Vivian Bi

ESPM 161 | Merchant

Not only is growth a crucial part of humanitys biological evolution, our need for change
can potentially allow us to reassess the faults in the linear growth our society relies on and shift
towards a more ecological mindset of sustainable growth. Growth represents the positive
change in a constantly changing environment, including both quantitative and qualitative
growth. Since dominant industrial and political powers tend to measure change through
quantitative numbers of statistics and GDP, it is easy to forget about other dimensions of
qualitative change that bind us with nature. By examining the quantitative changes we more
commonly associate with growth, it becomes clear what kind of growth humanity needs to
develop towards.
Rather than saying humanity needs physical growth, it is more suitable to observe how
growth plays an integral role in the sustainability of life itself. We age and grow old, trees have
rings that measure their life, and cells die and multiply to complete the circle of life. Since our
socially constructed paradigm establishes linear growth as the normative, it is easy to forget
how biological growth is actually cyclic, decomposed matter constantly being recycled into new
life forms. This contradicts with how society has come to understand growth in a perspective of
capital input and output, stemming from the monetary value of economic activity.
Economic growth plays an interesting role in that it seems imperative to the operation
of our socially constructed sense of humanity yet it challenges the cyclic nature of biological
growth. Joel Kovel explains in his article Global Capitalism and the End of Nature how despite
the boom of ecological awareness in the 1970s, there failed to be an expected dip in industrial
and population growth. This seems to show the lack of correlation between these two systems
of growth, striking up a contradiction in how society defines natural resources as capital for
economic growth when they in fact exist on different levels of operation. Kovel argues that at
the social level what grows is the imaginary and purely human entity of money- not money in
itself, but money in motion: capital. (Kovel, 106) His idea of economic growth as nothing but an
abstraction means it can completely disappear with the deconstruction of western capitalist
ideology and therefore not necessary to humanitys development.
Population is a third kind of growth we can observe that seems to be necessary to the
survival of a species but is also limited to the threshold of our planets carrying capacity. Coined
as one of the major causes of the ecological crisis, population control is often labeled as a key
factor in bringing positive ecological change. Barry Commoner however, argues for the inverse
of poverty as the cause and overpopulation as an effect of that. He believes that eliminating
poverty will naturally lower birth and death rates, stating that force, simply stated, is the
quality of life: a high standard of living; a sense of well-being; security in the future.
(Commoner, 126) Although Commoner makes valid points, the methods we tackle poverty with
include economic empowerment, a solution still based on linear growth. Higher standards of
living often times also mean a larger ecological footprint, cancelling out the benefits of a smaller
population size. While population growth seems to be vital to our western ideology of bigger is
better, humanitys growth needs to encompass personal qualitative development in areas such
as education and conservation to grow in sync with our ecological world.
The reductionist foundation in societys definition of growth creates a contradiction
with the cyclic system of interconnected relationships natures growth revolves around. Humans
need growth now more than ever to co-exist with nature and reverse the ecological crisis.

Vivian Bi
ESPM 161 | Merchant
Works Cited