Yves here. Readers know that I harbor cold-water Yankee predispositions with respect to climate change policies: that we are already way past the time when low-pain options would do the trick, and we need to embrace radical conservation strategies. “Degrowth” strikes me as too abstract and bloodless.
At the same time, it is depressing to encounter colleagues who are open about not being willing to make even modest changes in their lifestyle. For instance, one says she’s not willing to live like the Dutch, which she equates to living in a small apartment and not having a dishwasher.
By Beth Stratford. Originally published at openDemocracy
Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. Public domain.
The row about ecological limits to growth is back with a vengeance. On one side are those who are deeply sceptical about the idea of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’. They argue that to be sure of offering a good life for all within planetary boundaries, we need to kick our addiction to consumption growth (in wealthy countries at least). These ‘green growth sceptics’ include those advocating for ‘degrowth’, ‘prosperity without growth’, ‘steady state economics’, ‘doughnut economics’ and ‘wellbeing economics’.
In the opposite corner are ‘green growth’ advocates who believe that the historical relationship between GDP and environmental impact can be not just weakened but effectively severed. For green growthers, the key to maintaining a habitable planet is decoupling — reducing the environmental impact associated with each pound or dollar of GDP. By deploying new technologies, and shifting the nature of our consumption, they argue we can do our bit for the environment while continuing to grow our economies, even in wealthy countries.
Green growth sceptics do not dispute the need for decoupling, but observe that the faster we grow the faster we have to decouple. Even a modest goal like 2% growth per year implies doubling the scale of consumption every 35 years. Unfortunately, we have neverapproached the rates of decoupling that would be necessary for rich countries to get back within their fair share of ecological space while maintaining that kind of exponential growth.
Green growth advocates tend to respond that the historical record shouldn’t be taken as a guide to what is possible in future. Pessimism about future technological breakthroughs will be self-fulfilling, they say.
For some this is a compelling and entertaining debate. But it is not going to be settled in a timeframe that is useful for maintaining a habitable planet. In the meantime, these adversaries are in danger of delivering a major own goal. Because the more time we spend in nerdy (and sometimes venomous) exchanges about decoupling, the less time we have to build the broad-based movement we need to take on the vested interests who benefit from the status quo.
There Is More That Unites Than Divides Us
The question we should ask is: can those who care about economic and environmental justice on either side of this divide — growth optimists and growth sceptics — agree on a basic set of demands that can stop us hurtling toward ecological collapse? I believe that we are closer to a consensus than might immediately seem to be the case, for six reasons.
1) You don’t need to be degrowth advocate to support policies that would reduce our growth dependency
We are currently dependent on growth to maintain economic and political stability. If GDP flatlines or contracts our economy tends to topple into crises of unemployment, debt, inequality and hardship. It is no wonder, then, that policymakers remain preoccupied with this narrow economic metric, despite the widespread consensus that GDP is a poor measure of progress.
Fortunately, our growth dependence is not an inevitable fact of life. As I expand on below, there are four interrelated factors underpinning our growth dependency: the extractive power of rentiers, the disempowerment of workers, private sector over indebtedness, and our failure to safeguard basic needs. Tackling these problems is an emancipatory project that can be justified without any reference whatsoever to the wonky concept of growth dependency.
Moreover, ending our growth dependency does not foreclose the possibility of growth. It simply makes our society resilient in the face of economic contraction and economic shock. Who can object to that?
2) You don’t need to be a green growther to recognise the problems with trying to impose a direct limit on GDP
One of the reasons that people balk at the idea of ‘degrowth’ is because they imagine it involving some kind of descending cap on national income. As far as I know, there are no serious thinkers in the post-growth community proposing to try and control the marketvalue of production and consumption at an aggregate level. Such a project would not only be impractical but also illogical. Why would we attempt to control a metric that is several steps removed from the biophysical impacts that matter, when we can design policies to directly control resource use, habitat destruction and pollution?
3) You don’t need to be a degrowth advocate to recognise the need for tough environmental protections
Obviously scaling up the good stuff we need (public transport, home insulation, renewables and so on) is urgent and essential. But we also need to scale down the bad stuff, and ensure that the environmental benefits we hope to achieve through resource efficiency improvements are not compromised by the rebound effect. This calls for a robust regime of resource caps, taxes and regulations that gradually tighten until countries like the UK are back within their fair share of ecological space.
For growth to be genuinely green, it would have to take place within such limits. If green growth advocates oppose such limits, this would suggest that their confidence about the feasibility of achieving green growth is disingenuous.
4) You don’t need to be a green growther to recognise the need for an unprecedented technological transformation
Resource caps and environmental protections are no panacea on their own. They must be embedded in a set of institutional and infrastructural transformations that enable everyone to live comfortably within those limits, not just the rich.
There is already broad agreement about the critical role of technology here, as highlighted by Gareth Dale in his brilliant surveyof the points of convergence between the degrowth and Green New Deal agendas. Most growth sceptics are vocal advocates for industrial-scale investment in solar panels, wind turbines and public transport — precisely the kinds of technologies that will help to decouple GDP from environmental impact. What they object to is the hubris and recklessness of putting all our eggs in the decoupling basket, when the rates of decoupling necessary to avert ecological collapse whilst continuing to grow are, to put it politely, extremely ambitious.
5) You don’t need to be a degrowth advocate to recognise the risks involved with relying solely on decoupling
A recent comprehensive review of the evidence on decouplingconcludes that it will be virtually impossible to get back within planetary boundaries without slowing our consumption. Take the climate crisis alone: for the UK to abide by its own commitmentsunder the Paris Agreement, without compromising on current growth rates, would require us to roll out currently unproven negative emissions technologies at a scale and rate that many experts do not think is feasible, expand renewables at a rate that many experts do not think is physically possible, and achieve a net energy payback from that renewable infrastructure that many experts do not think is plausible.
The purpose of drawing attention to these studies is not to pick another fight about the theoretical feasibility of green growth. It is simply to establish that, in practical terms, there is a very strong possibility that efforts to decouple will not be sufficient to make continued consumption growth in the rich world compatible with environmental justice. To be confident of living well within our fair share of the earth’s carrying capacity — of playing our part in the struggle to preserve a habitable planet — we must adapt our economy to function well under conditions of slower, potentially negative, rates of GDP growth.
6) You don’t need to be degrowth advocate to recognise that our growth dependence is a straightjacket on policymakers
The spectre of shrinking or stagnating GDP has not only been invoked to block environmental policies. It has also been invoked to block food standards, labour rights, and most recently to justify the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in workplaces, in spite of the risks to public health. Fear of the consequences of economic contraction has been a major impediment to the containment of a pandemic, just as it has proved a major impediment to effective climate policy.
Our dependence on growth is thus a dangerous straitjacket. When certain forms of economic activity imperil our health and wellbeing, or the living systems upon which we depend, our governments must have the confidence to scale back those activities — without fear of triggering an economic crisis. That confidence will only be found if we escape our growth dependence.
What Does Ending Our Growth Dependence Mean in Practice?
In a report published this week by the University of Leeds, Dan O’Neill and I outline four critical strategies required to alleviate our dependence on growth, and highlight some opportunities for advancing these strategies as part of our COVID-19 recovery planning.
Shift the balance of power in workplaces
All else being equal, automation and other innovations gradually reduce the need for labour. Conventional economic wisdom says we must stimulate consumption growth to soak up the surplus labour. But there is an alternative and more environmentally sustainable way to maintain employment: share out the remaining work. Instead of using productivity improvements to drive down prices and sell more goods, companies could offer workers a shorter working week at a higher hourly pay rate.
This is not a solution that profit-oriented companies are likely to deliver of their own accord. It will require coordination, and a major shift in the balance of power in work places, so that those who invest their labour are no longer systematically excluded from decision-making. The way that many corporations have behaved during this crisis — funnelling bailout money to shareholders while firingworkers — merely underlines the need for such a fundamental redesign of corporate governance.
Reduce our exposure to private debt crises
We are dependent on growth to maintain financial stability because our economy is heavily burdened with private debt. Debts are promises to pay, often based on expectations about the future — usually of revenue growth or asset price growth. If those expectations don’t come to pass, debt obligations can become dangerously destructive. Unlike equity investments that shrink or grow with the fortunes of the firm, debts are fixed in nominal terms, and if the interest cannot be paid, they grow exponentially. Thus, high levels of private indebtedness can transform a modest fall in expected growth rates into a full-blown crisis.
It is worth stressing that public debt is not the concern here. We must resist any attempt to use our coronavirus debts as justification for a new round of austerity. Such cuts would be both unnecessary and counter-productive. First, 42% of our public debt (£875 billion) is owed to our own central bank, and can be rolled over indefinitely (as Japan has demonstrated). Second, with the cost of government borrowing negative in real terms this is the perfect time for the government to borrow to invest. Creditors are effectively paying for the privilege of holding government debt. Third, if the government were to try to cut back on spending to pay down the public debt it would simply suck more demand out of the system, and push morehouseholds and businesses into debt, exactly as the last round of austerity did.
The focus right now should be on reducing our exposure to privatedebt crises, by regulating to reduce exploitative and inflationary forms of lending (e.g. excessive mortgage lending), correcting the bias toward debt over equity in our tax system, clamping down on the use of debt for tax avoidance purposes, facilitating debt write-downs for households in problem debt, and restructuring our banking system to improve financial resilience.
Tackle rent extraction
Growth is required to protect the privileges of landlords, financiers, monopoly interests, and other “rentiers”. Rentiers do not create wealth; they extract wealth through their control of monopolised and scarce assets. As long as the economic growth rate remains higher than the rate of rent extraction, this injustice can be masked to some extent. But when growth stalls — while landlords, financiers, monopoly interests, and other rentiers continue to accumulate assets — the result is rising inequality. All the growth dependencies outlined here can, on some level, be understood as manifestations of a rentier growth imperative.
Diffusing rentier power will require structural changes right across the economy, from the governance of platforms like Facebook, Uber and Amazon, to the intellectual property regime. Right now, with tax revenues from employment and consumption dramatically reduced, we have an opportunity to push for fairer taxation of capital gains, dividends, and monopoly profits. Mounting rent arrears and the growing power of renters unions could also create an impetus for a fundamental shift in the ownership and governance of land and housing.
Safeguard basic needs
High levels of unemployment, indebtedness, and rent extraction are all-the-more dangerous in an economy like the UK, where essential goods and services like social care, energy, and transport are rationed by price — i.e. by ability to pay. In this context, the ability of the poorest to meet their basic needs is threatened by a fall in income, or a rise in prices. This is also why carbon taxes — which are essential to meet our climate obligations — are so difficult to introduce under the current system.
There is nothing natural or inevitable about this reality. Land, water, raw materials, and energy resources are gifts from nature — common resources that still account for more than half of our national wealth. In an ideal world, the rents arising from control of these common assets would be captured and invested in collective services and a strong social safety net, to ensure that nobody goes short on life’s essentials. Instead we have allowed private interests to profit from the control and exploitation of our common resources. Over recent decades, much of our publicly funded infrastructure has also been privatised, leading to rising prices for essential services like energy, transport, and water.
To increase society’s resilience in the face of economic contraction, we must gradually correct these injustices. First steps should include strengthening our social safety net and building better public services that meet people’s basic needs. Right now, with care providers calling for public bailouts, there may be an opportunity to de-financialise and democratise adult social care. With customers going into arrears on their utility bills, and many transport companies in need of extensive public support in the wake of COVID-19, this would also be a good time to extend the principle of free basic entitlements to our transport and energy systems.
It’s Time To Turn Our Fire on the Real Enemies of Environmental Justice
Most green growth advocates will admit that GDP is a poor predictor of health, well-being, and other social outcomes. Nevertheless many recoil at the idea of a politics of ‘less’, arguing that it “has little capacity to speak to the needs of the vast majority of workers ravaged by neoliberal austerity”.
I’ve tried to show that the policies necessary to end our dependence on growth speak directly to the needs of those suffering precarity, exhaustion and exploitation under the current system. Ending our dependence on growth is about diffusing the power of rentiers, expanding economic democracy, and establishing entitlements to a basic share of our common wealth. It’s about freeing up time for leisure, caring for one another, arts, education and democratic deliberation. It’s about protecting people from extractivism, just as environmental regulations protect the Earth’s living systems from it.
Of course there will be people on both sides of green growth debate who will reject the possibility of consensus — those, as Gareth Dale puts it, whose positions become supercharged with morality and aesthetics – “on one hand a fetishism of technology and a dogma that ‘growth is good’; on the other, a zeal for frugality”.
But the vast majority should recognise the necessity and possibility of working side by side. Some of us will focus our energies on the case for technological/infrastructural change, some on the need for resource caps and environmental protections, and some on the fight for the economic justice that would end our growth dependency.
Given the scale of the challenge ahead, it is naive to think that any one of these tasks can be neglected. So, let us reach a truce and build a mass movement to take on the real enemies of environmental justice. The stakes are too high to do anything else.
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Re: “Given the scale of the challenge ahead, it is naive to think that any one of these tasks can be neglected.”
It is also naive to overlook the quadrupling of human numbers in the lifespan of my mother(96 yrs) tripling in my 75, doubling in my son’s 48. Each human, no matter how simply she lives, displaces habitat for other life forms excepting human parasites and things thriving on our waste. Large fauna are shrinking rapidly, while rodents thrive with fewer predators.
There are billions living in INvoluntary simplicity who would increase energy and material throughput if possible. One must be very comfortable to opt for voluntary simplicity!
We will shrink. Most likely the hard way, as the three main global institutions (gov’t, business, religion) are all growth addicts.
One must be very comfortable to opt for voluntary simplicity! is somewhat a straw man–imo.
Ever talk to a Mennonite or the Amish?
We will shrink. Most likely the hard way, as the three main global institutions (gov’t, business, religion) are all growth addicts.–leaving out your predilections within the system. You do have a choice as we all have. The Ripple Effect.
I used to get reminded many years ago that ” If everyone else is jumping of a cliff, it doesn’t mean you have to also.” ;-}
https://rebellion.global/
John Michael Greer is onto that this week. Monastics, and similar people have the attitude needed to scale down.
I’ve always thought that monasteries were a good model – for towns. Self sufficiency and modest consumption. Not hard work, but an honest day’s work. etc.
>Ever talk to a Mennonite or the Amish?
Uh, I sure have. The Amish that work on my house show up in a van, not a buggy, and use power tools. (They did vaporize with Covid, but if we get a vaccine I’m sure they will call me – and yes they call – to see if there is more work).
The Mennonites actually drive, although their cars apparently have to be some limited (non?) color choice.
I’m kind of with Mr. Kurtz here.
It is their attitude towards consumption in general, not modes of transportation or tools i was referring to–living in the same consumer culture as you and I.
If yours are anything like i have worked alongside, their work is as good as their pricing,
and they answer the phone for call backs as well as more work. Yes, they use phones.
Depends on their specific church as to what they use. Yes, typically one car is approved to own (if their church oks owning cars… And only black). Generally though they aren’t allowed tech that makes life easier. Which in practice just means things that automate or simplify domestic work. If it’s “needed” to run a competitive business it’s all fine.
What a clear eyed discussion here. Thanks for presenting this very pragmatic analysis, as it points out how ‘available’ sets of solutions are for us all. Hidden or gauzed in plain sight.
There Is More That Unites Than Divides Us
The question we should ask is: can those who care about economic and environmental justice on either side of this divide — growth optimists and growth sceptics — agree on a basic set of demands that can stop us hurtling toward ecological collapse? I believe that we are closer to a consensus than might immediately seem to be the case, for six reasons.…
Yes I recognize this almost daily (in conversations and anecdotes and even underlying divergent rhetoric), therefore I believe this. And because I believe this I talk from and on this point to about anyone I am standing next to. Everyone has got to start somewhere.
This is resonating with me:
6) You don’t need to be degrowth advocate to recognise that our growth dependence is a straightjacket on policymakers—because the straitjacket binds not only Policy but Imagination(the opposite of TINA) imo.
I am rereading Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach(last years xmas gift to my better that has never rotated up from the bottom of her reading stack) and though amusingly dated at times, the thrust that an alternative exists for our adoption is still poignant and relevant:
Within 6 pages in you discover that the Ecotopian work week is 20 hrs weekly–a policy adapted almost immediately after their Separation as an Economic Policy to achieve Societal Stability within a Sustainable System. – -although it is apparent that much work goes beyond the 20 by choice(commitment to living a better life).
I am going to keep this Discourse as a handy reference for a while.
I think this is really an excellent summary as well. Beth Stratford. Open Democracy. She has tied in almost every loose end. It doesn’t leave me much to harp on except my usual – the Military. They have long held that the greatest threat to our nation and civilization is global warming – they seem to avoid thinking about environmental devastation, probably because they devastate for a profession. (So that’s the first thing that’s gotta change.) And it should change. I still want to submit that the military is an incorrectly used institution for today’s needs. We need a military that can address the environment as a whole. They are set up to use unlimited funding (since 1940 at least) paid directly to them as if they were indispensable. They are. And they are organized. They are disciplined. They are patriotic to a fault almost. And the most important thing to realize is that – So is every other military on the planet. China, Russia, the EU, Israel, Iran… some better equipped than others. So the logical next thought is – What if the US Military takes on the environment? Do they all follow suit? Or do they continue to rattle swords? My guess is that everyone is anxious to fix the mess and as paranoid and freaked out as any Army General. So one thing that might be very important is to ease the anxiety of militaries world wide and give them all a new mandate: Repair and protect the environment. It’s the only one we’ve got. And of course do our civilian part by following the above suggestions – all are important. “Important” being the understatement of all of history.
I like the imaginative way you listen to and examine things…
best real idea of the day–mutually assured security in a sense…
Nobody else wants to touch your ideation with a 10′ pole. Dismissed as unattainable or too novel to consider?
juno mas can see something : (my bold)
In my opinion, the way to begin to tackle the issues we face is to act locally and help develop observable models of success that will inspire others to follow. We need to to create a common wealth that will meet basic needs. And do it sooner rather than later. Hopefully, that will create a national wave of cooperation that will save us from the looming scorched earth.
I appreciate the idea of linking military and patriotism to tacking the climate change issues, but have you ever followed a military convoy rolling down the freeway? ‘Don’t need no stinking catalytic converters or clean diesel’. With budgets aimed at new weaponry and paying all-volunteer personnel with benefits, fuel efficiency and air quality is apparently a bottom tier issue.
When viewed in the context of how this plays in the developing world, I just don’t see degrowth as a viable solution or goal. For example, all of the coal use reduction in US, Europe and Japan in 2018-19 was more than compensated for by increases in coal use in the rest of the world. There is a very large capacity for the developing nations to simply absorb any savings produced in this way.
What is even the target of degrowth? Is it a modest reduction in western living standards? The developing world will hardly find this fair. Are they too supposed to have also a modest reduction in living standards, in effect making permanent the living standard difference between the western world, especially the United States, and the developing world? They won’t agree to that. They can easily absorb anything we achieve, laughing all the way to the bank over reduced fuel prices, and will not be pleased when asked to stop. They would instead point to the western world as the reason why we are in the predicament in the first place, and suggest that the western living standard should come way down so that theirs can go up. Expect little cooperation here. Certainly in the US, the notion that we should be reduced to “Third World” living standards has been as demonized as communism and would never fly.
This is why starving this cold, attempting to reduce emissions by thrift will never work. With 90%+ emissions reductions required of some parts of the Western world to reach parity with the rest, degrowth is not an achievable goal. That is not modest belt tightening. 90%+ reduction is the definition of societal breakdown. The Great Depression was a mere 50% reduction in GDP and gave us WWII.
We get out of this mess by investing. We must replace carbon based technologies with carbon free technologies. Yes, it is expensive, but it will put people back to work and grow the economy. The alternative is degrowth and that ends poorly with declining living standards and civil unrest. Most of all we need to disabuse the wealthy of the notion that if the 99% go down, they can somehow ride out the storm. They need to be leading this transition, not putting on the brakes.
>We get out of this mess by investing.
In what? Oh:
>We must replace carbon based technologies with carbon free technologies.
Yeah I’ll build those windmills somehow without energy. I’ll make and install solar panels again not using any fossil fuel energy. My Tesla will birth itself…
Actually, you aren’t wrong — if we started this like 75 years ago. One windmill could produce enough power to begat another windmill, the two can make a third one 2x as fast, and voila! The grains on a chessboard maths. We’d have got something. But we’re too late.
+1
The people advocating solutions which are dependent on a high usage of energy (windmills, solar panels) are delusional in my opinion.
This is only a problem because the current grid is dirty. Once the grid is green the energy problems you complain about go away. You have to start somewhere, and that probably shouldn’t be West Virginia or Kentucky.
The growth is there because everyone associated growth with “getting better”. We have seen in the last few decades that it doesn’t mean everyone getting better though, but a lot of the elites still peddles the idea that improving poors’ life requires growth.
Because the other option is redistribution, and in most cases, the redistribution means lower quality of life (even if quality of life is dubious, as for example having everything shrink-wrapped and veggies not looking according to our ideal of perfection thrown away).
We definitely cannot live all (8 billions and counting) like Americans. We most likely cannot all live even like Europeans, but the likelyhood is that we can live not far from that. But yet, it means sorting out what’s important from what’s not. And there’s another problem. Because a lot of what we do is not really important. For example, a majority of the media services, we could well do without. But all this not-so-important stuff providers jobs and thus livelihoods. We might have to chose between bread and circuses, but the reality is that the circuses provide bread to others. And unless that’s sorted, which is a pretty large task, I don’t see how we can really address it.
I’m not a great optimist in this TBH.
I don’t see how we can really address it.
but from the rest of your fine comment, i think you do understand some of the machinations of the issue.
So, the mechanical ideas come next:
Because the other option is redistribution, and in most cases, the redistribution means lower quality of life but—-We definitely cannot live all (8 billions and counting) like Americans. We most likely cannot all live even like Europeans, but the likelyhood is that we can live not far from that. –my bold on the salient point i see.
But Ian above says said this salient point isn’t what you think it is, he thinks it requires a 90% scale down for Americans, which I guess is roughly cutting things in half for Europeans.
Go argue with him. Even people on the same side aren’t on the same side. Wonderful.
Ummm–is that 90% Ian cites gospel?? Hard to say w/o reference.
Run a carbon calculator. Then compare to average human carbon production across the globe.
no doubt we’re # 1 in CO2 output for Population. no arguing here.
Every night I drive through the Metro area just north I am amazed at how much electricity goes to illuminate the Edifices there at 3 am–it doesn’t have to be that way but sometimes I think they are bleeding off excess capacity from the 2 Local Nuclear Plants.
Lot’s of real low hanging fruit available everywhere by people with the right priorities.
And every action gets closer to remediation.
140 million Americans live in poverty according to an article I just read today in the Guardian. I doubt if they could tolerate a 90% “scale down” without dying off entirely!
There will be another great extinction, driven with by the strongest force in Human Nature, Greed. That’s baked in at this point. Not accepting that is denial, discussing other mechanisms which probably cannot be implemented is sophistry.
My wife & I has 2 children, because we did not want to contribute to overpopulation.
Others did not. For example: Reading that the average age of people on Nigeria is 20, is chilling. It was crowded when I lived there in the ’50s and ’60s. The Logos airport (aka: Ikeja Airport) was then out in the country. Now it appears surrounded by the city.
If the average age is 20, most, if not all, of those have not finished adding to their families.
Over population, planet wide, is of course a real problem. However, global warming is being driven by the energy consumption (lifestyle) of about 20% of the world population. (US, Euro, China, and a rising India)
In my opinion, the way to begin to tackle the issues we face is to act locally and help develop observable models of success that will inspire others to follow. We need to to create a common wealth that will meet basic needs. And do it sooner rather than later. Hopefully, that will create a national wave of cooperation that will save us from the looming scorched earth.
well oddly enough if you looked at US and Japan (and others too), you find that Japan is actually depopulating, as in they dont replace those that die.and the US and China (even though they are enormous to begin with)…arent far from doing the same
but in the past the US used to have really large families. maybe driven by the need for workers (cheap to hire the kids to do work on the farm….note today there are very few permanent farm workers in the US today…some temps….but almost all of them have been replaced by machines….)
It might be a small appartment, but it sure as hell will also contain a washer + dryer (in use every day) and a freezer. Furthermore there will be AC for the summer season for a cool 18 degrees Celsius, , while during the winter period central heating will garantuee a comfortable 21 degrees Celsius.
If we are getting underwhelmed by smallness, which occurs at least two times a year, we’ll book cheap vacation packages. So…
>summer season… 18 degrees Celsius, , winter period … 21 degrees Celsius.
That always cracks me up, in a horrified way. When you realize the human so-called mind insists on being cooler in the summer than they do in the winter, it’s just…just…another one of those things that you hope you never have to explain to extraterrestials.
I’m from Pennsylvania. The coldest I have been in my life? Florida and Bakersfield, CA. I didn’t think to bring winter clothes for indoors.
I come from SoCal and we didn’t have much in the way of air conditioning. So you got used to being sweaty driving around town and less than comfortable on August nights. Fast forward to now and people turn on air conditioning the moment they’re inconvenienced at all. The DC subway used to be great bc all the air conditioning was broken. Now they’ve fixed it and I dread using them for the blasts of cold air in the stations and cars. As if everyone weighs 300 lbs. Though for DC I wonder if it’s more of a status symbol: “only a truly advanced subway system could get things so cold.”
why would the washer and dryer be in use every day? unless they are tiny too, that will be really expensive to run that way…lots of energy and water….sort of defeats the purpose of trying to save money by being small
while I guess we are odd (or averse to wasteful spending)…we are actually warmer during the summer than the winter (during the summer…average ac setting is about 78f…mainly cause computers dont like heat or it would be warmer) and during the winter we are usually at 72F)….course where i live…summers routinely are about 90-100F…and winters run about 30-50F…)
and while maybe we arent going with wholesale replacements of stuff, we have in fact done some. utility histories show that its rare (short of economically down turns) for the need of more electricity to be generated….but not today…though we do have some spikes…during summer…when its hotter thsn normal) because of the changes we have done..like LED lights (and you probably remember the howls bout the cost of those…but they last longer..lots longer….and use lots less energy)
think maybe if we just focused folks on the cost reduction side (like using much more efficient vehicles..that do the same work…) we would have an easier time selling it…nd make no mistake that it what we must do ….if we want buy in from others…
otherwise it makes it easier for those who dont want to change..
On population growth:
https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2327/Population-Education.html
The demand for children (the number of children that a couple desires) is also the outcome of complex calculations. Economists have predictably focused on the net contributions of children to the income and material welfare of the family. In verylow-income communities, children typically become contributors to the economic welfare of the family at a very young age. Small children care for younger siblings, thereby releasing their mothers to work either in the fields or in shops. Often, very small children also assist in the herding of small animals and in the care of kitchen gardens. In addition, children provide parents with economic security in their old age. As average incomes and aspirations rise, parents typically seek to have fewer children and to provide these children with more and better education. Labor market demands and the cultural values of higher-income communities stress education as a requisite of social success. Therefore, as incomes rise, families tend to have fewer children but to invest much more in the nurturing and education of each child. The demand for children is also affected by the costs of providing daughters with dowries and wedding celebrations.
Read more: Population and Education – Social and Economic Factors, Conclusions – Fertility, Children, Growth, and Rate – StateUniversity.com https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2327/Population-Education.html#ixzz6ffzNU4C6
or(from ugh) https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/how-education-can-moderate-population-growth/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CEducation%20leads%20to%20lower%20birth,population%
Bangladesh, for instance, used communications and awareness-raising to change people’s attitudes to family size and to increase the use of contraceptives among married women. As a result, fertility decreased from an average of more than 6 children per woman in 1975 to slightly more than 3 today.
but it isn’t linear, of course, but it is happening.
They won’t agree to that. They can easily absorb anything we achieve, laughing all the way to the bank over reduced fuel prices, and will not be pleased when asked to stop. They would instead point to the western world as the reason why we are in the predicament in the first place, and suggest that the western living standard should come way down so that theirs can go up. Expect little cooperation here.
ime, outside of the Political World, I would not disregard the commonality of humans to achieve together and this comment predisposes everyone to the behavior and attitude you allude to.(sort of speaking for everyone)
There will be another great extinction, driven with by the strongest force in Human Nature, Greed and I agree that is one powerful(and way often misdirected) force, however, what if your GREED is for a simpler more sustainable lifestyle??
What a great twist – “What if your greed is for a simpler and more sustainable lifestyle?” Mine is. I wake up at 3:00 in the morning because my brain is talking to me. The other night it said that Love is an imprint. We imprint on the things we see as young children and we automatically love them. I’ve never understood what love is – but somehow my brain does. And as we age, entropy takes its toll and our early imprint – impressions – dissipate. Love itself changes: I now “love” this idea, even if it is mine, it’s all so quantum. I once wondered what is “nostalgia” because it is almost an emotion like love. So, nostalgia too is imprinting at an early age. I’m so old I can accept this idea. I shouldn’t try to convince anybody. But change might be considered in a new light.
I think there is an urgent need to get away from conversations about ‘growth’ or ‘degrowth’, not least because, at least as measured by GNP terms, its entirely meaningless. GNP is simply a measurement of money flows and means very little in terms of peoples lives. For a lot of people, talking about ‘degrowth’, sounds like ‘having less money’ (in average GNP terms this is true), but that says nothing about what what impact you are having on the planet.
So many of the choices we face have little to do with actual outputs, its just how we choose to spend the resources we have, e.g.
highly insulated houses vs. high power aircon & space heating
mass transit/cycling vs car commuting.
local vacations vs flying across the world
Zoom vs business conferences
high quality plant based diets vs. unlimited meat and dairy consumption
organic farm production vs intensive farming
wind energy vs fracking
Rewilding low grade lands vs supporting marginal agriculture
All of these are key policy/personal choices with minimal relevance to raw GNP figures. Add in the potential for lifestyle improvements in the place of money – additional leave time, four day weeks, greater support for parental leave, and you can maintain peoples quality of life while very significantly decreasing our impact on the environment.
very few of what you have listed are personal choices.
and the ones that are personal are determined by what the individual can afford. thus far, the more environmentally sound have been not subsidized, and are niche markets catering to the well-to-do.
insulating the house, eating organic, and living in a place where cars are not required (or moving to one, which means moving to a more expensive area all around) is dependent upon money we don’t have and are not likely to get. vacations of any kind we haven’t seen in years.
and “the market” providing all of these due to demand has not appeared to work out, yet. which gives the lie to the whole “the market is what we consumers have decided is worthwhile”.
it is time for collective solutions. not installing fresh lightbulbs.
is dependent upon money we don’t have anon y’mouse
One huge benefit of de-privileging the banks is an equal Citizen’s Dividend to replace all fiat creation for special interests (e.g. for the banks and asset owners).
It’s bottom-up money creation to largely replace private bank deposit creation for the sake of the so-called “credit worthy” (typically the richer at the expense of the poorer).
There are many reasons to de-privilege the banks but one is a return to a more fulfilling lifestyle.
Kun is quite right that “monetary” GDP is a worthless metric for all purposes except the “flow of funds” (and then only when purged of “imputations”) and “real” GDP is thus entirely worthless (and
“net real” National Income worse than useless because not accounting in any way, but perversely, for all the destructive environmental and social effects of the capital accumulation that is the driver of our entire centuries-old global mode of production). Therefore the entire “green growth vs degrowth” framework is entirely misconceived. What is required is far more than a series of reforms, however “radical” they might be. Needed is a worldwide transformation of social consciousness from the “capitalist” metric of GDP to the “communist” (Bhutanese) metric of Net National Happiness.
Suppose, then, that the first step is free provision (MMT financed) of a Universal Basic Income, annually adjusted for price changes) sufficient for the essentials of human health–nutrition, secure living space, protective clothing (minimal in today’s terms, such a level of welfare would yet far exceed the standards enjoyed by virtually all the creator artists who over millennia have made all the cultural treasures we can enjoy today (think of Sokrates and all the other stone masons [“demiourgai”] who built the Pantheon.)
The immediate effect would obviously be an enormous GROWTH in monetary GDP by inflation everywhere which, even by itself, would accomplish the Keynesian project of “euthanasia of the rentier” while drastically reducing the Gini ratio and posing a universally agreed need for all the tax, subsidy, and regulatory reforms required to guide society, through market mechanisms, to the indispensable rebalancing and revitalization of our planet’s ecosystem
reforms required to restore planetary
>to the “communist” (Bhutanese) metric
Hmmmm….. you know all the hysteria about “socialism” which is somehow become interchangeable with “communism” in the Alice-In-Wonderland way our world is controlled?
Maybe we can start talking about Bhutanism! That should throw them off the scent and maybe get something done. The USA in particular likes faddish-sounding concepts.
The core founding MMT theorists all strongly repudiate the idea of a UBI, I believe (and, more semantically , it would be government financed, not MMT financed ;) ). If I recall correctly, Yves has also argued that a UBI high enough to probide a living wage for everyone would be overly inflationary, and would be used to undermine and weaken the extant social safety nets, such as they are (‘why do you need medicare when you’re already getting a monthly stipend?’ etc). I’m not equipped to make the former argument myself; the latter seems more obvious.
It depends on what you call a living wage I think. What’s world median household income, 9k? I certainly don’t think that would cause unstoppable inflation, if money inflates, just raise a Carbon tax. I’d say 1k per person per month, and see how it works to see if it should be higher or lower.
I think Yves’ “cold-water Yankee predispositions” are a healthy outlook with which to approach this issue. The article is interesting and provocative but I think it is missing the proper context. That context being the recognition that the economy is not a financial system but an energy system. A corollary to that assertion is that prosperity = surplus energy, and surplus energy is in a relentless decline (barring something like cheap fusion, which is a long shot). Renewable energy sources are great but they just do not have the surplus energy that conventional fossil fuels have (new fossil fuel discoveries are mostly unconventional). These ideas are best articulated by Tim Morgan at this site. The idea that we get to navigate a consensus path between degrowth and green growth/decoupling seems a little naive. Much of the coming trajectory is now beyond our control and our only option is to adapt to lower energy activities, hopefully while maintaining some semblance of domestic tranquility.
The Green Growth and De-Growth memes seem quaint viewed in light of the economic and political future looming for the US. The 2020 Election clearly illuminated the intent of the US Elite and the Government they own. There will be no Green Growth that does not profit Big Money ‘Green’ and the only De-Growth we can expect will be a De-Growth in employment, wages, prosperity, and happiness. The stock market and asset valuations may grow, the concentration and strength of the rentiers may grow, but the economy will only grow in some carefully crafted Government statistics and supplemented by Enron inspired accounting by the Cartels.
I can agree that the various parties opposing the Neoliberal Ideology and practices of the US Elite, — that those parties should stop bickering and focus their efforts and attentions on opposing Neoliberal Ideology and practices. But I doubt the bickering will stop. Besides I doubt peaceful opposition will have much effect and I am too old not to be a pacifist. As for the body of this post — a bell might indeed give warning of the cat but who might bell the cat and how?
I began this comment tacitly accepting the idea that what the US does might have some meaningful impact on reducing the impacts of the coming Climate Crises. However:
“Green New Deal Twentieth Century Shadows on Climate Crisis”, Adam Tooze
slide #40:
Fossil C02 Emissions in Gigatons Projections for 2018:
India 2.6
EU28 3.5
USA 5.4
China 10.1
All others 15.3
[Global Carbon Project — Data: CDIAC/GCP/UNFCCC/BP/USGS] [Min 46:47]
Slide 36 showing the ‘Great Acceleration’ is also interesting. [Min 44:20]
The US and Europe could have some impact on the Climate Crises but we have become passengers on that train.
Still, if the US and EU don’t cut their emissions to a similar per capita number as the others, this train will never go anywhere. And US and EU are the ones who can do it the easiest.
Thank You. A place to start–and just China set its 0 Carbon goal for 2050–sure that’s 30 years but it is also a goal finally set–and they have the demonstrated capacity to exceed their own set goals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXLmsNeecT4
The idea is not that the US and Europe can sit on their hands and continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at mad rates. Instead realize that what the US and Europe are no longer in control of the Earth’s degradation and the US has spent decades undermining whatever leadership by example it might have once enjoyed.
The entire debate is bizarre.
1. Something can be good in one way and bad in another. That’s the starting point. Then you have to figure out the tradeoffs, make them more favorable if you can and decide how to balance. It’s insane to think there’s a single answer to that across the entire economy — all goods, all regions, all people.
2. A large portion of the world’s people need more “stuff” than they currently have. If your theory tells you they can’t have it, you have to figure out how you’re going to keep them from rebelling against you.
3. Economic policy is not governed by the quest for growth anywhere with the possible exception of China. If you doubt this, look at any country or confederation like the US and the EU. If the people in charge of policy in the US prioritized GDP expansion over all else, would they have made the policy choices of Trump, Obama or any of those other guys?
4. Serious climate policy will almost certainly result in significant reductions in GDP in the developed countries, at least from long term trend. That doesn’t make this reduction “good” or do away with the need to minimize it without relaxing the policy. (See point number 1.)
5. Oh, and what about GDP itself and its relationship to well-being etc.? Ever since national income measurement was introduced in the 1930s its practitioners recognized it was not a measure of well-being, only the magnitude of the portion of economic production exchanged for money. (Everyone in the business knows the measurement of public sector output is drastically flawed as well.) Stuff traded for money is fungible: you can exchange more of this for less of that at the margin if both trade for money. Lots of good stuff is part of that network and lots of bad stuff too. Lots of good and bad stuff is out of network. This isn’t rocket science. Good judgment at the personal and political levels is about identifying and choosing the good stuff and shunning the bad stuff in both cases.
6. As a practical matter, the extent of decarbonization we need, measured in percent reductions in emissions year after year starting now, is far, far beyond the contribution either GDP or population reduction can conceivably make, short of a cataclysm. Even with the economic dampening of Covid, we are continuing to have emissions, and if it turns out the reduction in 2020 is about on track to stabilize at 450 ppm, we still have further reductions in 2021, 2022 and onward to engineer. Seriously, how can we do that except by instituting policies that directly constrain the use of fossil fuels, along with others that speed up the transition to other sources of energy or efficiencies in their use? How much of a 6% *annual* reduction in emissions can you buy with degrowth or population policy? Why are we even having this debate?
a large part of the world needs more stuff than they currently have?
a large part, even in the “first” world needs decent food, good housing, and something worthwhile (productive or not) to do with our time, hands and minds.
that some do not have this is not because materials are lacking.
starvation is highest among 3rd world farmers, for political reasons.
poor housing is endemic in the first world for the same.
i posit all could have a good life even before all of this technological development even began–say at a 16th or 17th century level, barring healthcare developments.
my econ professor, who did not know how money worked, could at least point out that human needs are few but wants innumerable. he did this with a handy list of about five items, although i can’t remember which all items and some people do not like eating peanut butter.
perhaps start asking “what do we really and truly need?” first, and then plan to create that in equitable fashion.
perhaps start asking “what do we really and truly need?” first, and then plan to create that in equitable fashion.
thanks for tacking that on–i was beginning to think we all were talking right past each other(except for guurst being cryptic ;-) )
Underlying the articles premise–imo– is that it is not an either/or choice, but a both in appropriate measure at the appropriate time
as for the ‘what about GDP’ thing–isn’t ‘it’ what we want ‘it’ to be??
Apropos of this article, a very thought provoking interview in The Sun Dec 2020:
Eileen Crist
http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/540/our-great-reckoning
a must – read?
I see all these arguments as pretty useless. Regardless of the choice, there are sufficient people who will co-opt policy or manipulate outcomes to ensure that they will gain an advantage or escape responsibility. We have sufficient sociopaths in our corporations and government as well as people enamored of spewing out babies to ensure failure of either green growth or degrowth.
I remain sanguine about homo sapiens as a transient geological force who’s action will end with the extinction of its population.
I remain sanguine about homo sapiens as a transient geological force who’s action will end with the extinction of its population.
and how do you convey this when interacting with Generations younger than yours? I mean, what’s your opening line when they bring it up?
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.
Western man has become a slave of his own creation. Capitalism and the machine have become a feedback loop, as the needs of the capitalism grow, so too does the machine industry required to support it, which in turn only blazes new paths for the further growth of capitalism .
The catastrophic long term effects of industrial society on the environment will only get exponentially worse over time.
Those effects are with us now, and people still have hope that we could fight it, that we can somehow stop runaway climate change, we need to act now they cry, the cost of doing nothing is ever increasing, etc.
But the future is never as malleable as political idealists would like us to believe, it is time to be realistic, we are long past arguing about whether or not we could stop it, the real issue going forward is how we intend to survive it. It is already too late to avert global and ecological catastrophe.
Climate crises are not a manageable side effect of the industrial civilization but rather its only possible outcome, the crisis is irresolvable.
Agreed except for the “Western man” part. The Chinese aren’t exactly helping the planet and in 2015 they changed the 1 child policy to now 2 children. The Japanese live small, but hey Fukishima! India I don’t even want to think about.
We all suck at this.
Capitalism is inexorably driven by the irrational Faustian man (western’s man) longing for power; it cannot be controlled rationally as history has shown. Knowledge is power for the Faustian man whereas Chinese and Indian cultures see it more as a virtue.
Western culture and the machine are inseparable. Other civilizations simply used nature; by contrast Western man dominates it and rapes it. Nature used to render services to man, now we have tied it up as a slave.
Industrial society is not a permanent fixture of human civilization. It is a transient phenomenon. Industry and capitalism are not material phenomena but uniquely western forms of thought. Industrial technology is indivisible only from western civilization which has a deep cultural historical need to dominate and control all things, especially its environment.
The Chinese and the Russian use technology but they don’t long for it as the western man does. They see it only as the source of the West’s military and economic supremacy and a weapon in their fight against western imperialism.
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/david-attenborough-natural-world/
todays 12/4 episode–just had a listen–serendipitous, I maybe guess.
Towards the end of the session he lights right into the consumption economy with some suggestions, so I thought I’d drop it down to compliment the discussion.
One thing we do need is seasonal migration. Imo. We need North-South railways. In winter the trains run south to a warmer climate that is survivable without too much excess energy. In Summer the trains run north to cooler climates that are good for our current agriculture of grains and corn. Where are you Elon Musk?
Elon Musk is too busy figuring out ways to destroy another planet – He wants to put a self sustaining city on Mars – I would ask him why not try to figure that out here on planet earth?? – it should be a bunch easier than putting a monoculture (by definition) on another planet – without diversity in plants, animals, virus, bacteria, prions and vectors – you will be so far out on a limb on mars – that the odds will be hyper stacked against you Elon – So why mars and not here you investors and Elon
It is easy to sell useless utopias when the reality of life on earth doesn’t interfere with your just-so stories.
Musk says anything to keep the subsidies rolling in.
No mention of plants and animals, nor the world either. ‘Sapien concentric’
Musk says anything to keep the subsidies rolling in.
“Growth is required to protect the privileges of landlords, financiers, monopoly interests, and other “rentiers”. Rentiers do not create wealth; they extract wealth through their control of monopolised and scarce assets.”
And the digital rentiers – in so many ways.
SaaS – prime example of rentierism. With the alleged IoT the next stage of rentierism.
Much to say about alot of this non-soecific, muddled piece but that’d the first thing I want to get out if the way.
When I know what this person is proposing neo-liberal claptrap and only heavy regulation of the non-rich:
“One of the reasons that people balk at the idea of ‘degrowth’ is because they imagine it involving some kind of descending cap on national income. As far as I know, there are no serious thinkers in the post-growth community proposing to try and control the marketvalue of production and consumption at an aggregate level. Such a project would not only be impractical but also illogical. Why would we attempt to control a metric that is several steps removed from the biophysical impacts that matter, when we can design policies to directly control resource use, habitat destruction and pollution?”
As long as resources and the services that use them and products have a price – income inequality will matter.
Capitalism is trying to fix it’s over-production, under consumption problems by instituting large scale rentierism…thag is supposed to be “good” for us.
Capitalism needs to consolidate. Make the Earth our landlord. That’ll be the only way to balance the books. If all profits went to the planet and we humans created sustainable living the devastation could be turned around. Curbing our enthusiasm is like not having any fun anymore. And we are nothing if not whimsical.
Next time somebody brings up “work-sharing” ask them if that includes execs/VPs, etc.
Besides most companies instead of “work-sharing” goes to contracting and outsourcing.
VPs/Execs stay highly paid with extra bonuses for eliminating workers. They consider splitting up work among consultants and contractors as “work-sharing.”
Well it’s not the only possible course. We humans, as a species, can use the power of our numbers to force an end to the collision course with disaster we’ve been set on by a changing world order meeting with the perverse neoconservative ideology that US hegemony must be preserved at all cost. It absolutely is possible for humanity to live in a state of healthy collaboration with itself and with its ecosystem, if only we can pry loose the fingers of the ruling sociopaths from the steering wheel and turn our world toward peace and harmony.
imo–some bit of parallelism between the above dialogue and this Link today:
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/12/05/so-were-already-at-the-chinese-super-soldiers-part-of-the-propaganda-campaign/
If greed is fear of deprivation then deprivation is what needs to be resolved. But, as irony would have it, greed creates (externalizes) deprivation. Funny that. I do think we are all crazy.
No dispute from me
I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.
Dalai Lama
seen on a bumber sticker at the Food Lion Parking Lot:
“Scared People do Crazy Sh+t”