[Pen-l] The specter of a no-growth world

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/0081958
Fear of fallowing:
The specter of a no-growth world

By Steven Stoll

    Discussed in this essay:

    The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's 
Politics and Culture, by Brink Lindsey. Collins. 394 pages. $26.95.

    The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Benjamin M. 
Friedman. Vintage. 570 pages. $16.95 (paper).

    Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, 
by Bill McKibben. Holt. 272 pages. $14 (paper).

From the March 2008 issue. Steven Stoll is Senior Fellow at the 
Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. His book The Great Delusion: 
A Mad Inventor, Death in the Tropics, and the Utopian Origins of 
Economic Growth was published this year by Hill and Wang.

Costco shoppers navigate with carts broad enough to seat two children 
side by side. The carts had better be big. They need to haul gallon 
jars of mayonnaise, 117-ounce cans of baked beans, 340-ounce jugs of 
liquid detergent, and 70-ounce boxes of breakfast cereal. The coolers 
advertised for summer picnics hold 266 cans. Giant warehouse stores, 
shelved to the ceiling with goods from all the waters and forests of 
the world, make no excuses for consumption. But although Costco sells 
its goods in large packages, there is no item here that cannot be 
found at a corner grocery. So why don't I lighten up and buy a pallet 
of mango salsa? Because thundering all around me is the scope and 
scale of American economic growth. Here it is possible to see the 
enormous throughput of the economy?its capacity to mobilize resources 
and energy and turn out waste. One store manager, on the floor for 
fourteen years, tells me he has seen eight pallets of paper towels 
move out the door in a single day. At forty packages to a pallet, 
twelve rolls to a package, this means nearly 4,000 rolls. I can hear 
the sound of chain saws laying off as falling trees cut the air 
somewhere high in the Cascades. The question that comes to my mind 
whenever I catch a glimpse of aggregate consumption is always the 
same: How can it last?

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