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From the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, this is The

0:07

Steady Stater, a podcast dedicated to discussing limits

0:08

to growth and the steady state

0:12

economy.

0:17

Welcome to the

0:17

show, I am your host, Brian

0:19

Czech and speaking for all of us

0:19

at CASSE, our board, staff,

0:24

interns, chapter directors, and

0:24

volunteer network. Happy New

0:28

Year! Now I don't need to tell

0:28

you Steady Staters that 2021 was

0:33

another year of destructive

0:33

ecological overshoot. Thanks to

0:38

the bloating GDP, which globally

0:38

has pushed back into the $90

0:42

trillion territory, things have

0:42

never looked less sustainable. I

0:47

also don't need to tell you that

0:47

changing that trajectory,

0:51

putting us on a path toward a

0:51

steady state economy -- degrowth

0:54

toward a steady state economy --

0:54

is a task far beyond the

0:58

capability of any one

0:58

individual. But I wanted to take

1:02

a few minutes this week to

1:02

eulogize a few individuals with

1:06

outsized contributions. These

1:06

are men and women that we lost

1:11

in 2021, who spent much of their

1:11

lives working for conservation,

1:15

sustainability, and a steady

1:15

state economy. Now, of course,

1:19

given the venue -- I mean, The

1:19

Steady Stater podcast --these

1:24

are individuals with some

1:24

connection to CASSE. In some

1:27

cases, the CASSE connection

1:27

provides for the only personal

1:31

observation we have. So I hope

1:31

it's in good taste mentioned

1:34

that. The last two to leave us

1:34

in 2021 were, you probably

1:39

heard, Thomas Lovejoy and E. O. Wilson,

1:39

who died on Christmas Day and

1:44

the following day respectively.

1:44

But I think it's appropriate to

1:48

start at the beginning moving

1:48

along with the sands of time. So

1:52

then, David Schindler died on

1:52

the fourth day of March at the

1:56

age of 80. Dave was an American

1:56

Canadian limnologist par

2:01

excellence. He was Professor of

2:01

Ecology at the University of

2:06

Alberta, and rose to prominence

2:06

for his extremely innovative,

2:10

long-running experiments on

2:10

entire lakes at the famous and

2:14

aptly named Experimental Lakes

2:14

Area of Ontario. Dave earned

2:19

over 100 awards and honors,

2:19

culminating perhaps in the 2016

2:24

Rachel Carson Award from the

2:24

Society of Environmental

2:28

Toxicology and Chemistry, which

2:28

a lot of us know as SETAC. In

2:32

his 2008 book The Algal Bowl -

2:32

Overfertilization of the World's

2:38

Freshwaters and Estuaries,

2:38

Schindler warned that [quote]

2:42

"the fish killing blooms that

2:42

devastated the Great Lakes in

2:46

the 1960s and 1970s. Haven't

2:46

gone away. They've moved west

2:52

into an arid world in which

2:52

people, industry, and

2:55

agriculture are increasingly

2:55

taxing the quality of what

2:59

little freshwater there is to be

2:59

had here. This isn't just a

3:02

prairie problem. Global

3:02

expansion of deadzones caused by

3:06

algal blooms is rising rapidly."

3:06

I can see why Dave won that

3:11

Rachel Carson Award -- he didn't

3:11

just write, didn't just report

3:14

his findings and leave it at

3:14

that. He was an active and

3:17

intentional agent of change. And

3:17

like Carson, he was that rare

3:22

ecological scientist who ended

3:22

up making a big difference in

3:26

the regulatory framework of the

3:26

American and Canadian

3:29

environmental agencies. I met

3:29

him at a society for

3:33

conservation biology conference

3:33

in 2010. That was in his

3:37

backyard and Edmonton, Alberta.

3:37

And there was a group of us --

3:41

the working group for ecological

3:41

economics and sustainability

3:44

science -- that was trying to

3:44

get SCB to take a position on

3:48

economic growth. We were using

3:48

the CASSE position as a

3:52

template. Dave read it and was

3:52

immediately all over it. He

3:56

loved it. In fact, he got all

3:56

charged up about it. He emanated

4:00

this great store of energy and

4:00

passion that allowed him, maybe

4:04

even pushed him, to accomplish

4:04

so much in his illustrious

4:08

career. Valerius Geist left us on July

4:11

6, at the age of 83. Val was

4:16

known as a Canadian biologist

4:16

and professor at the University

4:20

of Calgary. Val was actually

4:20

born in the Ukrainian Republic

4:24

-- as it was at the time,

4:24

Ukrainian republic of the USSR

4:28

-- and grew up primarily in

4:28

Austria and Germany. Quickly

4:33

though, as a young, adventurous

4:33

scholar, he took to the wilds of

4:36

British Columbia, then Alberta,

4:36

eventually settling into

4:40

retirement on Vancouver Island.

4:40

For decades, Val was a world

4:44

authority on the biology,

4:44

behavior, and social dynamics of

4:48

North American and really

4:48

circumboreal large mammals, such

4:52

as elk, moose, bison... but,

4:52

most of all, bighorn sheep and

4:57

wolves. One time I was in

4:57

Limerick, Ireland for a

5:01

conference of the international

5:01

fund for animal welfare, and I

5:05

had the great good luck of

5:05

joining Val over dinner in a

5:08

dining hall where, lo and

5:08

behold, an ancient pair of Irish

5:12

elk antlers were hung, spanning

5:12

much of a wall, in fact. Now if

5:17

you don't know the Irish Elk,

5:17

Google it up now -- so you will

5:21

have an idea of the majesty

5:21

we're talking about here. In

5:24

fact, just Google up "Irish elk

5:24

antlers" and go straight to the

5:28

photos. While there in Limerick,

5:28

Val absolutely regaled me with

5:33

everything you possibly want to

5:33

know about Irish elk evolution,

5:37

social behavior, physiology,

5:37

population, dynamics, and their

5:42

eventual extinction.

5:42

Furthermore, he took me on a

5:45

tour of the natural history of

5:45

this particular specimen based

5:50

on the shapes, and textures, and

5:50

battle scars on these antlers

5:54

from millennia past -- kinda

5:54

like a great forester can tell

5:58

you about the life of a tree

5:58

from its rings. Here's the thing

6:01

I remember the most -- the

6:01

proverbial, everything I could

6:05

possibly want to know just kept

6:05

expanding because of the

6:09

intelligence, the intrigue, and

6:09

the drama Val applied and

6:13

evoked. Yeah, Val was like a

6:13

walking encyclopedia of natural

6:17

history with an insatiable

6:17

intellectual appetite that

6:21

eventually brought him to a

6:21

highly respected level of

6:24

expertise on Neanderthal people

6:24

and their behavior. Well, like

6:29

Dave Schindler, Val received

6:29

numerous honors often stemming

6:32

from his 20-some books. Val was

6:32

old-school too, add a unique

6:36

nexus of academia and wildlife

6:36

adventure. He was the only North

6:41

American hunter to be honored

6:41

with professional membership in

6:44

the Boone and Crockett Club, and

6:44

its European counterparts, the

6:48

International Council for Game

6:48

and Wildlife Conservation. You

6:52

know, I can't help but to see

6:52

Val up there right now, chasing

6:56

that elusive Irish elk through

6:56

some Pleistocene step.

7:01

Now, we can't cheat death,

7:01

death, taxes are limits to

7:05

growth. But I'm going to cheat

7:05

here just once by bringing in

7:09

another July death, but this one

7:09

from 2020 -- because we didn't

7:13

have a memorial episode last

7:13

year. So on July 16 of 2020, the

7:19

iconoclast economist Mason

7:19

Gaffney died. Mason was one of

7:24

the leading Georgists, an

7:24

adherent to Henry George's 1862

7:28

masterpiece Progress and

7:28

Poverty. Mason's own book from

7:32

2007, The corruption of

7:32

Economics, is the most thorough

7:37

stripping of an emperor's

7:37

clothes you will ever read.

7:40

Gaffney was an economist and a

7:40

historian, and he documented

7:44

blow by blow how the bellwether

7:44

Economics departments of the

7:48

USA, Columbia, Stanford, Johns

7:48

Hopkins, and eventually the

7:53

University of Chicago were built

7:53

to fight against the Georgist

7:57

paradigm, thus the corruption of

7:57

economics -- that is the

8:02

American Neoclassical school of

8:02

economics as it developed in the

8:06

early decades of the 20th

8:06

century. Few students today are

8:10

aware that what Karl Marx was to

8:10

the capitalist in Europe, Henry

8:14

George was to the landlord in

8:14

the USA, and a few other parts

8:19

of the world as well. George

8:19

would have financed the polity

8:22

with a single tax on land, and

8:22

for the full rent, essentially

8:27

socializing land. And this at

8:27

the zenith of land baron power

8:32

among the likes of Rockefeller,

8:32

Carnegie Mellon, and Morgan --

8:36

the man had guts, and so the

8:36

Gaffney, a World War II

8:40

volunteer. Of all the labeled

8:40

schools of economic thought out

8:45

there aside from ecological

8:45

economics, the Georgists are

8:48

perhaps most allied with we

8:48

steady staters. It's no

8:52

coincidence that Gaffney was --

8:52

and so many other Georgists are

8:56

-- CASSE signatories. We all

8:56

recognize the profound and

9:01

distinctive importance of land

9:01

as a factor of production, kind

9:06

of in the vein of the

9:06

18th-century physiocrats. One

9:09

thing I especially appreciated

9:09

about Mason Gaffney is that

9:13

until I read The Corruption of

9:13

Economics, I'd never really

9:17

found any political explanation

9:17

for how the landless production

9:22

function came about -- you know,

9:22

that ecologically ignorant

9:25

equation at the center of

9:25

neoclassical growth theory that

9:29

tells us production is a

9:29

function of capital and labor,

9:33

with no acknowledgement

9:33

whatsoever of land. While

9:38

ecological economics was fine at

9:38

describing the shortcomings of

9:42

the production function, it was

9:42

the investigatory Georgist,

9:46

Mason Gaffney, that figured out

9:46

why. You might say he brought us

9:51

all the way to the neoclassical

9:51

Wizard of Oz and pulled back the

9:55

curtain. Well another July death -- back

9:57

to 2021 now, happened on the

10:02

29th, when steady staters are

10:02

saddened to hear of the passing

10:06

of Richard Lamm at the age of

10:06

85. Dick was a three-term

10:10

governor of Colorado who, if you

10:10

can believe it, won that office

10:14

in 1974 on a platform largely of

10:14

limiting growth. We spoke to

10:20

Dick on The Steady Stater in

10:20

October of 2020 and asked him,

10:24

how the heck did he pull that

10:24

off?

10:28

I did talk about

10:28

growth. I had led the fight

10:32

against the Olympics. Colorado

10:32

had bid to host the Olympics and

10:37

they won. And I went against

10:37

that, and led a statewide, an

10:41

initiative that defeated the

10:41

Olympics. And so a lot of that

10:45

was around grow -- Colorado was

10:45

growing too fast. And so the

10:50

growth issue was part of my

10:50

political platform. I was

10:54

fighting in the legislature for

10:54

land-use planning. But the

10:58

biggest thing where I got my

10:58

constituency is I led the battle

11:03

against the 1976 Olympics. In

11:03

the 1972, Colorado elections, we

11:10

defeated the Olympics. And

11:10

somebody at the victory party

11:15

held me up to the top of the sea

11:15

leader and said, "Ladies and

11:18

gentlemen, the next Governor of

11:18

Colorado."

11:22

Dick also

11:22

co-founded and presided over the

11:25

nonprofit Zero Population

11:25

Growth, now known as Population

11:29

Connection. He was always a

11:29

friend of CASSE and helped us

11:33

with advice and networking.

11:33

Let's not forget to that Dick

11:36

was nearly nominated as the

11:36

Reform Party's presidential

11:40

candidate in the 1996 election.

11:49

The Grim Reaper seemed to go on

11:49

hiatus through the late summer

11:53

and fall but came back with a

11:53

vengeance in late December.

11:57

Thomas Lovejoy left us right on

11:57

Christmas day. You know, I doubt

12:01

there's ever been a fellow whose

12:01

countenance better matched his

12:05

surname. I didn't know him well,

12:05

but he seemed to love the art of

12:09

joy. Google him up Thomas

12:09

Lovejoy, and you can see it in

12:13

his smile. The joy just

12:13

emanates. And that's something

12:17

for a fellow so thoroughly

12:17

knowledgeable about

12:20

biodiversity, and therefore the

12:20

plate of biodiversity. Among

12:24

other things, Tom was the

12:24

president of the Amazon

12:28

Biodiversity Center, a senior

12:28

fellow at the United Nations

12:31

Foundation, and a professor at

12:31

George Mason University. He was

12:36

the World Bank's chief

12:36

biodiversity advisor, and the

12:39

lead environmental specialists

12:39

for Latin America and the

12:42

Caribbean. He was president of

12:42

the prestigious Heine Center. He

12:47

gets credit for coining the very

12:47

term "biological diversity" back

12:51

in 1980. We could go on and on

12:51

about his titles, achievements

12:55

and awards, but I have it from

12:55

Herman Daly that Lovejoy was

12:59

influential at the World Bank in

12:59

helping protect the Amazon from

13:03

what could have been worse

13:03

despoiling. I know too that love

13:07

joy was quite interested in

13:07

limits to growth and the steady

13:10

state economy. Although we never

13:10

quite got the chance to follow

13:14

up on our encounter at a

13:14

conference in D.C.. It's

13:18

definitely one of my bigger

13:18

regrets with regard to steady

13:21

state networking. And for that

13:21

matter, networking period, I

13:26

feel I missed out on knowing not

13:26

only an effective

13:29

conservationist, but a wonderful

13:29

joy loving human.

13:34

One fellow I did get to know

13:34

fairly well though was E. O.

13:38

Wilson. He left us the very day

13:38

after Tom on December 26th, at

13:43

the age of 92. Known as the

13:43

modern day Darwin, Ed Wilson was

13:48

a biologist, naturalist,

13:48

evolutionary ecologist, and, of

13:53

course, the world's foremost

13:53

authority on that massive slice

13:57

of life on Earth called ants. He

13:57

was a generational talent,

14:03

coming up with big ideas on big

14:03

issues on a regular basis. He

14:07

was the author of such books as

14:07

On Human Nature, The Social

14:12

Conquest of Earth, Consilience,

14:12

Letters to a Young Scientist,

14:17

Our Planet's

14:17

Fight For Life. Ed received more

14:22

than 150 awards and medals and

14:22

was an honorary member of more

14:26

than 30 prestigious

14:26

organizations, academies, and

14:29

institutions. Several animal

14:29

species have been scientifically

14:33

named in his honor, mostly ant

14:33

species, of course, as well as

14:37

one bird and one bat. Well, I

14:37

got to know Ed while working for

14:41

the U.S. Fish and Wildlife

14:41

Service. I was the conservation

14:45

biologist for the National

14:45

Wildlife Refuge System. And I

14:48

caught wind of the fact that Ed

14:48

was hoping to get a national

14:52

park established in the

14:52

Mobile-Tensaw Delta. This

14:55

massive meandering Delta along

14:55

the Gulf of Mexico and Alabama

15:00

takes in the waters of the

15:00

Mobile and Tensaw rivers and

15:04

turns them into a flowing

15:04

labyrinth of shape shifting

15:07

mazes, as complex ecologically,

15:07

as it is hydrologically. I set

15:13

about to persuade Ed that, in

15:13

fact, the Delta would be more

15:17

fitting as a national wildlife

15:17

refuge than a national park. And

15:21

I'd do my best to promote it as

15:21

the potential crown jewel of

15:25

biodiversity in the national

15:25

wildlife refuge system. There

15:29

were excellent reasons for

15:29

taking this route, and Ed was

15:32

interested. So I went to meet

15:32

him at his Harvard laboratory,

15:36

met him again in Washington

15:36

D.C., and ended up spending

15:39

several spectacular days in the

15:39

field with him that summer in

15:43

the Delta. Ed took quickly to

15:43

the idea of a Mobile-Tensaw

15:47

Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

15:47

Our meetings and escapades also

15:52

led to some serious discussion

15:52

of a topic he'd largely avoided

15:56

till then, namely the conflict

15:56

between economic growth and

16:00

biodiversity conservation. I

16:00

discovered that Ed had been --

16:04

we might say -- somewhat

16:04

victimized by the win-win

16:07

rhetoric of the conservation

16:07

bigs. You know, The Nature

16:11

Conservancy, World Wildlife

16:11

Fund, National Wildlife

16:14

Federation, and really, almost

16:14

all of big green. You know, that

16:18

win-win rhetoric that there is

16:18

no conflict between growing the

16:22

economy and protecting the

16:22

environment. But to Ed's credit,

16:27

once he was presented with the

16:27

concepts of ecological

16:30

macroeconomics, the fundamental

16:30

conflict between economic growth

16:34

and biodiversity conservation

16:34

resonated quickly and strongly

16:38

with him, and he didn't worry

16:38

about offending any of the

16:42

win-win rhetoricians from big

16:42

green. He signed the CASSE

16:45

position on economic growth

16:45

right away, and that became a

16:49

turning point in the dialogue on

16:49

growth among the conservation

16:53

community. He went on to say

16:53

that destroying rainforest for

16:58

economic gain is like burning a

16:58

Renaissance painting to cook a

17:02

meal. Ed also served as the

17:02

figurehead for the Half-Earth

17:06

Project. Few projects would

17:06

square as neatly, as precisely

17:11

with the CASSE mission. What I

17:11

mean by precisely is -- well

17:16

have a look at the CASSE logo

17:16

sometime, you'll know precisely

17:19

what I mean by "precisely." I'd like to end this collective

17:23

memoriam by recalling one of my

17:27

closest friends in life. Lisa

17:27

Vandemark. She actually left us

17:32

nearly a year ago on January 17,

17:32

way too young, in her case at

17:37

61. She's not a household name

17:37

and ecological economics or

17:41

sustainability science, but she

17:41

would have been if she'd wanted

17:45

to. She had the brains in spades

17:45

and she could shift the paradigm

17:50

by personality alone. I think of

17:50

her a lot, but I guess I'm

17:54

remembering her now especially

17:54

because she was at my side the

17:58

first time I met Ed Wilson, back

17:58

in 2000 at a conference in D.C..

18:03

I was new to Fish and Wildlife

18:03

headquarters, new to the

18:06

beltway, in fact, and she was a

18:06

scientist with the National

18:10

Research Council. But soon

18:10

after, she took a circuitous

18:14

path with research in Thailand,

18:14

leading very circuitously to a

18:19

second career back in the states

18:19

in social psychology. A real

18:24

Renaissance woman she was. Lisa

18:24

Vandemark, a couple days before

18:29

she died of cancer, I told her

18:29

I'd be looking up in the clouds

18:33

for -- by God she said she'd

18:33

wave.

18:52

Well, folks, that's about wraps

18:52

us up. We've been memorializing

18:56

some of the best the world had

18:56

to offer. I am sorry if we

19:00

overlooked one of your favorite

19:00

steady staters, much less the

19:04

loved one. You know, these

19:04

remarkable, energetic,

19:08

brilliant, charismatic

19:08

individuals we talked about

19:12

today and ones we didn't too,

19:12

well, it just goes to show what

19:16

we all know in our hearts. There

19:16

are limits. And really, they're

19:20

not so bad. Let me try an

19:20

analogy -- without the cold,

19:25

would we ever know how it feels

19:25

to be warm? Same with limites.

19:30

Without limits, would we ever

19:30

even sense any growth. So it's

19:35

life, death, those dang ol'

19:35

taxes, and limits to growth. I'm

19:42

Brian Czech, and you've been

19:42

listening to The Steady Stater

19:44

podcast. See you next time!