"So he put to me that we are growing too fast - the world that is - that mankind is consuming already one and a half times the renewable resources of the planet; the current consumption rate is unsustainable. We must reduce our growth rate."
"And you said?" I asked over the stuffed artichokes (recipe later).
"You can only deny the benefits of growth to the poor if you are willing to redistribute wealth and income to them on a truly massive scale. You can only reduce growth somewhat by redistributing somewhat. There is no alternative."
"There is," I remarked. "Up to now the alternative has been that of killing them, not redistributing to them, growth or no."
"Not on a large enough scale."
Then he added after a few more chews of artichoke, "To solve the problem, I mean."
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Or, of course, reducing the per capita consumption of the richest countries. What is the good life? Now we're getting into real philosophy - not the hermeneutics of decontructivist wibble.
'reducing the per capita consumption of the richest countries.', requires precisely redistribution (unless you postulate a franciscan conversion on the part of the rich).
Is that what you mean by the good life - the franciscan ideal, S? I admire the Franciscans for many reasons but particularly the dynamic capabilities of their beliefs on how to achieve their objectives. And their individual paths to goodness.
That is, perhaps, going from one extreme to another - as indeed, the born-wealthy St Francis did.
But we don't have to go that far to make the human impact on the environment sustainable. There are huge inefficiencies in the way we do things.
One hardly knows where to start on that subject, but let's just take as a tiny example, the move from 90% of British children walking to school to 90% being driven, quite often in 4x4s.
Or all the resources put into the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BARTS) to reduce average home-to-work journey times from an hour to 30 minutes, only to find that the people then moved to homes twice as far away from work.
Or the high proportion of energy consumption that now goes on space heating for houses.
Or the way in which we acquire staggering amounts of personal possessions for reasons of social status rather than any practical need; or perhaps for obscurer emotional reasons that these things cannot satisfy.
The Four Horsemen are nicely rested and ready to resume their normal duties of population control. Arrogant leftist Icarii won't be able to control, let alone replace them.
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