One dark evening a man was on his hands and knees under a street light looking through the grass. A pedestrian asked what he was looking for. "The keys to my car." replied the man.

Having some time and feeling helpful, the pedestrian joined the man in his search. After a while, with no success, the pedestrian asked: "Where were you when you lost your keys?"

"Over there by my car." the man jestured. The pedestrian was puzzled. "Why are you looking for them here?" The man without keys explained: "The light's better!"

This story illustrates why so many interest groups seek to solve societies problems by promoting Growth. People are familiar with the idea of economic growth. And there is no question that the light of the media and the power brokers shines more brightly in that area.

Herman Daly put it well: "The growth ideology is extremely attractive politically because it offers a solution to poverty without requiring the moral disciplines of sharing and population control."

The following examples show how the measure of growth is mistaken and may be corrected by assessing for sustainability.

One example is our once great Cod fishery (Canadian East Coast). It was a model of economic success. Each year we invested more money in the fishery, we dragged more netting through the water, caught more fish and made more money. Year after year after year.

This is the model of success, is it not? More money changing hands year after year. How does such a clear success turn so quickly to disaster? The local fishermen knew. Fish were being taken faster than their rate of renewal.

The other example shows an even greater contradiction between the two values, growth and sustainability. It has to do with the practice of obsolescence. Many decades ago it appeared that technical advances in productivity would satiate human need. This presented serious problems for a system dedicated to perpetual expansion. One solution was to develop advertising and create additional desire. The other was to make things to wear out, break, go out of style or in some other way pass from use as quickly as possible. Packaging for example becomes obsolete as soon as a product arrives at its final destination.

Obsolescence has proved massively successful by conventional economic measure. It has also multiplied the amount of garbage we produce many fold. Problems with land fill sights are familiar to people almost everywhere. The mess, the noise, the cost and the ultimate threat of contaminated ground water are in no small part by-products of planned obsolescence.

Sustainability says that eliminating obsolescence would save valuable resources and energy. People wouldn't have to keep buying replacements and many of the problems of land-fill would be avoided. These things would clearly make society better off. The Growth imperative on the other hand says we need to achieve still greater levels of production or we will all be in trouble. Eliminating obsolescence would be an economic disaster. This is a smoke screen perpetrated by what one of the fathers of modern economice, John Maynard Keynes called "false analogies from an irrelevant accountancy."

Upon which value should we base decisions: growth or sustainability?

People keep throwing out governments because they want change. But they are only shown options under the same old street light. The examples here and many more show that something is mistaken in the established order. Sustainability is the bottom line in human and planetary well-being. If the people already aware of this can clarify the difference to the general public there may yet be the opportunity for countless new generations of people to enjoy a place under the Sun.

The guidelines below can be used to asses the sustainability of these and other examples.

Sustainable activities:

• 1 - use materials in continuous cycles.
• 2 - use continuously reliable sources of energy.
• 3 - come mainly from the qualities of being human (i.e. creativity, communication, movement, appreciation, and spiritual and intellectual development).

Non sustainable activities:

• 4 - require continual inputs of non-renewable resources.
• 5 - use renewable resources faster than their rate of renewal.
• 6 - cause cumulative degradation of the environment.
• 7 - require resources in quantities that could never be available for people everywhere.
• 8 - lead to the extinction of other life forms.

For more information about this system of values and the campaign to replace growth with sustainability as the goal of society, contact:

The Sustainability Project
P.O. Box 374
Merrickville, Ontario
K0G 1N0

Tel: (613) 269-3500
Fax: (613) 269-4693

e-mail: sustain@web.apc.org

'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed it's the only thing that ever has.'
-- Margaret Mead