Polluting your spaceship?

The broad strokes of a spaceship economy.

A spaceship economy is an economic model characterized by extreme resource efficiency and a focus on long-term sustainability. This model of sustainability relies on the principles of conservation, efficiency, and recycling to create an economic system that meets the needs of current and future generations without compromising the planet’s resources. 

The controlled explosion of hazardous chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio. Feb 2023.

The concept of a spaceship economy is largely attributed to the work of ecologist and futurist, Donella Meadows. In her 1972 book “The Limits to Growth”, she argued that the Earth’s resources are finite and that economic growth should be regulated.  This is a controversial viewpoint to many who point out that economic growth is what lifted so many millions of people out of poverty and illiteracy over the past couple centuries. 

Meadows suggests that a sustainable economic system should be modeled after a spacecraft, where resources are used frugally and re-purposed for multiple uses. This is in contrast to what economist William Nordhaus termed a “cowboy economy” where there is effectively an unlimited supply of natural resources such as fresh water, farmable land, clean air, timber, metals, oil, etc.

The primary goal of a spaceship economy is to build an economy that is equitable across time, meeting the needs of current generations without compromising the planet’s resources. To achieve this goal, economic policy would have to codify the imperative of maximum resource use and reuse efficiency.

It also involves developing ways to use renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power, to replace fossil fuels. Additionally, this model encourages a shift away from a throw-away economy and toward the production of goods that are designed to be recycled rather than discarded. 

Recent work in this field has found that, counterintuitively, closing resource loops in an economy does not incentivize holding onto goods because the inherent reuse value in every item eventually exceeds the current objects value as it depreciates.  Therefore, the result of a perfect recycling program would actually be shorter lived objects of consumption not extremely durable ones as is often assumed.

Ultimately, a spaceship economy is designed to meet the needs of current and future generations without compromising the spaceship’s resources. It is a conceptual tool for realizing sustainable economic growth and ensuring that the benefits of living in a growing economy are available to unborn generations of future human beings.