$1m cash to save civilisation

That was the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald last week as Mr. Smith announced his one million dollar Wilberforce Award – a grant to be awarded to someone under 30 “who can impress me by becoming famous through his or her ability to show leadership in communicating an alternative to our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy.”

Did you see a news story about this audacious offer? I found no news stories about this outside of Australia, other than a photo in Times of India and the UK Guardian. The rest of the world apparently doesn’t consider this million-dollar prize offered by one individual newsworthy. I find that incredibly disappointing, but I suppose that is to be expected in a world where denial of limits to growth is so widespread and growth addiction is perpetuated by the pushers (growth profiteers, who include mainstream media).

In fact, Dick Smith has taken on the mainstream media in his quest to eliminate the megadose of pro-growth Kool Aid served to us daily. He recently took out this ad in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper.

Unless you live in Australia, you may not know who Dick Smith is. The subject line of his follow-up email to me read: Rapacious Capitalist Loves your Website. So, who is this “rapacious capitalist” who is not pushing growth at every turn in order to finance his next private jet or another 10,000 square-foot vacation home? You can read more about him here.

Smith is a man who concedes “I’ve benefited from a long period of constant economic and population growth – we are addicted to it.” He is indeed a wealthy businessman. But Dick Smith has seen the light. It has come to his attention (thanks to his daughter) that there are limits. He writes, “sooner or later this consumption growth will have an end. We appear to be already bumping against the limits of what our planet can sustain and the evidence is everywhere to see.”

I’m encouraged that a number of wealthy capitalists are speaking out today about the fallacy of our quest for and belief in unending growth. Media mogul Ted Turner frequently raises the issue of overpopulation and sustainability. “Too many people are using too much stuff,” he told Charlie Rose two years ago. Zhang Yue, Chairman and Chief executive of BROAD Air Conditioning spoke eloquently about limits to growth in a speech last year to the Business for Social Responsibility Conference: “Today, that mission to grow more, to get more, to make more, isn’t suitable for society.”

Fact is we’ve all benefited from the era of growth. But just as it’s not too late for those who’ve built empires and made fortunes to learn from our mistakes and promote a more sustainable model, it’s not too late for society at large. It is time for us to get over our growth addiction and move quickly to a model that celebrates “enough.”

I applaud Australian Dick Smith for having the vision to see where our worship of growth everlasting will take us, the courage to confess his sins, and enough concern about future generations to put his money where his mouth is. According to Smith, “I will be looking for candidates whose actions over the next year show that they have what it takes to be among the next generation of leaders our incredible planet so badly needs.”

Quick note: Now you can subscribe to get an email whenever I publish a new blog post. See the Blog Subscription box to the upper right (just below where you can click to donate and support this film)!

Dave Gardner is currently producing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity.

Janaia Donaldson interviews Dave Gardner on Peak Moment

I’m happy to share this interview produced by Janaia Donaldson and Robin Mallgren of Peak Moment TV. They gave me an outstanding opportunity to explain the what and why of my upcoming documentary, Hooked on Growth. If you want to understand what the non-profit GrowthBusters film project is all about, watch this interview.

Back to my Thelma and Louise metaphor: To elaborate, it’s as if we’re in a convertible roaring toward a cliff. The cliff is far enough in the distance we can’t make it out clearly. It doesn’t seem like an immediate danger. But as we get closer and begin to realize where we’re heading, what do we do? Instead of stopping or turning the car, we fiddle with the radio – change the volume, tune to a different station. We roll down the windows, dust off the dash, clean the mirror. But we don’t slam on the brakes or do a James Bond J-turn to quickly head in another direction. Heck, we don’t even gently change course.

Of course, I’m referring to modern society’s irrational, growth-addicted response to mounting evidence we have hit the limits of Earth’s ability to meet our needs and wants. We’re experiencing peak oil, peak water and peak food. We’ve passed peak soil, peak fish, peak biodiversity, and optimum climate. You get the picture.

NO, you don’t! None of us do. We are not behaving as if facing an emergency. I count myself among the irrational here. Trust me, I’m working on it, but I’m still navigating, living and working within the system that all evidence demands we leave behind. I still get in a car and drive several times each week. I still board a jet airliner from time to time. I confess! I even enjoy the occasional cheeseburger! At our best, mainstream environmentalists give away compact flourescent light bulbs, fight sprawl, and promote composting, carpooling and permaculture. While these are all good moves, at this stage of the game they will make about as much difference to the outcome as cleaning the mirror of Thelma & Louise’s convertible. They are not enough if we don’t change course. Why do so few of us address the systemic problems? As I explain to Janaia in this episode of Peak Moment, my documentary Hooked on Growth attempts to answer that question.

A growing grassroots support network is helping produce, fund and distribute the film. With their help, and yours, Hooked on Growth will hit screens the first half of 2011. Check out the complete interview, and explore other episodes of Peak Moment. I love what Janaia and Robin are doing. And join us at GrowthBusters. Become part of a groundbreaking film project that will deliver a much-needed wake-up call. It was sad to see Thelma and Louise drive off that cliff. Let’s not join them.

Dave Gardner is producing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity.

The GrowthBusters project really kicked into high gear this year. The pace has kept me from sending updates with any regularity. I’ll try to do better! Lots to share…

THE VANCOUVER DE-GROWTH CONFERENCE in May was the catalyst for a 10-day shoot trip from Vancouver to San Francisco with multiple stops. A highlight was finally interviewing Bill Rees, originator of Ecological Footprint Analysis. Rees co-authored, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth back in 1995. In 40 minutes he brilliantly and comprehensively addressed nearly every topic in our film! Check out this Rees presentation: Is Humanity Sustainable?

In California we met up with the wonderful Janaia Donaldson and Robin Mallgren, who produce an online TV series seen by millions called Peak Moment. Check out their program and view our interview here.

I also had great visits in the Bay Area with key people from the Pachamama Alliance and Transition US. Check out this unusual YouTube video we posted of Transition US board member Dave Room.  These are just a few of the smart people I interviewed. I’ll try to share more about this trip in my blog.

A 24-DAY U.S. EAST COAST EXPEDITION from Virginia to Maine kept me hopping in June. I began the trip documenting the work of Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population. These enlightened citizens are engaging metro Charlottesville in a public dialog about the optimum population for the region. Watch for more about their project in my blog.

Other highlights included interviews with Nobel-winning economist, Robert Solow, former World Bank senior economist Herman Daly (who pioneered in the fields of ecological and steady state economics), sociologist Juliet Schor (author of Plenitude), No Impact Man (Colin Beavan), Friends of the Earth’s Erich Pica, and the great Gus Speth (too many credentials to list, including environmental advisor to President Jimmy Carter and author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability). You simply must read his Toward a New Economy and a New Politics.

I also spent a day at the annual gathering of the Slow Money alliance, a day with environmental journalist Tom Horton (please read his Growing! Growing! Gone! The Chesapeake Bay and the Myth of Endless Growth), and a day capturing the self-sufficiency preparations of Chris Martenson (see his Crash Course) and his family. This brief update can’t begin to include all this trip’s wonderful people and amazing stories. Watch my blog for more.

Thanks to the many many supporters who helped out on these shoots and/or provided a couch or even a guest bedroom, greatly aiding our limited budget. On that subject, please make your tax-deductible contribution to this effort right now.

SPEED IT UP! As we move into editing Hooked on Growth, the demands of high definition video are starting to show. Make that SLOW. Our edit system is chugging under the strain, so we have got to update our hardware and software. If just 50 supporters contribute $100 we can make this happen without eating into the very limited film budget. Please help.

This is not even half the news I want to share with you, so stay tuned; I’ll try to write more often and get caught up. To keep up to date between emails, subscribe to this blog.

RECENT BLOG POSTS (Since the last update):

Sustainable 1000 TV Interview

World Population Day (and we’re still avoiding the subject)

Everything You Wanted to Know About GrowthBusters

Miracle Cure for World’s Environmental Problems

Too Big to Succeed! Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth

Save the Polar Bear in Your Bedroom

I was glad to meet Shane Snipes, who stopped in as part of his Eco-Road Trip across the 48 contiguous United States. Every day he webcasts a live interview, which is pretty impressive. Those interviews are archived here, and at Shane’s website, www.sustainable1000.com/ you can find links to his YouTube channel, blogs, etc.

For such a young man, Shane has led quite the life. Fulbright Scholar, founder of several  European environmental and social issues organizations, university instructor, corporate trainer, environmental auditor, and now cross-country filmmaker/blogger/interview host. Shane’s personal motto is consume less and live more.  I wish Shane much success and happiness and hope he gives me a chance to do an even better interview next time he’s through.

Dave Gardner is producing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity.

It will be a scary picture. Will this kind of shock therapy work? Will audiences view this science fiction scenario and immediately change their own lives, get over the taboo on discussing responsible family-size decisions, and step up efforts to change a system hooked on growth?

The truth is we don’t know. Some sustainability advocates advise that instead of pointing out the dangers of where we’re headed, we should focus on painting an optimistic picture of where we want to go. They’re dead certain doom and gloom won’t sell an idea. And they may be right. Yet, there is no evidence it’s any more effective to follow the advice of that old song: “eliminate the negative, and accentuate the positive.”

No one has ever complained about doom and gloom when someone shouted a warning that kept a person from stepping off the curb in front of an oncoming bus. So I think we should grow up and be willing to discuss both the negative consequences of business-as-usual and the joys of stepping off the hamsterwheel of growth addiction. I suspect there are benefits to both messages of hope and red flags of warning. Both have a role to play.

Along these lines, I don’t think it serves us well to tiptoe around a subject just because it’s unpleasant or unpopular. I spoke out about this last year in this appearance on Inside Story, broadcast by Al Jazeera English on World Population Day in 2009:

When the negative baggage associated with population control was brought up, I responded, “what about population information?” It is time we openly discuss overpopulation and educate everyone around the world, rich or poor, dark-skinned or light, about the ramifications of their family-size decisions. There is nothing draconian or racist about that. In fact it is a very humanitarian, loving, and compassionate idea – to act responsibly so that our children can have a good life. I also advocated for citizens to give organizations and elected officials permission to address this issue openly and honestly.

As it happens, today is once again World Population Day. And I am disappointed, yet again, that World Population Day statements from the U.N. Secretary-General and UNFPA Executive Director intentionally tap dance around the subject of overpopulation. All I can say is, “Good grief! Get a backbone!”

Dave Gardner is producing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity.

 Steve Patterson tells me Two Beers With Steve started as a podcast about what they are doing to us, but it has evolved into a podcast about what we can do for ourselves and our communities. According to Steve, “we started looking for ways to become not so dependent on a flawed system. We cover topics about economic and financial chaos all the way to what method we should use in our gardens.” Patterson has some smart followers, covers great topics, and features some prominent guests (including Crash Course’s Chris Martenson, James Howard Kuenstler, and quickly-becoming-infamous GrowthBuster Dave Gardner).

On a completely different subject, I’m about to head out on a 3.5 week whirlwind tour of the U.S. East Coast to capture interviews and case studies for the film, and I need your help. Would you like to join the crew when I’m in your area? Or offer a couch or guest-room to a weary filmmaker on shoestring budget? With our lean budget, I’m avoiding hotels and I’m not hiring grips or camera assistants. We’ll be shooting some fascinating material and interviewing some of the leading thinkers on economics, environment, psychology and politics.

Here’s my schedule. Please call or email me right away if you can provide lodging and/or want to be on the crew when I’m filming in your area.

May 27-28       Charlottesville, VA

May 29-June 3 Washington DC

June 3                Annapolis & Baltimore

June 4-8            New York City

June 8-9            Long Island

June 9-11          Burlington, VT

June 14              Strafford, VT

June 14-16       Boston, MA

June 17-18       Montague, MA

The east coast of Chesapeake Bay will be fit in here at some point, also. Call me at 719-576-5565, or email me.

Necessity was behind the decision to tap the GrowthBusters support network for accomodations. Since we’ve so far raised only a modest percentage of our production budget for the film, Hooked on Growth, I have to be creative to capture the material we need while spending as little as possible.

It was no surprise, but still remarkable, that relying on the generosity of kindred spirits is much more rewarding than falling back on the old habit of Hampton Inn and Starbucks. At every stop I met the most amazing people — enlightened and inspired to live a  life where less is more: less commerce and more community, less consumption and more sharing. There is a phenomenal grass roots network of people and organizations around the world waking up from our collective trance and creating new ways to live after growth addiction.

I was fortunate to have Jason Cross accompany me and serve as camera assistant on the trip. Jason volunteered his time and paid his way. Thanks to John in Seattle, a Buddhist meditation room provided accomodation the first night of our journey.

The next night one of the Vancouver De-Growth Conferenceorganizers, Irene Stupka, and her roommates Laura and Chad offered us great company and a night’s lodging in their compact apartment. We enjoyed sharing thoughts and experiences around the kitchen table late that night after the evening’s conference film screenings. The next few nights ecological economist Tom Green shared his apartment and showed us some really creative videos his students have been making about economic growth. I’ll share these in a later post.

In Portland I finally got to meet prolific longtime GrowthBusters volunteer Albert Kaufman, who offered his house as an interview location. And we stayed overnight with another GrowthBuster, Ralph Risch. Ralph, his wife Amy and kids showed us their low-impact lifestyle, which includes chickens, bees and produce in the back yard. We also connected with a new member of the GrowthBusters Volunteer Network, Nancy, who can’t wait to put her passion to work geting our film finished and seen.

Tired, hungry and parched after a long day shooting lakes, aqueducts and pumping plants, Jason and I dragged ourselves up the stairs in San Francisco to be greeted by amazing food and wine and a small gathering of young Transition activists, courtesy of our hosts, Johnny and Colin. They saw keeping us fed and sheltered as a great contribution to the film, and they were right. Finally, Kent and Mary in Palo Alto opened their doors to us, grilled me thoroughly about the GrowthBusters project, and shared a few laughs as we watched my Endangered Species Condoms video on YouTube.

Of course the Vancouver conference and the interviews we captured from Vancouver to Palo Alto were rich with insight and information. If I get the chance I’ll share some of that in future posts, but it’s a good bet you’ll have to wait and see the film to get the full benefit of my British Columbia/Washington/Oregon/California adventure.

Must close for now. I’ve got to drop Jason at the train station to head toward his summer job in Kings Canyon National Park, shoot one last interview in Oakland, miraculously pack our production gear into two 48-pound suitcases, and then wing my way back to my own bed in Colorado.

(written on 2010/05/08)

Dave Gardner is directing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. For more information and to become a GrowthBuster, visit www.growthbusters.org

Without a doubt, there is, and it is getting unhooked from Growth Addiction. We put together a unique display for our local community’s Earth Day fair this year. It certainly brought many a curious onlooker to our booth. GrowthBusters volunteers Jason Cross and Bill Jack created this unusual tree. Each leaf trumpeted just one of the many, many environmental causes addressed by our project.

People stopped to ask, “How can you possibly offer solutions to all these problems?” This provided the opportunity to explain (as Jason was doing in this photo) how pursuit of economic growth and failure to stabilize or reduce population is currently erasing most, if not all, the gains we make in addressing today’s environmental issues. Our project, of course, is production of the film, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. Its purpose is to help us recognize our addiction, identify the pushers and resist their siren song.

Physicist Al Bartlett summed it up well when he wrote,

“Can you think of any problem, on any scale from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way, aided, assisted, or advanced by having larger populations at the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?”

Suffice it to say, we gave people some food for thought.

“The future ain’t what it used to be.”   Yogi Berra

Who knew Yogi Berra would be so prescient? I just finished Bill McKibben’s newest book, Eaarth: Making A Life On A Tough New Planet, and I am giving it three thumbs up. The book chillingly catalogs how the human enterprise has remade the face of the planet – and in the process created what could be a terrifying future. But it also offers hope. And part of that hope is really not even debatable: the end of growth.

After reading his Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future a few years ago, I caught up with McKibben in Boulder, Colorado to interview him for my documentary, Hooked on Growth. It was an outstanding conversation (see a clip below). In both book and interview he had some brilliant observations and recommendations for humankind to move in a more sustainable direction.

Shortly after our interview he launched the Step It Up and then 350.org campaigns to raise awareness and encourage action to reduce carbon emissions. These were no small feats. CNN described the 350.org day of climate action last October as “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.” For the past couple of years McKibben has put a laser-like focus on climate change. So much so, I hadn’t even bothered to keep him updated on my film, in which climate change is just one of a long list of evidence we are bumping up against the limits to growth on a finite planet.

So I was a bit surprised, and thrilled, that much of Eaarth is devoted to limits to growth and why we’re about to enter a post-growth world. McKibben sums up the purpose of the book:

“We’re moving quickly from a world where we push nature around to a world where nature pushes back…But we’ve still got to live on that world, so we better start figuring out how.”

He observes,  “I don’t think the growth paradigm can rise to the occasion; I think the system has met its match.”

As I’ve campaigned to get my own community, as well as the world, into a recovery program for growth addiction, I’ve learned there is nothing in our modern world as sacred as growth. While the famous Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth in 1972 began a global dialog about the unsustainability of economic growth, over the last few decades most of the mainstream environmental movement decided economic growth was too revered to even try to dismantle. It became politically incorrect to question continued, perpetual economic growth.

Today that’s evidenced by all the talk about green jobs. In order to jolt us out of our carbon-intensive ways, the environmental movement has resorted to greenwash. We can combat climate change and put everyone back to work – in the new green, clean-energy economy. McKibben bravely acknowledges,

“we’ve seized on green growth as the path out of all our troubles.”

 He quotes Al Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon in a Financial Times essay: “we need to make ‘growing green’ our mantra.” 

If we’re honest with ourselves, it’s not that simple. We cannot keep growing or even maintain the scale of the current global economy just by making it green. Not if we want our civilization to survive in any recognizable form. So I find it gratifying to read McKibben acknowledge in Eaarth that green technology alone is not going to save us. We need a sea change, a shift out of the perpetual growth paradigm.

“It’s not just the banks that have gotten to be too big to fail, but all the arrangements of modern life.” 

My hope is this book might re-ignite the fire over the unsustainability of economic growth (after all, that is one of the main premises of my film, Hooked on Growth). It will no doubt enlighten many who weren’t around when limits to growth were being discussed back in the 1970s. He understands and explains our cultural obsession with growth:

“In the world we grew up in, our most ingrained economic and political habit was growth; it’s the reflex we’re going to have to temper, and it’s going to be tough….for the two hundred years since Adam Smith, we’ve assumed that more is better, and that the answer to any problem is another burst of expansion. That’s because it’s worked, at least for a long while….”

McKibben takes us to task for ignoring two decades of climate change warnings, forgetting the forecasts of Limits to Growth, and pretending oil supplies will never run out. We’ve so far failed to recognize that the human enterprise has matured:

 “Ever since Jimmy Carter first hinted at it in the 1970s, we’ve been desperate to flog our economy back to life. We deregulated, never mind the pollution. We cut taxes, never mind the gross inequality it created. We handed out cheap mortgages, never mind the headache we know was coming. We have, in short, goosed our economy with one jolt of Viagra after another, anything to avoid facing the fact that our reproductive days were past….”

But we have clearly hit the limits. While McKibben focuses primarily on evidence and impacts of climate change, he provides other evidence that the size of our enterprise has peaked. Since 1986 per-capita grain yield has been declining (grain yields stagnated while population continued to climb). In spite of a host of technological advancements in agriculture, in spite of multi-national industrial-scale farming, new chemicals, genetically engineered crops and sophisticated automation, the amount of food per person has been dropping for over a quarter century.

“Times change, and when they do we must respond.”

After painting a rather bleak picture of the predicament in which we find ourselves, McKibben spends the last half of the book exploring ways we can, and probably will, survive. He introduces us to pieces of the puzzle forming an alternative, post-growth world. He mentions movements such as slow food, slow cities, slow design, slow money. He discusses the importance of community. Over 4,000 local currency projects.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do if we’re going to survive on this Eaarth, but most of it needs to be done close to home. Small, not big: dispersed, not centralized.”

He writes that in a hot, post-growth world, decision making needs to slide toward local levels. We need to scale down. Growth was about big, about centralization. Now it’s time for localization. He observes the failure rate of big banks during the recession has been seven times greater than that of small banks. American states and cities have done far more than the federal government to fight climate change. Small, family-owned and managed farms are making a comeback, and we’re learning how to grow better food with less machinery and fertilizer. The number of farmer’s markets has quadrupled in the last decade.

Bill McKibben leaves the reader with a sense of impending doom: life as we know it cannot continue. But he also leaves us with a prescription for – at worst – getting by; for making the best of a bad situation. But many, McKibben included, believe some of the needed adjustments will actually improve our lives.

McKibben reminds us the founder of Club of Rome (sponsor of the Limits to Growth study) stated, “The future is no longer what it was thought to be…,” bringing that funny Yogi Berra aphorism home in what is turning out to be a very chilling, but also promising way.

Dave Gardner is producing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. For more information or to join the cause, visit www.GrowthBusters.org.

“Go well, do well, my children. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.”

The environmental and sustainability movements lost a great champion Saturday with the passing of Stewart Udall. Mr. Udall left an indelible mark on the planet by protecting vast areas of North America from the indelible mark of encroachment by humankind.

For the past two years I’d been hoping to make a short trip down the freeway to Santa Fe, New Mexico to chat with Mr. Udall and capture an interview for my film, Hooked on Growth. The fact I procrastinated adds a little to my sadness. The good news is he does appear on the silver screen in the documentary Earth Days, coming to PBS April 19 in the U.S.

As U.S. Secretary of the Interior in the 1960s, Stewart Udall oversaw the creation of 4 national parks, 6 national monuments, 9 national recreation areas, 50 wildlife refuges and 8 national seashores. His son Tom and nephew Mark Udall carry on his legacy as they serve today in the U.S. Senate.

I’d like to memorialize Stewart Udall with a few of his own words that struck a chord for me:

“Over the long haul of life on this planet, it is the ecologists, and not the bookkeepers of business, who are the ultimate accountants.”

From a letter he and his wife wrote to their grandchildren:

“Americans must finally cast aside our notion that we can continue the wasteful consumption patterns of our past. We must promote a consciousness attuned to a frugal, highly efficient mode of living…..

To sustain life on our small planet, we will need a wider, all-encompassing planetary resource ethic based on values implemented by mutual cooperation. This ethic must be rooted in the most intrinsic values of all: Caring, sharing, and mutual efforts that reach beyond all obstacles and boundaries.

Go well, do well, my children. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.”

– Stewart and Lee Udall

Dave Gardner is producing the documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. For more information visit www.GrowthBusters.org.