Kayakas!

The push for continual economic growth is a serious problem. Such growth, as we know it, is unsustainable. In large part that’s because it has a physical component. From the extraction of substances from the earth, to the production of goods, through their disposal as waste, there is a depletion of resources, emission of pollutants, a build-up of “stuff,” and an accumulation of waste. When these activities are carried out at rates faster than the earth’s capacity to regenerate and absorb, they gradually destroy the ecosystem, our life support system.

As if that weren’t bad enough, evidence suggests economic growth no longer correlates

Follow the money

As is so often the case, those seeking the answer are best advised to “follow the money.” For large corporations, constant economic growth means billions in profit. And do you think those profiteers are going to put the ecosystem or your happiness or any general betterment of society ahead of that kind of money? True, their orientation toward short term profits will ultimately sabotage their own well being (or that of their children), but the immediate profits are just too enormous to forgo. Who isn’t familiar with the effects of human greed?

Not surprisingly, the corporate powers that be are among the primary cheerleaders of continued population growth and spreaders of disinformation on the topic. (Just investigate the opinion on population of any of a number of hyper-capitalist groups.) They don’t care about the impact of population growth on the environment as long as more people mean more demand for products and ever greater profits.

With the advent of “globalization,” as corporations have acquired, in some ways, more power than governments, crossing international boundaries and wielding their economic influence to bring governments into line with their agendas they have become more and more powerful in generating the economic growth of which they are the primary beneficiaries. Nearly everyone is victimized as third world citizens are directly exploited and the integrity of the ecosystem is sacrificed for the profits of a few.

There are good reasons, then, for the massive anti-globalization protests seen around the world in recent years. In fact, the phrase, “Growth is Madness,” came out of the anti-globalization movement. To address the destructive force of incessant economic growth, we’ll have to challenge global corporatization. Here, from the Pinky Show, is one of the shortest, simplest, clearest introductions to globalization you’ll ever see:

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If you found that useful, try the two other brief Pinky Show videos on globalization, available on YouTube.
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Image source: sgrah, posted on flickr under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

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