and changed its terms.

Emotion is the expression of the collective response of the floating set points in the homeostatic systems of the body (like the zen metaphor for consciousness; the surface of water) including our notion of self as it is modified by feedback from our physical and social environment.

Each of us has a meta-level understanding of our ecological status and our prospects for survival as individuals and as a species. For the most part that understanding is unconscious because we cannot function in the moment with that level of awareness. Happiness, or the lack of it, could be seen as the relative congruence between that unconscious awareness and the actions and habits of our daily life. The greater the dissonance the greater the need for distractions, projections, aggression and an anesthetized lifestyle. Eventually it can result in adaptation at the expense of short-term gain and/or a modification of our self-image.

Emotion is the somatic marker of the individual’s ecological health.

some of the crimes and/or mistakes that corporations make really aren't punishable since the actions are so horrific. i.e., in many cases, it's impossible for the environment to recover from pollution.

It's worth noting for the irony value that many of the same politicians who support the death penalty for humans would be horrified by the thought of doing the equivalent for a corporation.

Thanks, Larry. I, too, try not to stymie my imagination when thinking of the potential wonders of a decentralized world. I'm just too damned pessimistic that enough others are willing to do the same.

Aaron

In regards to "fast long distance travel", that usually means air travel, and (except for a tiny fraction of uber-wealthy with their own jets) that's a form of mass transit. It's quite a bit different (and vastly more efficient) from the ground travel situation where we have many millions of people each driving their own vehicle.

It depends on how you fly. A packed 747 will be a lot more fuel efficient than a Lear Jet bringing a half-dozen people across the country. It also depends on how you drive - solo or with more than one person.

Releasing pollutants including CO2 into the upper atmosphere, however, is more damaging environmentally than automobile exhaust.

I was mostly responding to JPF311's use of the term "mass transit" in reference to air travel, which seemed in context to be implying that it was more energy efficient than car travel. Unless the numbers I've seen are off, air travel and car travel are comparable.

Yes, a packed 747 is more fuel efficient per passenger mile than a LearJet, and is "mass transit" in the sense that it uses numbers of passengers to increase the efficiency of air travel. Good as far as it goes, but it's pretty faint praise.

Economic growth cannot continue forever, and the widespread belief that it will solve all our problems is overdue for examination. However, I recall the mid-1950s very well, and a big part of what made this the "happiest" period in our national history was the shared conviction that we could all achieve prosperity. Things were improving for a burgeoning middle class, and we believed the boom would continue. If we didn't actually have more, we expected to have it soon, so why not be happy? No one was thinking about limits. The issue now is managing material expectations--and, ultimately, population.

Do you really think that people were happier in the 1950s? Or is it just nostalgia? I'll bet minorities and homosexuals weren't happier...

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