Soundings

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32880, 1 April 1972, Page 6

Soundings

We know quite a lot about ecology now. We know we’re in danger of sliding towards a world characterised by famine, crowding, filth, poverty and probably war. We know we’re capable of doubling our numbers, but not our resources. We’re beginning to learn that a rapacious form of economic growth is at the base of it all, and we suspect that very little is being done about it There are plenty of reasons for such inactivity. In its huge, interconnected breadth the problem is very difficult to understand, particularly for those who haven’t yet tasted the deceptive fruits of a fully "developed” society. The serpent and the apple are irresistible. But the most important reason is that governments fear the unpopularity radical thinking would provoke. If the experts are right and we have only about a generation in which to alter our view of what is desirable, we must face up to the harsh priorities survival entails. They’re unpleasant. They contradict a great many of the things civilisation has taught us to value, such as freedom of the individual. Looked at with an ecological eye, many sacred cows seem to have been worshipped the wrong side of idolatry. Take education. Dutifully we train people to leap hurdles between themselves and the high material expectations we have taught them to hold until they are fully equipped to take their place in the polluting production/consumption cycle of industrial society. When a man is measured by his material possessions he has the greed motive built into him. Growth is presented as the one means of giving all people the things they lack. But “lack,” like “growth,” is one of those words with a new contemporary ambiguity. It can mean a lack of things people want rather than need. A half-conscious understanding of the trap we’re in gives rise to escape games. The midale-aged escape by car to the country bach. The young drop out and are easily sneered at because they can’t avoid being sustained by the system they reject; some realise that opting out can’t alter anything and begin wildly to think in terms of revolution, which only stiffens the resistance of governments that could, with courage, change direction. But just as the individual’s life style leaves that of the people around him largely unaltered, so too does any radical change of government direction remain futile if there’s no corresponding change internationally. Given our political system, it’s very hard to see how any party is relevant to the situation in which we find ourselves. Theoretically it’s conceivable that the fruits of economic growth

by

DENIS McCAULEY

might be more justly distributed within a socialist context, but ultimately the commitment to growth is central to all parties. The democratic system itself is perilously time-consuming, and the need to please the electorate every four years downright dangerous. The closely-bound issues of population growth, pollution and food shortage simply cannot be dealt with in the short-term. The possible shape of future government is hardly attractive. Perhaps it should be freed from the four-yearly need to seduce. It must certainly have the power to limit human behaviour and possession in jealously-guarded areas (the limitation of family size—so fundamental a restraint — immediately comes to mind). It must insist that industry pays for its pollution and be less persuaded by the argument that obsolescence keeps things cheap. Above all, it must turn away from wooing people with the affluent dream. It must find some means of recommending a lower all-round material standard for all of us. At the moment politicians like to counter these suggestions with the ridiculous idea that increased growth helps to pay for industrial abuse or that for every technological ill there exists a technological remedy. By that is meant that to cope with car congestion you build motorways, and to cope with all the motorway accidents you build more hospital units. Most politicians say quite flatly that economic growth can’t be curbed and, although I’m not entirely convinced, their experience is greater than mine. But I have less respect for their view that people won’t stand for change. On the contrary, there are great numbers of people in this country more ready to meet change than politicians care to admit. Many of them may not always have a very profound grasp of what is wrong ecologically, but they are deeply aware of things not being quite as they should be. The things they complain of are symptoms. They can’t get a hospital bed, they daren’t let their children cross the streets, or they simply sigh in the windy reaches of their high-rise flats about the good old days. It wouldn’t be hard to snow that all these fragments are part of a total situation straining under the combined pressures of profit-making and too many people. There are scattered groups dedicated to doing something constructive, but all this energy is being dissipated. The need is for men and women with professional experience and organising energy to come forward, possibly to infiltrate the ranks of the politicians where there now seems nobody with the courage to step aside from party commitment. Perhaps there are such people. Maybe they’ll declare themselves.