Towards the stable society: strategy for change

210. The principal conditions of a stable society-one that to all intents and purposes can be sustained indefinitely while giving optimum satisfaction to its members - are:

1. minimum disruption of ecological processes;
2. maximum conservation of materials and energy-or an economy of stock rather than flow;
3. a population in which recruitment equals loss; and (4) a social system
4. in which the individual can enjoy, rather than feel restricted by, the first three conditions.

211. The achievement of these four conditions will require controlled and well-orchestrated change on numerous fronts and this change will probably occur through seven operations:

1. a control operation whereby environmental disruption is reduced as much as possible by technical means;
2. a freeze operation, in which present trends are halted;
3. asystemic substitution, by which the most dangerous components of these trends are replaced by technological substitutes, whose effect is less deleterious in the short-term, but over the long-term will be increasingly ineffective;
4. systemic substitution, by which these technological substitutes are replaced by 'natural' or self-regulating ones, i.e. those which either replicate or employ without undue disturbance the normal processes of the ecosphere, and are therefore likely to be sustainable over very long periods of time;
5. the invention, promotion and application of alternative technologies which are energy and materials conservative, and which because they are designed for relatively 'closed' economic communities are likely to disrupt ecological processes only minimally (e.g. intermediate technology);
6. decentralisation of policy and economy at all levels, and the formation of communities small enough to be reasonably self-regulating and self-supporting; and
7. education for such communities.

212. As we shall see when we examine how our four conditions might be achieved, some changes will involve only a few of these operations; in others a number of the operations will be carried out almost simultaneously, and in others one will start well before another has ended. The usefulness of the operation-concept is simply to clarify the orchestration of change.

213. In putting forward these proposals we are aware that hasty or disordered change is highly disruptive and ultimately self-defeating; but we are also mindful of how the time-scale imposed on any proposal for a remedial course of action has been much-abbreviated by the dynamic of exponential growth (of population, resource depletion and pollution) and by the scarcely perceived scale and intensity of our disruption of the ecological processes on which we and all other life-forms depend. Within these limitations, therefore, we have taken care to devise and synchronise our programme so as to minimise both unemployment and capital outlay. We believe it possible to change from an expansionist society to a stable society without loss of jobs or an increase in real expenditure. Inevitably, however, there will be considerable changes, both of geography and function, in job availability and the requirements for capital inputs-and these may set up immense counter-productive social pressures. Yet given the careful and sensitive conception and implementation of a totally integrated programme these should be minimised, and an open style of government should inspire the trust and co-operation of the general public so essential for the success of this enterprise.

214. One further point should be made before we consider in more detail the various changes required. As each of the many socio-economic components or variables of industrial society are changed or replaced, so various pressure-points will be set up. It is easy to imagine, for example, a situation in which 25 percent of the socio-economic variables are designed for a stable society and therefore by definition are ill-suited to one of expansion. This situation may create more problems than it solves. When we reach the point at which 50 percent of the variables are adapted to stability and the other 50 percent to expansion, the difficulties and tensions are likely to be enormous, but thereafter each change and replacement will assist further change and replacement, and the moulding of a sustainable, satisfying society should be that much easier. It is difficult for the human mind to imagine the temporal sequence of complex change, and no doubt impossible for it to visualise the precise interactions of the various components. While bearing in mind the folly of expecting computers to do our thinking for us, we believe they have an important role to play in demonstrating the consequences throughout social and ecological systems of a great number of changes over a given period of time.

Minimising the disruption of ecological processes

220. Ecological processes can be disrupted by introducing into them either substances that are foreign to them or the correct ones in the wrong quantities. It follows therefore that the most common method of pollution 'control'. namely dispersal, is not control at all, but a more or less useful way of playing for time. Refuse disposal by dumping solves the immediate problem of the householder, but as dumping sites are used up it creates progressively less soluble problems for society at large; smokeless fuels are invaluable signs of progress for the citizens of London or Sheffield, but the air pollution from their manufacture brings misery and ill-health to the people near the plants where they are produced; in many cases the dispersal of pollutants through tall chimneys merely alters the proportion of pollution, so that instead of a few receiving much, many receive some; and lastly, in estuarine and coastal waters- crucial areas for fisheries-nutrients from sewage and agricultural run-off in modest quantities probably increase productivity, but in excess are as harmful as organochlorines and heavy metals.

221. Thus dispersal can be only a temporary expedient. Pollution control proper must consist of the recycling of materials, or the introduction of practices which are so akin to natural processes as not to be harmful. The long-term object of these pollution control procedures is to minimise our dependence on technology as a regulator of the ecological cycles on which we depend, and to return as much as possible to the natural mechanisms of the ecosphere, since in all but the short-term they are much more efficient and reliable. In the light of these remarks then, let us consider some contemporary pollution problems and how they might be solved.

222. Pesticides. There is no way of controlling the disruption caused by pesticides save by using less and progress towards this end will probably require three operations: freeze, asystemic substitution, and systemic substitution. The freeze operation consists of the ending of any further commitment to pesticides, particularly the persistent organochlorines. For the developed countries this is a relatively simple procedure, and already the use of Dieldrin, DDT, and so on, is beginning to decline. For the undeveloped countries, however, it would be impossible without an undertaking from the developed ones to subsidise the supply of much more expensive substitutes. In the malaria control programme, for example, the replacement of DDT by malathion or propoxur would raise the cost of spraying operations from US $60 million a year to $184 million and $510 million respectively[1].

223. Once such an undertaking is given, the undeveloped countries could proceed to the second operation. (There is no conceivable reason why the developed ones should not formally do so now.) This consists of the progressive substitution of non-persistent pesticides (organophosphates, carbamates, etc.) for the organochlorines. The third operation, the substitution of natural controls for pesticides in general could follow soon after. Two important points should be borne in mind: (a) it is most unlikely that the third stage could ever be complete-we will probably have to rely on the precision use of pesticides for some considerable time as part of a programme of integrated control; and (b) the second and third operations would proceed in harness until all countries had fully integrated pest control programmes. The drawback with integrated control (the combination of biological control, mechanical control, crop-species diversity and the precise use of species-specific pesticides) is that as yet we do not know enough about it, so that a full-scale research programme is urgently required. The agro-chemical industries should be encouraged to invest in integrated control programmes though plainly, since the profits cannot be so great as from chemical control, research will need public finance-as will the training of integrated control advisory teams to assist farmers, particularly in the undeveloped countries. Such an investment, however, will appear modest once integrated control is fully operational, in comparison with the vast sums of money currently being spent annually on pesticides. A typical operational procedure for the transfer from chemical to integrated control might be as follows: organochlorines phased out. Substitute pesticides phased in; in some cultivations these substitutes would be phased out almost immediately, to be replaced by integrated control; in others the time-table would be somewhat longer, depending on our understanding of the relevant agro-ecological processes and the availability of trained personnel.

224. Fertilisers. While on many occasions the use of inorganic fertilisers is valuable, their overuse leads to two intractable problems: the pollution of freshwater systems by run-off, and diminishing returns due to the slow but inevitable impoverishment of the soil (see appendix on food supply). Again the solution will come through three operations: freeze, asystemic substitution, and systemic substitution. The first operation requires there to be no further increment in the application of inorganic fertilisers, and hence the removal of subsidies for them. Again this is relatively easy for the developed countries (although there may be some drop in yield per acre), but next to impossible for the undeveloped countries, which are now being introduced to the new genetic hybrids of rice and wheat. Since the remarkable responsiveness of these hybrids is contingent on massive fertiliser inputs (up to 27 times present ones), the undeveloped world is faced with an unenviable choice: either to keep alive its expanding population over the next ten years at the price of considerable damage to soil structure and long-term fertility; or to improve soil structure so that a good proportion of the population can be fed indefinitely, but in the knowledge that the population will probably be reduced to that proportion by such natural processes as famine and epidemic. In the long-term, of course, the solution lies in population control; but in the intervening period there seems to be no alternative to concentrating on agricultural methods that are sustainable even at the expense of immediate productivity. The consequences of not doing so are likely to be much worse than any failure to take full advantage of the new hybrids. In the meantime, an emergency food-supply must be created by the developed prime-producers (USA, USSR, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) so that as much as possible of any short-fall can be met during this difficult period.

225. The second operation involves the gradual substitution of organic manures for inorganic fertilisers -though occasionally the latter will be used to supplement the former-and the return to such practices as rotation and leys; this would merge into the third operation: the adoption of highly diversified farming practices in place of monocultures. It is necessary to emphasise that this is not simply a return to traditional good husbandry: it is much more a change from flow fertility (whereby nutrients are imported from outside the agro-ecosystem, a proportion being utilised by food-plants, but with a large proportion leaving the agro-ecosystem in the form of run-off, etc.) to cyclic fertility (in which nutrients in the soil are used and then returned to it, in as closed a cycle as possible). The great advantage of nutrients in organic form is that the soil appears much better adapted to them. The nitrogen in humus, for example, is only 0.5 percent inorganic, the rest being in the form of rotting vegetation, decomposing insects and other animals, and animal manure. A high proportion of organic matter is essential for the soil to be easily workable over long periods (thus extending the period in which cultivations are timely), for it to retain water well without becoming saturated, for the retention of nutrients so that they remain available to plants until they are taken up by them (thus reducing wastage), and for the provision of the optimum environment for the micro-organisms so vital for long-term fertility. The rotation of leguminous plants and of grass grazed by animals are the most effective ways of adding organic matter to the soil, while at the same time allowing livestock to select their own food in the open has the double advantage that they are bred with a healthy fat-structure and their wastes enrich the soil instead of polluting waterways or overloading sewage systems. By diversifying farming in these and other ways we are taking advantage of the immense growth of knowledge about agricultural ecology, which plainly will increase with additional research.

226. Domestic sewage. The volume of sewage is directly proportional to population numbers and can only be stabilised or reduced by stabilising or reducing the population. However, sewage can and should be disposed of much more efficiently. It is absurd that such valuable nutrients should be allowed to pollute fresh and coastal waters, or that society should be put to the expense of disposing of them in areas where they cannot be effectively utilised. Unfortunately, in developed countries, their disposal as agricultural fertiliser is not generally feasible, largely for two reasons: (a) they are contaminated by industrial wastes; (b) transportation costs are too high. Both difficulties can be overcome-in the first case by ensuring that there is no (or negligible) admixture of industrial to domestic effluents, which depends on better industrial pollution control (see below); and in the second case by decentralising so that there is an improved mix of rural and urban activities. This will be explored in the section on social systems. In undeveloped countries, the problem of domestic sewage could be overcome by the provision of aid to pay for sewage plants that yield purified water and usable sludge.

227. Industrial wastes. Reduction of industrial effluent should proceed by two operations: a control operation, and an alternative (materials and energy conservative) technology operation. We have already suggested that the key to pollution control is not dispersal but recycling, and since recycling is a most important element in resource management it will be discussed in the section on stock economics. The alternative technology operation will be considered in the section on social systems.

Conversion to an economy of stock

230. The transfer from flow to stock economics can be considered under two headings: resource management and social accounting.

231. Resource management. It is essential that the throughput of raw materials be minimised both to conserve non-renewable resources and to cut down pollution. Since industry must have an economic incentive to be conservative of materials and energy and to recycle as much as possible, we propose a number of fiscal measures to these ends:

1. A raw materials tax. This would be proportionate to the availability of the raw material in question, and would be designed to enable our reserves to last over an arbitrary period of time, the longer the better, on the principle that during this time our dependence on this raw material would be reduced. This tax would penalise resource-intensive industries and favour employment-intensive ones. Like (b) below it would also penalise short-lived products.
2. An amortisation tax. This would be proportionate to the estimated life of the product, e.g. it would be 100 percent for products designed to last no more than a year, and would then be progressively reduced to zero percent for those designed to last 100+ years. Obviously this would penalise short-lived products, especially disposable ones, thereby reducing resource utilisation and pollution, particularly the solid-waste problem. Plastics, for example, which are so remarkable for their durability, would be used only in products where this quality is valued, and not for single trip purposes. This tax would also encourage craftsmanship and employment-intensive industry.

232. The raw materials tax would obviously encourage recycling, and we can see how it might work if we consider such a vital resource as water. The growing conflict between farmers, conservationists and the water boards is evidence enough that demand for water is conflicting with other, no less important, values. At the moment, the water boards have no alternative but to fulfil their statutory obligation to meet demand and accordingly valley after valley comes under the threat of drowning. Clearly, unless we consider dry land an obstacle to progress, demand must be stabilised and since demand is a function of population numbers x per capita consumption, both must be stabilised, if not reduced (and we have seen that for other reasons they must be reduced). To this end therefore, while a given minimum can be supplied to each person free of charge, any amount above that minimum should be made increasingly expensive. As far as industry is concerned, the net effect would be to encourage the installation of closed-circuit systems for water; total demand would be reduced, and there would be less pressure on lowland river systems.

233. Despite the stimulus of a raw materials tax, however, it is likely that there would be a number of serious pollutants which It would be uneconomic to recycle, and still others for which recycling would be technically impossible. One thinks in particular of the radioactive wastes from nuclear power stations. Furthermore, recycling cannot do everything: there will always be a non-recoverable minimum, which as now, will have to be disposed of as safely as possible. This limitation can be made clear if we postulate a 3 percent growth rate and the introduction of pollution controls which reduce pollution by 80 percent throughout - it would then take only 52 years to bring us back where we started from, with the original amount of pollution but with a much greater problem of reducing it any further; if we had a 6 percent growth rate, we would reach this position in a mere 26 years. It is also worth mentioning that recycling consumes energy and is therefore polluting, so that it is necessary to develop recycling procedures which are energy conservative.

234. The problem of uneconomic recycling can be resolved by the granting of incentives by government. Indeed, in the short-term, the entire recycling industry should be encouraged to expand, even though we know that in the long-term industrial expansion is self-defeating. This brings us to the intractable problem of the disposal of the undisposable, which can only be resolved by the termination of industrial growth and the reduction of energy demand. Again fiscal measures will be supremely important, and we propose one in particular: (c) A power tax. This would penalise power-intensive processes and hence those causing considerable pollution. Since machinery requires more power than people, it would at the same time favour the employment intensification of industry, i.e. create jobs. It would also penalise the manufacture of short-lived products. In addition to this tax, there should be financial incentives for the development and installation of total energy systems, a matter to which we shall return in the section on social systems.

235. Finally, industrial pollution can also be reduced by materials substitution. The substitution of synthetic compounds for naturally occurring compounds has created serious environmental damage, since in some cases the synthetics can be broken down only with difficulty and in others not at all. The usage rate of these synthetics has increased immensely at the expense of the natural products, as can be seen from the following examples:[2]

1. In the US, per capita consumption of synthetic detergents increased by 300 percent between 1962 and 1968. They have largely replaced soap products, per capita consumption of which fell by 71 percent between 1944 and 1964.
2. Synthetic fibres are rapidly replacing cotton, wool, silk and other natural fibres. In the US, per capita consumption of cotton fell by 33 percent between 1950 and 1968.
3. The production of plastics and synthetic resins in the US has risen by 300 percent between 1958 and 1968. They have largely replaced wood and paper products.

All of these processes consume the non-renewable fossil fuels, and their manufacture requires considerable inputs of energy. On the face of it, therefore, a counter-substitution of naturally occurring products would much reduce environmental disruption. However, it is possible that such a change-over, while it would certainly reduce disruption at one end, might dangerously increase it at the other. For example, many more acres would have to be put under cotton, thus increasing demand for pesticides, more land would have to be cleared and put under forest monocultures and so on. This problem can only be solved by reducing total consumption.

236. Genetic resources. Before leaving the subject of resources, it is appropriate that we consider the world's diminishing stock of genetic resources. Genetic diversity is essential for the security of our food supply, since it is the sine qua non of plant breeding and introduction. The greater the number of varieties, the greater the opportunities for developing new hybrids with resistance to different types of pests and diseases and to extremes of climate. It is important that new hybrids be continually developed since resistance to a particular disease is never a permanent quality. The number of plant varieties to be found in nature is infinitely greater than the number we could create artificially. Most of them are to be found in the undeveloped countries either as traditional domesticated plants or as wild plants in habitats relatively unaltered by man. There is a real danger that the former will be replaced by contemporary high-yield varieties, while the latter will disappear when their habitats are destroyed. An FAO conference in 1967 concluded that the plant-gene pool has diminished dangerously, for all over the world centres of diversity, our gene banks as it were, are disappearing and with them our chance of maintaining productivity in food[3].

237. Such centres-areas of wilderness-are often destroyed because their importance is not understood. Because they seem less productive than fields of waving corn, or because they are not accessible or attractive to tourists, they are considered in need of 'improvement' or development, or simply as suitable dumping grounds for the detritus of civilisation. This is particularly true of wetlands-estuaries and marshes-where pollution, dredging, draining and filling are looked on almost with equanimity, certainly with scant regard for what is being lost. Yet the complex of living and decomposing grasses and of phytoplankton, characteristic of wetlands, supports vast numbers of fish and birds and makes it one of the world's most productive ecosystems. Estuaries are the spawning grounds of very many fish and shellfish and form the base of the food-chain of some 60 percent of our entire marine harvest. Should they go we can expect a substantial drop in productivity.

238. It is vital to the future well-being of man that wilderness areas and wetlands be conserved at all costs. This cannot be a matter simply of taking seed and storing it, since to be valuable genetic stock must continue to be subject to normal environmental pressures, and besides we have scarcely any idea of what plants we shall find useful in the future. For these reasons we must not only conserve large areas of natural habitat, we must also draw upon the knowledge and experience of the hunter-gatherers and hunter-farmers who gain their livelihood from them.

239. We therefore have recommended to the UN Human Environment Conference that[4]

1. Certain wilderness areas of tropical rain forest, tropical scrub forest, and arctic tundra be declared inviolate. These being the least understood and most fragile biomes;
2. the hunter-gatherers and hunter farmers within these areas be given title to their lands (i.e. those lands in which traditionally they have gained their living) and be allowed to live there without pressure of any kind;
3. severe restrictions be placed on entry to these areas by anyone who does not live there permanently (while allowing the indigenes free movement);
4. sovereignty over the areas remain with the countries in which they lie; who should also be responsible for the policing of their boundaries;
5. funds for administration of these areas and payments in lieu of exploitation (to the host country) be collected from UN members in proportion to their GNP;
6. an international body be appointed as an outcome of the Stockholm Human Environment Conference to supervise an ecological programme of research, the results of which should be freely available to participating countries.

240. Social accounting. By the introduction of monetary incentives and disincentives it is possible to put a premium on durability and a penalty on disposability, thereby reducing the throughput of materials and energy so that resources are conserved and pollution reduced. But another important way of reducing pollution and enhancing amenity is by the provision of a more equitable social accounting system, reinforced by anti-disamenity legislation. Social accounting procedures must be used not just to weigh up the merits of alternative development proposals, but also to determine whether or not society actually wants such development. Naturally, present procedures require improvement: for example, in calculating 'revealed preference' (the values of individuals and communities as 'revealed' to economists by the amount people are willing and/or can afford to pay for or against a given development), imagination, sensitivity and commonsense are required in order to avoid the imposition on poor neighbourhoods or sparsely inhabited countryside of nuclear power stations, reservoirs, motorways, airports, and the like; and in calculating the 'social time preference rate' (an indication of society's regard for the future) for a given project, a very low discount should be given, since it is easier to do than undo and we must assume that unless we botch things completely many more generations will follow us who will not thank us for exhausting resources or blighting the landscape.

241. The social costs of any given development should be paid by those who propose or perpetrate it - 'the polluter must pay' is a principle that must guide our costing procedures. Furthermore, accounting decisions should be made in the light of stock economics: in other words, we must judge the health of our economy not by flow or throughput, since this inevitably leads to waste, resource depletion and environmental disruption, but by the distribution, quality and variety of the stock. At the moment, as Kenneth Boulding has pointed out,

"the success of the economy is measured by the amount of throughput derived in part from reservoirs of raw materials, processed by 'factors of production', and passed on in part as output to the sink of pollution reservoirs. The Gross National Product (GNP) roughly measures this throughput." [5]

Yet, both the reservoirs of raw materials and the reservoirs for pollution are limited and finite, so that ultimately the throughput from the one to the other must be detrimental to our well-being and must therefore not only be minimised but be regarded as a cost rather than a benefit. For this reason Boulding has suggested that GNP be considered a measure of gross national cost, and that we devote ourselves to its minimisation, maximising instead the quality of our stock:

"When we have developed the economy of the spaceship earth in which man will persist in equilibrium with his environment, the notion of the GNP will simply disintegrate. We will be less concerned with income-flow concepts and more with capital-stock concepts. Then technological changes that result in the maintenance of the total stock with less throughput (less production and consumption) will be a clear gain."

We must come to assess our standard of living not by calculating the value of all the air-conditioners we have made and sold but by the freshness of the air; not by the value of the antibiotics, hormones, feedstuff and broiler-houses and the cost of disposing of their wastes, all of which put so heavy a price on poultry production today but by the flavour and nutritional quality of the chickens themselves; and so on. In other words, accepted value must reflect real value, just as accepted cost must reflect real cost.

242. It is evident, however, that in a society such as ours, which to a large extent ignores the long-term consequences of its actions, there is a substantial differential between accepted cost and real cost. An industrial town, for example, whose citizens and factories pollute the air and water systems around it and who feed themselves from a number of increasingly intensive monocultures, not only has no way of measuring the satisfactions or otherwise afforded by its life-style, nor of equitably distributing the costs imposed by one polluter on another but no way either of assessing ecological costs, some of which will have to be paid by generation 1, others by generations 2, 3, 4, etc., and still others by people elsewhere, with whom in every other respect there might be no contact. Thus its agricultural practices might provide cheap and plentiful food for one generation and stimulate its agrochemical industries, but may so impoverish the soil and disrupt the agro-ecosystem, that the next generation will have to import more food, or failing this, to resort to still riskier expedients, thereby seriously compromising the food supply of the following generation; or the wastes of one generation might affect the health of the next, or its marine food supply, or so increase the mutation rate that future generations receive an unlooked for genetic burden. The extent to which we are simplifying ecosystems and destroying natural controls so that we are forced to provide technological substitutes, is a real cost against society and should be accounted as one. At the moment, however, we merely add up the value of mining operations, factories and so on, and that of cleaning up the mess whenever we attempt to do so and conclude that we have never been better off.

243. Since the full costs of any action anywhere in the world must be borne by someone, somewhere, sometime, it is important that our accounting system makes provision for this. We accept however, that ecological processes are so complex and can spread so far in space and time, that this will be exceptionally difficult. Nonetheless, given the truism that a satisfactory accounting system is one which supports and helps perpetuate the social system from which it derives, we must attempt to devise one which is fitted to a society based on a sober assessment of ecological reality and not on the anthropocentric pipe-dream that we can do what we will to all species, not excepting, it seems, future generations of our own. It is worth recalling Prof. Commoner's dictum that since economics is the science of the distribution of resources, all of which are derived from the ecosphere, it is foolish to perpetuate an economic system which destroys it. Ideally (and as befits the etymology of the two words), ecology and economics should not be in conflict: ecology should provide the approach, the framework for an understanding of the interrelationships of social and environmental systems; and economics should provide the means of quantifying those interrelationships in the light of such an understanding, so that decisions on alternative courses of action can be made without undue difficulty.

244. One of our long-term goals, therefore, must be to unite economics and ecology. The specific measures we have proposed are, we believe, necessary steps in this direction, albeit crude ones. A raw materials tax, an amortisation tax, a power tax, revised methods of calculating revealed preference, social time preference rate and so on, with legislative provision for their enforcement, a set of air, water and land quality standards enforceable at law and linked with a grant-incentive programme-these and other measures will have to be introduced at an early stage. Naturally, the full force of such measures could not be allowed to operate immediately: they would have to be carefully graded so as to be effective without causing unacceptable degrees of social disturbance. Plainly the social consequences will be great, and these will be considered in the section on social systems. The key to success is likely to be careful synchronisation, and this too will be considered in a separate section.

Stabilising the population

250. We have seen already that however slight the growth rate, a population cannot grow indefinitely. It follows, therefore, that at some point it must stabilise of its own volition, or else be cut down by some 'natural' mechanism -famine, epidemic, war, or whatever. Since no sane society would choose the latter course, it must choose to stabilise. To do this it must have some idea of its optimum size, since again it is unlikely that any sane society would choose to stabilise above (or indeed below) it.

251. The two main variables affected by population numbers, as opposed to per capita consumption, are the extent to which the emotional needs and social aspirations of the community can be met (i.e. the complex of satisfactions which has come to be known as the quality of life) and the community's ability to feed itself. In our opinion there is good social and epidemiological evidence that Britain and many other countries in both the developed and undeveloped worlds, are overcrowded. However, since this is impossible to prove and since there is immense variation in individual emotional requirements, it would be unwise in the present state of our knowledge to rely on quality of life judgements when calculating the optimum population. Fortunately, we know much more about feeding ourselves and assessment of the optimum becomes a realisable task if we base it on the simple ecological concept of the carrying capacity of the land.

252. Carrying capacity is usually defined as the amount of solar energy potentially available to man via food-plants in a given area. This definition must be accompanied by a caveat to the effect that if carrying capacity is considered in terms of energetics alone, a number of essential ecological and nutritional variables are in danger of exclusion. For example, it would be easy to assume that land used for a combination of purposes (mixed farming, woodland, etc.) would be better employed and could support a larger population if it were exclusively given over to the intensive production of food-plants high in calories (e.g. wheat). We know, however, that protein and the other nutrients are no less vital to us than calories, while there is evidence that we are more likely to get the proper nutritional components from meat if it comes to us from free-living animals. This requirement alone demands a certain diversity, both of species and habitat and we have seen too (in the appendix on ecosystems) that diversity is essential if fertility and stability are to be maintained over the long-term.

253. As we have seen Britain supports a population well in excess of the carrying capacity of the land owing to its ability to import large amounts of food, especially the cheap protein required to feed our poultry and pigs. As world population grows, and with it global agricultural demand, so will it be increasingly difficult for us to find countries with exportable surpluses, surpluses which in any case will become progressively more expensive. Unless we are willing (and able) to perpetuate an even greater inequality of distribution than exists today, Britain must be self-supporting. We have stated already our belief that on the evidence available it is unlikely that there will be any significant increase in yield per acre, so that there is no other course open to us but to reduce our numbers before we stabilise. Since we appear capable of supporting no more than half our present population, the figure we should aim for over the next 150 to 200 years can be no greater than 30 million, and in order to protect it from resource fluctuation probably less.

254. Not every country is in such a difficult position as Britain. A few will be able to stabilise at or relatively near present levels. But taking world population as a whole, and using per capita per diem protein intake as the key variable in assessing carrying capacity, we believe the optimum population for the world is unlikely to be above 3,500 million and is probably a good deal less. This figure rests on three assumptions: (a) that the average per capita per diem requirements of protein is 65 grams[6]; (b) that present agricultural production per capita can be sustained indefinitely; and (c) that there is absolutely equitable distribution, no country enjoying a greater per capita per diem protein intake than any other-which compared with today's conditions is absurdly utopian. Utopian though they may be, unless these assumptions are realised, we are faced either with the task of reducing world population still further until it is well below the optimum, or with condoning inequalities grosser and more unjust than those which we in the developed countries foster at present.

255. While they cannot grow indefinitely, populations can remain above the optimum-indeed above the sustainable maximum-for some time. The fact that the global population, including that of Britain, is above both levels, means only that our numbers are preventing the optimisation of other values. It means that while most people receive the bare minimum of calories necessary for survival, a large proportion are deprived of the nutrients (especially protein) essential for intellectual development. They are alive, but unable to realise their full potential-which is the grossest possible waste of human resources. An optimum population, therefore, may be defined as one that can be sustained indefinitely and at a level at which the other values of its members are optimised-and the fact that we are above this level does not justify despair but does justify a great sense of urgency in working towards our long-term goal of the optimum. For it is obvious that given the dynamic of population growth, even if all nations today determined to stabilise their populations, numbers would continue to rise for some considerable time. Indeed the Population Council has calculated (Annual Report 1970) that

"if the replacement-sized family is realised for the world as a whole by the end of this century-itself an unlikely event-the world's population will then be 60 percent larger or about 5.8 billion and due to the resulting age structure it will not stop growing until near the end of the next century, at which time it will be about 8.2 billion (8,200 million) or about 225 percent the present size. If replacement is achieved in the developed world by 2000 and in the developing world by 2040, then the world's population will stabilise at nearly 15.5 billion (15,500 million) about a century hence, or well over four times the present size."

Clearly we must go all out for the 'unlikely event' of achieving the replacement-sized family (an average of about two children per couple) throughout the world by the end of this century, if our children are not to suffer the catastrophes we seek to avoid.

256. Our task is to end population growth by lowering the rate of recruitment so that it equals the rate of loss. A few countries will then be able to stabilise, to maintain that ratio; most others, however, will have to slowly reduce their populations to a level at which it is sensible to stabilise. Stated baldly, the task seems impossible; but if we start now, and the exercise is spread over a sufficiently long period of time, then we believe that it is within our capabilities. The difficulties are enormous, but they are surmountable.

257. First, governments must acknowledge the problem and declare their commitment to ending population growth; this commitment should also include an end to immigration. Secondly, they must set up national population services with a fourfold brief:

1. to publicise as widely and vigorously as possible the relationship between population, food supply, quality of life, resource depletion, etc., and the great need for couples to have no more than two children. The finest talents in advertising should be recruited for this and the broad aim should be to inculcate a socially more responsible attitude to child-rearing. For example, the notion (derived largely from the popular women's magazines) that childless couples should be objects of pity rather than esteem should be sharply challenged; and of course there are many similar notions to be disputed.
2. to provide, at local and national levels, free contraception advice and information on other services such as abortion and sterilisation;
3. to provide a comprehensive domiciliary service, and to provide contraceptives free of charge, free sterilisation, and abortion on demand;
4. to commission, finance, and coordinate research not only on demographic techniques and contraceptive technology but also on the subtle cultural controls necessary for the harmonious maintenance of stability. We know so little about the dynamics of human populations that we cannot say whether the first three measures would be sufficient. It is self-evident that if couples still wanted families larger than the replacement-size no amount of free contraception would make any difference. However, because we know so little about population control, it would be difficult for us to devise any of the socio-economic restraints which on the face of it are likely to be more effective but which many people fear might be unduly repressive. For this reason, we would be wise to rely on the first three measures for the next 20 years or so. We then may find they are enough-but if they aren't, we must hope that intensive research during this period will be rewarded with a set of socio-economic restraints that are both effective and humane. These will then constitute the third stage and should also provide the tools for the fourth stage-that of persuading the public to have average family sizes of slightly less than replacement size, so that total population can be greatly reduced, If we achieve a decline rate of 0.5 percent per year, the same as Britain's rate of growth today, there should be no imbalance of population structure, as the dependency ratio would be exactly the same as that of contemporary Britain. Only the make-up of dependency would be different: instead of there being more children than old people, it would be the other way round. The time-scale for such an operation is long of course, and this will be suggested in the section on orchestration.

Creating a new social system

260. Possibly the most radical change we propose in the creation of a new social system is decentralisation. We do so not because we are sunk in nostalgia for a mythical little England of fetes, 'olde worlde' pubs, and perpetual conversations over garden fences but for four much more fundamental reasons:

261. (a) While there is good evidence that human societies can happily remain stable for long periods, there is no doubt that the long transitional stage that we and our children must go through will impose a heavy burden on our moral courage and will require great restraint. Legislation and the operations of police forces and the courts will be necessary to reinforce this restraint, but we believe that such external controls can never be so subtle nor so effective as internal controls. It would therefore be sensible to promote the social conditions in which public opinion and full public participation in decision-making become as far as possible the means whereby communities are ordered. The larger a community the less likely this can be: in a heterogeneous, centralised society such as ours, the restraints of the stable society if they were to be effective would appear as so much outside coercion; but in communities small enough for the general will to be worked out and expressed by individuals confident of themselves and their fellows as individuals, 'us and them' situations are less likely to occur-people having learned the limits of a stable society would be free to order their own lives within them as they wished, and would therefore accept the restraints of the stable society as necessary and desirable and not as some arbitrary restriction imposed by a remote and unsympathetic government.

262. (b) As agriculture depends more and more on integrated control and becomes more diversified, there will no longer be any scope for prairie-type crop-growing or factory-type livestock-rearing. Small farms run by teams with specialised knowledge of ecology, entomology, botany, etc., will then be the rule, and indeed individual small-holdings could become extremely productive suppliers of eggs, fruit and vegetables to neighbourhoods. Thus a much more diversified urban-rural mix will be not only possible but, because of the need to reduce the transportation costs of returning domestic sewage to the land, desirable. In industry, as with agriculture, it will be important to maintain a vigorous feedback between supply and demand in order to avoid waste, overproduction, or production of goods which the community does not really want, thereby eliminating the needless expense of time, energy and money in attempts to persuade it that it does. If an industry is an integral part of a community, it is much more likely to encourage product innovation because people clearly want qualitative improvements in a given field, rather than because expansion is necessary for that industry's survival or because there is otherwise insufficient work for its research and development section. Today, men, women and children are merely consumer markets and industries as they centralise become national rather than local and supranational rather than national, so that while entire communities may come to depend on them for the jobs they supply, they are in no sense integral parts of those communities. To a considerable extent the 'jobs or beauty' dichotomy has been made possible because of this deficiency. Yet plainly people want jobs and beauty, they should not, in a just and humane society, be forced to choose between the two and in a decentralised society of small communities where industries are small enough to be responsive to each community's needs, there will be no reason for them to do so.

263. (c) The small community is not only the organisational structure in which internal or systemic controls are most likely to operate effectively, but its dynamic is an essential source of stimulation and pleasure for the individual. Indeed it is probable that only in the small community can a man or woman be an individual. In today's large agglomerations he is merely an isolate-and it is significant that the decreasing autonomy of communities and local regions and the increasing centralisation of decision-making and authority in the cumbersome bureaucracies of the state, have been accompanied by the rise of self-conscious individualism, an individualism which feels threatened unless it is harped upon. Perhaps the two are mutually dependent. It is no less significant that this self-conscious individualism tends to be expressed in ways which cut off one individual from another-for example the accumulation of material goods like the motor-car, the television set, and so on, all of which tend to insulate one from another, rather than bring them together. In the small, self-regulating communities observed by anthropologists, there is, by contrast, no assertion of individualism, and certain individual aspirations may have to be repressed or modified for the benefit of the community-yet no man controls another and each has very great freedom of action, much greater than we have today. At the same time they enjoy the rewards of the small community, of knowing and being known, of an intensity of relationships with a few, rather than urban man's variety of innumerable, superficial relationships. Such rewards should provide ample compensation for the decreasing emphasis on consumption, which will be the inevitable result of the premium on durability which we have suggested should be established so that resources may be conserved and pollution minimised. This premium, while not diminishing our real standard of living, will greatly reduce the turnover of material goods. They will thus be more expensive, although once paid for they should not need replacing except after long periods. Their rapid accumulation will no longer be a realisable, or indeed socially acceptable, goal and alternative satisfactions will have to be sought. We believe a major potential source of these satisfactions to be the rich and variegated interchanges and responsibilities of community life, and that these are possible only when such communities are on a human scale.

264. (d) The fourth reason for decentralisation is that to deploy a population in small towns and villages is to reduce to the minimum its impact on the environment. This is because the actual urban superstructure required per inhabitant goes up radically as the size of the town increases beyond a certain point. For example, the per capita cost of high rise flats is much greater than that of ordinary houses; and the cost of roads and other transportation routes increases with the number of commuters carried. Similarly, the per capita expenditure on other facilities such as those for distributing food and removing wastes is much higher in cities than in small towns and villages. Thus, if everybody lived in villages the need for sewage treatment plants would be somewhat reduced, while in an entirely urban society they are essential, and the cost of treatment is high. Broadly speaking, it is only by decentralisation that we can increase self-sufficiency-and self-sufficiency is vital if we are to minimise the burden of social systems on the ecosystems that support them.

265. Although we believe that the small community should be the basic unit of society and that each community should be as self-sufficient and self-regulating as possible, we would like to stress that we are not proposing that they be inward-looking, self-obsessed or in any way closed to the rest of the world. Basic precepts of ecology, such as the interrelatedness of all things and the far-reaching effects of ecological processes and their disruption, should influence community decision-making, and therefore there must be an efficient and sensitive communications network between all communities. There must be procedures whereby community actions that affect regions can be discussed at regional level and regional actions with extra-regional effects can be discussed at global level. We have no hard and fast views on the size of the proposed communities, but for the moment we suggest neighbourhoods of 500, represented in communities of 5,000, in regions of 500,000, represented nationally, which in turn as today should be represented globally. We emphasise that our goal should be to create community feeling and global awareness, rather than that dangerous and sterile compromise which is nationalism.

266. In many of the developed countries where community feeling has been greatly eroded and has given way to heterogeneous congeries of strangers, the task of re-creating communities will be immensely difficult. In many of the undeveloped countries, however, although it will not be easy, because the process of community collapse and flight to the city has begun only recently, there is a real chance that it can be halted by such means as the abandonment of large-scale industrial projects for the development of intermediate technologies at village level; and the provision of agro-ecological training teams so that communities can be taught to manage the land together, rather than encourage farmers to turn to expensive and dangerous procedures like the heavy use of pesticides and fertilisers, which tend to reduce the number of people needed on the land.

267. At home, industry will play a leading role in the programme to decentralise our economy and society. The discussion of taxes, antidisamenity legislation and enforceable targets for air, land and water quality in the section on stock economics, might lead some to believe that we are willing to bring about the collapse of industry, widespread unemployment, and the loss of our export markets. It is therefore worth emphasising that we wish strongly to avoid all three and we do not see that they are necessary or inevitable consequences of our proposals. It is obvious that for as long as we depend on imports for a significant proportion of our food, so we must export. And since we are likely to require food-imports for the next 150 years, we are left with the question of whether it is possible to develop community industries, dedicated to the principles of maximal use/recycling of materials and durability of goods, and at the same time to earn an adequate revenue from exports.

268. We believe that the answer is yes, if the change-over is conducted in two stages. The first stage is to alter the direction of growth so that it becomes more compatible with the aims of a stable society. We have already mentioned that the recycling industry must be encouraged to expand, and it is obvious that, willy-nilly, it will do so, as over the years taxes and quality targets become more stringent. To give a clearer idea of how the direction can be altered we will consider briefly the question of transport.

269. There are more than 12 million cars in Britain today, and according to the Automobile Association this figure will rise to 21 million by 1981. About half the households in Britain own a car today and presumably the car population is expected to rise in response to a rise in this proportion, though presumably too, more households will own more than one car. At all events we have sufficient experience of traffic congestion in our towns and cities and the rape of countryside and community by ring-roads and motorways to realise that the motor-car is by no means the best way of democratising mobility. Indeed, if every household had a car, we would be faced with the choice of leaving towns and country worth driving to and thereby imposing immobility on the motorist, or of providing him with the vast expanses of concrete which are becoming increasingly necessary to avoid congestion at the expense of the areas they sterilise and blight.

270. No-one can contemplate with equanimity the doubling of roads within this decade necessary to maintain the status quo, and we must therefore seek sensible transportation alternatives. It is clear that broadly-speaking the only alternative is public transport-a mix of rapid mass-transit by road and rail. Rail especially should never have been allowed to run down to the extent that it has. The power requirements for transporting freight by road are five to six times greater than by rail and the pollution is correspondingly higher. The energy outlay for the cement and steel required to build a motorway is three to four times greater than that required to build a railway and the land area necessary for the former is estimated to be four times more than for the latter. Public transport whether by road or rail is much more efficient in terms of per capita use of materials and energy than any private alternative. It can also be as flexible, provided it is encouraged at the expense of private transport.

271. This is the key to the provision of a sound transport system. First the vicious spiral of congestion slowing buses, losing passengers, raising fares, losing more passengers, using more cars, creating more congestion, etc., must be broken. A commitment to build no more roads and to use the capital released to subsidise public transport would be an excellent way of doing this. The men who would normally live by road building could be diverted to clearing derelict land and restoring railways and canals as part of a general programme of renewal. From there, the progressive imposition of restrictions on private transport and the stimulation of public transport so that it could provide a fast, efficient and flexible alternative would be a matter of course. Within the motor industry, the decline in production of conventional private vehicles would be compensated for by the increased production of alternative mass-transit systems. There would also be a switch of capital and manpower to the redevelopment of railway systems. In the long term, however, decentralisation will bring a diminished demand for mobility itself. As Stephen Boyden has pointed out[7], people use their cars for four main reasons: to go to work, to go to the countryside, to visit friends and relations, and to show off. In the stable society, however, each community will provide its own jobs, there will be countryside around it, most friends and relations will be within it, and there will be much more reliable and satisfying ways of showing off.

272. This brings us to the second stage of the change-over, in which industry turns to the invention, production, and installation of technologies that are materials and energy conservative, that are flexible, non-polluting and durable, employment-intensive and favouring craftsmanship. Progress as we conceive of it today consists in increasing an already arbitrarily high ratio of capital to job availability; but if instead this ratio were to be reduced, then our manpower requirement would go up, while at the same time the pollution which is the inevitable by-product of capital growth would be cut down. The switch in emphasis from quantity to quality will not only stimulate demand for manpower, it will also stabilise it and give much greater satisfaction to the men themselves. Instead of men being used as insensate units to produce increasing quantities of components, they should be trained and given the opportunity to improve the quality of their work. The keynotes of the manufacturing sector should come to be durability and craftsmanship-and such a premium on quality should assure us an export revenue large enough for us to continue buying food from abroad, while providing our manpower with more enjoyable occupations. In the case of industries like the aircraft industry, which would naturally have a greatly reduced role in the stable society, their engineering expertise could be turned to the development of such things as total energy systems-designed to provide the requirements of a decentralised society with the minimum of environmental disruption.

273. Industry can completely fulfil its new role only in close harmony with particular communities, so that the unreal distinction between men as employees and men as neighbours can be abandoned and jobs then given on the basis that work must be provided by the community for the sake of that community's stability and not because one group wishes to profit from another group's labour or capital as the case may be. As industry decentralises so will the rest of society. The creation of communities will come from the combination of industrial change and a conscious drive to re-structure society.

274. The principal components of this drive are likely to be the redistribution of government and the gradual inculcation of a sense of community and the other values of a stable society. Over a stated period of time, local government should be strengthened and as many functions as possible of central government should be transferred to it. The redistribution of government should proceed on the principle that issues which affect only neighbourhoods should be decided by the neighbourhood alone, those which affect only communities by the community alone, those which affect only regions by the region alone, and so on. As regions, communities and neighbourhoods come increasingly to run their own affairs, so the development of a sense of community will proceed more easily, though we do not pretend that it will be without its problems.

275. Those regions which still have or are close to having a good urban-rural mix will be able to effect a relatively smooth transfer but highly urbanised areas like London, the Lancashire conurbation and South Wales, will find it much more difficult to re-create communities. Nevertheless, even in London the structural remains of past communities (like the villages of Putney, High-gate, Hackney, Islington, etc.) will provide the physical nuclei of future communities-the means of orienting themselves so that they can cut themselves away from those deserts of commerce and packaged pleasure (of which the most prominent example is the Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly complex) on which so much of London's life is currently focused.

276. It is self-evident that no amount of legislative, administrative or industrial change will create stable communities if the individuals who are meant to comprise them are not fitted for them. As soon as the best means of inculcating the values of the stable society have been agreed upon, they should be incorporated into our educational systems. Indeed, it may not be until the generation of 40-50 year olds have been educated in these values (so that as far as possible everybody up to the age of 50 understands them) that stable communities will achieve sufficient acceptance for them to be permanently useful.

Orchestration

280. A cardinal assumption of this strategy is that it will not succeed without the most careful synchronisation and integration. We cannot say of a particular section of these proposals that it alone is acceptable, and therefore we will go ahead with it immediately but consider the rest later on! This section, therefore, is devoted to a schematic, annotated outline of how change might be orchestrated. It is necessarily unsophisticated and oversimplified but we hope it will give some idea of how change in one quarter will aid change in the others.

281. Variables included in schematic outline:

1. establishment of national population service
2. introduction of raw materials, amortisation and power taxes; antidisamenity legislation; air, land and water quality targets; recycling grants; revised social accounting systems
3. developed countries end commitment to persistent pesticides and subsidise similar move by undeveloped countries
4. end of subsidies on inorganic fertilisers
5. grants for use of organics and introduction of diversity
6. emergency food programme for undeveloped countries
7. progressive substitution of non-persistent for persistent pesticides
8. integrated control research programme
9. integrated control training programme
10. substitution of integrated control for chemical control
11. progressive introduction of diversified farming practices
12. end of road building
13. clearance of derelict land and beginning of renewal programme
14. restrictions on private transport and subsidies for public transport
15. development of rapid mass-transit
16. research into materials substitution
17. development of alternative technologies
18. decentralisation of industry: part one (redirection)
19. decentralisation of industry: part two (development of community types)
20. redistribution of government
21. education research
22. teacher training
23. education
24. experimental community
25. domestic sewage to land
26. target date for basic establishment of network of self-sufficient, self-regulating communities.

282. Notes:

1. should be operating fully by 1980; review in 1995-if replacement-size families improbable by 2000, bring in socio-economic restraints; UK population should begin to slowly decline from 2015-2020 onwards; world population from 2100; little significant feedback expected in UK until about 2030.
2. progressive; ironing out run to eliminate inconsistencies up to 1980; thereafter revise and tighten every five years; increasingly significant feedback from 1980 onwards, stimulating materials-energy conservation, employment-intensive industry, decentralisation and progress in direction of (p),(q),(r) and (s).
3. limited substitution of integrated control can begin quite soon, but large-scale substitution will depend on (h) integrated control research programme; naturally (h), (i) and (j) will run in parallel and are therefore represented as one; (g) will also continue for some time.
4. diversified farming practices (k) and integrated control (j) will link up and form an agriculture best-suited for small, reasonably self-sufficient communities, so stimulating their development: significant feedback, therefore, will occur from this point.
5. likely to be necessary at least until 2100.
6. labour released from road building can go to (m) clearance of derelict land, which should be completed by 1985; thereafter there may be other renewal programmes such as canal restoration, while agriculture will increasingly require more manpower.
7. development of alternative technologies (q) and redirecting of industry (r) will proceed in harness; progressively significant feedback between (b) and (t).
8. target date for maximum redistribution of government 2030 to coincide with 45 years operation of (w); see note (9).
9. five years only allowed for preliminary organisation and research, since it can proceed in harness with teacher training (v) and also with the education programme itself (w).
10. an experimental community of 500 could be set up to clarify problems; feedback to (u).
11. as soon as communities are small enough, domestic sewage can be returned to the land; there should be the firm beginnings of a good urban-rural mix by then.
12. by this time there should be sufficient diversity of agriculture, decentralisation of industry and redistribution of government, together with a large proportion of people whose education is designed for life in the stable society, for the establishment of self-sufficient, self-regulating communities to be well-advanced. At this point taxation, grants, incentives, etc, could be taken over by the communities themselves. A further generation is allowed until target date, however.

References