Green Living
Politics & Economics

Growth: The Celtic Cancer €14.95
Why the global economy damages our health and society
John Jopling & Richard Douthwaite (Eds)

The Second Feasta Review

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." —Edward Abbey, radical US environmentalist (1927-1989)

Economic growth corrupts a society in the way a cancer destroys the human body on which it feeds. Growth is simply an increase in the size of the monetarized part of the social arrangements by which we live, relate and support each other. All too often, however, this increase is at the expense of non-monetarized aspects of life that make it so worthwhile – our personal relationships, for example, or the beauty of the natural world.

The lead essay in this collection shows that recent rapid economic growth in Ireland has been achieved at a heavy cost. More people have to work, and work harder, than ever before. Some have coped with the stress by drinking to excess while almost everybody finds they have not enough time to maintain their social bonds. The people who have fared worst, however, are those with the smallest share of the increased income. They feel less good about themselves, for example, making them more prone to depression, diabetes, arthritis and osteoporosis, and more liable to die prematurely from heart disease or a stroke.

So how should our society’s immune system respond to this invasive economic cancer? Another essay suggests that growth of the monetarized sector is only important because of the way money gets into circulation, and that this should be changed. A third one states that growth won't be able to continue for long anyway because of the scarcity of oil and gas, and the concomitant loss of energy.

Economic growth is only one of the many topics covered in this book. Others include globalization, fair trade, interest-free banking, genetic modification, the conflict between the dollar and the euro, eco-taxes and, finally, how Irish democracy can be reformed so it can respect ecological principles. Taken together, these essays present a convincing picture of how a truly sustainable, more equitable world might be built.

From FEASTA:

"The aim of the Review is to present in a permanent form some of the thinking that has been going on in the Feasta network since the previous one appeared" says John Jopling, who edited it with Richard Douthwaite. "It is three years since the last issue and there's a lot to report."

The issue's theme is the elimination of the human cost of economic growth and globalisation. In the opening article, Dr. Elizabeth Cullen demonstrates comprehensively how great this cost has been. She cites survey after survey to show how the stresses generated by Ireland's recent, rapid economic growth damaged its people's health and the strength of their communities.

"Although studies around the world had clearly shown that ill-health and certain crimes increase if the gap between rich and poor is allowed to widen, the Irish government deliberately increased the width of the gap by its tax policies in order to improve competitiveness" Dr. Cullen says. "In other words, they sacrificed the health of the people to improve the health of the economy. I was shocked."

Among the other 18 articles and 15 book reviews is the text of Dr. David Fleming's 2001 Feasta lecture on how we should respond to the threat that a catastrophic economic breakdown will occur in the next few years when the world's oil and gas production begins to fall as the reserves are used up. Stan Thekaekara's 2002 Feasta lecture is also there. In it, he describes how his thinking has been profoundly influenced by that of the tribal people among whom he works. "The economies of indigenous people are based on a concept of no ownership," he says. "How can you 'own' the land, the water, the forests, the birds, the animals?

2004