"The Sustainable Society: Further Exploration"
A Synopsis and Review of Chapter 3 of:
Andrew Dobson, "Green Political Thought"
(Routledge, 2000) pp. 62-111

Andrew Dobson begins his third chapter of Green Political Thought (The Sustainable Society) by discussing the limits to growth. He points out that the "foundation-stone of radical green politics is the belief that our finite Earth places limits on industrial growth". This article of faith for greens forms the framework in which the idea of a sustainable society must be drawn. Dobson then goes on to point out the "three principle thoughts related to the limits to growth thesis that have come to be of prime importance to the radical green position." They are:

1) That technological solutions will not in themselves bring about a sustainable society;

2) That the rapid rates of growth aimed for, and often achieved, by industrialized and industrializing societies have an exponential character, which means that dangers stored up over a relatively long period of time can very suddenly have a catastrophic effect;

3) That the interaction of problems caused by growth means that such problems cannot be dealt with in isolation - i.e. solving one problem does not solve the rest, and may even exacerbate them.

As an adjunct to these three points, Dobson refers to the 1974 report to the Club of Rome, "Limits to Growth" and the 1992 sequel, "Beyond the Limits to Growth" by describing the "five trends of global concern: acceleration industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and the deteriorating environment". A computer program was designed to track the likely outcome of various scenarios related to these five trends using changes in each of the variables. The various "runs" included "business as usual", "resource depletion problem solved", scenarios assuming a reduction of pollution, and so forth. For various reasons, the result is always the same: social collapse.

"The model system is producing nuclear power, recycling resources, and mining the most
remote reserves; withholding as many pollutants as possible; pushing yields from the land
to undreamed-of heights; and producing only children who are actively wanted by their parents"

Even this does not solve the problem of overshoot and collapse:

"The result is still an end to growth before the year 2100 (2051 in the 1992 report).
In this case growth is stopped by three simultaneous crises. Overuse of land leads to
erosion, and food production drops. Resources are severely depleted by a prosperous
world population (but not as prosperous as the present [1970] US population).
Pollution rises, drops then rises again dramatically, causing a further decrease
in food production and a sudden rise in the death rate. The application of technological
solutions alone has prolonged the period of population and industrial growth,
but it has not removed the ultimate limits to growth".

This brings us back to the first point Dobson makes: that technological solutions cannot provide a way out of the impasse of the impossibility of aspiring to infinite growth in a finite system. Irvine and Ponton write:

"...technological gadgets merely shift the problem around, often at the
expense of more energy and material inputs and therefore more pollution."

If the sustainable society is not going to be full of environment-friendly technological wizardry, what will it be like? To quote Dobson: "...if the green movement believes technological solutions to the limits to growth problem to be impossible, then it will have to argue for more profound changes in social thought an practice - changes in human values and ideas of morality". All of this stemming from the idea that "technological solutions can have no impact on the essential problem, which is exponential growth in a finite and complex system".

This then relates to Dobsons second point: all five points of the "Limits to Growth" model experience exponential growth. That is to say: "A quantity exhibits exponential growth when it increases by a constant percentage of the whole in a constant time period". Dobson then gives this example:

"In quantitative terms this is easily demonstrated by placing rice grains
on the squares of a chess board, with one on the first square, two on the
second, four on the third, sixteen on the fourth, and so on. The numbers
will build up very fast, and while the twenty-first square will be covered with
over 100,000 grains of rice, the fortieth will require about 1 million million".

Greens believe that present rates of resource extraction and use - a 3 percent growth rate implies doubling the rate of production an consumption every twenty-five years - and the production of waste and pollution necessarily associated with them, are unsustainable.

This brings us to Dobsons third point: the interrelationship of the problems with which we are confronted. Solving one problem does not necessarily mean solving the rest. Irvine and Ponton write:

"What matters is not any particular limit, which might be overcome,
but the total interaction of constraints, and costs".

Change in one element means change in the others: nuclear power might contribute to solving problems of acid rain but it still contributes to global warming, and chemical fertilizers help us grow more food but simultaneously poison the water courses. Dobson then sums up:

"So radical greens read off three principle features of the limits to growth
message and subscribe to them and their implications wholeheartedly:
technological solutions cannot help realize the impossible dream of infinite
growth in a finite system; the exponential nature of that growth both underpins
its unsustainability and suggests that the limits to growth may become visible
rather quicker than we might think; and the immense complexity of the global
system leads greens to suggest that our present attempts to deal with
environmental problems are both clumsy and superficial".

This then is the starting point for thinking about a sustainable society: that aspirations of ever-increasing growth and consumption cannot be fulfilled and furthermore, "present industrial practices are programmed to collapse by virtue of their internal logic, and in this respect they (greens) are persuaded by the fundamental message of the limits to growth thesis".

At this point, Dobson gives an explanation of Herman Daly's thesis of a steady-state economy. What follows is an essay by Daly on this topic.