working in compliance with market and entrepreneurial forces. Another path is
suggested by the Marx–Meadows (1867 and 1972) analysis for an exploitative con-
tinuum, arising as a consequence of excess human consumption and a societal
inability to effectively intervene.
A dilemma for modern society arose in terms of consumerist
and protectionist traits. The Anglo New World nations, in partic-
ular, have been drawn to, and somewhat divided by, opposing
mid-twentieth-century polemists: Hayek the free-marketeer and
Polanyi the social protector. Of the two, Hayek has been the
more persuasive and influential – open economies, tax cuts,
trickle-down production benefits, less welfare, self-regulation, privatization –
winning over the hearts and minds of conservative-voting North Americans and
Australasians. Yet Polanyi, the would-be social protector and advocate for overall
lifestyle quality, has also moved Democratic-Labour voting adherents, drawing
attention to the ravages of resource exploitation, the need for security in old
age, a fair start to life, and the scourge of unemployment. Governments remain
anxious to appear pro-growth, pro-consumption and pro-market, yet also want
to appease the elderly, the unemployed, and to be seen to be ‘for’ the environ-
ment! The problem here, as in much of life, is that the modern state cannot have
Polyani’s social protection andconsume Hayek’s free-market cake. The obvious
mediation is to target a balance between and for ‘growth community and the
environment’.
Foregrounding
The entropy law, historically an undetected irrelevance, now enters upon this dis-
course, predicating that all natural systems tend toward a state of ever-reducing
utility. Roughly expressed: the second law of thermodynamics (the ‘entropic’ law)
asserts that all ‘systems’ (complex entities) tend toward end states of disorder and
disutility. Accepting that the free-flow energy received from the sun can, for all
practical purposes, be regarded as a continuing given, the entropy law then
applies mainly to the degeneration and disaggregation of earth-
bound non-renewable (finite) resources, the fossil fuels and
ecosystems. This we must acknowledge, particularly in relation
to the previous two hundred years of previously unprecedented
consumerism, when for the first time human beings began to live
off their resource capital. This context is important because there
lies the path which has led throughout the twentieth century to
the disuse, decay and discard of earthbound resources, and the
most rapid onset of species extinction during recorded human
history.
The entropy of biological and mineral resources is apparent to
humankind as physical blight on the territorial landscapes
and within the ocean bodies. Even high-income, resource-rich,
Charter for Conservation with Development 79The Austrian polemicists:
Friedrich Hayek,The
Road to Serfdom, 1962.
Karl Polyani,The Great
Transformation, 1957.The ecosystem – which
provides potable water,
food- and fibre-
producing soils,
reoxegenated air, and
handles all manner of
wastes – does so at a
mostly unpriced ‘cost’ to
the ecosystem:until now
with the advent in 2002
of an Australian CSIRO
investigation into the
fiscally priced ‘worth’ of
natural systems, and the
‘cost’ of their
degradation.