Deadly Fallacies of Growth Management

Dave Paulsen is the co-founder and executive director of Attraction Retreat, a Bellingham nonprofit organization that specializes in the ecotherapy and ecoeducation methods of applied ecopsychology, and its current major project, the EcoIntegrity Center of Bellingham (ECO Bell). He’s also a faculty member of the graduate department in applied ecopsychology for the Institute of Global Education, a special NGO consultant to UNESCO.

Much of the debate surrounding growth in Whatcom County today, as well as what we can and must do about it, seems to hinge on a set of beliefs that the Washington state Growth Management Act (GMA) of 1990 requires. These beliefs lead to claims that growth is inevitable, that we need to continue building infrastructure to handle projected growth, and that growth will continue at the levels seen in the 1990s. This latter point is already known to be false, as the rate of growth has decreased in the past few years.

We often hear from the advocates of growth that growth is not only good—it’s actually necessary for prosperity. Questioning this primary assumption is not allowed. Alternatives to growth are not permitted to be planned for, and even exploring the possibility that there might be a need for an alternative to growth is banned from the debate.

The purpose of the GMA is to keep the harm of unplanned and uncoordinated growth from impacting the quality of life of the state’s citizens. Actually, the Washington state GMA requires planning for both development opportunities and constraints. This latter term seems to have been forgotten in the growth debates that tend to focus only on whether we choose the low, medium or high population growth projections.

Being anti-growth is neither an isolationist nor an exclusionary perspective. Anti-growth, actually a misnomer, is a label that speculators, developers and other growth proponents like to use to misrepresent and discredit the actual goals and values of sustainability advocates and adherents to a steady-state economy—meaning those economies that don’t depend on continuous growth for their overall health. Anti-growth, in the context of the GMA, means to constrain and limit physical growth that creates negative long-term consequences to both human life and environmental integrity.

The desire to constrain growth is an acceptance of the harsh reality that we have surpassed the organic carrying capacity of the region—that the quality of life in this beautiful area we all love so much is steadily decreasing. We need to be more consciously aware that the only organisms that grow purely for the sake of growth are cancer cells and other invasive species. One of the prime purposes of the GMA is to ward off the known dangers of unplanned and unrestricted growth, as well as to intelligently and fairly formulate policies that will restrain growth from decreasing the quality of life through environmental degradation.

The GMA’s vision is for the development of sustainable solutions to problems with economic development, water quality degradation, infrastructure financing, regional transportation capacity, catastrophic flood and fire damages, loss of natural resource lands, housing affordability and the jobs-to-housing balance. As such, it is a framework for other state statutes and local policies related to land use practices, environmental protection and sustainable development.

One of the problems with the “growth is positive” mindset is that the true costs of growth are simply not calculated in the discussions about growth management. Growth proponents ignore available evidence, which shows that increasing the tax base through sprawl actually increases the net tax burden to communities. The average national cost to communities for farmland and open spaces is $.53 in public services for every tax dollar contributed, while developed urban land requires $1.14 in public services for every tax dollar it generates.

The fact is we don’t need “smart growth.” Instead, we need less growth and sustainable long-term policy formulation in order to create a healthy future that exhibits a higher quality of life. This is not an impossible task. We can begin to curb costly growth by not actively encouraging it, which we do by giving taxpayer handouts of subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives to developers. We can also start to require realistically priced impact fees for new development.

Because we can’t have our cake and develop it, too. Whatcom County, as a region, contains finite resources and about 20 years ago began to exceed its ability to fully provide for all the species that live within its boundaries. So, smart growth gets us to the same place as dumb growth. We just get there via first class. The sprawl may be a little less obtrusive, the farms and open spaces may disappear a little more slowly, but the quality of life for all, and the health of our community, are still greatly diminished.

I’m going to keep this article from becoming buried in figures and statistics, and talk mainly about the concepts we must be aware of in coming to terms with how we want to work together to co-create a future that works for all of us. This work necessarily includes restoring and sustaining the natural world that we all depend on for our own health and sustenance. It also entails understanding how much of that world we actually need.

A diet that provides the necessary energy for human health averages out to about one acre per person. According to the Washington State University (WSU) county agricultural extension office, there are 103,600 acres of land in farms in Whatcom County. The Whatcom County population as of 2000 was 166,814. These are a few of the necessary baseline figures we need to keep in mind for the following, which also point to the fact that we are already overdeveloped and overpopulated.

People tend to jump to the conclusion that we can import the food and other resources we need to continue maintaining our lifestyles, since we can’t source them all locally for the current population. However, 20-year growth projections completely ignore what is going to happen to the economy and people’s mobility (since the majority of population increase is from in-migration and not births) when the petroleum economy starts its race toward the bottom in the next five to 10 years.

Harbingers of the coming collapse are already happening with the imminent peak of global oil extraction. While there isn’t full agreement on whether we’ve already passed this pivotal point, or if it’s still two to five years out, it seems that it would be much wiser to be safe than sorry, apply the precautionary principle, and start realistically planning for sustainability.

Another important concept to keep in mind when discussing the amount of growth that Whatcom County can handle is the “ecological footprint.” A person’s ecological footprint is the measure of the amount of ecological capacity required to support an individual’s consumption patterns for food, fibers, energy and waste absorption. The average American uses 24 acres to support his or her current lifestyle. By way of comparison, the average Italian lives within a footprint that is 60 percent smaller (nine acres).

The landmass of Whatcom County is 1,360,000 acres. This means that Whatcom County can support a population of 56,666 based on the ecological footprint calculations for an average American. If we lived like the average Italian, Whatcom County could support 151,111 people. Remember, Whatcom County’s current population is 166,814—ask yourself how we’re going to take care of a doubling population that the growth proponents keep insisting they need to start immediately developing for.

The next concept important to add to this discussion is “carrying capacity.” Carrying capacity is an ecological concept that pertains to the ability of an environment to sustain the resource demands of a species or a community without losing its ability to regenerate the resource.

Carrying capacity is often calculated using the energetic requirements of a species. Thus, a particular environment might support more lizards than birds of equal body mass. With the human species, lifestyle choices play a major role in calculating what a particular area’s carrying capacity might be.

For humans, we must not only consider individual consumer choices, but also the economic ability of a given population to fulfill those choices. While Whatcom County population grew by 30 percent in the 1990s, the county lost 21,000 acres of farmland, and the average yearly income, in 1999 dollars, fell by almost $4,000 compared to 1971. Does this reflect an increasing quality of life?

“Sustainability” is another concept crucial to this discussion. A sustainable process is one that maintains its ability without interruption, weakening or loss of valued qualities. Sustainability is also a necessary requirement for a population to remain at or below its environment’s carrying capacity. §

Next Month — Part Two