Up to today the two things I knew about Hamsters were; that it took me 6 years of schooling to learn how to spell their name (I always thought that there was a “p” in it) and second that my two sons had varying success in looking after them as family pets. After today I will never be able to look at a Hamster in the same way. Let’s face it, I have always thought that Hamsters were incredible, but I never knew that they could be used as an economic model. I have just been to the Princes Mayday Network meeting
in Cardiff today and one of the speakers was from the New Economics Foundation (NEF). An inspirational speaker Andrew Simms captivated the whole audience with his talk. Throughout his presentation he kept promising us that we would meet a hamster. Not to little his brilliant views he finished off his session by introducing us to the Impossible Hamster.
This very simple cartoon does highlight the dilemma that we face and highlights the issues in the report “Growth Isn’t Possible: Why rich nations need a new economic direction”. Living on a world with finite natural resources, can we realistically expect continued economic growth year on year?
Andrew Simms, co-author of the report said, “We tend to think of growth as natural for economies, forgetting that in nature things grow only until maturity and then develop in other ways. A world in which everything grew indefinitely would be strange indeed. A young hamster, for example, doubles its weight each week between birth and puberty. But if it grew at the same rate until its first birthday, we’d be looking at a nine billion tonne hamster, which ate more than a year’s worth of world maize production every day. There are good reasons why things don’t grow indefinitely. As things are in nature, so sooner or later, they must be in the economy.
“The economic priorities of the rich world are as ridiculous as the impossible hamster. Endless growth is pushing the planet’s biosphere beyond its safe limits. The price is seen in compromised world food security, climatic upheaval, economic instability and threats to social welfare. We urgently need to change our economy to live within its environmental budget. There is no global, environmental central bank to bail us out if we become ecologically bankrupt.”
One way that we can start to address this is by living more sustainably and in business a good way to embark on this is to introduce an environmental management system into the business. This not only will help to reduce your carbon and environmental footprint but make savings. Yes it is a journey, but if we don’t start to act now just remember the nine billion tonne hamster.
For advice on an environmental management system or your carbon and environmental footprint, we can help you.
Chris Gledhill
