economic growth
We Asked for Science. We Got Sustain-a-Babble.
Editor’s Note
CASSE encourages members and readers to hold their government agencies to account on the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Last week, Brian Czech presented Gag-Ordered No More to the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome, concluding with recommendations for engaging agency directors. We follow up this week with a letter from the Qualicum Institute (British Columbia) to Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, MP.
Canadian citizens can petition a Minister of the Crown via a Member of Parliament (MP). The minister must respond to each petition within 45 calendar days. In December 2022, MP Rachel Blaney, on behalf of the Qualicum Institute, petitioned Minister Guilbeault to acknowledge the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection, and to apply the principles of steady-state economics in the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
What follows is the Qualicum Institute’s rebuttal of Minister Guilbeault’s response. Headings were inserted by CASSE.
The Rebuttal Letter
Canada features many geographies of majestic beauty. (Trevor McKinnon, Unsplash)
To the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada:
The Qualicum Institute (QI) petitioned Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) (Petition 441-01068—Environment. Editor’s note: The link also includes the Minister’s response to the petition.) to pursue a real solution—a move towards steady-state economics—to address the dangerous and escalating climate and biodiversity crises. Steady-state economics, grounded in science, is an economic model that respects physical and ecological limits. There are many experts across a wide array of disciplines who understand and know how to apply ecological economics and who can help keep humanity within the safe operating limits of planet Earth.
We believe it is your job and responsibility, on behalf of all Canadians, to assemble these experts to deal quickly and efficiently with the limiting factors of the climate and biodiversity crises: population and economic growth. Empower these experts and let them begin the transition towards a steady-state solution!
The escalating, threatening crises we face are the direct result of overpopulation, over-development, and ecological overshoot caused by the continued pursuit of economic growth. This isn’t an accident—economic growth requires never-ending expansion in order to grow GDP. It’s an economic model that doesn’t respect and isn’t grounded in physical or biological reality.
Specifically:
- Economic growth is an exponential function
- A 3% growth rate, the target rate of most governments, doubles the size of the economy, and thus resource and energy use, roughly every 23.5 years
- Physical and biological laws dictate that economic growth can only occur by liquidating the natural world on which we depend; absolute decoupling of resource use from GDP is a fantasy
- Scientific data show that exponential GDP growth is occurring lockstep with exponential resource use and climate and biodiversity breakdown. In fact, GDP is actually a measure of environmental impact—our collective ecological footprint—and not a measure of our well-being.
If the Canadian Government’s overarching goal is to grow the economy, then attending conferences, such as the climate and biodiversity Conferences of the Parties (COP), developing policies, protecting natural areas, signing agreements, and funding initiatives, won’t and can’t work. Truth in government matters and we don’t accept the sustain-a-babble provided in your government’s reply to us.
The Reality: Climate
For example, you wrote that “the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which took place in Egypt in November 2022, and the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which took place in Montreal in December 2022, have demonstrated the increasing global focus on these issues.”
Figure 1. Annual mean atmospheric CO2 concentration levels from Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, overlain with the various climate conferences, scientists’ warnings and, in particular, the formal United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences of the Parties (COP) and their 28 Climate Change Conferences. (Qualicum Institute based on data from NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory)
We are well aware of all the global meetings that have taken place over the years and the increasing global focus on the issue, which always appears to be of the highest concern. That is until you consider the resulting actions this so-called global focus has generated. Look at how effective these globally focused meetings have been (Figures 1 and 2)! Some focus! Some effective actions!
Despite the scores of climate meetings that have been held, there has been a continual increase in CO2 emissions (Figure 1). These emissions, and their relationship to economic and population factors, have been discussed in many IPCC reports over the years. But the 2014 IPCC report specifically identifies the primary drivers of emissions: “Globally, economic and population growth continue to be the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. The contribution of population growth between 2000 and 2010 remained roughly identical to the previous three decades, while the contribution of economic growth has risen sharply (high confidence).”
In your response to us, however, you ignored our specific concerns and did not explain what the Canadian Government has done and is doing to address the two primary emissions drivers. In fact, neither economic growth nor population growth nor steady state economy appear in your response to our Petition yet those are the principle points we fully expected you to address!
The Reality: Biodiversity
Regarding the biodiversity crisis, you wrote, “The [Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity] Framework addresses the direct drivers of global biodiversity loss: land- and sea-use change; direct overexploitation; pollution; invasive species; as well as climate change given that we cannot solve the climate crisis without nature, nor can we solve the nature crisis without stabilizing the climate.”
Figure 2. The Living Planet Index showing an average relative decline of 69% across the studied animal populations, overlain with the various biodiversity conferences, conventions, scientists’ warnings and, in particular, the formal Convention on Biological Diversity Conferences of the Parties (COP) and their 14 Biodiversity Conferences. (Qualicum Institute based on data from Our World in Data)
But—and we emphasize this—the Framework does not address the actual direct or primary drivers of global biodiversity loss according to the current science, which are, again, economic and population growth. The so-called “direct drivers” you mention are merely symptoms of continuous economic growth. As Ripple et al. (2017) note,“economic growth is one of the two major causes of the environmental crisis, along with population growth.” And Pacheco et al. (2018) emphasize that “A transition to sustainability cannot be achieved if our economic system is not radically changed, simply because limitless economic growth is impossible within a limited planet.” Many scientists have echoed these concerns, which makes us seriously question the contention that your government “follows the science.”
The myriad biodiversity meetings over the years that you speak of have paid off in similar results to the climate crisis meetings, in this case an average relative decline of 69% across the studied animal populations since the 1970s (Figure 2). Would you seriously call this “the successful conclusion of [any of] the COP or other such meetings”? We certainly wouldn’t.
You talk of “an ambitious goal” and that budget 2021 investments are setting the stage to support efforts to conserve 30% of land and waters by 2030. But we have known biodiversity loss was a major issue since at least the 1970s, so taking these small, gradual steps now is too little, considering what the science is telling us. Ecological studies have shown that at least 50% of all regional ecosystems need to be restored, preserved, and protected—both land and marine systems—in order to provide sustainable ecosystem services for humanity and all other life forms that share the planet with us. According to Dinerstein et al. (2019) it’s important we “protect at least half of Earth by 2050 and ensure that these areas are connected.” There is a “need to fast-track the protection and restoration of all natural habitat by 2030. A GDN [Global Deal for Nature] that will ensure that we have at least 50% intact natural habitats by 2030 is the only path that will enable a climate-resilient future and is one that will offer a myriad of other benefits.” Protecting only 30% is insufficient and doesn’t follow the science, especially at this late date when time is our least abundant resource.
Ditch the Myth of Absolute Decoupling, Move to a Steady State Economy
If the Government of Canada moves towards steady-state economics and addresses the primary drivers of the climate and biodiversity crises— economic and population growth—it would show Canada as a global leader in true sustainability and, more importantly, give humanity a chance of long-term survival. Then, many of the other actions you describe in your response might add up to make a difference. However, if the government continues to choose to ignore the primary drivers of the climate and biodiversity crises— economic and population growth—the good actions you describe will be overwhelmed and swamped by the exponential growth.
Moreover, we were totally confused by your statement that “Canada is one of many countries demonstrating strong economic performance while decreasing the GHG intensity of their economy.” This is the same decoupling myth that your government used in its reply to our initial petition to the Auditor General of Canada (No. 408 dated 27 May 2017). Since this seems to be your government’s attempt to allow the continuation of economic growth by attempting to decouple that growth from GDP, you might take notice that we debunked that possibility at length in our comments to your predecessor’s reply to that petition with Minister McKenna: Where is the Science? (Dawe et al. 2022).
While there has been some success in relative decoupling, in order to be sustainable, absolute decoupling must occur and that has not been shown to be possible. Hickel and Kallis (2020) found through “Examining relevant studies on historical trends and model-based projections … that: (1) there is no empirical evidence that absolute decoupling from resource use can be achieved on a global scale against a background of continued economic growth, and (2) absolute decoupling from carbon emissions is highly unlikely to be achieved at a rate rapid enough to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C, even under optimistic policy conditions. We conclude that green growth is likely to be a misguided objective, and that policymakers need to look toward alternative strategies.” Fletcher and Rammelt (2017) describe decoupling “as a ‘fantasy’ that functions to obfuscate fundamental tensions among the goals of poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, and profitable enterprise that it is intended to reconcile. In this way, decoupling serves to sustain faith in the possibility of attaining sustainable development within the context of a neoliberal capitalist economy that necessitates continual growth to confront inherent contradictions.”
The Government’s Poor Performance to Date
Finally, we have noticed that the crises of climate change and biodiversity loss have all been handled by your government reluctantly and in an inefficient manner. There seems to be no understanding of the relevant scientific information. This seems to us due to the government’s pathological reliance on an economy dependent upon growth and debt at the expense of humanity and the other lifeforms on Earth. Your government has relied on a faulty human construct—neoclassical economics—designed not by scientists but by conventional economists.
Parliament: Do the right thing for Canada and the planet! (Chelsey Faucher, Unsplash)
“Neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, [and thus] it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threats to the planet” (Nadeau 2008). The assumptions of neoclassical economics are inconsistent with reality and the current science and fail to recognize that the global and local economies lie within the biosphere and its limits (Moldan, Janoušková, and Hák 2012; Rockström et al. 2023). As Kosoy et al. (2012) point out, “The simple, but to many unthinkable, fact is that you cannot get to a flourishing or even sustainable Earth if you start with the assumptions of neo-classical economics.”
The climate and biodiversity crises are global issues and both have been driven to the crisis point by governments engaging in confirmation bias and clinging to the demonstrably false human construct of economic growth, a construct facilitated by population growth and growth in per capita consumption. We cannot see any improvement regarding either crisis without dealing with economic growth. This would entail, among other things, going through a period of degrowth of both population and consumption as we move towards a steady state economy, an economy in balance with the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the biosphere. Listening further to conventional economists who, in no small way, have brought us to this point, rather than ecological (not environmental) economists, will only exacerbate the crises, leading us in the direction of a 4° C global temperature anomaly and leaving us with a depauperate planet, where many species, including perhaps humans, cannot survive.
If we ever hope to have a sustainable society, governments must follow the science and commit to a solution that lies within the physical and biological laws of the universe. As our leaders, we fully expect the Canadian Government—especially ECCC—to respect and be led by the science and to support a move towards the only truly sustainable solution to these crises: a steady state economy.
Can you make this commitment?
Sincerely,
Neil K. Dawe, President and Terri D. Martin, Secretary
On behalf of the Board of Directors
Qualicum Institute https://qualicuminstitute.ca/
Neil K. Dawe is President, and Terri D. Martin is Secretary, of the Qualicum Institute in British Columbia.
The post We Asked for Science. We Got Sustain-a-Babble. appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Introducing the Commission on Economic Sustainability Act
by Daniel Wortel-London
New economic paradigm—and policy—needed in the U.S. Government.
What U.S. federal agency is responsible for identifying and reducing the environmental and social costs of economic growth? None, really. The government has plenty of agencies and programs devoted to conservation, natural capital accounting, “green” industrial policy, and just transitions. But none address the elephant in the room: economic growth. Growth is what causes a nation’s ecological footprint to exceed its biocapacity.
To address this issue, in 2020 CASSE proposed a Full and Sustainable Employment Act (FSEA). Central to the FSEA was the establishment of a Commission on Economic Sustainability. Consistent with steady-state principles, the Commission entailed no net increase of bureaucracy. Rather, the Cabinet-level commissioners, led by the Secretary of the Interior, would simply refocus some of their duties on the matter of sustainable population and GDP.
The paradigm-shifting FSEA has evolved into the plainly titled Steady State Economy Act, carefully pieced together with “feeder bills.” The bill I introduce herein is the Commission on Economic Sustainability Act (CESA).
Growth is the Footprint
More growth, more waste. (Ryan Brooklyn, Unsplash)
Since the 1970s, the resource demands of the U.S. economy have overshot the country’s biocapacity. This “overshoot” threatens human wellbeing and the foundations of economic development more generally. To address the social and ecological perils connected to the swollen size of our economy, we must slow economic growth. And we must reduce the economy’s size to be consistent with our environment’s biocapacity.
For this reason policymakers need to focus on GDP in developing our nation’s sustainability strategy. In particular, they should understand what drives GDP growth and what could reduce it. This is because analyzing GDP reveals, in ways that analyses of natural capital or “ecological footprints” do not, the specifically economic drivers behind our ecological crises.
When combined with analyses of the nation’s biocapacity, we can evaluate how much we need to shrink GDP to fit within a “safe operating space” afforded by nature. GDP is already a familiar yardstick to policymakers and the public, and economists calculate it with exceptional rigor. Thus, GDP should be the prime metric for sustainability analysis and a key guide to sustainability initiatives in the United States and elsewhere.
Missing the Target
Most sustainability strategies do not identify the costs of economic growth, much less scale this growth back in a just way. Instead, they focus on reducing the symptoms of growth and advocate for actions like de-carbonization and “net-zero” goals. Others measure overshoot using natural capital accounting and by incorporating “planetary boundary” frameworks into policy planning decisions.
Missing are initiatives that forthrightly address a key driver of our ecological crisis—the economy’s unsustainable size. Nor do we have initiatives that identify viable and just strategies for reducing it. To be sure, scholars like Daniel O’Neill, Peter Victor, and Tim Jackson have developed models proposing policy routes toward a steady state economy. But these paths are generally developed in an academic context. They incorporate only a limited suite of policy tools. And they don’t address the full range of levers driving growth, from federal fiscal policies to planned obsolescence and bank-created money. They generally focus on “ideal-type” policies, rather than those that can be developed realistically within existing national legal landscapes.
More solar panels won’t help much if consumption inside is growing. (Christine Westerback, Creative Commons 4.0)
Here is where a Commission on Economic Sustainability comes in. The Commission’s founding premise—a conclusion really—is the fundamental conflict between sustainability and growth. It would identify the federal policies and initiatives that promote this growth. It would calculate an optimal size for the economy as measured by GDP, based on the ecological requirements of the country and its citizens’ social needs. And it would develop a whole-of-government, 25-year strategy to reach this target in a way that maximizes fair redistribution and efficient allocation.
There are, of course, great difficulties involved in identifying the targets and strategies mentioned here. In part these difficulties are technical, including the challenge of identifying drivers of economic growth that are both granular and comprehensive. Others are ethical, such as identifying the material needs of the population while accounting for ecological health and personal freedom.
These difficulties, however, should not discourage us. We can tackle the ecological emergency only by addressing the forces driving it: the growth and size of our economy. The issues involved in tackling our civilizational challenge can be addressed through science and political debate. The Commission on Economic Sustainability is the agency that will keep us on track.
The Commission on Economic Sustainability Act
The Act establishes a government body responsible for measuring, monitoring, and coordinating federal efforts to reduce economic growth to environmentally and socially sustainable levels.
Section 2, “Findings and Declaration,” states that there is a fundamental conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Because this conflict threatens both the economy and security of the United States, it is necessary to reduce growth through concerted federal activity. The section therefore declares that establishing a Commission on Economic Sustainability is in the interest of the United States.
A good Secretary of the Interior has the background, resources, and independence required to chair the Commission on Economic Sustainability. (U.S. DOI)
Section 4 establishes the Commission. The Secretary of the Interior will chair it, and members will include the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Secretaries of Agriculture, Energy, and Commerce.
Section 5 directs the Commission’s Chair to produce a report identifying all federal activities that incentivize economic growth. Among the activities to be identified are funded and unfunded rules, regulations, policies, programs, laws, and initiatives implemented by all federal commissions, agencies, and departments.
Next, section 6 requires the Chair to produce a report identifying environmentally sustainable levels for the growth of population and GDP for the United States.
Section 7 directs the Chair to produce a report identifying a 25-year plan for establishing a steady state economy at the optimal levels of population and GDP established in Section 6.
Section 8 requires the Chair to produce a report summarizing the Commission’s activities and proposals, and to submit it to Congress annually.
The CESA is designed as a stand-alone bill and as a key component of the larger Steady State Economy Act. It addresses, as no other federal body currently does, the unsustainable growth that threatens national prosperity and security alike. And by identifying the drivers of this growth and coordinating government-wide strategies to reign them in, the CESA will help ensure a better, steady-state future for our people, nation, and planet.
Daniel Wortel-London is a CASSE Policy Specialist focused on steady-state policy development.
The post Introducing the Commission on Economic Sustainability Act appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Water Theft in the Heartland: The Case of Tippecanoe County
by Dave Rollo
Indiana’s wetlands and rivers were appropriated for ag use, leaving cities dependent on groundwater. Green shading in left figure indicates different forest types. (Indiana University Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences).
Imagine a landscape with some of the richest wildlife habitats in North America. Settlements are scarce and water is plentiful. Birds dot the skies, mammals abound on the ground, and fishes fill the rivers and lakes.
That’s Tippecanoe County, Indiana. In 1800.
The county’s transformation over the past two centuries would make it unrecognizable to its original inhabitants. Today, much of Tippecanoe consists of flat plains of fertile soils. They host vast expanses of farmland, spotted with a few hills and valleys. The county’s makeover is emblematic of the change in much of northern Indiana.
The region’s extensive conversion to farmland brought changes that reverberate across the landscape today. A great example is the draining of the great midwestern marsh of northern Indiana—the Kankakee Grand Marsh, once comparable to the Everglades in size and biodiversity. Its elimination in the late 19th century caused half a million acres of wetlands to vanish, including the largest natural lake in Indiana. The loss rendered the landscape nearly devoid of surface water. It forced settlements to turn to the remaining rivers or groundwater to meet urban needs and to irrigate farmland. This conversion of wetlands to farmland contributed to water scarcity in Indiana and set the stage for battles over water resources today.
Growing Demand
Tippecanoe County, like most of west-central Indiana, is increasingly reliant on groundwater. The Teays Aquifer, which extends beneath ten counties in the region, is now the essential water source for Tippecanoe, together with the Wabash River, which is overused.
The Wabash River in Northern Indiana. (Chris Light, Wikimedia).
One of those ten counties is Marion County where Indianapolis dominates municipal governance. Given its projected water needs, the county may find the available water supply to be too confining. Dependent on the White River and the county’s own aquifer, city leaders and developers have long coveted surrounding water resources for the city’s expansion. In 2006 the city attempted to tap Monroe Lake, a reservoir some 60 miles to the south. That project failed after considerable resistance from multiple jurisdictions and state officials, including the governor.
The target of the growth boosters of Greater Indianapolis is the Teays Aquifer. They propose to transport water 50 miles to advance the largest development project in the state’s history. Developers call it LEAP, the Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace Research and Innovation District. LEAP is a megasite—a type of enormous industrial and manufacturing center developed as a group effort by state agencies, universities, and private developers.
Unlike a failed attempt in 2006, LEAP has the support of the current governor. But whether appropriation of the water for distant growth ambitions comes to pass remains to be seen. The battle is just beginning.
The Wabash Consumed
We often think of water wars as occurring in the western USA. But conditions are shaping up for similar skirmishes in the Midwest. As recently as the fall of 2023, drought impacted some 50 percent of the Midwest. And periodic severe droughts have tested regional water providers. Furthermore, climate modelers predict that Indiana will have wetter springs but drier falls, with higher temperatures creating stress on humans and crops alike.
Already, seasonal droughts in Tippecanoe County have impacted the largest surface water source in the region, the Wabash River. Its watershed encompasses two-thirds of Indiana, and cities in the catchment area draw heavily from the river. During the summer, cities withdraw river water at nearly the same rate they replenish it. (Replenished supply is water used by power and sewage plants that is treated and returned to the river.) In other words, during its period of lowest flow, municipal users appropriate nearly the entire supply of river water. What will happen as demand for water grows?
The county also gets water from the Teays Aquifer. The twin cities of Lafayette and West Lafayette depend entirely on the aquifer to meet residents’ needs.
The Wabash River watershed serves much of Indiana and a significant portion of Illinois. (Wikimedia)
Tippecanoe County may have a secure water supply for the time being. But counties to the east and close to Indianapolis are not as fortunate. Boone County has rich agricultural farmland, but little subsurface water due to its underlying geology. So it has little potential to increase extraction. Yet the economic development community in Indianapolis has targeted Boone County—25 miles northwest of the city—for the enormous LEAP megasite.
LEAP is an industrial park facility with centers for pharmaceutical development, silicon chip manufacturing, and data storage. It is under construction on 10,000 acres of some of the best farmland in the state. It’s situated along Interstate 65, a superhighway connecting Indianapolis and Chicago.
Analysts estimate LEAP water needs at up to 100 million gallons per day. Yet Marion County (Indianapolis) and the counties surrounding it have no spare water capacity. For this reason, project developers propose to run a pipeline more than 50 miles to extract water from the Teays Aquifer in Tippecanoe County. This $2 billion pipeline plan has alarmed the public and brought scrutiny to LEAP. Yet many aspects of the project remain obscure.
Growth Boosters Shift Costs to the Public
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), whose board is appointed by the governor is a major cheerleader of LEAP. The IEDC and its associated foundation is a public/private partnership that is opaque to public scrutiny. Yet is Indiana taxpayer fund it to the tune of billions of dollars.
The IEDC keeps secret the names of private donors who provide supplementary funding, as donors request anonymity. But the public lobbying group Common Cause has noted that a thank-you to sponsors on the IEDC website mentions the five largest investor-owned utility companies in the state. IEDC has also been evasive regarding LEAP. It refuses to share internal reports, excluding the public from meetings, and failing to answer questions posed by citizens, citizen advocacy groups, and the media.
A December 2023 report from the largest citizen/consumer advocacy group in the state, the Citizen Action Coalition (CAC), found “significant and valid concerns” regarding LEAP. It also found that the project “will likely lead to an environmental and financial crisis for Hoosier taxpayers and utility customers.” The report notes that LEAP’s projected water extractions from Tippecanoe County may exceed the water use of 1.3 million average Indiana residents.
A sliver of the LEAP vision. (IEDC)
Tippecanoe County, with a population of 186,000, currently uses 35 million gallons/day from the aquifer—about a third of LEAP’s potential impact. Furthermore, the $2 billion cost of the pipeline and expansion of related utilities is as yet uncertain. (How often do we find massive infrastructure projects come in under cost?) The CAC warns that the cost of adding such capacity may well be borne by customers.
The CAC further revealed that the IEDC purchased the 10,000 acres and committed to greenlighting the site prior to securing the water needed or even conducting a water study of the project. It purchased some farmland at up to six times the assessed value. One farmer reported being approached by IEDC attorneys who “refused to disclose who they worked for or the reason behind the land purchase.”
After issuing their report, the CAC (along with major media outlets and local government officials) has requested answers to numerous questions raised by the LEAP project. Yet the IEDC has refused to meet or even respond. This led WTHR in Indianapolis to report last December that “Over the past eight months, the IEDC has refused all of our interview requests to discuss the project.” The IEDC even ignores inquiries posed by Tippecanoe County elected officials, whose municipal water may be affected by the pipeline. “The project has been shrouded in secrecy and lack of responsiveness since its initiation. Only public pressure has resulted in any willingness to discuss, in a very limited fashion and mostly through press releases, the potential for large-scale water diversion,” David Sanders, a West Lafayette city council member, told me in an interview.
Pushback from Tippecanoe County
Citizens and public officials are pushing back on the LEAP pipeline in Tippecanoe County. Both Lafayette and West Lafayette have passed resolutions against tapping their aquifer. Tippecanoe County has passed a moratorium on high volume withdrawals for the next nine months.
Stop the Water Steal, a citizen group founded by Councilmember Sanders, has rallied residents in Tippecanoe County to resist the pipeline and work toward an independent water analysis that will evaluate the effect of a potential 100 million-gallon-per-day extraction from the Teays Aquifer. This evaluation has been supported by legislators at the Indiana Statehouse.
Tippecanoe citizens are pushing back against the pipeline that threatens their water supply. (Stop The Water Steal).
Richard Meilan, Professor of Natural Resources at Purdue University in W. Lafayette, found that test wells for the project created a drawdown of 1.5 feet after only a 2-million-gallon withdrawal over a 72-hour period. He lives only a mile from the test wells and spoke directly to a drilling company employee who expressed surprise at the decline of the water table. Dr. Meilan, CAC, and Stop the Water Steal have all remonstrated in public forums. Their efforts have garnered seventeen resolutions against the pipeline from county and city jurisdictions as far away as Bloomington, some 100 miles distant. “Don’t take the LEAP” might summarize their message.
Such resistance has prompted Indiana Governor Holcomb to pause the LEAP proposal pending further analysis of the pipeline’s impact by the Indiana Finance Authority (IFA). However, CAC Director Kerwin Olsen says this should not be considered a fully independent study. The IFA is under the authority of the governor, who is also Director of the IEDC Board. The delay, according to Olsen, is a political response to lower the project’s profile during an election season.
Fortunately, the delay also provides additional time for citizens and their representatives to continue to spread the word, gather evidence, and build resistance to the water theft in the heartland.
Dave Rollo is a Policy Specialist and team leader of the Keep Our Counties Great campaign at CASSE.
The post Water Theft in the Heartland: The Case of Tippecanoe County appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Keeping the County Great: Rappahannock’s Steady State
by Dave Rollo
Farms and forest occupy Rappahannock County. The Shenandoah Mountains lie to the west. (Wikimedia Commons)
It would be difficult to match the pastoral majesty of northwest Virginia, with its rolling hills covered in forests and prime farmland at the northern foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The region boasts the Shenandoah Valley to the west and Shenandoah National Park (SNP). Sitting at the eastern doorstep of the Park is Rappahannock County, part of the Piedmont region of the state, which lies between the mountains and the coastal plain.
Rappahannock is unique among the counties of the northern Piedmont for its careful approach to conservation. Unlike neighboring jurisdictions, Rappahannock County has carefully guarded its rural character and natural beauty—an astounding achievement given its proximity to the Washington, D.C. Metro (less than 50 miles away). Missing in Rappahannock are the big box stores, strip malls, fast food restaurants, and sprawl that are common outside the county’s borders.
Threats from Exurbia
“Super commuters” and telecommuters have created great demand for land in the counties west of Washington, D.C. Extending beyond the coastal plain cities of Washington, Arlington, and Alexandria, whose combined population is 5.5 million, the Piedmont region and the mountains beyond have felt the effects of this hunger for land.
Rappahannock County lies on the periphery of the exurban D.C. metro area. (Wikimedia Commons, modified).
The population of suburban Loudon County has increased more than tenfold in 50 years, to 440,000 people. Fauquier County, sandwiched between Loudon and Rappahannock, has tripled since 1970, to 76,000 residents. Fauquier is now considered part of the 22-county D.C. metro area, out on the exurban fringe.
Yet despite growth pressures—actually, because of active resistance to them—the population of Rappahannock County has held nearly steady over the past half-century, at 7,500 people.
Growth pressures have intensified over the years and are now on Rappahannock County’s doorstep. The county has successfully staved off most conversion of land to housing tracts, but neighboring counties have approved large development projects within a few miles of the county line.
In Culpeper County, immediately southeast of Rappahannock, the County Planning Commission granted unanimous approval of a massive development at Clevenger’s Corner. The development consists of 774 homes and a 144,000 square-foot commercial center. The approval was consistent with the county’s “growth centers” vision described in its 2005 comprehensive plan. To the people of Rappahannock County, Clevenger’s Corner is an object lesson in the type of development to avoid. They point to it when they complain to their elected representatives about the consequences of loosening zoning restrictions.
Pressures of Growth Tested
Rappahannock residents’ preference for conservation was put to the test recently, as was Rappahannock County’s 2020 Comprehensive Plan, by two controversial development petitions in the villages of Sperryville and Washington. The proposal in Sperryville was denied, while the one in Washington was approved, but they both reflect a cautious review of development that is more or less consistent with a steady state economy.
Sperryville, with more than 350 residents, has a vibrant village center. At the boundary of Shenandoah National Park, it benefits from significant tourism, and is buoyed by visitors frequenting the handful of shops, galleries, and restaurants. It is unincorporated, and development decisions are made exclusively by the County Board of Supervisors.
In Washington, by contrast, commercial and cultural activity has waxed and waned over time, and population has fallen from a high of 250 residents to 86 today. The mayor has set a goal of increasing the town’s population to roughly its former high. Unlike Sperryville, Washington (and most towns and villages in the County) is incorporated; development within its boundaries falls under the purview of the Town Council.
The Sperryville development proposal was for changing the density requirement of a local parcel from five acres per home to two acres (referred to as “upzoning”). This proposal generated a great deal of public opposition. In response, environmental restrictions on the parcel were introduced, which reduced the developable area and the number of homes. However, a petition of nearly 400 signatures urged the Board of Supervisors to reject the rezoning request outright. Ultimately, the Board agreed with the opposition to the proposal and kept the current zoning, at five acres per home.
View of Main Street, Sperryville, Virginia (Wikimedia Commons)
Meanwhile in Washington, the Rush River Commons project consisted of a mixed-use (commercial/residential) proposal on 5.1 acres that featured slope constraints and environmental challenges. The Washington Town Council viewed the project as valuable for shoring up town commerce. They also liked its inclusion of space for nonprofits and 20 units of affordable housing, a key consideration in their comprehensive plan.
After approval of the first phase by the town council, the developer offered a second phase that not only entailed additional building but required expansion of the town boundary by three acres. This required approval from the County Board of Supervisors. County residents pushed back on the proposal, and it was only after the developer removed the residential component and met twenty-five other conditions that the Board approved the project.
Thus, although the Board of Supervisors finally approved the Washington development, it imposed a high degree of stringency in the review process. Concern over the town’s loss of 60 percent of its population was likely a key reason for the decisions by both the town and county governmental bodies.
In the Sperryville and Washington cases, meeting records, public comment, and letters to the editor of the local Rappahannock News illustrate a substantial degree of public input from throughout the county. Civic involvement explains, to a large degree, Rappahannock County’s success at preserving land and resisting growth pressures.
Comprehensively Speaking
The Rappahannock Comprehensive Plan of 2020 updated the previous 2004 plan in significant ways. The Board of Supervisors implemented a downzoning (an increase in minimum lot size) of approximately 90 percent of the county’s land. Current zoning allows only one housing unit per 25 acres. This check on development is popularly supported and was reflected in elected leadership and appointments to the Planning Commission.
The opening statement of the comprehensive plan emphasizes the value that residents find in the county’s undeveloped lands: “When asked what brings the most pride related to Rappahannock County, there were various answers generally related to the unique viewsheds, the rural nature, the preservation of land and open spaces, and the citizens that help keep it that way.”
Popular support for constraints on development is clearly evident: “When asked what should never change about Rappahannock County, responses generally referenced the natural beauty and the zoning restrictions that control development.” Clearly, residents prize the natural attributes of the county over proposed alterations imposed by development.
Fortunately, Rappahannock County can draw on state-level policy to limit land conversion. For example, a foundational element in Rappahannock’s success in farmland preservation is the State of Virginia’s 1971 LUVA (Land Use Value Assessment) law allowing local governments to assess land by its “use value” rather than its typically higher market value. Through LUVA, real estate taxes are lower for lands that are useful for production of food, fiber, or timber. This creates an incentive to keep land rural and productive. The policy is effective: Ninety-eight percent of farms in the county are still family-owned, and 80 percent are smaller than 179 acres.
Rappahannock’s permanently protected land. (Piedmont Environmental Council)
The Piedmont Environmental Council, a regional environmental organization founded in 1972, has played a significant role in environmental protection and conservation for more than half a century. It promotes parks and trails, supports the local food system by connecting consumers to producers, encourages an active civic culture, and builds on land conservation successes.
The PEC has permanently protected more than 420,000 acres through the use of conservation easements. In Rappahannock County, conservation easements total approximately 34,000 acres, 20 percent of the county’s area. These are held by a consortium of organizations, including The Land Trust of Virginia, Virginia Outdoors, local and state governments, and the PEC. Together with the Shenandoah National Park, conservation easements cover more than 38 percent of Rappahannock County.
The PEC goal is to place 50 percent of the privately held land in the Piedmont region—a million acres—into permanent conservation status. The PEC has determined that the 50 percent goal is the minimum area required to preserve species diversity in the region. The secondary goal is to create a vibrant rural economy.
The PEC is in the process of targeting farms in the upper Rappahannock watershed that could also provide an anchor for the rural economy. Farm Bill programs through ALE (Agricultural Land Easements) provide grants—up to 50 percent of the land’s fair market value—to farms for placing their land in easements, with tax benefits on the remaining land value.
The Need for Vigilance
The inclination of town and county residents alike is to resist sprawl, as reflected in the 2020 comprehensive plan. The Land Use section provides that ”…we the people of Rappahannock County declare it to be a ’scenic county‘ and all goals, principles, and policies will reflect and devolve from this fundamental recognition.” The “Principles” section includes six that are directed toward land conservation. Two principles pertain to economic growth and development. However, they call for maintaining “growth areas” of urban infill for commerce and affordable housing. Economic growth is allowed only when it “assists in maintaining our existing balance and is compatible” with the natural and rural nature of the county.
Principle 10 promotes the philosophy that “land is a finite resource and not a commodity” and needs protection. Principle 9 encourages “citizen involvement in the planning process,” citizen education regarding the value of the natural and rural environment, and provision of an avenue for citizen participation in the oversight of development proposals.
The Rappahannock Comprehensive Plan’s “Goals” section is likewise explicit regarding land conservation. Seven goals require protection and preservation of the natural attributes of the county. Only one goal entertains prospects for further economic growth. It includes the directive to “Define the future boundaries of growth in village and commercial areas necessary to preserve our community character and to maintain the balance that exists today.”
Since growth is constrained by restrictions and within discrete physical boundaries, what level of growth is likely, especially given the demographic and affordability challenges of the county? The Board of Supervisors recognizes that as the county ages, gentrification prevents younger and poorer community members from living and participating in the county. Yet younger residents are usually needed to work in agriculture.
The remarkable success of protection by conservation easement within the County. (Piedmont Environmental Council)
The comprehensive plan anticipates population growth of 0–1 percent per year. This is not a goal, but a response to a variety of causes. The plan indicates that infrastructure such as schools are adequate to accommodate an increase of 750–1,500 county residents. This means a total projected population of 8,800 people, similar to the County’s population in the year 1900.
Rappahannock’s comprehensive plan embodies a limits-to-growth ethic that is consistent with the county’s legacy of resisting development pressures. The use of conservation easements and support for an agrarian base with ecological integrity is also consistent with a steady state economy. However, conservation easements are vulnerable to violation, the doctrine of changed conditions, and other legal challenges in a nation pursuing economic growth. Vigilance will be required to maintain the terms of easements. Ideally, these easements would be bulwarked by a sturdy framework of conservation lands owned by the county or a fee-title land trust.
Continued advancement toward a steady state economy could also be encouraged by replacing references to quantitative “growth” in the comprehensive plan with principles of qualitative improvement. And because the county’s population growth has long fluctuated within a small range and at a low level, the county could explicitly aim to maintain this dynamic equilibrium for the purpose of protecting its biocapacity. With these moderate changes, the plan could serve as a model for keeping a county great by maintaining a steady state.
Dave Rollo is a Policy Specialist and team leader of the Keep Our Counties Great campaign at CASSE.
The post <em>Keeping</em> the County Great: Rappahannock’s Steady State appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Debt, Deficits, and Warranted Money
by Brian Czech
Concern over mushrooming debt is growing. Click on the image to see the casino-like tumbling of national debt “clocks.” (US Debt Clock)
If you recognize the damages done by a bloating economy, you’ll be alarmed by the global GDP meter, which hit the existentially menacing threshold of $100 trillion in 2022. If that doesn’t give you a dose of distress, try the global debt clock. Then, for a dizzying dose indeed, check the casino-like combination of debt and GDP maintained by “US Debt Clock.”
Almost all readers, bearish and bullish alike, can sense the unsustainability of skyrocketing debt. Even wild-eyed growthists, who see no problem in a perpetually growing GDP, can’t abide a perpetually growing debt. Yet very few critics of debt can articulate, with economic fundamentals, why such debt is so unsustainable.
Sadly absent from the discussion of debt is the ecological underpinnings of money. As long as these underpinnings remain overlooked, the money lenders will be overbooked. Deficit spending will rule the day, and global debt will continue rocketing into the stratosphere, heading for the sun like a pecuniary phoenix.
Let’s have a closer look at the debt problem, with a focus on global and U.S. scenarios. We’ll consider the relationship of debt to deficit spending, along with inflation. Finally, we’ll bring in the ecological basis of money, and hope our policymakers grasp and apply it, lest our money supply—not to mention the planet—turn to ashes.
Deficits and Debt: Global and U.S.
As global GDP was ramping up to the planetarily punishing $100 trillion level, global debt was already surpassing $300 trillion. It reached that dubious distinction in 2021, just one year after reaching the previous record of $226 trillion. It has since come down from the peak, but still stands around $238 billion, and the reduction is surely short-lived.
The majority of global debt is private, especially corporate but significantly household debt as well. Public debt—money owed by governments—makes up about a third.
In the USA, those proportions are roughly reversed. From the county commission to Capitol Hill, American politicians have ambitions that far exceed government coffers. When they’re not spending money to “stimulate the economy,” they’re trying to spend their way out of the social and environmental problems caused by an overstimulated economy. They spend money they don’t have; that’s deficit spending and it adds to the public debt.
Deficit spending is a way of political life in the U.S. Government. (Image snipped from 2024 Budget of the U.S. Government.)
At this point in fiscal year 2024 (October 1, 2023 through September 30, 2024), the U.S. government deficit stands at roughly $532 billion, contributing another two percent to the federal debt of $26 trillion. The deficit may lessen as taxes are collected in the coming months, but then it will shoot back up for the remainder of the year. Even the figures provided by the Administration (probably rosy figures) acknowledge that the deficit is expected to be a whopping $1.8 trillion by the end of fiscal 2024. That’s nearly seven percent of the 2023 GDP ($26 trillion).
The USA is particularly relevant to the global debt; its debt is bigger than any other. In fact, U.S. entities—government and private combined—carry a debt burden nearly the size of the global economy!
Only Japan and China have joined the USA in the club of over $10 trillion government debt. France, Italy, the UK, Germany, India, Canada, Spain, and Brazil all have debts exceeding a trillion dollars.
In terms of relative debt (ratio of debt to GDP), Japan is at the top of the list at 255 percent. Greece, Singapore, Italy, Bhutan, and the USA (123 percent) round out the top six.
Deficit Spending: Getting Dumb and Dumber?
Deficit spending has a long history in American policy. The fiscal exigencies of war have triggered deep deficits, with World War II as the classic case. But huge deficits were already incurred during the Great Depression, coinciding with the influence of the British economist John Maynard Keynes. In the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Keynes prescribed a liberal dose of deficit spending to spur the western economies out of recession.
But Keynes never said to go hog wild, much less stay that way. So, for many decades now Americans have heard the debate between fiscal conservatives and “deficit-spending liberals.” They both want growth, but conservatives think a persistent deficit and ballooning debt is more burden than boon for GDP. They typically only abide a big debt for hawkish military purposes. Otherwise they’re “budget hawks.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are you sure about MMT? (Wikipedia)
Inveterate deficit spenders, on the other hand, think they can stimulate the economy by picking the winners and funding the right programs.
Into this old debate comes “modern monetary theory,” centered around the idea that deficit spending is generally fine, and policymakers needn’t worry too much about a growing debt, as long as the economy is also growing. Beyond that, “MMT” seems to mean many things to many people and has polarized the economics community. Even pollyannish growthists like Paul Krugman find MMT “obviously indefensible.” Another growthist (aren’t they all?) at the dark-monied Mercatus Center calls MMT “a bizarre, illogical, convoluted way of thinking.”
MMT does, however, provide some political cover for politicians hunting pork. The late King of Pork, Senator Robert Byrd, would have championed MMT all the way to the bottom line. But MMT has persuaded some presumably more fiscally innocent members of Congress, most notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Bernie Sanders, and even John Yarmuth, past chair of the House Budget Committee.
In any event, it’s hard to tell what’s so “modern” about MMT. It has a few new wrinkles—it picks them up as it goes along—but basically it’s just another phase of Keynesian thought on deficit spending. And, as President Nixon said a half century ago, “We’re all Keynesians now.” He could have added, “We’re all growthists, too!”
And so, the first subheading that appears in this year’s federal budget (page 5) is: “GROWING THE ECONOMY FROM THE BOTTOM UP AND MIDDLE OUT.” We could add: “WITH A SHOT OF DEFICIT STEROIDS.”
Money Supplies: Warranted vs. Inflated
In 1939, one Sir Roy Forbes Harrod wrote “An Essay in Dynamic Theory,” published in the stately Economic Journal. Until then, little had been theorized about the process of economic growth, and rarely with such nuance. Harrod’s approach is considered a leading precedent of growth theory.
Harrod spent much of his 20-page essay contemplating three kinds of growth rates: warranted, natural, and actual. Our charge here is not to dive deeply into Harrod’s thoughts on growth rates, but to see where they take us on debt and inflation. In particular, I propose we have three levels of money supply: warranted, real, and nominal.
Economists are familiar with the latter two. The real money supply has been adjusted for inflation, typically by pegging to a particular year. The nominal supply is expressed in terms of face value in real time. For example, $1.38 trillion today—the nominal money supply of a hypothetical country—is only one trillion real dollars, if we’re pegging to 2010.
It’s the “warranted” supply I’m proposing here. The concept stems from the trophic theory of money, which is that money originates via the agricultural surplus at the base of the economy. Not agricultural surplus in the sense of grain going to waste in the fields, but surplus in the sense that one farmer can grow enough to feed many people.
It is that surplus—more broadly, a food surplus but for all practical purposes the agricultural surplus—that frees the hands for the division of labor. The division of labor, in turn, allows for the exchanging of goods and services. All this calls for an efficient means of exchange, store of value, and unit of account: money, in other words.
Money is warranted, then, by the division of labor flowing from agricultural surplus.
Money didn’t just originate historically via agricultural surplus—as it did in Mesopotamia, Lydia, and the Yellow River Basin of China—it originates each year in the breadbaskets of the world. Actually it originates twice a year as these breadbaskets are found in Northern and Southern Hemispheres. North America (prairies and California), China, Southeast Asia, Brazil, and Chile come to mind, plus of course the contested confluence of political Europe and Russia, centered in Ukraine.
You might say money gets “printed” into circulation with each perennial pulse of wheat, rice, corn, oats, barley, and soybeans. Massive harvests free billions of hands for a spectacular division of labor and the exchanging of trillions of dollars of warranted money. Lenin was right on the money (so to speak) when he referred to grain as “the currency of currencies.”
Wheat combine “printing money” in North Dakota. (Flickr)
Think about it: How would money remain relevant in a world of agricultural collapse? Everyone would be occupied with growing, gathering, catching, or commandeering their own food. No one would be producing other types of goods and services, much less bringing them to market. Money would be worthless; it wouldn’t be warranted.
Not so with the collapse of massage services, NASCAR, hip hop, or even Taylor Swift. Nor with the disappearance of boats, guns, electronics, fur coats, or perfumes. A thousand container ships of manufactured dreck could be dumped in the Panama Canal, never to be seen or sold again, and the economy would persist. Plenty of other goods and services would remain. Money would still be meaningful, relevant, and valuable.
It’s an entirely different story with the world’s soy, root crops, poultry, livestock, finfish, and, above all, grain. Burn those up like some omnipotent, omnipresent Putin, and watch the economy come tumbling down in days.
That is why, in a fundamental sense, it is agricultural surplus that “prints” money into circulation. The warranted money supply, then, is that which reflects the amount of agricultural surplus. Lots of surplus warrants lots of money; little surplus warrants little money.
The trophic theory of money doesn’t explain every possible aspect of monetary economics, at least not directly. For example, how big a role do livestock and fish play in food surplus and therefore warranted money? What’s the linkage of food surplus to energy inputs? What about other natural resources at the trophic base of the economy such as heavy fiber and timber? (It takes clothing and shelter to subsist, not just food.)
The trophic theory of money generates plenty of research questions, but it provides plenty of insight as is. Take inflation, for example. That’s when the nominal money supply exceeds the warranted supply.
Limits to Warranted Money
While it is helpful to think of money as being “printed” into circulation with agricultural surplus, it is even more helpful to think of money being “footprinted” into circulation. There’s no way to produce an agricultural surplus—or a warranted money supply—without a heavy ecological footprint. Not for a population of eight billion people.
It takes a lot of inputs to grow a lot of food, so the ecological footprint of agriculture reaches far beyond the field. (Flickr)
Each parcel on the planet has a biological capacity. So, given limits to agricultural efficiency, we know that the ecological footprint of agriculture can only reach so far (or sink so deep, if you prefer). Then it exceeds the biological capacity, agricultural surplus plunges, and the warranted money supply drops like a shot.
The pre-existing, nominal money supply remains, but to what avail? With no agricultural surplus, businesses big and small disappear—banks, too—and the government defaults. All but the most civilized (or uncivilized but ethical?) polities descend into some sort of chaos. The nominal money supply might still be in the trillions of dollars, but it’s neither warranted nor real. It’s like the gold supply of King Midas. It’s hyperinflated, not because of an “overheated” economy and the pull of demand; quite the opposite. It’s devalued by “cost-push” inflation, the relentless price increases due to diminished stocks of natural capital.
What the Fed Needs Now
The Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, Budget Committee(s), World Bank, and all the other fiscal, monetary, and financial institutions need a reality check in the form of basic and applied ecology. They need to learn especially about the concepts of trophic levels and carrying capacity. Otherwise they won’t be able to sufficiently connect the dots among deficits, debt, and cost-push inflation.
Right now, the Fed’s approach to curbing inflation is the ham-handed raising of interest rates. But raising interest rates only works (sometimes) for the “demand-pull” form of inflation, where prices rise due to an increasing propensity to consume, or due to an injection of nominal money (as with deficit spending). It’s no remedy for cost-push inflation stemming from limits to growth in the real economy.
The Federal Reserve needs ecological training to manage inflation. (Wikipedia)
I’m not saying these accomplished folks—geniuses in other ways—have no sense of economic capacity. They most certainly do; they monitor and talk about it all the time. Unfortunately, they have essentially no knowledge of ecological capacity, so their notions of economic capacity are flawed. They tend to think of capacity in terms of financial capital, labor, manufacturing facilities, infrastructure, and new technology. It’s reminiscent of Herman Daly’s lament about focusing on the kitchen and the cook, with little thought to the ingredients.
When is the last time you heard a Jerome Powell or a Janet Yellen utter a word like “soil” or “water” or “forest” or “fishery”? Yet those are the stocks of natural capital at the very base—the trophic base—of the economy they preside over. They should be intent upon conserving those stocks, if not for purposes of long-term human wellbeing (which would be nice), then at least for purposes of fighting inflation!
Brian Czech is CASSE’s Executive Director.
The post Debt, Deficits, and Warranted Money appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Envisioning a Steady-State Comprehensive Plan
by Dave Rollo
”Economic growth” is commonplace in the daily news. We assume it’s a good thing, that a 2–4 percent increase in GDP is beneficial to all. Likewise, we hear that our communities are growing, and we see a 2–4 percent increase in population as reasonable and benign. Meanwhile, visionary community leaders are busy planning for a steady feed of single-digit annual growth. So we’re in good hands, right?
Too often, new homes claim farmland. (Brett VA, Flickr)
But what the news reports miss is that any steady rate of growth is an exponential function that contains within it a knowable doubling time. Suppose a reporter added this: “County officials say that at 3.4 percent growth annually, our county will double in population in just over 20 years.” Would this capture our attention? Would we respond differently? A doubling of population, of water demand, of schools needed, of traffic! And what about taxes?
Suppose the reporter further spelled out the meaning of this growth. “Developers are proposing new housing tracts on the farmland just outside town. If trends continue, the radius of our city will double in two decades.” The intrepid reporter continues: “Doubling the radius of Central City will quadruple the built area of our community!” Now the mind is reeling. Time to pull the car over. What are these county leaders thinking?
The reporter might also note that the expansion of our built environment is doing measurable harm to our environment and quality of life. Two examples: The USA is losing farmland at a rate of 1.8 million acres per year. And more than 40 percent of groundwater wells in the U.S. are declining faster than they are recharged. It seems growth is not so benign after all.
Local communities need more than ever to safeguard their own life-support systems by taming growth and retrofitting existing dwellings and neighborhoods to respect limits. This requires reality-based community planning, typically reflected in a fundamental document: the comprehensive plan. A comprehensive plan has long been the means to regulate development in an orderly fashion. Now it must evolve to help towns and cities live within limits set by nature.
The Evolution of Community Planning
Most counties and cities within the USA have a long-range plan that anticipates urban expansion. The Comprehensive Plan (sometimes referred to as a “Growth Policy Plan”) was developed early in the twentieth century as the need for universal community planning became clear. At that time growth was expected and invariably desired. Growth promised more of everything, including tax revenue for local government. Comprehensive plans promised an ordered development by zoning for specific uses and building public infrastructure to serve them.
Visions are exciting, but boundaries matter, too. (Parisa, Flickr)
Cheap energy helped create cheap transportation, which encouraged physical expansion and accelerated the conversion of farmlands and wildlife habitats into housing tracts and strip malls. This post-World War II conversion was lamented not only by conservationists, but by urbanists of the day, who foresaw the drawbacks of sprawl such as pollution, traffic congestion, and social isolation. The manifest problems of sprawl began to be recognized widely in the late twentieth century. In response, “smart growth” was promoted to ameliorate the worst effects of unimpeded expansion.
At about the same time, comprehensive plans began to incorporate broader themes, including community vision and values, retention of community character, the value of ecological services, and quality of life. This expanded view, while reflected in only a minority of comprehensive plans, laid the groundwork for challenging the growth mandate. It advances the public good not just via quantitative metrics of physical material or GDP, but also through the use of measures of human wellbeing. It enables questions such as, “What is the optimal size of our community?”
A Path to Real Sustainability
Municipalities and counties that envision quality of life beyond simple growth metrics have often incorporated the concept of sustainability into their planning documents. Supposedly sustainability is achieved at the intersection of the environmental, social equity, and economic dimensions of community life.
Partial and more accurate visions of sustainability, respectively. (Penn State)
While helpful in some contexts, this intersectional approach to planning allows “sustainability” to be acknowledged while denying any need for limits on economic expansion. This denial is never made directly but in a workaround fashion. For example, the American Planning Association professes a concern about climate change but endorses “smart growth” adaptations to address the climate threat, despite the obvious and long-documented relationship of greenhouse gas emissions to GDP.
A fundamental requisite of a steady-state comprehensive plan is to acknowledge that human economies are subsidiary to the biosphere. Therefore, local plans should incorporate limits that preserve biocapacity for humans and our fellow species. This is explicitly described in the ordered hierarchy of sustainability, in which the economy is embedded in society, which in turn is nested in the environment. It should appear in the introduction to the comprehensive plan. An example would be the Bloomington, Indiana Comprehensive Plan Executive Summary: “Our community has resolved to do our share to protect the biosphere, and critical to this protection is recognizing that infinite growth is neither possible nor desirable in a finite world.”
The most basic obligation of local government is the health, safety, and welfare of the community. Meeting this obligation requires a stable climate, productive and regenerative food systems, and biodiversity conservation. Protecting these natural assets necessitates limits to growth of the built environment.
Integrating real sustainability in a community’s comprehensive plan requires taking into account the carrying capacity of land under community control. It also requires impact measures such as ecological footprint analysis that describe impacts relative to the biocapacity of the area. Carrying capacity and impact analysis represent important inputs to the design of a zoning code to limit growth.
A Framework for a Plan
Modern comprehensive plans begin with a vision statement for the community followed by a summary of the plan and the relevant chapters for its implementation. A vision for a county intending to create a steady state economy would acknowledge limits to the GDP growth of the county and to its physical expansion. This vision could be affirmed in a statement—perhaps a “Declaration of Limits”—by the elected representatives of the county or municipality and adopted by the county commissioners or the city council.
Plan Ithaca. (Ithaca, New York: Vision for Our Future).
A steady-state comprehensive plan would then focus on preserving the county’s natural capital, green infrastructure, and agricultural land while improving and building upon the community’s historic, cultural, and civic assets. These goals can be detailed in the plan’s chapters, directing departments within the local government to implement programs and policies to achieve the objectives of the plan. The plan can also provide a benchmark for progress.
The structure of a steady-state comprehensive plan would be similar to that of a conventional growth-oriented plan. Functional areas such as transportation, economy, housing, and land use would offer guidance to planners and elected bodies in dealing with important infrastructure works and sectoral activities. But instead of a growth-oriented approach to development, steady-state plans would emphasize qualitative optimization of each topic.
For example, transportation planners might halt road expansion and focus instead on expanding public transportation and building trails for biking and walking. They might also create, through land-use planning, residential/work nodes that minimize the need for travel. These efficiencies would be aligned with sustainability goals that aim to reduce energy and carbon emissions.
Steady Statesmanship, Chapter by Chapter
The Economy chapter would focus on wellbeing and would adopt quality-of-life objectives in place of measures of GDP. (To be clear, GDP could be used as a measure of environmental impact—not quality of life—in which case county leaders would seek to contain it, rather than expand it.) For example, the chapter would expand economic development to include the work of social service agencies. The county’s Economic and Sustainable Development Department would prioritize supporting local business as a means of cultivating real, sustainable prosperity. And a prime focus would be to recirculate wealth by substituting locally-sourced goods for imports.
Comprehensive plan elements. (Twin Cities Metropolitan Council)
The Housing chapter would prescribe compactness of form—of housing developments as well as of houses. Goods and services would be provided within walking distance or a short public transit ride. Amenities and services such as garden space, orchards, laundries, and tool shops would be nearby and compact. Building codes would be adjusted to favor using local materials, and to aim at low-impact energy use.
The Land Use chapter would have special importance in the Comprehensive Plan. Based on measures such as ecological services, agricultural use, species richness, watershed protection and other metrics of biocapacity, areas outside those reserved for human habitation would be placed in Conservation Districts. Likewise, Rural Preservation Areas would aim to preserve farmland by allowing only low-density human habitation. To further limit expansion, the Plan would include an urban services boundary and create a greenbelt of rural land that precludes urban development.
The Details are in the Data
Comprehensive plans are the chief guiding documents of a city or county. But clear data and analyses are also needed to guide policy decisions. Preservation of biocapacity is an important goal, but policymakers will need to know the locations of natural areas and farmland, and their characteristics such as biodiversity or agricultural productivity, in order to formulate the proper policies.
Likewise, elected representatives could best advocate for limits if the costs of growth are fully accounted for. Growth impact assessments that include cost calculations are indispensable. These assessments should include direct costs of infrastructure and services as well as indirect costs including the loss of ecological services and the reduction in biocapacity.
Community footprint analyses that quantify human economic and social demand on the county’s natural capital provide a clear basis for protecting the reserve capital through land preservation and reducing human impact through other policies, such as efficiency measures in building and transportation. Where footprint analysis is not available, county GDP should be used as an indicator of environmental impact.
Natural capital should be integral to urban planning. (Randy von Liski, Flickr)
Other reports and action plans that complement a steady-state comprehensive plan are already being utilized by many communities. Climate action and sustainability plans provide strategies to lessen energy consumption. Local food charters offer ways of expanding the local food economy to protect farmland, provide employment, and provide for county food security. Reports on import replacement and establishing a diverse local economy offer ways to build community wealth by recirculating dollars as an alternative to the wealth building that is presumed to come from continual expansion.
The process of creating a Steady-State Comprehensive Plan will require engaging citizens. Surveys indicate that many citizens see growth and sprawl as a pressing problem, with one poll reporting that 77 percent of Americans see sprawl-driven destruction of farmland and natural habitat as a major problem or somewhat of a problem. Given this sentiment, community leaders should be asking a crucial question: What is the ideal size of our community?
Dave Rollo is a Policy Specialist and team leader of the Keep Our Counties Great campaign at CASSE.
The post Envisioning a Steady-State Comprehensive Plan appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Growth Battles in Chittenden County
by Dave Rollo
The Green Mountains of Vermont. (JJ Sky’s the Limit)
Vermont takes its name from the French Monts Verts, or Green Mountains, the state’s rolling hills that host maple, birch, and beech forests in the south and spruce and fir in the north. Quaint towns and farms, many retaining their historic structures, are nestled in the mountain valleys. Lakes, streams, and wetlands are plentiful. And farms are everywhere: Vermont consistently ranks as one of the top states in the nation for local food production.
The verdant beauty of the Green Mountain State is striking, but preserving its beauty is a struggle as the state’s fields and forests attract green of a different kind. The state’s revered rural landscapes represent potentially lucrative investments for developers.
Developers have sought to expand urban development into surrounding green areas since the end of World War II. This is particularly evident in Chittenden County, the home of Burlington, Vermont’s largest city. More than a quarter of Vermonters live there, and it remains on the front line of the struggle against sprawl. Recent battles there highlight the tensions between providing housing and protecting the environment. They also demonstrate that well-organized groups of citizens can make inroads against powerful pro-growth interests.
Burlington’s Growing Pains
In the latter half of the 20th century, Chittenden County lost farmland at an alarming rate; farmland’s share of total area fell from 73 percent to just 24 percent between 1950 and 1992. Commensurate with this loss was a doubling of population. And since 1945, the number of residents has more than tripled.
In the late 1960s, politicians and the public began to clamor for action to prevent further loss of land to sprawl. The legislature responded in 1970 with Act 250, a landmark land-use statute. Years later, the Republican governor who signed the legislation recognized the Act as the most significant of his administration.
Act 250 marked a sea change in land use. It required that a project, after passing review at the local level, meet ten criteria to earn further review by the state’s Natural Resources Board. Then it is reviewed by one of nine regional Environmental Commissions. Environmental Commission review has been particularly successful in regulating developments of ten or more housing units or building lots.
Analysts credit Act 250 with protecting Vermont’s agrarian spaces, wetlands, and forests. The development process mandated by the Act encourages the participation of neighbors in targeted areas, bringing the perspectives of various stakeholders before the commissions. Although developers find the requirements onerous and time consuming, most permits are granted—none were rejected in 2022, and only one was rejected in 2021.
Will the scarlet tanager continue to have a home in Vermont? (Jen Goellnitz)
Still, developers complain of a chilling effect of the Act, as the review can be lengthy and costly. And housing advocates, concerned about housing scarcity and rising home prices, have joined developers in critiquing the Act.
Legislators are now debating reform of Act 250, which the current Governor favors. Changes are likely soon. Some proposed changes are quite benign, such as exempting farm restaurants or farm stands from the density provisions of the law. But loosening standards and lowering barriers threatens to generate the very sprawl that the law was enacted to prevent. Resident groups such as Better (Not Bigger) Vermont eye the growing coalition of developers and housing advocates with concern.
Meanwhile, the legislature adopted the Home Act in June 2023, which critics fear could encourage sprawl. The intent of the Home Act is purportedly to elevate density in village centers of rural communities to increase housing stock. To this end, the Act permits “plexing,” the subdividing of existing single-family homes, usually to create rental units.
While creating density through plexing could be beneficial in town cores, the Act’s simultaneous elimination of single-family zoning statewide reduces opportunities for home ownership, a key strategy for building wealth. In contrast, duplexes convert housing stock to rentals where equity building isn’t possible.
Many advocates of a supply-side approach to the housing crunch fail to consider that the problem is not just a shortage of structures, but how they are used. Short-term rentals (Airbnb) and the purchase of second homes effectively take homes off the sale and rental markets. The effect is to reduce housing availability in Vermont, just as it does elsewhere in the country.
Infrastructure and Growth Pressures
As the state legislature begins to ease development review and encourage greater density through upzoning (allowing greater height, density, or both), local governments are responding by relaxing local land-use codes. Planning commissions typically develop eight-year plans and create zoning regulations that are forwarded to selectboards, the legislative bodies that govern towns in Vermont. The revision of zoning plans provides an opening for growth advocates to expand development in rural towns—especially the bedroom communities of large cities such as Burlington.
Summer 2023 algal bloom in Lake Champlain. (southherovoters.org)
Growth in these communities takes infrastructure, such as roads and waterworks, which benefits developers. Expanding sewer treatment, for example, is a prerequisite of housing and commercial development. At least, it should be a prerequisite. Unfortunately, a common practice of growth advocates is to pressure communities to develop more housing even though existing infrastructure is inadequate to accommodate it.
Many communities impacted by growth and sprawl commonly complain about a lack of concurrency of infrastructure and services—ensuring that infrastructure is possible and affordable before a new area is developed. But concurrency is rarely prioritized, leading to stress on existing infrastructure that is costly in both environmental and economic terms.
In Vermont, the case of combined sewer systems, in which sewage and stormwater flow through the same pipes, demonstrates the lack of infrastructure capacity. Combined sewer-stormwater infrastructure renders water treatment vulnerable to flooding during heavy rains. This can bring about sewage overflows into waterways, such as the White River, a tributary of the Connecticut River, the largest river in New England. Sewage overflows also contaminate Lake Champlain.
Heavy summer rains in July 2023 caused an antiquated sewer pipe to rupture, spilling 10 percent of Burlington’s wastewater into the Winooski River, which feeds into Lake Champlain, causing extensive contamination of the lake. Combined sewer-stormwater overflow also contributes to poisonous bacterial blooms, which diminish fishing and swimming opportunities and threaten the health of pets and wildlife.
During the COVID pandemic, federal funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARPA) was ostensibly made available for upgrading antiquated sewage systems such as combined sewage-stormwater systems and septic fields. However, in Vermont this funding was often used to expand sewage treatment plants in rural areas, stimulating growth there. As a result, combined sewage-stormwater systems still plague the state.
Westford Pushes Back Against Growth
Westford, Vermont, a town less than 10 miles from greater Burlington, illustrates how citizens can stand against development interests to protect small-town rural character. In 2023, the state proposed use of ARPA funds for construction of a wastewater treatment plant that would permit a 60 percent increase in Westford residences. Ninety percent of the construction cost of the $4-million plant was to be financed by the state, but Westford residents needed to approve a bond to cover $400,000 of the cost.
Westford, Vermont town center. (Bernhard Wunder)
Knowing that the plant’s extra capacity would be utilized by development interests, residents joined forces to educate the town and vote down the referendum that was required for the bond passage.
Residents found themselves pitted against the town planning commission, and the local media was unsympathetic to their objections. They were even removed from a statewide listserv used to provide information on the project, according to Bob Fireovid, a farmer and activist in the greater Burlington area.
Despite these obstacles, the group created a political action committee and a website with information including videos describing the proposal. They also peppered the community with signs urging a “No” vote on the referendum. To the surprise of the growth boosters, the referendum was defeated in November, 2023 in a 532-to-488 vote. Furthermore, the Westford Selectboard went further, declaring that the vote represented not just a rejection of the bond, but a referendum on the wastewater project. The project is now suspended
Tale of Two Heroes
Other rural communities threatened by Burlington sprawl are the towns of North and South Hero, located on Grand Isle in Lake Champlain. South Hero is just 12 miles from Burlington, while North Hero, on the northern end of the island, is more distant. Towns in Vermont make changes to their town plans every eight years, and both Hero draft plans were opened to public review in 2022. A referendum in South Hero and a vote by North Hero’s Selectboard were then to follow. That’s when residents got busy.
Many residents of both towns were alarmed at the extent of the proposals, which increased density and altered zoning over large areas extending from their town centers. The plans, they argued, weren’t created in the interests of residents at large, but to serve commuters to Burlington, South Burlington, and Essex Junction.
Residents of South Hero developed a website to post planning documents, alert neighbors to upcoming meetings, and describe the hazards of a plan that would have expanded development into their rural community.
On the South Hero ballot were two alternative proposals: one to limit the extent of growth and the other to expand the dense development many-fold. The proposal to limit sprawl failed by about 50 votes of the 650 cast.
The referendum question for South Hero. (southherovoters.org)
In contrast, residents of North Hero opposed to comprehensive density increases were able to restrict multi-family housing primarily to a limited zone near the town center. The North Hero Selectboard will permit denser housing in rural neighborhoods only by conditional use, which requires a board hearing with public input.
Moreover, recommendations by the town’s planning commission to decrease rural minimum lot size from three to two acres was rejected by the North Hero Selectboard. The commission had recommended a more expansive zoning allowance for multi-unit development, but residents convinced the North Hero Selectboard to adopt the more limited area, with density increases in the larger jurisdiction left to a matter of conditional use.
The divergent outcomes in South and North Hero hold important lessons for advocates of restricted growth. In South Hero, advocates lost, but narrowly, demonstrating the near-effectiveness of their organizing and communications efforts. Their network and template of action can be deployed in the next attempt to update their town plan.
In North Hero, a committed group of residents were successful in resisting the most ambitious objective of the growth boosters, which would have adversely affected their quality of life and negatively impacted their island’s environment.
Together, the two cases demonstrate that citizen action can move the needle in opposing growth. The Heros have constructed constituencies for eventual success, if not initial victory.
A Recurring Theme
Chittenden County’s growth struggles pitting the preservation of scenic beauty, rural character and agricultural base against housing development are a recurring theme in counties across the country. Preservationists have traditionally stood up to development interests, but today the latter are joined by “affordable housing” advocates who contend that the demand for housing should be met with more supply—and therefore, that communities need to grow. This is the argument and impetus of easing the current standards of Act 250, and the frame of mind of planners and elected officials who modify zoning.
This clash of interests must ultimately be resolved by means other than accommodating ever more housing if Vermont is to retain its rural character, protect its production of food, and conserve wildlife habitats. While density can play a part in accommodating housing, it should be localized so as not to undermine decades-long efforts to limit land development impacts.
Equal attention should be placed on limiting short-term rentals and the trend of investors buying up housing stock. Efforts to limit these trends probably require federal action.
In the meantime, residents of Vermont have had some success in restraining urban encroachment, serving as examples of steady-state citizenship at the local level.
Dave Rollo is a Policy Specialist and Team Leader of the Keep Our Counties Great program at CASSE.
The post Growth Battles in Chittenden County appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Redesigning Business for Sustainability
by Daniel Wortel-London
Members of a women’s cooperative in Cameroon. (UN Women/Ryan Brown, Creative Commons 2.0)
Can businesses become sustainable? Certainly—at least in theory. In recent years, new business models have emerged that attempt to place business on an ecologically healthy footing. The doughnut economy, the regenerative economy, sufficiency enterprises, and postgrowth and degrowth businesses: These and other experiments represent ways of doing business that not only create customer and firm value, but address social and environmental needs as well. In a context of limits to growth, such experiments are excellent vehicles for providing the goods and services people need, within boundaries set by nature.
But relatively few businesses are adopting these models. On the contrary: Businesses drive resource extraction and erosion of natural capital and therefore are key drivers of our planet’s environmental crisis. For example, just 100 corporations account for more than 70 percent of global carbon emissions on earth.
Presumably the primary reason businesses aren’t embracing more progressive models isn’t ignorance, greed, or a lack of commitment. It’s a question of design. The way businesses are governed and incorporated tends to promote unsustainable production and consumption and blocks them from undertaking activities that can make a net-positive impact on our environment.
But these designs can be changed—and more and more firms are changing them. Business leaders are broadening business governance to include different voices, expanding corporate charters to include environmental responsibilities, and reforming how their businesses distribute profits. The enterprises emerging through these reforms, from B-corps to worker cooperatives to nonprofit enterprises, are addressing head-on the task of reducing our economy’s environmental impact.
Misaligned Incentives
The way businesses produce, the way they encourage consumption, and the way they design products and choose suppliers have enormous environmental implications. Environmentalists have looked to government intervention to curb bad practices and encourage good ones—through regulations, taxes, subsidies, reporting requirements, and other measures.
A Walmart shareholders meeting. (Walmart, Creative Commons 1.0)
Regulation creates, at best, a hostile relationship between businesses and government (and environmentalists). But the bigger problem is that regulatory tools don’t touch incentives internal to businesses. To change the way businesses make things and deliver services, we need to think first about how businesses are designed.
For example, corporate law in the USA imposes fiduciary duties on directors to act in the best interest of their shareholders. A corollary to this principle is that corporate directors must act to maximize shareholder value, defined in terms of distributed profits. In pursuit of maximized profits, corporate directors can ignore the health of the environment, labor, or local communities in their decision-making. In fact, they can be held legally liable if caring for the interests of these other stakeholders depresses profits.
Alternative Designs
Other ways of designing businesses go to the heart of their operations.
First, we can change the purpose of businesses to incorporate or even prioritize environmental benefits. Most states have adopted legislation creating new legal forms of enterprise, such as social purpose corporations and benefit corporations, that specify that corporate managers must take social or environmental considerations into account when making decisions. These businesses, such as Patagonia, continue to function in many ways as conventional firms. They have products, services, customers, expenses, and revenues like any other business. The difference is that shareholders can’t sue them if these firms decide to forgo profits in favor of environmental protection.
Second, we can change the way businesses are governed. Currently, most answer to a relatively narrow range of investor shareholders. But other ways of governing firms can “embed” environmentalism and worker protection into decision-making. In cooperatives and mutual associations, for example, local workers can ensure that business decisions benefit communities threatened by environmental deterioration rather than geographically distant shareholders. Open-source and commons-based enterprise open the doors to environmental protection even wider. The business “Faith in Nature” has even appointed a “Nature Guardian” to its board. Its job is to give nature a voice and a vote in business strategy. Such governance structures provide an additional internal incentive—and legal grounding—for businesses to take environmental and social considerations into account.
Alternative ways of designing a business to encourage sustainability. (Financestrategists, Creative Commons 2.0)
Finally, we need to take on the elephant in the room: profit. If businesses aim to maximize profit, they will be compelled to maximize production and consumption. This dynamic is difficult to balance with any environmental commitments a business might otherwise have made.
But there are other ways of doing business; nonprofit enterprises are a good example. While these firms buy and sell services like any other, the profit they make is legally required to be used for social or environmental purposes, rather than being distributed to private owners or shareholders. Growth is not the goal; maximizing the firm’s positive environmental impact is. And if making additional profits threatens to reduce this impact, profits are sacrificed.
Together, these reforms of the purpose, governance, and profit orientation of businesses can dramatically shift their orientation toward sustainability. They will be incentivized to respect planetary boundaries not by government fiat but using their own by-laws. Moreover, they could welcome government sustainability initiatives to the extent that those initiatives make their own job easier. All of this can help make an economy more resilient—and more just.
Real Potential for Real Change
Businesses with a progressive orientation do in fact exist. There are currently 6,000 certified B corps in 60 countries around the world, up from 2,500 in 2018. In the EU alone there are more than 2.8 million “social and solidarity economy” firms—more than 10 percent of all businesses!
Moreover, these alternative firms are very successful. Cooperatives routinely demonstrate a lower failure rate than traditional corporations or small businesses: About 10% of cooperatives fail after their first year, compared to 60–80% of traditional businesses. And the potential to convert other conventional businesses to alternative models may be greater than one might expect. Most businesses in America and elsewhere are small and don’t necessary want to expand dramatically. A recent survey of German firms found that only two percent were “growth-driven.” Despite the absence of a growth ambition among the other 98 percent, they operated successfully enough to remain in business.
Most businesses are small, and don’t seek to grow dramatically. Laws should help businesses like these. (Roman Bozhko, Unsplash)
Environmentalists might wonder whether promoting these new forms of business risks generating a “rebound effect” in which reduced consumption in one economic sector is outweighed by the broader growth of that sector. But we need to keep our eye on the goal: reducing the growth of our economy as a whole. We still want to shrink the highest-impact sectors, like energy and agriculture, while increasing product durability as a way of lessening throughput. But increasing product durability will generally increase production costs, which in turn could reduce profits. If we want businesses to adapt to this era of lower profits, we need to encourage new models of enterprise that will help them do so. That’s where public policy comes in.
What’s Next?
Public policy could better support the new kinds of businesses that our environment and economy need. Incorporation laws that enable the formation of these businesses are ad hoc and vary wildly. Governments could procure from, or contract with, existing social enterprises through tools like “community wealth building.” Public bodies could better publicize and promote the role these enterprises can play in addressing our planet’s challenges.
Luckily, campaigns across the world are attempting to change this. More and more U.S. states are providing support to worker cooperatives and B-corps. A coalition to promote “impact-oriented businesses” received the support of three American senators and eighteen representatives in the House. Meanwhile, a campaign in the UK to require corporations to consider social and environmental concerns in decision-making has received the support of 2,000 businesses.
Creating an economy that works for all requires that all step up. (Joe Piette, Creative Commons 2.0)
Too often, however, these campaigns silo themselves from each other. Nonprofit enterprises act separately from cooperatives, who work independently of B-corps. To encourage businesses to transform the way Earth needs them to—to transform their purpose, governance, and relation to profit—these firms need to be working together. And ecologists need to join them.
Not that business reform is by itself sufficient for sustainability. The economy grows as an integrated whole, ultimately limited by agricultural and extractive surplus at the base. (That is the essence of the “trophic theory of money.”) In other words, not all businesses can be truly “green,” even if most can become “less brown.” That’s why there is a limit to economic growth and a fundamental conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Therefore, macroeconomic policies to cap the size of the economy are a prerequisite to sustainability.
Yet even with steady-state macroeconomic policy, we can’t solve our planet’s environmental crises without the help of business. We need to reform businesses so they adopt environmental protection goals on their own. This means encouraging new legal forms of business: ones that allow the purpose, governance, and role of profit to align with the steady-state goal.
Daniel Wortel-London is a Policy Specialist at CASSE.
The post Redesigning Business for Sustainability appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Conservative Idaho: Poised to Resist Sprawl?
by Dave Rollo
Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountain Range. (USDA)
The USA, Canada, and other countries have long recognized sprawl as a vexing dimension of urban development. Especially challenging is the difficulty creating the public consensus needed for political and planning responses to the problem.
But growing numbers of residents today are expressing their distaste for sprawling approaches to development and are primed to resist it. Perhaps surprisingly, sprawl afflicts a U.S. state better known for its natural beauty and its potatoes: Idaho. Even more surprising, and hopeful, is the growing opposition to sprawl among the state’s citizens.
An Urban Malignancy
Sprawl, one of the chief products of the urban growth machine, entails a development and building pattern that is damaging to the environment and to a community’s quality of life.
The monotony of sprawl replaces farmland and natural habitat. (Mark Strozier, Flickr)
Characterized by an expansive diffusion of roads, housing, and other built infrastructure, sprawl has become ubiquitous across the USA and Canada. With its emphasis on separation of commercial, residential, and public uses, sprawl employs great quantities of concrete and asphalt infrastructure and promotes car use. Furthermore, its high energy demands are maladaptive for a future of energy limits. Lax and aesthetically unimaginative design standards create a monotonous landscape that swaps traditional beauty for strip malls, big box stores, and McMansions.
Sprawl eats up natural habitats, demands huge amounts of resources and energy, and leads to isolation, social segregation, and other societal harms. However, in the short term, sprawl generates profits for development interests, especially when demand is high, and when planning codes permit or even encourage it.
Losing Natural Assets
Idaho is ecologically rich and abundant in quality farmland, rangeland, and water resources, assets threatened by pro-growth development in cities and counties across the state.
Idaho is often ranked in the top tier of states endowed with natural beauty. It borders Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons and includes the strikingly beautiful Sawtooth Mountain Range, which runs through the center of the state. That range boasts four unique plant and animal communities and provides habitat for numerous species. Idaho’s natural features also include sagebrush steppe, an ecosystem that supports 350 rare, threatened, and endangered species.
Besides its magnificent wildlands, Idaho is endowed with a vibrant agricultural base, composed of some 25,000 ranches and farms. Food abundance is evidenced by the state’s seventh-place ranking in the USA for agricultural exports per capita. Furthermore, 26 percent of Idaho’s agricultural land is considered “nationally significant” by the American Farmland Trust; that is, it ranks among the best in the nation for long-term food production.
Yet Idaho’s natural assets are threatened by population pressure, which often drives land conversion. Idaho is one of the two fastest-growing states, with immigration from California accounting for nearly 40 percent of Idaho’s population increase in 2021. Spokane Public Radio reports that Idaho is projected to add 800,000 residents by 2060, an increase of 42 percent from the current population.
Aquifer depletion is already a problem in Idaho. (NumbersUSA)
This population pressure was largely responsible for the loss of some 370,000 acres of farmland and natural habitat between 1982 and 2017. The nationally significant share of agricultural land was more than three times as likely to be developed as other cropland. Population increase and attendant sprawl negatively impacts the sagebrush steppe in Idaho, with the greatest decline in ecological integrity in the fastest-growing regions of the state.
Apart from displacing cropland and wildlife habitats, new residences place added pressure on water tables, which are falling in Idaho. As aquifers trend toward depletion, allocating more water for a growing population will only serve to exacerbate the problem—in part through arguably wasteful uses of water, such as irrigation of turfgrass lawns, which competes with agricultural irrigation. Increased economic activity also generates contaminated stormwater, septic leakage, and yard pesticides that seep into groundwater and adversely affect aquifers.
Gauging Sentiment and Building Consensus
Prospective increases in the human population and the evident failure of land use regulations to limit the impact of growth have alarmed many residents of Idaho. Concerns about farmland loss and the degradation of Idaho’s environment prompted a 2023 study to assess the problem of population growth and sprawl in Idaho and take the pulse of the populace.
The overwhelming majority of Idaho residents see population growth as a problem. (www.IdahoSprawl.com).
NumbersUSA, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for “sensible immigration reform,” published a report on the study last month. The report establishes in detail the degree of habitat and farmland loss over several decades. Of the 370,000 acres lost, 77 percent was due to population increase, while 23 percent was caused by land conversion by the existing population.
The report also contains a survey of Idaho residents conducted by Rasmussen Reports that documents public awareness of sprawl and concern over it. More than three-quarters of respondents believe Idaho’s growing population negatively affects its open spaces and environment. And fully 93 percent see current growth as a problem and wish to slow, reverse, or stop it.
Furthermore, aquifer depletion is on the public’s mind. Some 73 percent of respondents oppose diverting water from agriculture to development. Clearly the citizens of Idaho understand that it’s not in their interest to compromise a precious and limited resource.
Addressing the Problem
Besides assessing the contextual problem of sprawl in Idaho, the report addresses how urban areas could implement zoning code changes to restrict encroachment of development, thus protecting farmland and natural features such as forests or sagebrush steppe.
Permissive land use (zoning) codes are one way sprawl is unleashed. Sprawl is also promoted when developers are not required to internalize the costs of added community infrastructure, such as water and sewer lines. Their development activity is essentially subsidized by taxpayers.
Various zoning tools can mitigate the impact of sprawl by incentivizing density. Tools such as the transfer of development rights, infill strategies, and permitting multifamily apartments instead of single-family housing all help to limit diffused development patterns. Implemented appropriately, these tools can increase density in ways that increase overall livability.
Sentiments of Idahoans on zoning that encourages high-density development. (www.IdahoSprawl.com).
The NumbersUSA poll indicates that Idahoans are split on this approach, with 42 percent favoring regulations that encourage apartments and condos over single-family housing versus 47 percent strongly or somewhat opposed to such regulations.
While the approach of internalizing costs—that is, increasing development fees to offset the costs to the community for new development—was not directly addressed by the poll, Idahoans are resoundingly opposed to public subsidization of new development. Nearly 80 percent of respondents expressed opposition to paying higher property taxes to cover the infrastructure costs of new subdivisions.
Pressure on public infrastructure such as roads, sewers, water utilities, police and fire stations, and schools increases with an expanding population and its growing economy, and these facilities often become overextended. The costs of such services are supposed to be borne by the new residents, but are externalized to the existing residents.
One way to prevent such externalization is to impose caps on services. For example, sewer hook-ups can be limited. Limiting hook-ups to sewage lines and wastewater treatment plants was favored by half of respondents, while 22 percent were unsure and just over a quarter were opposed.
Up to the Challenge?
While it’s clear that population growth and the development pressures that follow are negatively affecting residents of Idaho, their county and municipal governments are having a limited impact in restraining sprawl as planners continue with a business-as-usual approach to development.
Recognizing sprawl as a threat should be made explicit within county planning documents and clear measures to limit sprawl should be specified. Yet, the comprehensive plans of seven of the eight fastest growing counties in Idaho mention ‘grow’, ‘growth,’ or ‘growing’ 1063 times in all, while sprawl garners only 15 mentions. And most of the references to growth focus on how to accommodate it; little mention is made of growth’s negative impacts.
Greater density can mean greater livability (La Citta Vita, Wikimedia Commons)
Boise is Idaho’s largest city and its capital. It was also one of the first communities in the state to experience the impacts of sprawl. Sprawl from Boise continues at a fierce pace with 24,000 new residents pouring into the city in just the past 2 years. “Blueprint Boise” is the 2021 updated comprehensive plan for Boise, whose more than half a million residents comprise over a quarter of the population of Idaho.
While Blueprint Boise is similarly light on references to sprawl (a single mention), it offers some measures to mitigate sprawl. In response to population pressures, the comprehensive plan adopted strategies to add density and to guide growth within a set of neighborhood and area master plans.
But critics of the plan complain that it does not adequately describe the consequences of growth and sprawl. And they blame continued loss of farmland and other open spaces on the failure of regional coordination, especially the absence of concurrency. Concurrency is a planning concept that mandates that adequate public facilities be in place before development is approved.
The threats to Idaho’s natural places, farmland, and rangeland will continue as population and economic pressures mount. Most of Idaho’s counties are ill-equipped to address the pressures that come with the surge in population. Recent efforts to make clear to Idaho’s elected officials that action is needed are also bound to intensify. Bold action is required soon. Which communities in Idaho will choose to lead on confronting the problem of sprawl, inspiring others to follow?
Dave Rollo is a Policy Specialist at CASSE.
The post Conservative Idaho: Poised to Resist Sprawl? appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Learning from Las Vegas: The Costs of Growth
by Daniel Wortel-London
The city of Las Vegas is gambling with growth—but the game is rigged. (LasVegasGuy, Creative Commons 4.0)
Since 1998, the City of Las Vegas and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have been gambling with nature. By auctioning off public land from the BLM for development and using the proceeds to preserve natural areas, policymakers and federal officials have bet that development and conservation can go hand-in-hand.
But it hasn’t worked out that way.
As the Las Vegas region has grown from 1.3 to 2.7 million people since 1998, it has suffered from the effects of sprawl, drought, and air pollution. And the ecological consequences of the city’s growth have largely canceled out the “conservation” provisions of federal-regional land use agreements.
The result is a local case that brings to life a much larger lesson: Maintaining the earth’s biocapacity and accelerating growth are mutually exclusive goals. By learning from Las Vegas, we can assemble the evidence and identify the coalitions needed to contest planet-wrecking growth policies across the country.
Selling Public Land
The BLM, which manages about one-tenth of the land area of the USA, is one of the most important federal agencies involved in public land sales. The Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1978, or FLPMA, sets many of the requirements and procedures for such sales.
It specifies that the BLM can select lands for sale if, as determined through a land-use planning process, they meet one of three criteria: 1) lands are scattered, isolated tracts that are difficult or uneconomic to manage; 2) they were acquired for a specific purpose and are no longer needed for that purpose; or 3) disposal of the land would serve important public objectives such as community expansion and economic development.
Satellite view of Las Vegas. The city’s sprawl is abetted by federal aid. (Goddard Space Flight Center)
In the last criterion, the meanings of “public objective,” “community expansion,” and “economic development” are critically important. But they are not defined clearly in the Act itself nor in the BLM’s Land Exchange Handbook. The best clue regarding BLM’s understanding of the terms is found in how it has managed actual cases of development. Las Vegas provides an excellent example.
The 1998 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA) provides the federal legislative template for aligning the interests of developers and conservationists in the region. The purpose of the bill was to “provide for the orderly disposal of certain federal lands in Clark County, Nevada, and to provide for the acquisition of environmentally sensitive lands in the State of Nevada.” It aims to accomplish this by drawing a boundary around the Las Vegas Valley and identifying public lands to be sold at auction to private bidders, while allowing the proceeds of those sales to be used to purchase “environmentally sensitive” land elsewhere.
In some ways the bill seems to have worked as planned. Some 34,468 acres of public land have been sold or exchanged for development purposes. This has provided $2.6 million dollars for environmentally sensitive land acquisitions, $17 million for miscellaneous conservation activities, and $54 million for park development. That’s a win-win, right?
The Costs of Growth
Wrong. First, not all money raised through land sales has been spent for environmental purposes. Funds have been used to build everything from shuffleboard courts to softball complexes, $60 million gun clubs, and a $5 million neon-sign museum. They’ve also paid for the parking lots, roads, and power lines leading to these amenities, all of which means more resource throughput.
Las Vegas’s growth is putting pressure on the Colorado River, as evidenced by the bathtub rings near Hoover Dam. (Peter Theony, Creative Commons 2.0)
The biggest issue isn’t the use of money from land sales, it’s the use of the land purchased from the sales—specifically, the spawning of sprawling housing and commercial developments. Technically, local governments could request land sales only by demonstrating that the land’s use would follow comprehensive and “smart” plans. But planners in Las Vegas have, for the most part, been content to approve the kinds of automobile-centric plans that characterize much of America’s development around cities.
As a result, Las Vegas now suffers the ecological, fiscal, and social costs of sprawl. Worsened air quality, less open space, longer commutes, and poorer health all afflict the metropolis. The upkeep of Nevada’s roads alone now costs the state $10 billion annually, spurred partly by Las Vegas’s growth. Pollution-induced asthma rates among African-American youth in the city are now 30%. A lack of public transit prevents many citizens from accessing badly needed jobs and housing.
Overshadowing these ills is an even bigger malady: climate change. The Las Vegas Valley receives fewer than 5 inches of rainfall per year on average and relies largely on water drawn from the Colorado River to meet residential, industrial, and commercial demand. But the river is stressed by record droughts—droughts that will be exacerbated by the climate change accelerated by Las Vegas’s cars as the city sprawls ever-outward. Already, Las Vegas is one of the fastest-warming cites in the country, having experienced 5.7°F of average temperate rise over the past 70 years.
Round 2
Yet the drive to further plunder public land for the sake of growth continues. In 2021 a Democratic senator introduced legislation modeled on the SNPLMA that would effectively double the amount of real estate the BLM could sell to Nevada developers. A metropolitan area the size of Miami—42,427 acres, or approximately 65 square miles—will become available for sprawl in the Las Vegas region.
Nonetheless, many conservationists have supported the bill thanks to its provisions for habitat preservation—again, modeled on the SNPLMA. For example, the bill would conserve about 2 million acres of public land, add more than 1.6 million acres of wilderness, add 350,000 acres to Southern Nevada’s conservation portfolio, and permanently save the Red Rock National Conservation Area from development.
Fabulous Las Vegas—but for how much longer? (BrendelSignature, Creative Commons 3.0)
Thus, groups like the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, the Nevada Conservation League, the Conservation Fund, and the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association have aligned to support the self-contradictory “Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act.”
But not everyone is on board with the bill, and many opponents are sounding off to the media. The Nevada Climate Justice Coalition, comprised of social and ecological advocacy organizations, has united to fight it. They argue that the bill’s conservation measures are outweighed by its ecological costs. “While we support protecting public lands, designating a bunch of wilderness areas does nothing to ameliorate the climate or justice impacts of sprawl. It’s a false equivalence,” says Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity in an interview with the Nevada Current. “It disregards our future water supply. It disregards emissions, vehicle miles traveled,” Kyle Roerink of the Great Basin Water Network told the paper in a separate interview.
Meanwhile, Janine Blaeloch, Project Director of the Western Lands Project, told National Public Radio, “It’s salt in the wound for American taxpayers. Because we’re losing public land that’s being sold off, we’re losing money that’s being funneled into supporting sprawl in Las Vegas, but we also are unwittingly supporting really unsustainable development in the middle of the desert.”
The political appeal of these critiques, however, appears to be limited. Few local politicians and fewer national ones have taken up the cause of curbing growth in Las Vegas. As law professor Bret Birdsong notes, “Growth is a hungry mouth to feed, and growth itself is an industry…I can understand how that takes almost immutable political forces to solve that problem. And here, the problem is solved by privatizing more public lands.” Thus, for most politicians in Nevada the solution to the problem of growth is—more growth.
This strange logic has bipartisan appeal. As Representative Mark Amodei, a Republican, states, “We’ll have our fights over conservation, development, water, that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, you don’t have to have a degree in finance to [know] what will happen if those tax bases go static… In all modern times, growth has been the cash flow for local government and the state.”
Underlying the political hesitation to critique growth is the element of partisan competition. Las Vegas has turned blue in recent years; a critique of growth by Democrats might jeopardize their newly attained power. Brian Petersen, an environmental scholar at Northern Arizona University, sums up the political reality: “If you start saying, all of a sudden, ‘We’re no longer giving out building permits, we’re no longer allowing multinational companies to build a facility here, we’re shutting down golf courses’—you would have people in the streets rioting.” The result is that, in the words of journalist Kyle Paoletta, “Even as Democrats lead the national charge toward tackling climate change, they are continuing to preach at the altar of growth.”
The Road Ahead
If Las Vegas is to have a future, it will need to stop growing. (Http2007, Creative Commons 2.0)
So, what is to be done? On one hand, the public can exert pressure to contest individual BLM land sales through public comment posts, letters to legislators, and letters to the editor. But the higher-level goal is to prevent public land sales from increasing environmental pressures to begin with. This can be done partly through more rigorous cost-benefit analysis of land sales to capture, for example, how much the ecological costs of sprawl would cancel out the conservation benefits of land preservation. But amendments to the Nevada bills must embed in them the true meaning of economic development and set true development as the bills’ chief goal and guiding principle.
None of this can happen, however, without assembling a strong political coalition. The Nevada Climate Justice Coalition, with its combination of social and ecological critiques of sprawl, provides a powerful model. Now is the time to support and expand their struggle by pointing out how other public policies on behalf of growth are also threatening people and the planet. But critique is not enough: We have to show how a degrowth-to-steady-state trajectory can not only avoid disaster, but actually improve outcomes for people.
Doing this will require research, persistence, and the courage to resist the blandishments of so-called “green” growth. I’m betting we’re up to the challenge.
Daniel Wortel-London is a Policy Specialist at CASSE.
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