Ecological debt: the health of the planet and the wealth of nations

333 Pages·2009·1.653 MB·English

by  Simms, Andrew

Ecological Debt
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree ii 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2222
PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION
‘For conventional economists the environment is often an
afterthought. They even describe the uncounted cost of pollution as
an abstract “externality”. Ecological Debt diagnoses this potentially
suicidal oversight, and comes up with a creative and compelling
plan of action.’
Larry Elliott, Economics Editor, Guardian
‘Never has the idea of “living beyond your means” seemed so
terrifying and potentially disastrous. As a business woman I know
the importance of reading balance sheets. This book shows that
we’re in-the-red like we never knew. Forget your bank balance, now
we’re all going to be talking about our ecological debt. A new phrase
has entered the language.’
Dame Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop
‘This book describes the world as it really is. Not as the advertisers or
growth-obsessed politicians and economists would have us believe.
A world where the most massive debts of all are owed by the rich
to the poor, a world in which luxurious western lifestyles directly
undermine the prospects for a fairer global society. Simms sets out
a compelling argument as to why the stakes are now so high, and
why the question of ecological debt must move to centre stage in
global politics. Read it, fi nd out who really owes what to whom.’
Tony Juniper, Executive Director, Friends of the Earth
‘This book should be essential reading, particularly for those in
positions of responsibility. It brings out in very simple but powerful
words the reason why ecological debt is far more important than
national debt for a country. The book highlights the paradox of the
world having reached unprecedented prosperity in monetary terms
but an alarming rate of impoverishment in ecological terms. This
trend needs major global efforts to address this malaise.’
R. K. Pachauri, PhD, Director-General, TERI, Chairman of the Inter-
governmental Panel on Climate Change
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree iiii 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2222
Ecological Debt
Global Warming and
the Wealth of Nations
Second Edition
Andrew Simms
PLUTO PRESS
www.plutobooks.com
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree iiiiii 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2222
First published 2005.
This edition published 2009 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Andrew Simms 2005, 2009
The right of Andrew Simms to be identifi ed as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 2728 0 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 2727 3 Paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from
fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and
manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental
standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to
70 per cent post-consumer waste.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, England
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Printed and bound in the European Union by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree iivv 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2233
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Preface to the Second Edition viii
1 A Short Walk to Venus 1
2 The Chemist’s Warning: a Short History of Global
Warming 14
3 The Heaven Bursters: Tuvalu and the Fate of
Nations 30
4 The Great Reversal of Human Progress 50
5 Ecological Debt 70
6 The Carbon Debt 93
7 Rationalising Self-destruction (Or Why People
Are More Stupid Than Frogs) 110
8 The Car Park at the End of the World 124
9 Pay Back Time: the Law, Climate Change and
Ecological Debt 141
10 Data for the Doubtful: the Lessons of War
Economies 155
11 The New Adjustment 165
12 Minerva’s Owl 180
13 In the Footsteps of Stanley 190
14 Tick Tock Climate Clock 203
15 The Ducks’ Choice 227
16 How to Live on an Island 252
Notes 278
Index 304
v
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree vv 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2233
Acknowledgements
To all the people, in no particular order, who were interested,
helpful or encouraging, even if they were unaware of being
so at the time – including but not limited to: June Simms,
David Simms, David Boyle, Rachel Maybank, Simon Retallack,
Andy Strauss, Nick Robins, Jenny Scholfi eld, Caroline Lucas,
Jonathan Walter, Molly Conisbee, Ann Pettifor, Romilly
Greenhill, Marion Genevray, Etienne Pataut, Peroline Bousquet,
Renwick Rose, Ruth Potts, Hetan Shah, Pat Bailey, Matt Rendell,
Angela Burton, John Harriss, Alex Macgillivray, Petra Kjell,
Jessica Bridges Palmer, Julian Oram, Alex Evans, Aubrey
Meyer, Angela Wood, James Marriott, Wolf Hassdorf, Andrew
Dobson, John Broad, Ralph Russell, John Magrath, Ed Mayo,
Saleemul Huq, Hannah Reid, Judith Dean, David Woodward,
Jane Shepherd, Victoria Johnson, Corrina Cordon, Peter Myers,
Benedict Southworth, Stewart Wallis, Kevin Anderson, Joe
Smith, Pat Conarty, Sarah Butler Sloss, Liz Cox, Fred Pearce,
Sue Mayer, Ros Coward, Martyn Day, Charlie Kronick, Rob
Hopkins, Satish Kumar, John Sauven, David Castle, Caroline
Stewart, Colin Hines, Robin Maynard, Tim Lang, Bevis Gillett,
David Adshead, Andy Fryers, Rosie Boycott, Felicity Lawrence
and Ethan and Joe Stein. Some specifi c ‘thank yous’ are also
in the endnotes.
All photographs have been supplied by the author, unless
credited otherwise.
vi
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree vvii 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2233
To Scarlett Iona Snow,
on behalf of my generation I apologise,
we didn’t do enough.
And to Rachel Maybank, thank you for Scarlett.
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree vviiii 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2233
Preface to the Second Edition
I discovered a fl aw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning
structure that defi nes how the world works.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman, US Federal Reserve, October 2008
Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have now
entered upon a period of danger … The era of procrastination, of half
measures, of soothing and baffl ing expedients, of delays, is coming to its
close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.
Winston Churchill, 12 November 19361
Oil is the trouble, of course. Detestable stuff!
Gertrude Bell, Baghdad, 1921
RETURNING …
The elephant is still standing. And still dead. Around its feet
glisten hundreds of coins thrown by visitors. They might be
wishes asked of the soul of the departed animal. Or, small
gestures of recompense in lieu of its fate and the fate of the
land that was once its home. Three years since I last visited
the Museum of Central Africa in the Belgian city of Brussels,
little else has changed. Room after room is full of animals
stuffed and perched rigidly against crudely realised backdrops
of African forest and grassland.
Had they been painted by your three-year-old daughter, you
would brim with pride. As the work of a major museum, they
look comic and sad. The joke, too, is a bad one. Passing through
to another long room that surveys Africa’s global economic
contribution, maps on the wall dissect and label each country,
tagging them like the worn, stuffed big cats and apes, and fi sh
pickled in jars.
viii
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree vviiiiii 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2233
Preface to the Second Edition ix
This is Africa as the memory and promise of wild, exhilarating
and dangerous nature. Life waiting to be hunted, captured,
tamed or killed. Two crocodiles in a glass case encircle each
other in freeze-frame, fl exing long tails and grins that seem to
keep widening. This is Africa seen as a cornucopia of natural
wealth to be mined, harvested, picked, squeezed and taken.
The wall maps speckled with graphs reduce the continent in
general, and the Congo in particular, to a series of carefully
plotted locations for the extraction of oil, cotton, coffee, sugar,
rice, maize, jute, palm oil, diamonds, cobalt, tin, copper and
gold. One term for it is the ‘resource curse’.
A partial defence by the museum could be that this is real
history – it represents precisely how Europe has viewed and
treated Africa for more than a century. But the defence fails
because there is too little to rescue it from the charge that seen
like this, it merely lays the psychological foundations for the
future to repeat the mistakes of the past. Somehow, the reality
of civilisations wrecked and of peoples brutalised and killed to
support Europe’s rising economies becomes dissipated.
When a continent is reduced to economic botany, agronomy
and geology, it comes to be seen through a lens of cold
accounting, by eyes disinterested in rich history and cultural
diversity. But, more recently, a new interest in the murderous
story of King Leopold II’s activities in Central Africa (told
briefl y in Chapter 5) forced the museum, and the nation more
widely, to reassess its colonial past. Two rooms introducing the
history have been carved out from among the cases full of still
air, masks, spears and bewildered-looking big cats.
Yet in the museum, when it does address the troubled
human past, the tone is often reluctant, equivocal and
begrudging. With glorious understatement it tells the visitor
that this history was experienced ‘differently’ by Belgians
and Congolese. There is a quiet but repeated emphasis on the
involvement of the Congolese in their own exploitation, as
if to create a moral equivalence between the corruptor and
the corrupted. We are warned that ‘passions and emotions’
concerning the past continue to the present. The display is less
forthcoming about another unbroken link with the past, about
SSiimmmmss0099 0000 pprree iixx 2299//11//0099 1144::5555::2244