Is Growth always the answer?

In a widely televised interview, the Prime Minister of Singapore reiterated the need for continued economic growth in order to "improve lives". Undoubtedly, many of us do not question the assumption that growth is always good, after all it was what had brought Singapore from Third World to First, and its citizens are now enjoying the fruits of decades of increase in GDP and material standard of living.

However like all physical phenomenon, there will be limits to growth eventually, since we live on a finite planet. Today, resource scarcity and climate change are manifestations of the physical constraints the world faces. Singapore can be seen as a microcosm of the world in that the island-state is severely limited in land size. As such it will more quickly run into problems of overcrowding compared to most other countries. Already as Mr Lee Hsien Loong pointed out, the nation is finding it very difficult to maintain the rapid pace of expansion enjoyed previously due to currently low population and labor productivity growth – the twin drivers of GDP growth. This is natural for any mature economy, as is the case with developed countries in the West and Japan for example.

Instead of always agonizing over how to further expand an already well developed economy, perhaps we should be asking if more growth is always beneficial. Singapore’s per-capita GDP has been among the world’s highest for some time now. Research has shown that beyond a certain level, people generally do not become happier from further increases in income. Just as in a growing person, there is an optimal level when further expansion becomes excessive and detrimental. We become overweight and suffer from the associated health problems if we overeat. Living organisms also naturally go through the stages of youth, maturity and old age. Similarly with our economies, when the marginal costs of economic growth exceed the marginal benefits, we should rationally stop growing. Congestion in all its forms like public transportation breakdowns, overcrowded roads and hospitals, shrinking living spaces per family, and pollution, from the ever expanding islands of garbage we need to the destruction of wild places to make way for property and infrastructure development, are all signs that growth is doing more harm than good. They also show that there are diminishing returns to growth, when it becomes more costly to obtain the same increase in GDP or well-being, or even just to maintain the status quo.

Singapore should focus on creating an optimal living environment given its limited size, rather than relying on growth to improve lives. Economic inequality cannot be resolved through economic growth alone. Better redistribution of existing resources should be tried. The appetite for unabated growth has to be curbed at some point as we have long overshot the Earth’s capacity to support us sustainably. Continuing on its present path of business-as-usual expansion, by planning for seven million or more people on the island will leave its population even more vulnerable to an increasingly volatile and resource constrained world. Rather than fostering the attitude of current and future generations that more is always better and to always expect a bigger economy, our leaders should face up to the reality that perpetual growth is neither possible nor desirable and prepare the country to be more resilient to setbacks as we head into tougher times ahead.

The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation by Fred Pearce
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It is always interesting to read what Fred Pearce has to say, and I have great respect for his many years of investigative reporting on environmental and nature issues. He writes lucidly and the variety of locations from which he reports adds tremendously to the interest of his accounts.

Having already read two of his previous books, I noticed he tries to be deliberately controversial and contrarian in his views on these topics. Whether it is merely an attempt to generate more interest for his publishers and audience, or if he truly believes in the conclusions he writes about I do not know. This book is ostensibly about invasive species, a subject that evokes strong feelings in many. Pearce argues that labeling species as such is entirely arbitrary and artificial since it all depends on the time frame in which one is referencing. Go back far enough and every organism has to come from somewhere else, so arguably every species 'invaded' its current home. This much I agree with. But he goes further to opine that given this, we should therefore embrace ecological change, since nature is never static, habitats and their creatures are always evolving. We should not be too bothered by 'novel' ecosystems created out of brownfield sites where hybrid and alien species thrive. In any case there is nothing humans can do to stop this change as nature does not go back to previous states.

Yes, it is true that humans have altered the landscape on a massive scale for thousands of years, even in such seemingly wild places like the Amazon and the African savanna. However the book totally misses the point at looking at the RATE of change we are imposing on the natural world. It is this that makes the whole argument for letting go of traditional attempts at preserving nature fall flat. "The New Wild" is the author's version of that other controversial book "Rambunctious Garden" by Emma Marris, in that it also envisions and supports a new state of nature marked by human interference and the giving up of preserving 'pristine' nature because it was hardly pristine to begin with. For this conclusion and its anti-conservation (in the traditional sense) message it does not warrant a high rating from me.

One simply cannot deny that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction because of the rapid rate of species extinction, up to 1000 times the background rate, due to our activities in the Anthropocene. How can one argue that this does not matter since change is the constant? Of course it does because we are the agents of change at a pace that is out of proportion to the change that the environment is used to. There is no time for nature to adapt to the destruction, we are for all intents and purposes akin to the meteorite that struck out the dinosaurs. Sure nature will EVENTUALLY come back, but in what time frame? What about the species lost FOREVER? The danger in Pearce's and Marris' writing is that it is okay to let go, and let our destructive habits continue unabated, let nature 'take its course' so to speak. Yes we are part of nature anyway so is it therefore natural to let humans wipe out other living beings on this planet?

It is well and good that forests are regenerating on abandoned farms as urbanization takes hold. Good that animals are once more returning to suburban landscapes in Europe and North America. What the author does not mention is the continued habitat destruction that has been exported by the developed countries of the west to the global South in places like China, India and Indonesia, where the opposite is occurring much like the massive die offs that took place in America and Europe during their industrialization. Nature simply cannot withstand the scale and pace of industrial development. It is merely wishful thinking and misplaced optimism that unbridled development is all right since nature can recover as is now happening in some places of the global North. We will all live in a biologically impoverished world as nature gets wiped out, notwithstanding the handful of hardy species that can live with us.

Pearce's book is still worth reading for educating readers about common misconceptions of nature being untouched, virgin and pristine, and how no species can be seen as absolutely native and more recent arrivals as dangerous and undesired. But this does not imply that we should not care about the rapid change we are imposing right now on the natural world and that anything goes since nature has always been resilient and will bounce back somehow. I hope readers do not get misled into this dangerous way of thinking.

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The Beauty of Buses

I've recently rediscovered the joys of riding the bus. There is something to be said for not having to keep your attention on the traffic like a driver must, instead letting your gaze wander where it pleases, enjoying the passing scenery outside. As the bus wends it's way through the city streets, one can observe not only the unique mix of buildings and architecture that define each neighborhood, the serene parks and gardens with their profusion of trees and greenery, but also the life of it's inhabitants. Be it a quiet residential estate with maids pushing their little charges in prams and retirees sitting in the void decks enjoying a game of chess, flat dwellers hanging out laundry on poles outside their windows, or a bustling historic ethnic enclave with colorful street markets and their stalls displaying a multitude of wares, the occasional tourist in shorts and sandals snapping away with their cameras. The entire smorgasbord of city life is played out to the observant bus commuter peering out from its windows. This is especially so on double-decker buses, which provide the added perspective from a heightened vantage point. From the top deck, one has an extended visual range that opens a whole new world to view, past the ground level fences, gates and hedges into the compounds of both private housing and public institutions like schools and even swimming pools! You don't have to have voyeuristic leanings but merely possess some curiosity to enjoy looking at say, a football game or parade of students at school, or the landscaping of a beautiful park, that would be entirely hidden from view at street level. I also enjoy the gentle swaying sensation as the bus rounds a corner or pulls out of a stop, almost like being on a boat buoyed by the sea, and sitting at a height well above other vehicles feels a little like low level flying even! And one can easily get lulled into sleep by the soporific rocking motion.

In today's hectic world where most of us value the time saving efficiency of quicker modes of transportation, only tourists, retirees and students choose to take buses on a regular basis. Most commuters rely on the subway instead. Yes, trains are more predictable as they are not subject to the vagaries of vehicular traffic, whisking you in a direct line, more or less, to your destination at the same constant pace, no matter the weather or time of day, in air conditioned comfort without having to brave the elements at a bus stop. But how boring it is! With our trains being almost at capacity most times these days, finding a comfortable seat for the duration of your ride is well-nigh impossible. One has to stand the entire way, jam packed like sardines or cattle, like so many anonymous goods on a conveyor belt. While the ambient environment in a subway carriage could be comfortable, there is nothing to see on the journey through dark underground tunnels, which goes to explain why most people are glued to the glowing screens of their phones or computers. Lastly, even though trains carry you faster from point A to B, unless your point of origin or destination is right on top of a train station, chances are you face a long walk getting to and away from them to wherever you're going. In cavernous multi-level underground stations this can mean time spent going up or down escalators while jostling with others all the way and long lines due to bottlenecks, all adding additional time to your journey. Time spent getting stressed and frustrated and waiting, instead of enjoying the city sights above ground.

Cattle Car

What about driving I hear you say. Surely having your own set of wheels is the ultimate luxury and preferred choice if you can afford it, right? No more being at the mercy of unreliable public transportation, prone to delays and breakdowns, not to mention having to put up with sweaty commuters, and having to actually walk to and from the bus and train stations. True that relying on yourself to get from one place to another offers the utmost freedom, after all the car is like an extension of your own legs, taking you precisely where you want to go at whichever time you please. It symbolizes freedom, independence and control, is highly personal because it is private, and so accords privilege and status to those who have one, and envy from those who don't. But is it really an efficient and even joyful choice of transportation in a crowded and densely packed city like ours? With the rising population of urban dwellers that necessitates allocating more land for housing, commercial and other infrastructural uses, space to expand the road network is more limited than ever before. This means more competition for road space, making traffic jams now a constant, negating the advantages of having your own personal vehicle. While one does not have to wait for others or walk any great distance to get into the car, once in it, the actual journey could take just as long if not longer, say during peak hours. Unless you enjoy stewing in your car with a leg cramp thanks to start stop traffic, I think the alternative of being a passenger on a bus and not suffering from road rage is enticing indeed. Finally, the cost of car ownership is vastly higher than taking the bus or train obviously, from vehicle maintenance, to petrol, insurance, taxes and parking, the last of which can be a real hassle at your destination, the endless circling in parking lots or on the streets looking for a spot adding not insignificantly to your total transit time, as well as stress and unhappiness to your journey.

Remember you're not stuck in traffic, you ARE traffic.

This is why I now find myself taking the bus more frequently again, reliving bygone days as a student using public buses for the daily commute to and from school. The fares may now be a whole lot higher, the buses all fully air conditioned therefore sealing one from the refreshing air outside and cool cleansing breezes, but well, I suppose that's the price of progress, eh?

Took this bus twice a day for more than three years back in the day, fond memories!

What's that smell?! Oh, it's the stench of sweaty kids that just came in from under the hot sun outside.

Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Donella H. Meadows
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A classic in environmental literature, the tremendous debate and controversy generated when it was first published back in 1972 makes this one of the most famous publications the world has ever seen. For the first time it set a time, albeit a broad range in which our global civilization could collapse as we overshoot the Earth's limits. Basically these can be classified as source limits and sink limits, the former being the natural resources at hand from fossil fuels to raw materials and land, while the latter refers to the planet's ability to absorb the pollution from human activities, be it air, water or land pollution, or greenhouse gases. We will likely run into either the first or second kind, sooner or later, if we continue pursuing perpetual economic growth.

Despite the debates that ensued since the first edition, the world has unfortunately not acted on its dire warnings since then, and this latest edition shows that we are now past the time when action could have easily made a difference to the future. 30 years of dithering and business-as-usual have made the situation more urgent than ever, making our choices and their effects much more limited than if the world had changed its path 20-30 years ago.

The analysis is very systematic and clear, the conclusions convincing. This should definitely be made mandatory reading for every student today, and maybe all politicians as well! The more than ten scenarios run by the model at the heart of this book shows that only if we combine policy, technological advances (such as in efficiency and negating effects of pollution) and the active WILL to curb our desire for more will we even have a small chance of averting disaster. It is therefore difficult and perhaps even idealistic to be optimistic about our future, but there is no other way than pushing on with even the faintest glimmer of hope I suppose.

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Book review of "Nature Contained, Environmental Histories of Singapore" by Tim Barnard

Nature Contained by Tim Barnard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a collection of essays on the history of various subjects relating to the natural environment of Singapore. Some of the topics are interesting, like how the island came to become a hotspot for man-eating tigers in its earliest days since British colonization, or how farming was so widespread that it surprisingly did not have to import much food from elsewhere up till as recently as the 1980s! Other drier topics include the history of the Botanical Gardens, Alfred Russell Wallace's years spent using the country as a base for his wanderings in the surrounding archipelago, the brief but failed attempt by the colonial government at controlling trade in wildlife, and the episode of how Singapore was coerced into signing CITES by the United States after flatly rejecting pleas from local environmental activists.

The overwhelming impression is that of how the natural environment as manifested in the original primary rainforests and its wildlife had always taken a backseat to more pressing economic concerns. Indeed, from the sad chronicle of how the collection in the natural history museum was shunted from one basement storage shed to another, the aforementioned passive stance of the authorities with regard to wildlife trade, to the rapid closure of very productive market gardens and pig farms in favor of more economic industrial and housing developments, makes the use of the word 'contained' in the book's title rather lenient. I would've chosen 'Nature Subjugated', 'displaced' or 'eradicated' as a more apt description of the country's history as far as wild nature is concerned. In the final chapter about the state's drive to green the island by planting non-native trees, the lead author falls short of being really critical of the direction the government has taken in making nature a man-made product and equating planted trees with 'nature'. The culmination of it all he rightly points out, is the monstrosity that is Gardens by the Bay, basking in the glory of its artifice and proud to be a showcase of how nature can be built from scratch.

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Where do we go from here?

There is nothing like reflecting on the entire span of our planet's history to get some perspective on where we, as a species and civilization, are today. The study of this immense period of time, and not merely the relatively brief history of mankind, is amongst the most insightful and beneficial parts of any person's education. Too many of us are only interested or preoccupied with the recent history of humanity, for example from the beginning of the industrial revolution and the birth of modern nation states. Undeniably, the geopolitics of today have been predominantly shaped by the events of the previous centuries, especially since the first World War. Analyzing this period is perhaps useful for making short term general predictions of the positioning of each country viz-a-vi one another in the next few years, but to look further ahead at where we as a global society is headed we need to dig a little deeper. I will come back to the 20th century again, if only to highlight the extremely rapid changes wrought by our species on Earth in a relatively short span of time. To really understand where we've come from, it is useful to look back much further, beyond the age of civilizations, past the paleolithic even, when we lived as hunter-gatherers for perhaps a hundred thousand years before agriculture was invented. I am speaking of geological epochs, the time scale at which the evolution of life takes place i.e. millions of years.

Source: http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/the-greatest-animal-war

The Earth has a history of some 4.5 billion years, but life really only took off with the Cambrian explosion some 550 million years ago when large bodied multicellular organisms rapidly colonized first the oceans, then the land. This means for almost 90% of its existence our planet was a barren, lifeless rock (if we exclude simple single celled life). Despite the conditions being suitable for life to arise, like the planet being in a sweet spot in terms of distance from the sun, for water to remain in liquid form, for instance, for almost four billion years there was nothing substantial beyond archaic bacteria-like life forms. To keep the story short, the onset of complex life led to the spread of ever larger and more complex biota, culminating in the era of dinosaurs, before they were unceremoniously wiped out by an asteroid strike from space. One wonders if that had not happened what would be the state of life on Earth today, and if intelligent, sentient beings like ourselves would still have eventually evolved. Perhaps if that evolutionary trajectory had not been disrupted it could have brought forward sentient life by millions of years, instead of resetting the clock back to zero but allowing mammalian life to fill the vacuum and inherit the Earth. But I digress!

In any case, it took another 63 million years give or take, for our planet to produce walking apes that would eventually lead to hominids and us, "only" around a million years ago. We were rather insignificant as a species for the majority of that time, just another large bodied mammal trying to make a living from the land, in competition with the suite of various mega-fauna of the time like cave lions, dire wolves and mammoths to name just three. With the discovery of fire and refinement of tool use humans dispersed out of Africa and gradually spread out worldwide to every continent. Still, our numbers remained small and impact on the environment was localized and negligible, if we conveniently overlook the extinction of mega-fauna that have been attributed to our competitive edge.

Things began to pick up with the dawn of farming around ten thousand years ago, which allowed our population to rise rapidly as settlements expanded and technological progress gathered pace. However, for thousands of years of civilization, we could only rely on the energy from ourselves, other creatures, the sun, wind, and living plants to do our bidding. It was only with the unlocking of energy from fossil fuels, accumulated underground since the beginning of life on Earth (i.e. hundreds of millions of years worth) that we really took off, quite literally. One has only to look at charts of world population, GDP and energy use to see the exponential growth of our species, particularly in the last century and more so post-WW2. In 1900 there were about 1.6 billion people, we are at seven billion today, all in a mere hundred years. Economic and industrial output growth are even more rapid, driven by associated massive inputs of material and energy resources. Which brings me to the point of this essay - that it is simply impossible for our current path of expansion to last much longer.

Exponential growth of any sort has the effect of compressing time, as the underlying subject increases in a geometric progression. Each doubling of number requires a shorter period as the base expands. Looking back at the history of life on Earth and the sheer stretch of deep time that has passed, one can be fooled into thinking there is ample time still for something to happen, perhaps the discovery of a new energy source, or the ability to colonize other planets that will once again push those annoying physical resource limits away from their current constraints on carrying capacity. But the enemy of exponential growth is against us in this fight. We just do not have another thousand or even a few hundred years to figure a way out of the limits of a finite Earth. I venture that in all likelihood we don't even have another hundred years. Before this century ends, i.e. within our children's lifetime, things would have to come to a head. This is no mere hysteria on my part without substantiation or deliberate, rational analysis. In all but a few of the multiple scenarios generated by a sophisticated model from the authors of 'Limits to Growth'*, some sort of collapse is forecast before the end of the 21st century. To summarize their analysis, even if we were to take collective action quickly and invent practical technologies without further delay, we will inevitably come up against limits of one sort or another to further economic expansion. There has to be a sea change in mindset away from the goal of perpetual material growth if we are to avoid the inevitable downward 'adjustment' in ecological carrying capacity. Yet the majority of us blindly go about our individual lives without any seeming concern or awareness of the cliff looming ahead of humanity. We continue to strive for the next career advancement, upgrade our houses, our cars, put our kids into prestigious institutions so that they may become even more materially well-off, ad infinitum. It is truly mass insanity, truth be told, as we step on the accelerator even whilst headed for the precipice.

From a lifeless rock and empty world, to one filled to brimming with humans, but all the impact on the planet has come about within the last hundred years, a blink of an eye as they say, in the enormous span of geological time. How long will the Anthropocene (Age of Man) last? At the rate we are going it could be just another blink of an eye. Just take a look at those population and world economy charts, the way the lines on the graphs rocket almost to the vertical, and tell me if you think otherwise.

And we have lift-off!

 *Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004)

New Year thoughts

Firstly, Happy New Year to everyone! May you have a great year ahead.

So 2015 is upon us! I don't know about you, but the years of the new millennium just seem to fly by so quickly. Could it be that as adults, our lives do not vary that much from year to year, compared to the many milestones one crosses from childhood to adolescence and beyond? I was sitting at a cafe in a neighborhood I grew up in, and they were playing pop music from the 1980s. It felt like I was stuck in time or back in the past, looking around at the familiar buildings and layout of the street where I have been hanging out since I was a teenager. It got me thinking of how change in general seems to have slowed down, at least from my perspective. As a kid, the 21st century held great mystique and wonder for me, watching movies like Back to the Future, Total Recall, Terminator and Star Wars. It seemed so far away back then that the possibilities were endless! Flying cars, spaceships, laser ray guns, fully intelligent robots and artificial beings, the list went on. Here we are now, well into the 21st century, and it's as if nothing much has changed, or at least the rate of technological advancement has slowed compared to the 1980s and 90s. What do we have to show for it? The internet, Facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, smartphones? YAWN. It pales in comparison to the very real sense of progress I felt as first CDs, then portable mp3 players replaced walkmans, cell phones rapidly became ubiquitous and outmoded fixed line telephones, answering machines and pagers, the PC and laptop took over from giant room-sized mainframe computers, to name some examples. Where are the advances in new hardware today? The iphone? That's merely an improved cell phone that plays music and video and takes pictures! That's nothing compared to the digital revolution seen in camera technology that put professional grade SLR cameras within reach of many. If we went back even further and compared the progress made during the 1950s and 60s, when jet planes and plastics took over, or the explosion in new forms of transportation and warfare made possible by the industrial revolution of the 19th century, the disparity in revolutionary inventions really becomes apparent. Where are the wonders that would be possible with our knowledge of genetic engineering and ability to map genomes? AIDS and cancer still plague us, while hybrid beasts, super soldiers and clone armies are nowhere to be found.

You still haven't arrived, T1000.

My point in all this rambling, patient reader, is that the rate of technological progress has slowed. This, despite our population skyrocketing past 7 billion souls, making available more combined brainpower collectively than in previous times. This is worrying because the longer we take to make significant breakthroughs the more problems we face from the negative effects of growth. It is like a snowball accumulating in size as it rolls, making the need to find new resources on the one hand and deal with the waste products of our civilization on the other that much more urgent as time passes. What will we invent that will replace our dwindling fossil fuel (albeit largely oil) resources that underpin our ability to sustain the current number of people on Earth? We are truly in a race against time, and it seems to me that the previous 14 years of this century were wasted on waging wars and on financial speculation, while the world continued on its business-as-usual trajectory, consuming ever more non renewable resources and putting ever greater stresses on our one precious planet.

My hope for the new year is that we see some genuine progress toward addressing humanity's predicament, be it more agreement on what to do about climate change, new inventions that could help reduce our ecological footprint, or better yet, change in our behavior to become less consumers of material goods, with more focus on mental and spiritual well-being.

Here's toward a brighter future for us all!