EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

In 1991, George Bush Sr. was President, something called “grunge” was beginning to ooze out of the Pacific Northwest, and I had just moved to Phoenix, Arizona.

Back then, the city was mostly empty space. There was a meager downtown, a few fringe settlements and nearby Scottsdale—which was the real boom town. But mainly the area was open desert: dry and bare and beautiful.

I flew into Phoenix not long ago. Seen from above, I couldn’t believe the change. The long stretches of sand and saguaro were gone, replaced by high-rises and housing developments. They went for miles and miles in every direction. Even at 30,000 feet I couldn’t see the edge.

And it’s not just Phoenix. In 2008, the US Census Bureau reported that eight out of the 10 fastest growing counties in America are in the Southwest. Hell, between 2006 and 2007 alone over 100,000 people relocated to Maricopa, Arizona; answer honestly, have you ever even heard of Maricopa?

All of these places have one thing in common—they rely on the Colorado River to remain viable. Unfortunately, the Colorado River itself is no longer viable.

Last year, a study done at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (published in Water Resources Research) compared water usage to population, then factored in a variety of global-warming possibilities. It concluded that there’s now a 50-50 chance both Lake Mead and Lake Powell—the Colorado’s major feeders—will be bone dry by 2021.

And since the entire area runs on hydroelectric power, the study also found that this energy tap could be turned off by 2017.

Already, the entire river system—which slakes thirst and washes clothes in six states—is running at half capacity, the result of a series of dry years. Each year the system loses the equivalent of 8 million people’s worth of water.

Which brings me to British Columbia’s Green Party. They recently became the latest in a string of environmental advocates proposing a new model for economic development—that is, no development at all.

The Greens proposed that all of BC transition to a “steady-state economy.”

Before we can talk about the steady-state model, it helps to understand a bit about our current framework, known as a “growth model.” Essentially the growth model is pure capitalism—an unending cycle of produce, consume and repeat.

There are two big problems here. One is currently on display all over Wall Street. The second is that the growth model (endless growth) works only if resources—the things fueling that endless growth—are also endless.

Apparently, and I may be the last to know here, it turns out they’re not infinite. Run out of resources and, you guessed it, you run out of growth.

So if you’re starting to run out of the stuff you need to make the stuff you want, a different model is required. That's right—a steady-state economy.

The idea entered the world in 1956, thanks to Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow, but became a fixture in the modern lexicon in 1977, courtesy of ecological economist Herman Daly.

It’s nothing more or less than an economy that meets everyone’s needs and holds steady. It ranks sustainability over growth, choosing to balance resource use with resource availability. Above all, it values economies of scale.

Which brings us to the Southwest, where, at the very least, it seems high time to adopt a basic tenet of the steady-state platform: enough already.

Let’s limit the number of households in major cities in the American Southwest. Cap growth. Start with obvious offenders—Las Vegas, Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Palm Springs, freaking Maricopa—all the pipe-dream places where the pipes are running dry.

Let’s also plan ahead and start giving people tax breaks to relocate to cities like Detroit—which needs an influx of people and can handle one, sitting as it does on the shores of one of the largest bodies of freshwater in the world.

According to the UN, most of the globe will be facing massive water shortages by 2025 (20 percent of the world’s population currently lack access to fresh water). Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently led a water march through the streets of Los Angeles to draw attention to the crisis.

Yet we still think that constantly expanding desert cities like Las Vegas is a good idea? We can believe whatever we like until reality sets in, which isn’t far off. The year 2025 is closer to 2010 than 1991.

[EcoHearth has endorsed the position on economic growth developed by the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). CASSE is the leading organization in educating the public and policy makers about the impacts of economic growth on the environment, national security, and international stability. Please join us and notable sustainability thinkers like David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva and Bill McKibben, and sign the CASSE position on economic growth. - Ed.]

Steven Kotler is the author of The Angle Quickest for Flight,West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Beliefand the forthcoming A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue, Animal Altruism and the Meaning of Life (Bloomsbury). He is a frequent contributor to anyone who will have him, his non-fiction appearing in more than 50 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, LA Times, Wired, Popular Science, GQ, Outside and National Geographic. He also writes The Playing Field, a blog about the science of sport for PsychologyToday.com and lives with his wife and too many dogs in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico.

Updated 7/2/10; originally posted 4/20/09.

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