Aweh, My Dearly Beloved Fellow Ruminants & Groupies
As some of my more socialist colleagues have diagnosed, I am apparently an anarcho-capitalist. For the uninitiated, that’s someone who dreams of a utopia where the free market replaces governments and common sense, with private companies managing roads, courts, and probably your gran’s knitting club. Fantastic, right?
Capitalism has been kind to me—my lazy investment in an S&P 500 index fund in America has paid off handsomely, thanks to red-blooded capitalism thriving as intended. I hope for more growth and returns in the future. So be it if that means President Musk, AI overlords, and more tech titans. Bills need to be paid, and families need supporting.
But here’s the catch: I’m about to teach a sustainability course to postgraduate students for the third time. This forces me to confront a difficult question: how does my beloved capitalism square with sustainability?
A useful definition of sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Let me extend this to many generations and centuries. This sounds wonderful and is the orthodoxy of sustainable development.
The United Nations is the high church of sustainable development and the 17 UN sustainable development goals are a holy text of sustainable development. So far so wonderful but are the sustainable development goals sustainable?
Let’s focus on Goal 8: “Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work for all.” This sounds great, but is sustainable economic growth possible over centuries?
To illustrate the issue, let’s meet the Impossible Hamster. Imagine a baby hamster, adorable and tiny, doubling in size every week. Natural enough—until the growth doesn’t stop. Within months, the hamster is house-sized; within a year, it’s larger than the Earth. This absurdity highlights a fundamental truth: exponential growth hits natural limits.
Now, economic growth isn’t as absurdly fast as the hamster. The US economy, for example, has averaged 1.7% real growth over the last 150 years—doubling roughly every 41 years. Not hamster levels, but still exponential. Four centuries of this growth would mean an economy 1,000 times its current size. Imagine multiplying your income by 1,000. Would you consume more? A bigger house, holiday homes, fleets of cars, a private jet? More stuff. More and more and more. We aspire to more. That is what drives capitalism. It caters to our desire for more.
Capitalism thrives on this model of “more.” More consumption. More production. More everything. Is that bad? Not necessarily. Since the Industrial Revolution, life expectancy and living standards have improved dramatically. For most of history, unless you were landed gentry, life was nasty, brutish, and short. Forget idyllic preindustrial life—just imagine a tooth abscess with no anaesthetic. Capitalism, for all its faults, has brought us modern comforts and a much-improved lifestyle.
But here’s the rub: our desire for “more” collides with the limits of a finite planet. The SDGs aim high, but are they chasing an unsustainable vision?
One intriguing alternative is the doughnut economy—a framework that combines planetary boundaries (ecological limits) with social boundaries (ensuring human well-being). Think of it as a lifebelt-shaped balance between overusing resources and meeting basic needs. It’s logical, compelling, and nerd-approved.
So, is this going to happen soon or ever? Not a chance in my opinion. Why? It requires sacrifice and curbing our desire for more. That’s a hard sell.
The right-wing backlash to sustainability and climate change is a loud, sweaty tantrum where plastic straws are freedom, solar panels are communism, and saving the planet is somehow a woke conspiracy to ruin Sunday braais.
In Germany, the backlash is fuelled by fears that transitioning to renewable energy will turn the economy into a patchwork of windmills and job losses, with the far-right dubbing climate policies as elitist plots to bankrupt the average worker. Meanwhile, in the USA, it’s a rodeo of climate denial wrapped in patriotism, where banning gas stoves is treated like a declaration of civil war and SUVs are driven like middle fingers to the entire Paris Agreement.
Polarisation and rowdy politics have become the noise drowning out meaningful conversations about sustainability. Instead of grappling with the complex trade-offs required to balance economic growth and ecological limits, we’ve devolved into tribal shouting matches where facts are optional, and compromise is betrayal. Whether it’s fearmongering over heat pumps in Germany or rallying around gas stoves in the USA, the spectacle distracts us from the real work of crafting a future that doesn’t burn out the planet. If we can’t break free from this cycle of ideological mudslinging, sustainability risks becoming yet another casualty in the culture wars—an idea too divisive to unite us when we need it most.
So, what’s the answer? Planetary boundaries don’t care about our politics or desires. I’m regularly and rightly accused of nihilism and posing problems and not offering solutions. But do all problems have solutions? My self-diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder does not.
But dearly beloved readers you are much wiser and more optimistic than me. What is the answer to sustainable development if the UN hasn’t cracked it?
In the meantime, I’m going to check my stock portfolio and calculate what growth I need this year to buy a new BMW.
Looking forward to your insights on a sustainable, abundant future.
Regards,
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 
The origin of governments is interesting. Many formed when roving bandits settled down as they realised long term settled banditry was more profitable and easier than raiding raping and destroying in many places, especially as settled bandits stopped roving bandits crashing in on their monopoly. A good example was the Rus , a viking roving bandits who were asked by the slavs to become rulers and stop other roving bandits pillaging. Hence Russia was formed in the 9th century…..in Kiev. (
Governments are not noble entitities but entities that , unless constrained, are exploitive in the utmost, especially when they are not under threat from internal or external powerful entities.
And so to me although there are many constraints on the planet, a majpr one is not CO2.
Without fossil fuels, for instance in america you couldnt fight the fires in california as you need them for firetrucks, and as they run on fossil fuels. And the other half of america would freeze as the polar vortex is causing below freezing temperatures on the rest of the country.
Why dont I believe that CO2 so dangerous. Vostok in the antartic is the perfect place to get CO@ and temperautre measurements in time. Co2 follows the temperature change by between 800 and 1000 years during the ice ages. It Follows almost perfectly on the way up and lingers after the temperature falls, taking much longer to fall to the lower levels. In paleolithic times where smaller time differences are difficult to see, sometimes they match each other and sometimes they dont.
Governments however want always to control their people and as HL Menken said “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
Yes there are many limits , and yes we need to look after the environment, and yes we are damaging the environment. But be warned that governments are always loking for ways of control, and since we all breathe out CO2 its the perfect tool for guilt manipulation and control.
So enjoy your new BMW , but share a thought(and a dollar) for the poor, who would love to be in the same place as you.
John
PS Peter Turchin has interesting views on the creation of big governments where you have the borders of different culture/civilisations
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