Our quality of life peaked in 1974. It's all downhill now [Jackass alert]

With the turning of every year, we expect our lives to improve. As long as the economy continues to grow, we imagine, the world will become a more congenial place in which to live. There is no basis for this belief. If we take into account such factors as pollution and the depletion of natural capital, we see that the quality of life peaked in the UK in 1974 and in the US in 1968, and has been falling ever since. We are going backwards.

The reason should not be hard to grasp. Our economic system depends upon never-ending growth, yet we live in a world with finite resources. Our expectation of progress is, as a result, a delusion.

This is the great heresy of our times, the fundamental truth which cannot be spoken. It is dismissed as furiously by those who possess power today - governments, business, the media - as the discovery that the earth orbits the sun was denounced by the late medieval church. Speak this truth in public and you are dismissed as a crank, a prig, a lunatic.

Capitalism is a millenarian cult, raised to the status of a world religion. Like communism, it is built upon the myth of endless exploitation. Just as Christians imagine that their God will deliver them from death, capitalists believe that theirs will deliver them from finity. The world's resources, they assert, have been granted eternal life.

The briefest reflection will show that this cannot be true. The laws of thermodynamics impose inherent limits upon biological production. Even the repayment of debt, the pre-requisite of capitalism, is mathematically possible only in the short-term. As Heinrich Haussmann has shown, a single pfennig invested at 5% compounded interest in the year AD 0 would, by 1990, have reaped a volume of gold 134bn times the weight of the planet. Capitalism seeks a value of production commensurate with the repayment of debt.

Now, despite the endless denials, it is clear that the wall towards which we are accelerating is not very far away. Within five or 10 years, the global consumption of oil is likely to outstrip supply. Every year, up to 75bn tonnes of topsoil are washed into the sea as a result of unsustainable farming, which equates to the loss of around 9m hectares of productive land.

As a result, we can maintain current levels of food production only with the application of phosphate, but phosphate reserves are likely to be exhausted within 80 years. Forty per cent of the world's food is produced with the help of irrigation; some of the key aquifers are already running dry as a result of overuse.

One reason why we fail to understand a concept as simple as finity is that our religion was founded upon the use of other people's resources: the gold, rubber and timber of Latin America; the spices, cotton and dyes of the East Indies; the labour and land of Africa. The frontier of exploitation seemed, to the early colonists, infinitely expandable. Now that geographical expansion has reached its limits, capitalism has moved its frontier from space to time: seizing resources from an infinite future.

An entire industry has been built upon the denial of ecological constraints. Every national newspaper in Britain lamented the "disappointing" volume of sales before Christmas. Sky News devoted much of its Christmas Eve coverage to live reports from Brent Cross, relaying the terrifying intelligence that we were facing "the worst Christmas for shopping since 2000". The survival of humanity has been displaced in the newspapers by the quarterly results of companies selling tableware and knickers.

Partly because they have been brainwashed by the corporate media, partly because of the scale of the moral challenge with which finity confronts them, many people respond to the heresy with unmediated savagery.

Last week this column discussed the competition for global grain supplies between humans and livestock. One correspondent, a man named David Roucek, wrote to inform me that the problem is the result of people "breeding indiscriminately ... When a woman has displayed evidence that she totally disregards the welfare of her offspring by continuing to breed children she cannot support, she has committed a crime and must be punished. The punishment? She must be sterilised to prevent her from perpetrating her crimes upon more innocent children."

There is no doubt that a rising population is one of the factors which threatens the world's capacity to support its people, but human population growth is being massively outstripped by the growth in the number of farm animals. While the rich world's consumption is supposed to be boundless, the human population is likely to peak within the next few decades. But population growth is the one factor for which the poor can be blamed and from which the rich can be excused, so it is the one factor which is repeatedly emphasised.

It is possible to change the way we live. The economist Bernard Lietaer has shown how a system based upon negative rates of interest would ensure that we accord greater economic value to future resources than to present ones. By shifting taxation from employment to environmental destruction, governments could tax over-consumption out of existence. But everyone who holds power today knows that her political survival depends upon stealing from the future to give to the present.

Overturning this calculation is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. We need to reverse not only the fundamental presumptions of political and economic life, but also the polarity of our moral compass. Everything we thought was good - giving more exciting presents to our children, flying to a friend's wedding, even buying newspapers - turns out also to be bad. It is, perhaps, hardly surprising that so many deny the problem with such religious zeal. But to live in these times without striving to change them is like watching, with serenity, the oncoming truck in your path.

Lock up all the environmentalists, cut government programs and departments by 90% and we can recover our standard of living in short order.

Matter can't be destroyed, only converted to another form. Someday the air, oceans, and landfills will be mined for resorces.

Thanks for posting this.

As the man says you gain no love for spreading this message...or believing it. But, for the most part, I do. I've read Julian Simon but I find him unconvincing. Land prices are rising almost everywhere...which should be a real warning. Fresh water shortages are also looming in many places.

As Heinrich Haussmann has shown, a single pfennig invested at 5% compounded interest in the year AD 0 would, by 1990, have reaped a volume of gold 134bn times the weight of the planet.

Another varient popular with business math professors: If the Manhattan Indians had invested the $17 they got for the island at 5% they could buy back all five boroughs today complete with all improvements.

(Note to George Monbore: an intelligent person files this stuff in the "so what?" file.)

The laws of thermodynamics impose inherent limits upon biological production.

Well, it looks like we've eliminated physics and biology from Monbiot's list of expertise. This pathetic attempt at profundity is roughly akin to "the laws of gravity impose inherent limits upon journalism."

The reason should not be hard to grasp. Our economic system depends upon never-ending growth, yet we live in a world with finite resources. Our expectation of progress is, as a result, a delusion.

For example, cavemen hunted game for food, but then the population increased to the point where they couldn't find enough game to feed the...er...huh. Well, OK, but when they developed agriculture, then they needed oxen to plow the fields, and as the population that needed food grew, there were too many acres to plow, so everybody went without...er...huh. Well, OK, but when they developed tractors, they were too labor-intensive and too difficult to produce for large numbers of people, so that agriculture became impossible and we ran out of...er...huh. Well, OK, but when they developed machinery to mass-produce tractors, they used up all the land so that there wasn't enough to grow all the food we nee...er...huh. Well, OK, but when they developed intensive agriculture to produce more food per year on the same amount of land, they..................

Simon was right. Look at history: there is no human endeavor or practice that had to be ended because of a lack of resources. The practices either became obsolete, or were improved by technology so that scarcity was no longer a problem--it would have been impossible to build with marble indefinitely, so voila, someone invents concrete! The laws of economics.

The only time humans have ever regressed is when knowledge is lost through unnatural death--the massive wars and plagues that killed the Romans, for example. And even then, we got our concrete back in the end, didn't we?

We don't can goods with tin any more (a la Simon), and eventually we won't can them with aluminum either. We don't ride horses and buggies anymore, and someday we won't use oil to heat our homes or propel our vehicles, either. If we ever actually get close to running out of oil (and we won't), the economic pressures will cause huge amounts of money to go into finding a viable alternative source of energy. More likely, someone will come up with a workable fuel cell before it ever comes to that, and he will become a very wealthy man.

We need to reverse not only the fundamental presumptions of political and economic life, but also the polarity of our moral compass. Everything we thought was good - giving more exciting presents to our children, flying to a friend's wedding, even buying newspapers - turns out also to be bad.

Yes! Yes! Oh, the agony! Everything we know is wrong! We must turn everything upside-down! Disavow all we know! Destroy everything we have built! We must stop... yes, we must stop breathing!

Oh wait. I guess I got a little carried away there. Where was I? Oh yeah.

We are so hosed! Woe is us! The end, the end is nnffuut zzt pop hisssssssssss

Just throw him in the back of the truck. Are you sure you got his arms in there tight? What meds was he on? Do we know?

Simon was right. Look at history: there is no human endeavor or practice that had to be ended because of a lack of resources.

There's plenty of examples.

Why do you think humans gave up hunting and gathering for the back-breaking work of farming if game did not become too scarce and wary from overhunting?

It was proper to give the keyword after this article as Marxism. This is a purely Marxist analysis in that it assumes that everything is determined by economics. There has been a decline in the quality of life in the UK and the US (and a lot of other places) but the decline can be traced to social pathologies unrelated to the economy.

it would have been impossible to build with marble indefinitely

If we hadn't first run out of land in congenial climates, we would never have needed to bother with slaving at building and maintaining permanent shelters to begin with.

But plenty of good land in a comfortable climate is another resource of which there is long since not enough to go around.

Perhaps, though I'm not so optimistic. A couple decades ago, a mechanical contraption such as a typewriter which had hundreds of precisely-formed metal parts could be produced in this country for a sum that could be afforded by a working-class family; there were many companies making such devices. What similar manufacturing abilities exist today?

As for things like computers, there were people who had the skills necessary to design functional computer chips using pencils, paper, ruby-lith film, and exacto knives. The computers so designed were primitive by today's standards, but could be used to "bootstrap" the designs of better ones. If there's a major technological meltdown, what abilities can be used to bootstrap technologies today?

Once upon a time, people learned the skills necessary to do amazing things in 4K of code. Outside of a few microcontroller developers like myself, how many people today possess such skills?

This pathetic attempt at profundity is roughly akin to "the laws of gravity impose inherent limits upon journalism."

Now that, Sir, is profoundly funny!

"The laws of thermodynamics impose inherent limits upon biological production."

The laws of static thermodynamics deny the possibility of biology (i.e. life)!

delta G = delta H - T delta S

The laws of thermodynamics:

1) You can't win. (Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.)
2) You can't break even. (Complete efficiency is impossible.)
3) You can't even come close. (Substantial chaos is unavoidable.)

The "trick" to life is nonequilibrium thermodynamics (Katchalsky & Curren).

I'm well aware that I might be the guy who has been standing on the corner for the last 2000 years warning that the end of the world is at hand.

I'm well aware that - so far - man's ingenuity has enabled him to triumph over adversity, greatly increase available resources, improve his lifestyle, and expand his opportunities. Just as Simon observed.

Nonetheless, I hold to my position.

Simon devoted a separate chapter to the land question because he recognized that it was a prime example of a resource which had no substitute. He also - contrary to popular interpretation - did not claim that our ingenuity would enable us to overcome all possible environmental constraints. What he said was that if there were real limitations the market would better indicate them than governmental bodies - and would force solutions.

Well, land prices are going up, up, up and fresh water prices too. Let's face it; the past is only a rough guide to the future. We no longer have much of a frontier. In the past that's always meant big trouble.

We don't can goods with tin any more (a la Simon), and eventually we won't can them with aluminum either.

And if naturally occurring game and plant products were not so scarce relative to our numbers, we wouldn't need to bother about canning anything.

We'd just go for a short walk and find something fresh to eat--but nature is no longer capable of supplying free and fresh food to the world's bloated population.

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