No such thing as a free launch

I can't remember how I got on the publisher's email list, but I get sent an astonishing number of announcements of new publications: fascinating stuff about energy, life, predicaments, forests, money, you get the idea. I wish I had time to read them all.

Sometimes events get announced, but they're always in London. There was one I particularly wanted to go to: Tim Jackson, who as far as Lunchista can tell seems to be a Professor of Everything, has written up the latest findings of the Sustainability Development Commission (who advise HMG about, yes you've guessed, Sustainability), as a book, and this was the official launch. Sparkling conversation with fascinating people, and wine and nibbles: sounded like Lunchista's ideal soiree. Pity it's 200 miles, and about as many pounds sterling, away.

Then events conspired to take Lunchista down south anyway: to sort out building-work, of all things. So I booked a place.

After spending the day with three lads heaving pieces of floor around I was glad the hot water worked and I could have a shower, put on a posh frock (full-length), walk safely across the newly-repaired floor and head out into the night and the pouring rain. I couldn't believe that rain: it wasn't like November, it was more like August. Except without the warmth, and with a Force 9 thrown in.

If you stay away from our wonderful capital for long enough, and then suddenly arrive there, it doesn't half look, well, desperate. Not desperately poor, or ill, or run-down, but just desperate to do business. Add in the rain and the gale and it was beginning to border on the surreal. Arriving at the launch Lunchista (and the friend whose sofa I was borrowing) must have looked like something the cat dragged in. Our only consolation was that we were all in the same boat. Which is in a way what the book is about. It goes like this:

Everybody wants economic growth. But on a finite planet you're eventually going to run out of, well, planet. So you want economic growth without resource-use growth. Except (carefully-documented chapter) we've never really managed to do this, and it might even be impossible. Oh, and as if that's not enough, in our part of the world the race for economic betterment, without social betterment, is doing our heads in. So, how about going for quality-of-life growth instead?

All of which provides something of a talking-point over your wine and nibbles.

I bought the book, I even got it signed. But lurking in the back of my mind is the fate of government advisors whose advice the government doesn't like.

"My, how you've grown!"

We've all been there. Some of us longer ago than others.

You're visiting, or being visited by, an older relative, and you're standing there thinking that you'd far rather be playing football or climbing trees, and they utter those awful words "My, how you've grown!". Now how on earth are you supposed to answer a greeting like that? You could try the logical approach ("Yes it's because I eat lots of spaghetti, and it's long and thin..."), the contrary riposte ("No I haven't"), or the sociable rejoinder ("Yes, so have you"). You could even branch out into surrealism ("No, I'm standing on your head"). Growing just happens: it's not even interesting. Saying "My, you're breathing!" would sound no less daft to a ten-year-old. Although it might arouse the suspicions of his parents.

We grow, then we grow up. The English language has this amazingly economical way of saying not only that we have finished doing something, but also that we have exhausted all further possibilities of doing it. We eat, and when there's no more we've eaten up. When the stuff is all used, and there's no more to be had, it's used up. The only other language Lunchista knows of which shares this turn of phrase is Chinese: the little suffix "Le" at the end of a sentence tells us that whatever is going on in that sentence has now been completed. Sometimes "Le" also implies that whatever has been done, has been done to the point of perfection. So, we grow, and provided we stay healthy and have enough of the right type of food (spaghetti or otherwise), we reach the best of all possible heights and then we stop. We are then grown-up.

We are lucky that this is all done automatically. What would we do if it took some effort, or some choice, to switch "growing" off? Ten-year-olds grow at the rate of about 5 cm a year: imagine the chaos if that carried on throughout life. A typical retiree, at about 4 metres tall, would be nearly as high as a house.

Most people, given the choice, would like to be "slightly taller than average". So in the end, a choice about whether to stop growing or not would result in maximum possible growth: very few people want to be shorter than average.

Does the phrase "maximum possible growth" sound familiar? Isn't it what most governments, given the choice, would like their country's economies (their GDP) to do? But in a mature economy like ours, where everybody could easily have enough of all they need if the distribution were ever so slightly tweaked, do we really need more "growth"? How about two things to ponder over lunch:

First, think of all the goods and services we use: there's a physical limit to how much of all of them we can cram into our lives. We can only eat so much food, inhabit and fully appreciate so big a house, drive so many miles, take up so many sports, drink so much beer and read so many books: after that the enjoyment palls or we simply run out of time, health or natural resources.

Second, pick any easily-measureable number that represents quality of life: life expectancy, infant survival, people's perceived happiness, you name it, and plot it against income: all this can be done as a lunchtime's entertainment using Gapminder, who already have all the numbers. Of course you get a rising curve on your plot: it is better not to be poor. But, at a level of income just shy of the UK average, the curve flattens out. The very rich do not live any longer, or feel any happier, than the average Brit. We should delight in that curve. It tells us that the present halt in economic growth need not prevent us from having a good quality of life. It also tells us that economic growth is best left to the people in countries who really need it.

There's only one problem. Every time any money is created, so is a corresponding amount of debt. This debt incurrs interest. So unless we are all producing goods faster than this debt grows, there will always be more debt than the total wherewithal available to pay it off. Someone, somewhere, will always go bust. It could be you.

It is not a pleasant thought: we either put up with an economy that grows, providing us all with more of anything than we can ever sanely use, or put up with one that doesn't, launching us all into a game of musical chairs (or Russian Roulette, depending on your frame of mind) with the bailiffs.

So until we change the way that money is created, the economy can never be allowed to be grown-up.