Euphemisms of the Apocalypse #4 Green Growth

We have built an entire global economy and monetary system on the idea that resources are infinite.  This isn’t too bright – because they’re not.

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Remember Peak Oil? The idea that oil might not be available in ever increasing amounts spooked quite a lot of people back in the day. The common response to Peak Oil was denial – via better extraction techniques and some sleight of hand from economic theory, people decided that oil extraction would neither stop, slow down or even slow its rate of growth. As it turns out, the deniers were right for the wrong reasons – we have more than enough oil and other fossil fuels left in the ground to completely destroy our civilisation – we will never run out of oil before we run out of planet.

Peak Oil raised the prospect of a seemingly insoluble challenge to the ideological efficacy of capitalism / neoliberalism – indeed one that threatened its very existence, thus some quite clever people came up with two narratives to ease the worries of all concerned.

Firstly economists decided to calculate proven oil reserves as a function of demand – so if the world needed ‘x’ barrels of oil by 2050 then proven reserves were deemed to be a multiplication of demand over time. In other words the existence of oil was not to be constrained by material limits but transcended by market forces. To make the calculations work it was simply assumed that supply capacity would always expand to meet demand. This is actually quite ‘normal’, economics routinely treats the material world as both a theoretical abstraction and an externality. 

Secondly – some of the (slightly) more unhinged defenders of the status quo came up with another idea – abiotic oil. In this narrative, oil simply bubbled up from the ground all the time and thus would never run out.

As insane as these narratives sound – they are startlingly similar to the ideas that we are currently betting the entire future of humanity on.

Since economic growth is deemed to be the ultimate ‘good’ to which all human labour is to be directed, the fact that we live on a finite planet of material limits and delicate ecological balances is to be ignored and explained away.

This is why the establishment needed to come up with ‘Green Growth’ – it is the abiotic oil of its day. The 34 members of The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) define ‘Green Growth’ thus:

“the fostering of economic growth and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies.”

Notice how the rest of nature is deemed to be just a collection of ‘environmental services’.

To the OECD, ecological systems are merely ‘assets’ that need maintenance in order to function properly within a globalised growth economy, this is the only planning interest that the OECD has in the environment. 

In its 2019/20 brochure for Green Growth (and it is a brochure) the OECD explains what Green Growth is and why we need it:

“Long-term projections suggest that without policy changes,the continuation of “business-as-usual” growth will have serious impacts on the climate, natural resources and ecosystems on which economic activities rely.” 

Their emphasis is illuminating – it’s not that all of nature relies on the earth, something far more important is at issue – ‘economic activities’.

This framing allows the OECD to treat the planet and all of its inhabitants as variables in the only calculation that really matters to it – how to sustain and endlessly increase ‘development’. If the OECD could concrete over the entire planet so as to put the meddlesome environment in its place…it would, so long as ‘economic activities’ were unaffected. 

As noted in our exploration of the Green New Deal – there are no truly clean sources of energy extraction, they all have an ongoing impact on the environment – the more you extract the bigger the impact.  Some methods of energy extraction have less impact on the environment than others but that is as good as it gets – not least because the most ‘clean’ often have the lowest EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested).

Thus far, no source of energy extraction has the EROEI, portability and scalability of oil – which is why the idea of even sustaining the existing economy, much less growing it, with supposedly ‘clean’ renewable energy is terrifying. That isn’t to say that solar panels aren’t better than coal fired power stations – but it is to say that the idea of hot swapping the global economy to renewables is not green. The only truly ‘green’ solution to exigent ecological emergencies is to drastically REDUCE the size of the materials economy – but no one in the mainstream is going to even broach that idea.  

There is only so much ‘economic development’ that the earth can deal with and we are waaaayy beyond that point already. The idea that economic growth can power endlessly on is madness – that some think that renewable energy can be the snazzy new engine of Green Growth is to pile absurdity atop of insanity. 

It is impossible to grow the economy without increasing resource and energy extraction and decreasing labour costs. Economic growth always increases environmental and human impacts. Economic growth means we have to work harder and faster, it means we need more resources, energy extraction plants, energy infrastructure, factories, transportation, call centres, advertising retail and of course…consumption.

All ‘developed’ nations know that economic growth is entirely inconsistent with the aims of genuine environmentalism  – but they do feel under pressure to respond to the increasingly strident (if routinely incoherent) demands of the populist green lobby nevertheless. The only way that the usual suspects can square this seemingly impossible circle is to use public relations trickery to re-brand “business as usual growth” as lovely eco-fresh Green Growth… and for people to be stupid enough to believe in it.

Oil Company British Petroleum has a huge portfolio of oil extraction assets and a massive ongoing investment in ‘developing’ future oil fields across the globe and is an industry leader in greenwashing. They showered the world with glossy brochures and videos of breathlessly happy families, wind turbines, forests and solar panels. BP then proudly trumpeted that its name now stood for ‘Beyond Petroleum’ – a claim for which there wasn’t  – and isn’t – a shred of evidence. 

The straightforward truth is this – the entire concept of Green Growth is complete and utter bullshit. It is bullshit when the OECD prints glossy brochures about it, when politicians demand it, when overpaid executives at environmental NGO’s trumpet it and when some green activists unwisely talk about it.

The concepts of ‘green’ and ‘ongoing economic growth’ are entirely incompatible.

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These terms  have been cynically conflated. The Orwellian task of PR agencies is to destroy meaningful language so as to hide the sins and terminal prognosis of the status quo.  The whole point of phrases like Green Growth is to generate an entire lexicon of meaningless language, to jam the frequencies of debate with white noise.

If you start talking with people about Green Growth you will soon find yourself as a donkey – braying nonsensically as you are lead around in never ending circles of meaningless language. How does the OECD suggest we pursue the golden oasis of Green Growth? Why with oodles of other euphemisms – what else!?!

“To do this, we must catalyse investment and innovation which will underpin sustained growth and give rise to new economic opportunities for all in inclusive ways.”

As anodyne, bland and meaningless as the language of Green Growth and the Green New Deal is – we should not underestimate its appeal and power – their soft entreaties and hollow promises must be resisted tooth and nail.

If we lose this battle for language then we may as well give up on even the hope of truth, just select whatever ‘green’ brochures the usual suspects have out this week…

…and prepare for the apocalypse.     

Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.

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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.