John Ruskin, the Victorian philosopher wrote “There is no wealth but life”. Ruskin believed these words to be his most important. They appear in his last book, ‘Unto this last’, published in 1860. More than a century and a half later, those words couldn’t ring truer.
Labour’s strategy of importing cheap labour resulted in a staggering 25% increase in population in just 10 years. That’s an additional 100,000 people, the most rapid increase in Malta’s population ever. We now live in a very full Malta. But Labour still behaves as if the island were empty with ample space and resources for an indefinite future.
In 2019, Employment Agency head Clyde Caruana insisted that despite having imported 60,000 foreign workers, Malta would need another 10,000 the following year. The reason - to keep growing the economy. In 2021, as Finance Minister, he still insisted that more foreign workers were required to sustain the economy.
Labour is basing the country’s future on neoclassical economics which were developed for an empty world. Those economics no longer hold. The aggregate burden of the Maltese population has far exceeded the limits our small country can sustain. But Labour’s obsession with economic growth puts us on the path to environmental collapse, sacrificing our very wellbeing.
Labour is determined to continue with its unrestrained drive for “ever more things for ever more of Labour’s inner core”. They maintain that there is no conflict between economics and ecology. Malta Development Association president and Joseph Muscat employer, Michael Stivala insisted that “development must continue” in order to stimulate the economy, “this is not overdevelopment”. That’s a convenient idea but it’s a lie.
There is an obvious conflict between economic growth and environmental preservation. The massive population increase Clyde Caruana engineered encroaches on our environment. Those additional 100,000 consume more water, produce more waste, take up more land, pollute our air and help fuel the rampant development Mr Stivala and Labour are so intent on.
Robert Abela keeps reminding us that the country is “full-up”. In some respects he’s right. Malta is no longer empty. When our numbers were small our impact on our environment was negligible. Fish in our sea reproduced far quicker than we could catch them. Trees grew faster than we could uproot them. Our water table filled quicker than we could deplete it. Our resources weren’t scarce then. There was little conflict between economic growth and our environment. But Malta is no longer empty. Abela bragged that Malta would have the fastest growing economy in the EU. That was only possible because our population exploded. So have the number of cars, buildings, refrigerators, washing machines, computers, air-conditioning units and mobile phones. These “dissipative structures”, both living and non-living, produce massive amounts of polluting waste. Maghtab is full. A new Maghtab “hill” has been created to delay a waste crisis. But that only buys two years of respite.
Malta is producing waste at a staggering rate and hasn’t figured out how to dispose of it. The latest Environmental Implementation Review (EIR) issued by the European Commission expressed concern on Malta’s dismal track record on waste management. Malta keeps increasing its year-on-year weight of landfilled waste per capita. The Commission called for urgent reforms in waste management. Instead Labour keeps importing tens of thousands of workers to add to our waste.
Labour’s strategy has resulted in massive qualitative degradation of our environment - in the quality of our air, sea, traffic, and waste. Labour’s economic growth is paid for by increasing disorder in our life-supporting ecosystem. Labour ignores the fact that GDP is not an end in itself - it reflects both beneficial and harmful activity. Growth in GDP has become uneconomic, inflicting more harm than good.
What a country as small and as overpopulated as ours needs is development without growth - qualitative improvement without quantitative increase in resource consumption beyond an ecologically sustainable scale. Labour must realise that we no longer reside in an ‘empty’ Malta. Our resources are the scarce factor. We need to invest in our natural capital by protecting what little land, water, clean air, arable land we have left. What limits our crop yield is not the lack of tractors or agricultural equipment but the lack of arable land and water in our aquifers, their recharge rate and the flow of surface water into them. The building and asphalting of more roads leads to more rainwater loss into the sea. Yet Labour keeps issuing permits for development on ODZ land and steals arable land for more roads and cars. Labour is transforming our natural capital into waste.
Labour’s economic growth is yielding declining marginal benefit and increasing the cost for the people. Labour fails to understand that beyond a “sufficiency threshold”, personal happiness and public welfare cease to increase with GDP. In chasing that GDP growth, Labour sacrifices the nation’s quality of life. Costs are far exceeding benefits making us all poorer. Almost 28,000 people in Malta struggle to meet their basic needs and are considered to be severely deprived. Almost 50,000 people are materially and socially deprived, an increase of over 8000 people between 2017 and 2021. 1 in 12 of our children are severely deprived. Over 1,500 people live in extreme poverty surviving on only 2.50 euro per day. That number has trebled in just one year.
We’re poorer not just financially. Our countryside is steadily being eroded, our water table depleted, our air polluted, our waste mountain raised, our village cores destroyed, our traffic jammed, our agricultural land stolen.
Our government must abandon its mad chase for growth and should introduce policies for a steady state economy - measures to limit inequality, good governance, tax-shifting, limitations on in-migration through passport sales and cheap labour recruitment. The ultimate end cannot continue to be growth. Labour should keep Ruskin’s aphorism in mind: “there is no wealth but life”. Labour’s objective should be maximising the proportion of citizens whose wealth is sufficient for a good (not luxurious) life.