choose the future!
Dear Kevin,
Congratulations on successfully reclaiming the prime-ministership of Australia.
I am aware that there are many immediately pressing issues that we must resolve, including climate change, refugees, unemployment, and the future of Australian industry. However, for the long run, there is one issue that both overrides and underpins most of these other issues; that issue is sustainability, both for Australia and for the Earth. If our societies are not sustainable, then neither they, nor we as individuals, will be sustained. When I talk of sustainability, I am referring to all forms of sustainability: social, ecological, economic, business, and others. In the long run, all forms of sustainability are interconnected; you can't have one type of sustainability without all of the others.
No region, whether it is a country like Australia or the whole Earth, can be sustainable while we have growth. No sort of growth can be sustained when it is occurring in a finite system, and in practice there are mostly only finite systems; sustainability and growth are irreconcilable.
Our current economic system, by its nature, necessitates its own endless growth; that endless economic growth necessitates endless growth in the use of all resources, both finite resources, and renewable resources which will not be renewed if they are used too fast. Endless economic growth also necessitates endless growth in our appropriation of the surface of the Earth, and in the resulting loss of environments and other species.
Endless economic growth makes it impossible for us to limit the generation of the carbon dioxide that is causing global warming and consequent climate change. Methods such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading scheme may be able to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that is generated for a given quantity of economic activity, but, while the quantity of economic activity is growing and growing exponentially, they won't be able to stop growth in the total amount of carbon dioxide generated.
A carbon tax or carbon emissions trading scheme won't be able to reduce the generation of carbon dioxide continuously; at first they will cause us to do the relatively easy and effective things, and then the more difficult and less effective thing afterwards. As time goes by, we will be able to achieve less and less only with more and more effort. Eventually, we will not be able to further reduce the carbon intensity of our economies; carbon dioxide generation must then continue to grow with our economies. Meanwhile, our economies, because of the way they work, must keep growing and growing and growing... overwhelming any reduction that we achieve in the carbon intensity of our economies. I'm sure that you are aware that despite all of the efforts made so far the generation of carbon dioxide has never stopped growing.
Even if we were able to use renewable energy sources to completely decarbonise our energy supply, this same relationship with growth occurs with most other resources that our economies rely on, and with our appropriation of the surface of the Earth. None of this is sustainable, and if we continue to ignore this issue we and our societies will not be sustained.
So, please, while you are working on all of the other issue that we must resolve, keep in the back of your mind that the whole world must start working towards an economy that doesn't need to grow: a steady state economy. That's not all that we will need to achieve, but no other achievement will work without this one.
Yours sincerely,