The study found that if you commute for 45 minutes plus then your chance of getting divorced is 40% higher than for those with shorter journeys.

This is good news for me (and my wife) given that we live in central Wellington just 15 minutes walk from Parliament.

Also today the Auckland Transport Blog put up a piece showing a new tool that’s been created called Mapnificent which allows you to find out on google maps which locations can be reached within a certain time by public transport.

As the Auckland Transport Blog points out, it’s interesting to run the maps on Auckland. You can see that a lot of areas which are most inaccessible (e.g., Flat Bush) are the areas where there has been major development in Auckland over the last 10 years.

These two pieces made me think about the launch of a book I attended last week called Growth Misconduct: Can We Do Better on Urban Intensification?

The book was based on a range of presentations made in 2010 at a conference on sustainable cities and you can see more about what they covered here.

The presenters at the launch gave some amazing examples of medium and high density developments overseas which have lots of units, flats and terraced housing but still give the residents awesome facilities like private green space, water features, playgrounds etc

Overall, the presentations just reinforced my belief that we have to start thinking harder about how to grow our cities in ways that make us happy.

If there was an Urban Design portfolio I’d be keen to take it because I believe these issues are particularly relevant to people of my own generation. Many people of my age can’t afford the type of quarter acre block that the Baby Boomers aspired to and brought.

In particular, we have to remember that before encouraging new development on the fringes of our city (as the National government would like us to do in Auckland) we should put in place good public transport links first.

Otherwise we will just have more unhappy commuters clogging up our roads.

I like the warning at the start: “This film contains material which may be offensive to economists, developers, the Pope, politicians, octomoms, wealthy capitalists, environmentalists, people who leave the lights on, and…well, pretty much everybody.”

I’ve had my fill of doom documentaries, so the promise of a positive vision is what appeals to me most. I’m not sure where they will go with that, but their ‘alternatives‘ page looks promising!

Despite many false and ad hominem attacks on the research, it stands up very well in its forecast for humanity’s situation in this century. As Dr Meadows says in this video, we know 100% for sure that this growth trajectory is going to come to an end, we just don’t exactly when.

Hat tip: The Oil Drum

The Greens here in Aotearoa have debated the topic and written our population policy. It was no less difficult a debate for us either. To my knowledge, no other political party has the courage to front the issue.

There was a burst of media in February/March, as the Global Population Speak Out encouraged people like the BBC’s John Feeney and others to do just that – speak out.

The question for debate here is whether population growth is a direct driver of climate change. New research just published claims that the link is very weak indeed.

Dr David Satterthwaite, of the London-based policy research centre and think tank the International Institute for Environment and Development, analysed changes in population and in greenhouse gas emissions for all the world’s countries.

He found that between 1980 and 2005: Sub-Saharan Africa had 18.5 percent of the world’s population growth and just 2.4 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; the United States had 3.4 percent of the world’s population growth and 12.6 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; China had 15.3 percent of the world’s population growth and 44.5 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; Population growth rates in China have come down very rapidly – but greenhouse gas emissions have increased very rapidly; Low-income nations had 52.1 percent of the world’s population growth and 12.8 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; High-income nations had 7 percent of the world’s population growth and 29 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions; Most of the nations with the highest population growth rates had low growth rates for carbon dioxide emissions while many of the nations with the lowest population growth rates had high growth rates for carbon dioxide emissions.

It makes your brain hurt to read it, but it does make it clear that the link is not as ‘obvious’ as one would assume.

While many of us take it as read that unfettered population growth is bad for the environment and that unfettered consumerism is bad for the environment, it seems that consumerism takes the rap for climate change.

What do you think?

The beer market and the alcohol market have been very resilient. We’re not complacent about that but it is a positive trend. We’re in a market that often has said when things get tough people still enjoy a drink and they still enjoy going to the cinema. So there are a couple of things that people don’t tend to give up. And we’re I guess reasonably lucky that alcohol’s one of those things.

I guess the positive trend he is talking about is the record 470.3 million litres of alcohol consumed by New Zealanders last year. Cheers to a company that ‘s aiming for double digit growth for the foreseeable future.

THE last line of defence for advocates of indefinite global economic growth is that it is needed to eradicate poverty. This argument is at best disingenuous. By any reasonable assessment it is claiming the impossible.

Here’s why. During the 1980s, for every $100 added to the value of the global economy, around $2.20 found its way to those living below the World Bank’s absolute poverty line. During the 1990s, that share shrank to just 60 cents. This inequity in income distribution – more like a flood up than a trickle down – means that for the poor to get slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer. It would take around $166 worth of global growth to generate $1 extra for people living on below $1 a day.

That’s an astonishingly poor return on a investment.  To use a timely horse racing analogy it’s like betting on a horse that that’s offering odds of 0.6 cents on each dollar.

To get the poorest onto an income of just $3 a day would require an impossible 15 planets worth of biocapacity. In other words we will have to make Earth uninhabitable long before poverty is eradicated.

Poverty is a crucial problem for the world.  Unlimited growth can’t solve the problem but likewise we can’t solve our environmental problems while masses of people live in extreme poverty.  So we have to do something.

But we have to overcome knee-jerk reaction of the R word – redistribution.  With global growth constrained by the need to limit carbon emissions (remember the poorest will be the first and worst victims of climate change) redistribution becomes the only viable route to poverty reduction.

That is when I realised that economists have not grasped a simple fact that to scientists is obvious: the size of the earth as a whole is fixed. Neither the surface nor the mass of the planet is growing or shrinking. The same is true for energy budgets: the amount absorbed by the earth is equal to the amount it radiates. The overall size of the system – the amount of water, land, air, minerals and other resources present on the planet we live on – is fixed.

While living in a steady state system – planet earth – economists still fantasise that we can ´grow´ our economies exponentially, forever.

As long as our economic system is based on chasing economic growth above all else, we are heading for environmental and economic disaster. To avoid this fate, we must switch our focus from quantitative growth to qualitative development, and set strict limits on the rate at which we consume the earth´s resources.

In such a steady state economy, the value of goods produced can still increase, for example through technological innovation or better distribution, but the physical scale of our economy must be kept at a level the planet is able to sustain.

No doubt the critics will just insist that we will go to space to get what we need. David Suzuki, in another article in the same series, states that:

The option of going into space allows you to pretend that technology will get our asses out of any problem so we don´t have to worry, which is just not true. Limitless resources are a fool´s dream that we can never achieve. The reality is that we are biological beings dependent on the biosphere. What kind of intelligent creature, knowing that these are our crucial limitations, would act as if we can use the Earth as a garbage can and not pay a price for that?

What kind of intelligent creature indeed? Let´s start with the majority of our political parties, in all countries. Until these simple home truths percolate into the political dialogue, humanity is on a road to nowhere. That´s why I am a Green with capital G, and proud of it.

any alternative to growth remains unthinkable, even 40 years after the American ecologists Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren made some blindingly obvious points about the arithmetic of relentless consumption.

The Ehrlich equation, I = PAT, says simply that the impact (I) of human activity on the planet is the product of three factors: the size of the population (P), its level of affluence (A) expressed as income per person, and a technology factor (T), which is a measure of the impact on the planet associated with each dollar we spend.

Take climate change, for example. The global population is just under 7 billion and the average level of affluence is around $8000 per person. The T factor is just over 0.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide per thousand dollars of GDP – in other words, every $1000 worth of goods and services produced using today’s technology releases 0.5 tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere. So today’s global CO₂ emissions work out at 7 billion × 8 × 0.5 = 28 billion tonnes per year.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that to stabilise greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere at a reasonably safe 450 parts per million, we need to reduce annual global CO₂ emissions to less than 5 billion tonnes by 2050. With a global population of 9 billion thought inevitable by the middle of this century, that works out at an average carbon footprint of less than 0.6 tonnes per person – considerably lower than in India today. The conventional view is that we will achieve this by increasing energy efficiency and developing green technology without economic growth taking a serious hit. Can this really work?

With today’s global income, achieving the necessary carbon footprint would mean getting the T factor for CO₂ down to 0.1 tonnes of CO₂ per thousand US dollars – a fivefold improvement. While that is no walk in the park, it is probably doable with state-of-the-art technology and a robust policy commitment. There is one big thing missing from this picture, however: economic growth. Factor it in, and the idea that technological ingenuity can save us from climate disaster looks an awful lot more challenging.

¨Growth¨ 1750 to 2000 Click to enlarge

To grow an economy requires more resources – including carbon, water, trees raw materials, and energy sources.  3 percent growth normally means more carbon is burnt, more trees are felled more water is polluted. Case in point – Labour’s growing economy of the last nine years. Technology can ameliorate this problem but not completely negate it. When the wrong parts of the economy grow too fast it depletes our resources.  And we only have a set amount to use.  There is no re-deal of cards if we don’t like the hand we’ve been dealt or we accidentally play our good cards too early.

Incidentally the economy also requires the environment to clean up after it, by absorbing and recycling pollutants.  Again, the environment has a limited ability to do this.  The more we use up that ability now, the less time left before we reach a tipping point in on our planet’s biodiverse sustainability.

So Nickk (Did I mention Russel only has one ‘l’) I’m not quite sure why you think being measured on your plans to put our economic growth into overdrive would have done anything to change the outcome of the Greens decision this afternoon not to work in coalition with National.  I suspect the result was more likely cemented in the last months by National’s increasingly apparent policy agenda, including refusing to front up on emissions trading, strip-mining the Resource Management Act and scrapping the $1 billion energy-efficient home insulation fund. Smith’s criticisms of Labour in his media release are all true, and he will see the Greens’ analysis reflect that, but sadly National fared even worse on the same test.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: How is it credible for her to maintain the façade of carbon neutrality, and world leadership in sustainability, when during the last 9 years emissions have increased by 14 percent, one of the highest rates in the developed world; when 75 percent of new electricity generation built has actually been thermal, resulting in the largest drop in the proportion of renewables of any Government in New Zealand history; and when the last 4 years has seen a massive loss of forest area and the first years of deforestation since records began in 1951?

Cullen blamed all those emissions on a growing economy. And as economic growth remains a sacred cow, we all politely moved on to the next question. Afterall we wouldn’t want to stop growing beyond the limits of our planet’s ability to cope.

The more interesting parliamentary question came later on and was from Sue Bradford, standing in for Jeanette, to Pete Hodgson, the Minister of Economic Development who was standing in for Jim Anderton, the Minister of Fisheries. (I suspect MPs had been re-enacting the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party earlier and all standing up and rotating seats). Sue initally asked a generic question about trade of fish with China.  I thought she was likely to move on to talk about Maui dolphins which were also a topic of debate today*. But she actually followed up with this:

Sue Bradford: Can the Minister confirm that Talley’s Fisheries ships chilled, gutted fish to China for thawing, processing, and rechilling, only to ship it back to New Zealand for sale; and is that how the fishing industry contributes to the Prime Minister’s goal of carbon neutrality?

Hon PETE HODGSON: New Zealand fishing companies have been exporting to China for years, and a proportion of that product is inevitably processed further and onsold to Japan, North America, and Europe. That has been going on for some time in China and in any other continent in the world. Our fishing industries are international.

…

Sue Bradford: If shipping fish from New Zealand to China for processing, then shipping the fish back here to our supermarkets for retail sale is an example of his Government’s global trade agenda in action, then surely it is time to admit that the resulting carbon “fin print” of these fish, the race to the bottom on wages, and the threat to jobs here in New Zealand make the whole situation a disaster, not just for our country but for the planet?

Hon PETE HODGSON: Let me offer a different tack. I am the member of Parliament for Dunedin North. Cadbury’s and Gregg’s are both in my electorate. Both of those companies are food companies; they both import, then re-export products. That is the nature of trade.

No, it’s the nature of specific type of neo-liberal free trade. Really though, given our claimed high tech business environment, couldn’t we breed or train the fish just to swim over the China and at least save themselves one boat trip?

*Sorry to jump around so many topics. For more on the dolphin dilemma listen to this Checkpoint interview with marine scientist Steve Dawson.

First his views on Peak Oil:

Yeah, I’m not sure I entirely buy the peak oil argument. I guess, if it’s real, and demand really is greater than the world’s ability to supply, then you’ll certainly see technology being invoked that will make things more competitive…

I’m of a view that these kind of sustained oil prices will see all sorts of reserves around the world opened up. From New Zealand’s point of view I think we all accept there is a fair bit of oil around New Zealand but it is expensive to get out. At a hundred dollars a barrel however, it’s competitive…

I think the supply side will respond

Why is it the peak oil deniers (or should I say ‘sceptics’) always settle for the ‘don’t worry if things get too bad we’ll just invent a new gizmo to solve the problem’ solution?

Then he traverses climate change:

But look, I think climate change is a long term problem and needs long term solutions. It is right for New Zealand to play its part in the world, it’s crazy for New Zealand to lead the world if that means massive drop in jobs and economic growth, and that’s what it does mean.

So, at least no longer any scepticism here. But this ‘slowly slowly’ response needs to be contrasted with the IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri

“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

Of course it’s hard for Key to say much else when he believes in unlimited growth at all costs. If you’re in debt, the answer is just grow your way out of it:

New Zealand doesn’t have a debt problem it has a growth problem and a competitiveness problem.

And, finally on an unrelated topic, watch Key try to extract himself from the s59 bill that he previously lauded and voted for.

I think the last straw was really smacking. While we put up a compromise, and it was the right thing to do because it delivered something that was half workable, I think for a lot of new Zealanders it was the final straw.

Meanwhile Paula Oliver at the Herald highlights an important issue that could get lost in the tax cut debate this budget.

[T]he fact is that when taxes are cut by any amount, however big or small, that amount automatically becomes money that could have been used for something else.

It’s a question of priorities.

So, what are our priorities? English will tell us that tax cuts are important for growth. Cullen won’t challenge this claim because for both National and Labour all growth is implicitly good. If things are bigger than they used to be that is inherently good. We need to grow bigger coal mines and bigger dairy farms to feed our bigger mega-malls filled with bigger amounts of consumer goods imported from bigger countries. To pay for that we need to grow bigger credit card debts and borrow bigger mortgages. Ah, step back and admire the beauty of unlimited economic growth.

If tax cuts provide incentives for growth, shouldn’t we only give them to the things we want to grow? And if things that should be shrinking are actually growing shouldn’t we give them an incentive to change that behaviour?

Trade deficits have the opposite problem in that they create a debt which one day must be paid off with trade surpluses, & due to interest accumulating in the modern money economy, the surpluses in the future must be much greater than the deficits which incurred the debt problem in the first place.

For every 5% consumed over & above what we produce this year, we may have to produce 10% more than we consume at some point in the future.

Current account deficits must be matched with capital movement surpluses, i.e. foreign investment in the domestic economy increases, creating a burden of debt to repay with interest. As the repatriation of return on foreign capital goes into the current account on the negative side as well, as long as that balance remains negative, we get further & further into debt. We start running out of assets to sell off to repay it – first companies & bank deposits, then land. We become a nation of renters & workers for our foreign landlords & bosses.

Only two ways to remove this debt problem, one is start running big current account surpluses, the other is to become absorbed into one of the creditor economies.

While the Greens have never opposed international trade or trade agreements axiomatically, they have argued that the economic criteria for measuring them needs to be more than just GDP growth. Growth is a flawed and short term measure of economic wellbeing.

Now that you’ve read it, I have to ask: Could you vote for investment banker John Key and his gang in the next election? It’s not that the Greens would be exempt from the gang description used in Kay’s article. It’s just the National Party’s (and Labour’s), obsession with growth-at-all-costs against the reality of a finite world that has me wondering if either party is truly fit to lead.

Just in case you are locked out of the FT website because you’ve been there too many times before, here is a reasonable summary of the article.

• They like to expand on this by pointing to our philistine beliefs that you can’t have infinite growth in a finite world.
• Or they highlight our archaic assertion that GDP is a poor economic tool because it treats destruction and waste like they are good things.
• Sometimes they call us ’1970′s Marxists’ because we believe that the price of a product should reflect its true cost to people and the environment rather than getting hidden subsidies in the form of cheap oil, un-replenished natural resources or abusive labour conditions.
• Oh, and of course green economics also a plot by feminists.  The Worldwatch Institute in its helpful primer on Green Economics notes that a key part of green economics is valuing women:

Economic systems ought to be gender-blind but they’re not. A UN report in the 1990s noted that “most poor people are women, and most women are poor.” All over the world, women earn less than men for equivalent work, they lack access to land and credit, and they do more than their share of child- and elder care, volunteer work, and other unpaid labor. There is evidence that this gender bias actually suppresses economic activity.

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.

Surprisingly — stunningly, in fact — research shows that the majority of people select the first option; they would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?

Well it might be irrational for traditional economists brought up with Rational Choice Theory. But it makes a lot of sense if you believe that people basically aspire to an equitable society where they have a fair chance and fair share, and where the planet is not put under undue pressure from unsustainable growth.

That’s probably why, for instance, people have such a visceral reaction to the EMI’s savage downsizing and commercial growth strategy. They don’t really feel the chance for a multimillionaire financier to grow his corporate profits outweighs the cost of thousands of redundancies, and bands wearing corporate sponsor logos on their shirts.

The Greens have been saying for a long time that equity, culture and community are more important values than economic growth. Simply growing everyone’s income doesn’t work if large numbers of people feel they have a less equal share, even if they have more TVs and fridge magnets than they used to have.

Hat tip – Freakonomics