The Real Paths to Ecocivilisation - Chapter 10: Econationalism
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In the previous chapter I chose the example of gender ideology as an example of what happens when realism comes into contact with postmodern social leftist politics. That choice was partly motivated by the fact that the contemporary political conflict over sex and gender has no direct relevance to the task of constructing an ecocivilisation. It matters only in the sense that it is so deeply divisive that no attempt to build a new large-scale movement of any sort can ignore it. Hoping that it is just going to go away is not a serious option.
This chapter is about a political conflict that is directly relevant to the task at hand, and therefore poses a far greater threat to the coherence and stability of any Western movement towards ecocivilisation. In Chapter Two I explained that degrowth and collapse should be seen as opposite ends of a scale that describes the nature of the coming contraction, and I argued that degrowth is politically unrealistic. I don’t believe it is possible to make the contraction fair, at least at the global level. However, I do recognise that a significant proportion of my readers, and of the pool of people who are likely to be early adopters of the concept of ecocivilisation, will not be prepared to give up on degrowth just yet. They still believe that there are real paths to ecocivilisation that do not involve the collapse of the existing global order. They think the transformation might still be manageable, at least in theory.
However, most Degrowthers are prepared to admit that avoiding a significant degree of collapse is now a long shot. They may not have given up entirely, but it is hard to deny that the situation is deteriorating all the time. For the purposes of this chapter, I am going to assume that Degrowth, as a movement, does not have much of a future. The complete collapse of all nations is absolutely not inevitable, but life is going to become much more difficult everywhere and many states will indeed fail. This process has already begun. How extensive it will eventually be – how steep and how deep the collapse will be – is a massive question to which nobody knows the answer. However, this level of uncertainty provides some sort of answer in itself: we need to be prepared for the worst. We cannot base our strategy on an assumption that things are going to get better before they have got much worse. A global ecocivilisation must always be the ultimate goal, but this book is about our real options for getting there, and none of the real paths involve teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony. There is trouble ahead, and the music we must face is going to be much more discordant than that.
Some definitions (from Merriam-Webster)will be useful at this point:
Fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralised autocratic government headed by dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
Anarchism:a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups.
Bigotry:obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices.
John Rawls
The goal of fairness doesn’t have to be based on irrationalism and anti-realism. Americanphilosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) was Thomas Nagel’s teacher at Harvard (Nagel later called him “the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century.”)[Footnote:John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice, Thomas Pogge, 2007, Oxford University Press.]
Rawls developed the theory of “Justice as Fairness,” and it became a cornerstone of modern political philosophy. In his 1971 book A Theory of Justice Rawls argued that principles of justice are those that free, rational individuals would agree upon in a fair situation. This approach is meant to address the inequalities and injustices that arise in society. For Rawls, a just society is one that is organised according to principles that everyone would find acceptable, even when considering their place in society. Two main principles of justice are central to this idea.
The Liberty Principle states that each person should have an equal right to the most extensive set of basic liberties compatible with similar liberties for others.
The Difference Principle states that social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society, and they should be attached to offices and positions open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
The Original Position is a hypothetical scenario Rawls uses to determine the principles of justice. In this thought experiment, individuals are placed in a situation where they must agree on the rules that will govern society. The original position ensures fairness by situating these individuals in a setting where they are equals, without any knowledge of their personal circumstances that could bias their decisions.
TheVeil of Ignorance is a key element of the Original Position. It ensures that the decision-makers do not know their own social status, abilities, or personal values. This ignorance prevents them from creating rules that favour their own particular situation. Under the veil of ignorance, they are forced to consider the perspectives of all members of society, leading them to choose principles that are fair and just for everyone. The idea is that, without knowing where they would end up in society, they would naturally choose rules that protect the most vulnerable, as they might end up in that position themselves. I will return to Rawls later in this chapter.
The Perpetual Sovereignty Fallacy
Postmodern reality denial is systemic, but on the path ahead we will also face a great deal of non-systemic reality denial. One particular example is frequently deployed as a means of avoiding discussion of some of the most controversial moral decisions we are going to face, especially in the West.
The sovereign states of which our world is comprised are unquestionably an example of socio-cultural constructions, but it does not follow that we can simply wish them away. The whole point in a sovereign state is that it is politically independent of other sovereign entities. Not completely so – groups of sovereign states form alliances, for example. Some powerful states have a lot of de-facto power over others, because they support them economically or militarily, or in other ways. But all of them remain sovereign...until they don’t.
Sovereign states exist because one group of humans has taken control of a particular piece of land and has succeeded in defending it for long enough for the rest of the world, or at least the majority of it, to recognise its sovereignty. I am not making any value judgement about this. I am saying that sovereign states and their borders will remain an inescapable part of reality until such time that one of two things happens. One is the creation of a global government by negotiation, which might become possible in the distant future but isn’t going to happen any time soon. The other is the deterioration of the global situation to the extent that no sovereign entity remains capable of defending its borders – an outcome that seems to me to be highly improbable because the worse things get, the more important it will be for sovereign states to defend them. National survival will depend on their determination and ability to control who and what is allowed to cross those borders, and that means their defence will remain a priority for as long as sovereign states continue to exist, even after many of the other functions we currently expect of a state are a distant memory. The mistaken belief that the sovereignty of nations can be easily dismissed or that their existence isn’t fundamentally tied to their ability to defend and maintain control over their territory I call the Perpetual Sovereignty Fallacy (PSF).
A perfect example of the PSF can be found in Tim Mulgan’s Ethics for a Broken World (2011). The back cover blurb asks us to imagine living in an ecologically impoverished, climate-changed future world, looking back to the present “Affluent Age”. The book is presented as a series of history lessons from the future, studying “classic” philosophical texts of our time. It purports to “[re-imagine] contemporary philosophy in a historical context, and [highlight] the contingency of our own moral and political ideals”.
The PSF is introduced right at the start. On page three we are asked to imagine a time-traveller going from the future back to our own time, and we are told she would immediately be struck by two things:
“The first is that the affluent world was rigidly divided into nations or states. These concepts are hard to translate into our political vocabulary. For political purposes, people in this age saw themselves not simply as humans, nor as members of some large pan-global confederacy. Nor did they identify primarily with smaller groups such as tribes or families. Instead, they thought of themselves first and foremost as citizens of a particular nation, as “British”, “American”, “Chinese” and so on. These territories were separated by national “boundaries.” Movement of people across those boundaries was highly restricted... The second fact that would strike our time-traveller would be the enormous inequality between these nations...”
In one deft move, Mulgan has evaded all of the ethical questions set up by the existence of sovereign states. How and why does he think that this borderless world will come into existence? What makes it thereal world he is talking about? We don’t find out the answer to that until the end of Part I of the book (which is entitled “Rights”).
“...the transition to our broken world stretched the very idea of national territorial rights to breaking point. Most affluent philosophers recognized some national duty to assist others in times of crisis. They hoped this duty would be undemanding. In a broken world, that hope was in vain.”“One vexed affluent political question was immigration. Each affluent nation claimed the right to exclude non-nationals from its territory. (Ironically, some individuals who defended this right were themselves descended from 'founders' who, when immigrating to already inhabited lands, had definitely not asked permission!)....”
Next we have a debate between refugees and affluents about rights (shortened, but not misrepresented, below):
Refugees: We claim the right to an equal chance to survive. Earth is the common property of all. You must share your land and resources with us.
Affluents: That is not reasonable. These are our resources, we inherited them from our ancestors. We would share if there was enough, but we are already struggling to feed ourselves, and things are only going to get worse. We cannot help you. Go home.
Refugees: We cannot go home, because our homeland has become uninhabitable. It was through the profligate lifestyle of your ancestors that our world was broken. They are responsible for our plight. You must share what you have.
Affluents: Perhaps our ancestors did harm you. But let’s not harp on about the past. Why should we apologise for things we didn’t do? That is not our debt. We are not our ancestors. We do not recognise the inheritance of their debts.
Refugees: We are now confused. If you do not recognise the inheritance of debts, then how can you consistently affirm the inheritance of territorial rights? What makes this your land? If your link to your ancestors is strong enough to give you inherited rights, then it is also strong enough to inherit their debts. If you renounce the debt, you have no right to turn us away. You cannot have it both ways.
Part I then ends with “These refugees – sadly not imaginary – had a point. In fact, it was claims like theirs that finally overwhelmed the nation state system and destroyed its moral credibility.”
Does Mulgan (or anybody else) really believe that philosophical arguments about the rights of refugees will overwhelm the nation state system? Could a lack of moral credibility even make the slightest difference to what happens? And perhaps more importantly, do arguments like this actually succeed in “destroying the credibility of the nation state system”? Something like this debate will indeed play out over and over again. How do you think it will conclude in the real world?
Mulgan’s (implied) version:
Affluents: You’re right. We can see the logic, and now we understand that you do have a right to share our resources, even though we are suffering terribly ourselves and we know things are going to get even worse. Come in. We’ll sort you out with a house and a plot of land. Then we’ll organise a lottery to decide which of our own people will have to die to make space for you. We’ll sleep well at night, knowing that we did the right thing (assuming we aren’t the ones who lose in the lottery, of course!).
My own guess as to what is most likely to actually happen:
Affluents: We cannot let you in, for two reasons. The first is that there are hundreds of millions more like you, and if we share our resources with you then many more will come here and our sovereign territory will end up as uninhabitable as yours is. Or are you suggesting that after we have let you in, we should close the borders and keep the multitudes behind you out? The second is that if we let you in then our people will replace us with somebody who is prepared to do whatever it takes to refuse entry to those who will come after you. We know who will be likely to replace us, and we do not want them to take control of our land. We believe it is in the best interests of our people that our more moderate regime should retain power. We claim the right to preserve the possibility of building a democratic ecocivilisation. We believe this to be the way to minimise total future suffering. Both in terms of practical reality, and theoretical morality, we must not and will not let you in.
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Tim Mulgan asks us to imagine him as a philosopher from a broken future, looking back and judging us here in the age of affluence. In reality he is an affluent age philosopher projecting an affluent age fallacy on to the future. In the real broken world that is coming, philosophers and everybody else are going to be engaged in a very real struggle to survive. Nation states are not going to be swept away by the overwhelming power of moral arguments in favour of a borderless world. The real causal relationship will be the other way around: it will be the ever increasing threat of uncontrolled migration that necessitates the survival of sovereign states. The worse the situation gets, the greater the importance of retaining control over migration. We are heading for the worst humanitarian catastrophe there will ever be and there is nothing anybody can do to prevent that now. We needed to act 50 years ago, we didn’t, and now it is too late. Some people did try to warn us, but we really didn’t want to listen.
Garrett Hardin
Garrett Hardin (1915-2003) was both the most influential and the most controversial ecologist to have written about the realities of overcoming the biological growth imperative in humans. I am going to start with the element of his beliefs that is of least relevance to the current discussion. He was a product of the culture of the United States in the 50s and 60s and an opponent of multiculturalism. Those political battles have very little to do with the main subject of this book. Firstly, multiculturalism in the Western world is now simply a fact of life. Secondly, in order to create an ecocivilisation, the culture of both the West and the rest of the world must radically change. In such a context it would be absurd to resist cultural change in any sort of general sense. Rather, we must be prepared to rethink almost everything. We need to carefully consider what we should retain (or try to), and what must go. If aspects of our culture are unsustainable or otherwise hindering what needs to be done then they must change. If other cultures have useful ideas then we should adopt them.
Hardin himself understood this very well – for example he suggested polyandry as a potential way forwards: women being allowed to have more than one husband. This he proposed as a means of population control – if a woman has four husbands then all of them can be sexually active but there will presumably be fewer children produced. This is illustrative of the way Hardin thought, and his willingness to say things he believed were justified even if the response was likely to be public outrage. This is not the suggestion of some small-minded traditional conservative who fears social change. He was trying to make people understand just how radical the changes will need to be if we are to build a sustainable civilisation.
Hardin’s views on “multi-ethnicism”, multiculturalism and genetic differences between different groups of humans are an unhelpful distraction from ideas that are directly relevant to the subject of this book. Their effect is to hand ammunition to his critics, who can now say “Garrett Hardin? Don’t you know he was a racist? Why should anybody take anything he said about overpopulation seriously when we know that was all just cover for his hatred of Black people?”
Two different things get mixed up here – another example of deliberate terminological ambiguity. For some people the word “racism” now includes discrimination against (or hatred towards) various groups of people who are primarily distinguished by things that have little or nothing to do with genetics, such as Jews, who are primarily distinguished by their religion, and the Irish, who are distinguished by culture and geography. Personally, I see no reason to believe the genetic heritage of a particular group of humans will make any difference to their collective capacity to create and sustain an ecocivilisation, and even if I am wrong I don’t see how we could determine in advance which genes will be beneficial and which will not. In the case of the UK, I do not believe the presence of a large number of individuals who are genetically of non-European descent is at all relevant in the context of this discussion. Racism (ie biological racism, not some fuzzy concept that can mean whatever you want it to) does not belong in any movement towards ecocivilisation. Vigilance will be necessary to prevent such a movement being hijacked by people with an agenda that is biologically racist.
The situation with religious and other cultural differences is not so simple. This book puts front and central the idea that some of the cultural differences between China and the West are indeed significant (and mostly not in our favour) and if I were to claim that there are no important cultural differences between Western civilisation and Islamic civilisation then I would be ridiculed. However, this subject is very complicated, and not directly related to the Westernisation of ecocivilisation either. If an Islamic ecocivilisation proves to be impossible then Islamic civilisation will not survive. The same applies to any society or nation that resists radical change while the rest of the world is transformed, and in my fictional timeline that includes the United States, where the resistance is likely to be just as extreme as any in the Islamic world. As a general rule, ideological conservatism will lead to disaster. Our different forms of civilisation are themselves about to face a struggle for survival. We must adapt or die, and right now it looks to me like the Chinese are adapting while the West is dying.
Hardin’s most important ideas have nothing to do with race, religion or ethnicity. They stem from two facts: that humans are already well into ecological overshoot (we are seriously overpopulated), and that the world is divided into sovereign states.
The Tragedy of the Commons
The concept of the tragedy of the commons dates back to an 1833 pamphlet written by English economist William Forster Lloyd. Lloyd used the example of herders sharing a common parcel of land. In this case, the benefits of allowing overgrazing are accrued by the owner of the cattle who overgraze, but the costs are shared by everybody. The inevitable outcome is that the shared ecological resource is over-exploited to the point that it is no use to anybody – in the end, everybody loses. Hardin popularised this idea in a 1968 article in the journal Science.
Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
You will find no shortage of people who will tell you that Hardin’s views have been demonstrated to be wrong. Here are three real-world examples that demonstrate just how right he was.
The first of these is of particular interest to me because of my work as a professional foraging teacher, especially with respect to wild fungi. In the UK wild fungi are a common resource. When I first got into foraging in the 1980s almost nobody used that resource, which is why the UK has never had the sort of foraging regulations that exist in many European countries. The purpose of those regulations is to avoid the tragedy of the commons by restricting access to wild fungi, one way or another. As foraging became much more popular the sheer number of people picking wild fungi led to large areas being totally stripped of anything worth eating, leaving nothing for the wild animals that eat fungi and hampering the ability of fungi to reproduce. Regulations are now being introduced and very often they take the form of a total ban, as has happened in Epping Forest (the largest area of woodland anywhere near London).
I watched first hand as similar problems played out with seaweeds at the only location in south-east England where they were sufficiently diverse and abundant for me to teach people how to forage for them. Over the space of ten years I saw this resource go from abundant to stripped – not of all species, but of those which were both good to eat and not particularly abundant. This was incredibly painful to watch, because I was probably more responsible for the changing situation than any other individual – I was literally teaching people how to do the thing that was causing the problem. This is one of the reasons I left overpopulated south-east England and moved to one of the most sparsely populated areas in the UK – not to teach foraging where there are fewer people, but to escape from the unsustainable and morally dubious situation I had found myself in. Foraging is only sustainable when the number of people doing it is very small compared to the size of the resource. If it is a freely accessible common resource in an area where the level of demand gets anywhere near to the amount of resources available then the inevitable result will indeed be ecological ruin. And I’m saying all this without getting into the debate about illegal commercial foraging, which leads to the “industrialised” version of the problem I’ve just described. It is very likely that foraging is going to have to be regulated and policed in the UK in a more systematic way, as fungi foraging is already in traditionally more mycophillic countries.
The other two examples apply at the global level and the first is international fisheries. Within the territorial waters of individual sovereign states there is a reason to manage fisheries in a sustainable manner. Sadly, this does not usually happen, because of internal political and economic factors that prioritise short-term gains even if they lead to long-term losses. However, these are problems that can, at least in principle, be fixed at the sovereign level. “All” it needs is sufficient political will to prioritise long-term national interest over the short-term interests of the fishing industry. From the perspective of ecocivilisation the correct strategy is obvious: we should be managing fisheries so that over the longer term fish stocks increase, which will ultimately increase the sustainable catch as well as providing broader ecological benefits. Fish in international waters would ideally be managed in the same way, but in the absence of a correctly motivated global fishing regulator – one with power to enforce its decisions – this cannot happen. Of course fish don’t recognise human boundaries, which means that in this case the reach of “the commons” extends into sovereign waters, but the point still stands: from the point of view of each individual nation, there’s no motive to restrict catches in commons of the high seas, because if your boats don’t take the fish then somebody else’s will. China’s, probably. The result is systemic overuse of the shared resource, and this will continue until the fish population is reduced to the point where it is no longer worth sending boats out.
The final example is climate change. The Earth’s atmosphere is a shared resource. If we had a global government then that government would (or at least could) have introduced serious restrictions on greenhouse emissions decades ago. That is because it would have been in a position to distribute the costs of doing so in a way that it deemed fair. In reality the benefits of continuing to emit carbon dioxide in ever increasing amounts are enjoyed only by the producers and emitters, while the costs are borne by everybody. No international agreement has come anywhere near solving this problem, because the politics is impossible. Freedom in the global commons of the atmosphere is indeed going to bring ruin to all.
In both these global cases and many more, the tragedy of the commons is utterly unavoidable, determined by the logic of game theory.Footnote: which was largely the invention of John von Neumann.The only way to prevent it leading to the depletion and potentially the total destruction of shared ecological resources is some sort of binding and enforceable global agreement, or a global government, neither of which are imaginable as things stand. Overcoming this game-theoretical impasse is one of the biggest problems that must be solved if a global ecocivilisation is to be constructed.
There is a political extension to this theory that makes an additional claim: that ecologically sensitive resources should not be in public ownership – they should be privatised, because then there is a motive for the owner to ensure they are not over-used. Privatising the atmosphere clearly isn’t an option, and I am in no way endorsing or agreeing with this as a political theory. I see no reason why publicly owned natural resources cannot be managed sustainably – they do not have to be privately owned for the tragedy of the commons to be avoided, and private ownership provides no guarantee that the resources will be well managed.
Lifeboat ethics
Hardin’s concept of “lifeboat ethics” deals with the ethical implications of a seriously overpopulated world. In Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle (1978) Hardin compared the lifeboat metaphor to the “Spaceship Earth” model of resource distribution, which he criticises by asserting that a spaceship would be directed by a single leader, which the Earth lacks. Hardin says that the spaceship model leads to the tragedy of the commons.
A modernised version of Hardin’s argument would run like this: the Earth is not like a single spaceship, as demonstrated by the two global examples above. We have no captain – no global government. Instead there are individual nations, which are more like individual boats, some of which stand much more chance of being made into effective lifeboats than others. Some already look like deathtraps that will sink when the storm comes. And if you are on a lifeboat, and that boat is full, and there are hundreds of people in the water, there cannot be any moral obligation to keep taking people on board until it sinks too.
Hardin’s critics typically begin by claiming that the lifeboats aren’t full: “We could fit the whole of the world’s population on Manhattan Island!” Sure we could. That half of them would be dead within five minutes apparently doesn’t matter. If we’re agreeing to start with realism then there can be no question that most of the world’s remaining lifeboats are already dangerously overloaded. There is at least one obvious example of a potential lifeboat nation that is not so full, and it is also one of the few nations that stands to gain from climate change in terms of useful territory. That country is Russia. Currently, not many people see it as an attractive destination, but who knows what the future holds.
The lifeboats are sovereign states, especially those in the West. The “swimmers” are migrants (and/or the places most of them are coming from). It has become normal to distinguish between “economic migrants” and “genuine refugees”, but this distinction will eventually become irrelevant. In the broken world that is coming, there are likely to be fewer “safe” countries than unsafe ones. Almost everybody is going to find their lives increasingly difficult, due to a combination of ecological decline, economic decline, political chaos and conflict, especially conflict over resources. The “migrant crisis” and the “cost-of-living crisis” are both going to get much worse, and continue to do so until the world has changed beyond recognition. We are either already in a lifeboat situation, or we will be in the forseeable future.
If we are going to keep civilisation going in lifeboat nations – if we’re going to prevent the lifeboats from sinking – then it is going to be necessary to limit the population to what is ecologically sustainable. At least in most cases, and probably in all cases, this will require tight control of immigration.
Lifeboat ethics vs Nagel’s moral realism
Nagel’s moral realism, with its emphasis on universal moral obligations, might seem to clash with lifeboat ethics. Nagel would likely argue that moral obligations do not cease to exist just because the situation is dire. If fairness and the well-being of others are objective moral truths, then they should still guide action, even in a lifeboat situation. Nagel’s view implies that moral duties are not contingent on context but apply universally. Hardin suggests that ethical decisions should be made based on the context of survival and resource scarcity. Hardin’s approach could be seen as a challenge to Nagel’s moral realism, as it posits a situation where adhering to universal moral principles leads to universal catastrophe.
Both Nagel and Hardin emphasise rationality, but they apply it differently. Nagel uses rationality to derive objective moral truths that should guide our actions. Hardin uses rationality to advocate for what he sees as the most practical and survival-oriented strategy, even if it contradicts what might be considered morally universal. This difference raises questions about whether moral rationality must always align with practical rationality, or if there are cases where they diverge.
In fact, there is no conflict. Nagel can be correct that there are moral truths accessible to everybody, while Hardin is correct that in a lifeboat situation the moral truth is that those on the lifeboat are justified in preventing those outside the lifeboat from getting onboard, even if that means they will drown. It can be morally realist because even those outside the lifeboat are capable of understanding the moral argument, and should, if they are being rational, understand that those on the lifeboat are justified in letting them drown. They ought to recognise that they would do exactly the same thing if the roles were reversed. If this is correct then it amounts to a moral realist defence of allowing the swimmers to drown.
Nagel’s moral realism does not conflict with Hardin’s lifeboat ethics but rather provides a robust framework for understanding why, in certain situations, morally difficult decisions are justified. The objective moral truth is contextualised, but still universal and accessible to all rational agents. Moral realism can support difficult ethical decisions, including those Hardin describes, without compromising on the universality or objectivity of moral truths.
Lifeboat ethics vs Rawls
When lifeboat ethics meets Justice as Fairness, ethical idealism fails catastrophically. From the original position, behind the veil of ignorance, let’s say we know that no more than 2 billion people will survive the coming global die-off. What fair way is there to decide which 6 billion don’t survive? In the real lifeboat situations from which Hardin’s concept is derived, such as the sinking of the Titanic, the decision was based on systemic discrimination against men: women and children were prioritised, while the men were condemned to honourably drown. Clearly that’s not going to work on a global scale, but what are the alternatives? Volunteering?A lottery? Merit-based selection? The healthiest? The most diverse group?
At the level of sovereign states, what happens will be decided by internal politics. This is especially true with respect to whatever level of immigration continues (who is allowed to board the lifeboats), but as the situation deteriorates it may also apply to the population as a whole (who should be prioritised if the lifeboat proves to be overloaded). But at the international level, which is what we are really talking about – and it doesn’t matter whether we are talking about authoritarian states or democracies – no group of people is going to passively accept theoretical ethics dictating policy that affects their own survival prospects, or that of their families, their communities and their countries. No government that attempts to implement policies based on Rawls’ theory in an international context will be able to retain power. There are no real paths to ecocivilisation there. We can only choose between the options that are actually available to us, and asking people to abandon hope for the survival of their in-group (at whatever level) because powerful people have decided they aren’t a moral priority is not an option.
This is the place where the consequences of bad decisions become real. If the world in general had understood and acted 50 years ago upon the warnings of people like Garrett Hardin then we would not be in this situation now, but very few people did and here we are.
What about “foreign aid”?
I have focused on one particular aspect of lifeboat ethics, and that is immigration. Hardin also wrote extensively about foreign aid. To what extent should “lifeboat nations” financially and practically support the failing nations from which the migrants are coming?
In most respects this question is beyond the scope of this book, because every case is different, both in terms of which sort of aid and which countries we are talking about. However, there is a general point that is more relevant, and that concerns the claim that we can avoid a lifeboat situation entirely if we devote enough aid to the most vulnerable nations and people. Given everything I have already said, it should be obvious that this won’t work: it’s too late and the problems are too serious and too extensive. While there may be compelling justification for specific interventions, if we’re going to agree to be realistic then we must acknowledge that even if these are successful they will be individual battles won in a war that is already lost. In fact, this is just a restatement of the claim that the coming transition is going to be involuntary, chaotic and unmanageable – that what is coming is going to be more collapse than degrowth.
The universal right to attempt to survive
What can seem like an incredibly complicated set of ethical problems actually boils down to something very simple – the most basic human right of them all: the right to attempt to survive. This isn’t really a “right” at all, because it can’t be taken away from people, which is why the “migrant crisis” can only get much worse. Nobody is going to accept that somebody else has the right to decide that they don’t matter. All over the world, people are going to be faced with a choice between giving up and trying to survive. Regardless of how emphatically we insist that we should attempt to save everybody, when it comes down to a choice between watching our own children starve and allowing somebody-else’s children to starve in a faraway place, every single one of us will choose the latter. And if anybody says otherwise, my response to them is simply this: I don’t believe you.
I think some sort of econationalism is inevitable, but that it is not at all clear which sort it could or will be. What we do not need is a revival of 20th century style nationalism involving flag-waving, empires, cult-of-personality leaders, or the exaltation of nation or race above the individual. In the present context, the main relevance of the sovereign state is not the power of nationalism to inspire the masses with patriotic fervour but that that is where the real power lies. If you believe in democracy then you have to believe in sovereignty, and that means borders. [Footnote: The EU is an example of a region in transition between independent sovereign states and a single federal sovereign entity. It is therefore not a valid counterexample.]
If the nation you live in does not survive, then the survival prospects for your community, your family and yourself will be dramatically degraded. Nobody wants to be trapped in a failed state during a global collapse. Nobody wants to be on a sinking boat when the lifeboats are full. The sort of eco-nationalism we do need is a system of integrated policies aimed at national survivalwithin the context of ecological realism: individual sovereign states doing everything in their power to transform their own societies, economies and physical territories in order to make them as ecologically sustainable, resilient and self-sufficient as possible. We need to prepare the lifeboats for the coming storm. Relying on global supply chains for energy, food, medicines or anything else we can’t live without is asking for trouble. This does not mean international trade should completely stop, of course. But it does mean it has to be rethought, and the nature of this rethink is important.
A focus on survival, sustainability and self-sufficiency at the national level implies a reduction in dependence on international trade. At the global level this means a general reduction in inter-dependence between countries, and there is a serious risk that this could increase the chances of war. The more your economy is inter-dependent with the economy of some other country, the less likely it is to be in your self-interest to choose a path of conflict rather than peace, and vice versa. The problem is made even worse by the fact that the effects of climate change and other forms of ecological degradation aren’t going to affect nations equally. The coming fight for survival is not going to be fair, and we cannot make it fair. The best we can hope for in terms of fairness is to try to ensure that whatever global systems we construct in future do not repeat the identifiable mistakes of the past. We can and must try to make those new systems as “fair” as they can possibly be going forwards. Nothing is more important than this – our prospects of being able to establish a global ecocivilisation are directly related to how successful we are in creating an economic system that minimises future injustices. Until such time as this is achieved, conflict over resources will never be far away, and nobody should be surprised if this includes expansionist wars in the name of national survival.
I am expecting some people to find the above position completely unacceptable, because it effectively writes off the injustices of the past. They might argue that there can be no real justice in the future without reparations for slavery, climate change, colonial exploitation, genocides, territorial theft of one sort or another, etc... This sort of justice is mostly beyond the realms of possibility. Injustice has been widespread for the whole of human history, both within societies and between different city states, empires, nations, or whatever was taking the functional place of the tribe at that point. And before we invented civilisation, there was tribal warfare. Building a global ecocivilisation that succeeds in minimising future injustices is, on its own, the biggest challenge humans have ever faced, but it is theoretically possible. Simultaneously putting right the injustices of the past is, at least in most cases, not.
Expansionism and the biological growth imperative
Expansionist nationalism is the ultimate human expression of the biological growth imperative (a perfect example being the Nazi concept of lebensraum – “living space”). It is the same in the cases of superorganisms such as ant colonies – expansion is the ultimate goal, and the inevitable result is the ant equivalent of war. Our ultimate goal is global ecocivilisation and that means finding a way to eliminate, or at least minimise, war. If we are going to get global ecocivilisation right, then we are going to have to overcome the biological growth imperative not just once, at the level of the sovereign state, but a second time, at the global level. Either that or we have to overcome it in two very different ways at the same time. This is not a dichotomy – there is no reason why the pursuit of ecocivilisation at the sovereign level should make it any more difficult than it already is to achieve ecocivilisation globally. What we must not do is allow the absence of any prospect of a global ecocivilisation to justify a refusal to even attempt it at the sovereign level.
Humans have been fighting over territory and resources as long as we’ve been human and we can safely assume that this isn’t going to change any time soon. If the situation is falling apart globally then national survival, or the survival of alliances of nations, will be the only game in town. One of the consequences of this is going to be increasing conflict over resources, including territory. Defence of borders will be just as important for this reason as it will be in terms of controlling migration. I wish none of this were so, but wishing doesn’t make it go away. I believe that the possibility of global ecocivilisation provides the only hope of abolishing war between sovereign states.
Our goal has to be to minimise the tendency of individual sovereign entities to decide that it is in their own interest to fight a war over territory, resources or anything else. In Chapter Six I outlined my own ideas of at least one way such a thing could actually happen. I think it would require (at minimum) a new global currency, established and overseen by a new global authority whose specific task is to manage the new currency in the interests of creating conditions conducive to the construction of global ecocivilisation. The goal would be an international monetary system that is viewed by all parties as as fair as it can possibly be. This could ultimately turn out to be a stage on the way to a more comprehensive form of global government, although I personally think it is unlikely that all of the world’s sovereign states will choose to give up their sovereignty in this way. However, this is all speculation about some distant future. Right now we are very far away from anything of the sort.
Ecocivilisation and money
I have argued above that in order to make international trade fair, we need to establish a neutral global currency. This would eliminate unfairness that results from one (or a small number) of powerful nations having total control over currencies that everybody else is then forced to use in international trade. At first sight this might seem to be perfectly fair – what could be fairer than a truly neutral international currency managed in the interests of ecocivilisation? Such an invention could be the ultimate example of what anthropologists call “general-purpose money” – a neutral currency that can be used to buy pretty much anything anywhere. This would be the situation if a neutral global currency was in use internally in each country, instead of the existing national fiat currencies, as well as for international trade. However, this sort of a system may not be as fair as it seems, as pointed out by Swedish anthropologist and professor of human ecology Alf Hornborg, who is known for his work on the relationships between technology, economy, and ecology. Hornborg argues that general-purpose moneyplays a central role in perpetuating global inequality and environmental degradation, because it facilitates unequal exchange between wealthy and poor nations. Wealthy countries benefit from cheaper resources and labour from poorer countries, while poorer countries are left to deal with the environmental and social costs of extraction and production. General-purpose money, because of its abstract and universal nature, allows these imbalances to be hidden and perpetuated.
Money enables the commodification of natural resources, turning them into objects of trade rather than elements of ecosystems. This promotes exploitation without regard for ecological sustainability. Hornborg believes general-purpose money drives overconsumption and the depletion of resources. It abstracts the value of labour and resources in ways that do not reflect their true ecological or social cost. For instance, money can represent labour and energy from very different contexts (e.g., human labour vs. fossil fuels) as equivalent. This distorts how societies perceive the value of things, leading to decisions that are economically profitable but ecologically harmful.Hornborg also ties the logic of money to technological systems that require vast amounts of resources and energy. He argues that the global economy, driven by monetary transactions, depends on large-scale, energy-intensive technologies that contribute to global inequality and ecological destruction. Rather than general-purpose money, he suggests alternative systems of exchange that are more localised and reflect ecological and social realities. For example, he proposes systems where the value of goods and services is based on the local context of production and their ecological sustainability. Such systems would promote fairness and reduce ecological footprints. In his 2017 paper How to turn an ocean liner: a proposal for voluntary degrowth by redesigning money for sustainability, justice and resilience (which is available online) he proposes that we create a parallel economic system using localised currencies distributed as a universal basic income. He is suggesting that to build an ecocivilisation we may need to go in exactly the opposite direction to a neutral international general-purpose currency – he wants to make money local and specialised rather than global and general purpose.
Money is central to both our problems and their solutions. We cannot simply get rid of it, but neither can it remain as it is. The existing system of free-floating national electronic currencies is unstable now and premised on the fantasy of infinite economic growth. The threat of serious or total economic and monetary collapse is very real. This too can and should be understood not just as a threat but as an opportunity, because if/when it collapses then something will have to take its place. This is one of the reasons why localised currencies make sense, because they can provide a backup system designed to be at least partially insulated from global economic and monetary shocks.
I am not an economist, but when I put all this together the solution that emerges is a three-tier monetary system. At the top level would be a neutral global currency, but this would not be general-purpose. Its use would be restricted to whatever things we’ve decided should be traded using that type of money. Below this would be (completely rethought and redesigned) national currencies, and below that would be a system of Hornborgian localised currencies distributed as UBI. There would then have to be some complex arrangement that determines how these three tiers should be related to each other, and what sort of things you can buy with what sort of money. The three tiers – global, national and local – would each work differently, with the whole system designed to avoid conflict and ultimately facilitate global ecocivilisation.
The inevitability of econationalism
Econationalism is a stepping stone to global ecocivilisation. Because national survival is critically important for individual survival it will be saleable to the public, and it offers a realistic path toward ecocivilisation at both the national and global level. I am unable to imagine any other paths available in Western democracies. As the situation deteriorates, Western electorates will become ever less inclined to vote for policies or parties that prioritise the needs of desperate outsiders over desperate people at home. If those in power refuse to accept this reality and respond accordingly then, as long as democracy survives, the people will deliver power to somebody who will. The more the pre-collapse left protests against this sort of realism, the further away from power it will find itself. Anarchism is not an answer. We need to change a process of collapse into a process of transformation. Anarchism might help to accelerate the collapse, but in place of transformation all it offers is an extreme form of political idealism.
We need to deal with reality. Some sort of eco-nationalism therefore seems inevitable. My personal preference would be for the social democratic kind, though whether that is what we end up with seems rather less inevitable. Doubtless I will be accused of ecofascism and bigotry by people who don’t know what those words mean. It is not possible to be a fascist democrat. The real story is well told inEcofascism Revisited: Lessons from the German Experience (1995) by Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier.
Quality of life vs quantity of life
One of the central themes of Garrett Hardin’s work was that humanity needs to focus on improving the quality of life, rather than merely increasing its quantity. This he applied not just to overpopulation but to individual life choices, especially towards the end. On September 14, 2003, Hardin and his wife, Jane, committed suicide together at their home in California. He was 88 and she 81, and both were reportedly suffering from serious health problems. The couple chose to end their lives together under circumstances that reflected Hardin’s belief in the importance of controlling one’s own fate and quality of life, especially in the face of illness and suffering. Their joint decision was consistent with Hardin’s broader philosophy that human life should not be extended at all costs if it means enduring suffering or a significant decline in quality of life. It also aligns with his belief in personal responsibility and autonomy over one’s own existence, including the decision to end it when life no longer holds the prospect of dignity or well-being. It was an example of the same harsh pragmatism that underpinned much of his ecological thinking. He viewed life as valuable only when it could be lived with a reasonable standard of well-being.