Manning Clark House Forum Making Canberra Sustainable
Canberra, 17-18 October 2005

People and population - the challenge for sustainability

Paper by Dr Richard Denniss
Strategic Adviser to the Australian Greens

Short Biography

Dr Richard Denniss is an economist with a particular interest in the role of regulation in achieving sustainable and equitable economic and socialoutcomes. He is currently employed as Strategic Adviser to the Australian Greens. He has previously worked as the Deputy Director of the Australia Institute, was Chief of Staff to the then leader of the Australian Democrats, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, and lectured in economics at the University of Newcastle. He has published widely on the topics of regulation and sustainability and recently co-authored Affluenza with Clive Hamilton.

Introduction

Human beings cannot do anything other than have an impact on the natural environment. The issue is to what extent does their impact harm or distort the operation of other natural systems. It is, therefore, important when discussing the sustainability, or otherwise, of human behaviour to distinguish between the desire to minimise the adverse impact of human activity from the desire to prevent such impacts altogether.

There are two main determinants of the net impact of human behaviour on the natural environment. The number of people, and the average impact of each person. Much is made in debates about ‘sustainable populations’ about the ‘right number’ of human for a given region, be it a local community or a continent such as Australia. But such conversations about how many people is too many begs the question of how those people are to live.

On overage, modern Australians impose one of the largest ecological footprints in the world. Our economic development has relied, and continues to rely, on farming and extractive activities. The result is an enormous transformation of the landscape, and in turn a substantial impact on the natural and social environment. In addition to our unsustainable land use practices Australians are, per capita, among the world’s highest emitters of greenhouse gasses. Out simply, a growing population that continues to behave as we currently do is unsustainable by any meaningful definition of the term.

It is not obvious, however, that the solution to Australia’s growing environmental and resource use problems is a lower population. While there is no doubt that, all other things being equal, lower population growth would result in less environmental harm, there is little chance that all other factors are likely to remain equal.

For example, if economic growth continues at its current rate then we can expect to see average incomes double over the next 20 years. If we were to halve the size of the population over the same period (an event that even the most zealous of population reductionist would concede is unlikely) we would not have succeeded in reducing the net impact of human kind on the natural environment at all.

This is not to say that population policy should not be part of any conversation about sustainability, it should be. But the combination of a slowly declining population and rapidly rising per capita resource use will not deliver the benefits that most who are concerned with protecting the environment would agree are necessary.

It is, therefore, essential to look seriously at the average impact of individuals on the natural environment if we are to achieve substantial improvements in the coming decades.

There are two main ways that individuals can reduce the impact of their consumption behaviour on the natural environment, namely, reducing the level of their consumption expenditure or changing the composition of their consumption expenditure away from more harmful forms of consumption and towards less harmful, or even beneficial, forms of consumption.

The first alternative, that of lowering personal levels off consumption, perhaps sounds more daunting than it needs. Many people associate spending less money with having a lower quality of life and while this may well be the case for very low income earners, there is a wide range of evidence that suggests that for many low, middle and high income earners making decisions that result in lower incomes is often associated with improved wellbeing.

For example, many Australians report high degrees of stress, anxiety and ill health associated with working long hours and spending inadequate time with friends and families. One way to address these problems is to sacrifice some income in order to purchase additional leave or to work 4 days per week. While many people express in principle support for such choices they often cite pragmatic problems, especially in relation to workplace rigidity, as the reason for following such a path.

Such concerns about the difficulties of achieving work life balance are ironic given the longstanding agreement in Australian public debate about the desirability of workplace flexibility. At the societal level if we were to advocate the pursuit of ‘holiday rises’ ahead of ‘pay rises’ we would make a large step towards decoupling the link between ‘progress’ and environmental harm.

The second alternative is to encourage shifts in individual consumption patterns, as opposed to reductions in consumption levels, in order to minimise the impact of human activity on the natural environment. That is, not all forms of consumption expenditure make the same call on our scarce natural resources.

A simple example of shifts in consumption patterns delivering significant environmental benefits is the shift towards the belief that native vegetation is attractive in Australian backyards. That is, if more Australians spend a growing proportion of their consumption expenditure on native plants, and a smaller proportion on exotic species, then the habitat for native species is enhanced rather than destroyed.

Going one step further, if individuals switch towards spending money on native vegetation and away from spending on electrical appliances then the benefits are magnified several fold. Not only is new habitat being created with fewer resources extracted to manufacture the appliances, but less energy will be demanded in the future as bottlebrushes use a lot less energy than electric foot spas.

An individual who spends $50,000 per year on big cars, big houses, and lots of electrical appliances has a significantly greater impact on the natural environment than someone who spends $50,000 per year on software downloaded from the internet, public transport and expensive restaurant meals. This is not to say that we should all frequent fine restaurants in order to save the environment, but there is no doubt that some forms of indulgent expenditure do more harm to the environment than others.

Of course the distinction between whether we should spend less or spend differently is as artificial as the choice between whether we should have fewer people or better behaved people. The reality is that if we are sincere in our attempts to live sustainable we need to look for all the policy and behavioural levers that yield the right results and pull on them as hard as we can.

In attempting to achieve such changes one of the biggest obstacles we face is the rhetoric of material progress. Australians, like the citizens of most developed Anglophone countries have been bombarded for many years with the view that unless we pursue rapid economic growth we will not just stagnate as a people, but enter some form of terminal decline. Absurd as it may sound, slower rates of economic growth are typically conflated with life getting worse, rather than better at a slower rate.

If the economy grows at 4 per cent per annum then GDP will double in 20 years time. If the economy grows at 3 per cent then GDP will double in 25 years time. The impact of slower growth is not that our lives get worse, simply that our material living standards improve more slowly. Unfortunately, however, in Australian public debate if it is argued that a policy designed to improve our natural environment, our cities or our workplaces will lower the rate of growth then it has little chance of remaining on the table.

Another problem with our obsession with the rate of growth of GDP is that there is extensive evidence that GDP does not measure everything that matters to our quality of life. In fact, those who invented GDP in the 1940s and 1950s stated quite explicitly that they did not think that GDP should ever be used as an indicator of national progress or wellbeing. All GDP measures is the value of all goods and services bought and sold in a given year. That is quite distinct from the value of all things enjoyed by the citizens of a country in a given year. Shifts in behaviour away form electrical appliances and towards more leisure time will, by necessity, result in slower growth in GDP, but that is quite distinct from slowing the improvement in Australian quality of life.

One obvious way to improve Australia’s quality of life, reduce our impact on the environment, and slow the rate of economic growth is to reduce the amount of money we spend on things that we never use. Australians are estimated to spend more than $10 billion per year on things that they never use, with food that is purchased and thrown away uneaten coming in at the top of the list. Clothes we don’t wear, books we don’t read and electrical appliances we never use also feature strongly in the statistics.

But while Australians admit to spending an enormous amount on things they never use, the majority also agree with the statement ‘I can’t afford to buy everything I need’. Our attention, it seems, is focussed more on what we don’t have than on how best to enjoy what it is we have already acquired.

Throwing less money away would seem to be a relatively uncontroversial way to start the process of reducing the impact of humans on the natural environment, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. The knee jerk reaction from those who are concerned with ‘the economy’ is as predictable as it is meaningless, namely, that if we all stopped buying things we didn’t need then jobs will be lost, unemployment will rise, and the economy will slow! That is, we are told that spending is not our choice, but actually our duty. It is on this issue that the ‘right wing’ begins to sound like the old left, placing our national obligations ahead of our private preferences.

Advocating a reduction in wasteful expenditure is actually a subversive concept. Not only does it raise the issue that not all spending delivers tangible benefits, but it also begins a debate about what is actually wasteful, and what is useful. For example, Australians now spend billions of dollars each year on bottled water. In addition to the enormous financial cost borne by ‘struggling families’, the costs to the environment of packaging and transporting a commodity that was already plentifully, and literally freely available, is enormous. But encouraging a switch back to public drinking fountains and away from bottled water would no doubt raise the ire of retailers, bottlers and governments alike.

Australians are fortunate to live in a rich country at a rich point in time. The more of us there are, and the more resource intensive our lifestyle is, the greater the harm we will do to the natural environment.

If we are to live sustainably we must make significant changes to our lifestyle regardless of what our population growth rate is. Some of those changes may be inconvenient, but none of them will be life threatening. But rather than focus on the downside, if we are to convince the public at large that such changes ar not just possible, but desirable, we must also communicate the enormous benefits that such changes will deliver. In addition to the obvious improvements in our natural and built environments there is no doubt that a more sustainable Australia will be less dominated by overwork, overconsumption, and over stress.