Futures Forum: The semantics of sustainability: 'sustainable development'... or 'sustainable growth' ... or 'sustained economic growth'... or 'development for sustainability'...
Futures Forum: From Sustainable Development to Degrowth: strategic concepts in a time of downturn
Futures Forum: Climate Change solutions: "Revealing greater agreement than the pro-growth versus de-growth dichotomy suggests."
Futures Forum: The Circular Economy
Some years ago, the Sustainable Development Commission published a paper on the issues:
November 23, 2009 3:41 am
P
rosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Plan
By Tim Jackson
Earthscan £12.99, 160 pages
FT Bookshop price: £10.39
By Tim Jackson
Earthscan £12.99, 160 pages
FT Bookshop price: £10.39
Do economies have to grow? Or, to put the point another way, what do they have to grow for? As rich countries suffer their worst failure of economic growth since the second world war, those questions have resurfaced with a new urgency.
IN NON-FICTION
Sign up now
FirstFT is our new essential daily email briefing of the best stories from across the web
The sense that our prevailing economic model is bankrupt, allied to fears that the world is heading for catastrophic climate change, has stoked demands for a radical rethink of the guiding principles of modern capitalist democracies.
Answering that call, an assortment of pundits have been issuing challenges to political and economic orthodoxy, offering alternative visions of what a good society would look like.
At the user-friendly end of the field, Zac Goldsmith, an environmental adviser to the British Conservative party, has taken an amiable stroll round the issues in The Constant Economy.
At the more rigorous end, a commission convened by France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy and led by the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has examined the limitations of standard gross domestic product data as a lodestone for policy.
Between those extremes lies Tim Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth, a challenge to mainstream economic thinking that is both accessible and robustly argued.
Jackson, a professor of sustainable development at Surrey university, has thought hard about the subject. His prose is lucid and lively, and many of his policy prescriptions are sensible.
Jackson is a member of the British government’s Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), and the book draws on a report for that commission published earlier in the year. Full disclosure: I also served on the SDC until 2004. For a work by a government adviser, based on an officially supported research project, his stance is also refreshingly radical.
Yet for all these strengths, his argument is flawed. Jackson’s starting point is that, as he puts it, “a return to business as usual is not an option.”
If economic growth carries on as it has done since the industrial revolution, he writes, “by the end of the century our children and grandchildren will face a hostile climate, depleted resources, the destruction of habitats, the decimation of species, food scarcities, mass migrations and, almost inevitably, war.”
In his strongest chapter, he takes on what he calls “the myth of decoupling”: the idea that the link between economic growth and environmental damage can be broken.
Typically, the environmental impact of an economy, relative to its income, falls as it gets richer. But while that “relative decoupling” is well-established, “absolute decoupling” – a decline in greenhouse gas emissions, for example – has been elusive.
Jackson’s conclusion is that if economic growth cannot be separated from environmental damage, then – in rich countries at least – it is growth that will have to be abandoned. Instead, he argues, societies can attain a truer prosperity that “consists in our ability to participate in the life of society, in our sense of shared meaning and purpose and in our capacity to dream.”
Lives of frugality and simplicity, with stronger communities and healthier relationships, will make us more genuinely prosperous than our present obsession with “material pleasures”, he argues.
This is, in many ways, a beguiling vision, particularly at a time when the pursuit of prosperity in the material sense has proved so harrowing. The problem comes with reality.
Jackson’s policy prescriptions – including greater financial prudence and tighter regulation of TV advertising – are all sound, to varying degrees. Yet they take only the smallest of steps towards the post-growth society that he suggests we need.
His only idea that could put the brake on growth would be cutting working hours. Here he takes the economist’s famous “lump of labour” fallacy – the idea that there is only a fixed amount of work to do that has to be shared round – and suggests it should be a goal of policy. Yet in anything other than a perfect utopia, the idea that there is no more work that needs doing is ludicrous.
There are other problems, too. Jackson has no answer for the question of how a post-growth economy would handle technological innovation, or a refutation of Benjamin Friedman’s argument, in his excellent The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, that rising standards of material prosperity foster opportunity, tolerance, fairness and democracy. A society that has given up on growth seems unlikely to be the open, friendly community of Jackson’s imagining.
His pessimism about decoupling is probably also overdone. There is plenty of analysis, from Lord Stern’s report on the economics of climate change, to show how CO 2 emissions can be cut to keep global warming within reasonable limits while the world economy continues to grow.
While the goal may be achievable, reaching it will require an enormous effort. By daring to challenge one of the fundamental precepts of orthodox policy-making, Jackson performs a valuable service in reminding us of that. His questions are worth asking, even if his answers are wrong.
Ed Crooks is the FT’s energy editor
Prosperity without Growth - The transition to a sustainable economy.
This has been referenced ever since - as here, from 2011:Out of the Ashes – George Monbiot
And here, in a very provocative piece from a couple of weeks ago (with a reply below):
“Very serious people often tell us that the word “degrowth” is too negative. People like happy, positive, nice things. Sure, the economy is systematically destroying life on earth. But nobody wants to degrow it.
Instead, these critics prefer words like “post-growth,” “a-growth,” “re-growth”, even the mythical “green growth.” They want to create a circular economy, a green economy, a new economy, a prosperity economy, well-being economy, or a steady-state economy.
What do all these terms have in common?
They’re boring.
Here’s what degrowth naysayers don’t seem to get: degrowth is actually punk as f*ck. We’re nonconforming, anti-establishment, DIY punks. And we’re not trying to sound nice. Take your positivity and shove it.
The term “sustainable development” shows what happens to concepts that aren’t hardcore. It’s been integrated into international agreements for over two decades, yet here we are, at the precipice of reaching dozens of tipping points that will send Earth’s climate spinning into chaos.
The problem wasn’t that not enough people got behind sustainable development, it was that everyone got behind it because it didn’t challenge anything at all. In 2014, Goldman Sachs commissioned a report “Attaining Sustainable Development of Oil and Gas in North America” (emphasis ours).
That’s why we use degrowth. Goldman Sachs won’t be able to co-opt it. Unlike post-growth, re-growth, or a-growth, we think degrowth has something special: that “de-” is a little middle finger at the establishment.
Very serious people shoot back that degrowth, in using the word “growth,” just strengthens the language of the status quo. All it does, according to “framing” enthusiasts, is further reinforce the dominant pro-growth “frame” that supposedly makes degrowth seem scary and bad.
To this, degrowthers respond reasonably: we actually don’t give a flying f*ck. We don’t want to be fake-nice about it. We want to name and shame our enemy.
Very serious people claim that degrowth, like some punk culture, is nihilistic, that it doesn’t inspire hope or change. We denounce growth but do not describe alternative values, they say.
Sure, degrowth is nihilistic, but in the Nietzschean sense: a healthy refusal of the present, one that is necessary to think differently. We reject growth to make space for different concepts and values: international solidarity, the commons, financial reform, basic income, conviviality, care, to name a few. We’ve done our research, and we urge for practical policy proposals, long-term utopian visions, and disobedient direct actions—because the very serious politicians aren’t listening yet. If you’ve come to any of the last five degrowth conferences, you’ll know how forward-looking and positive degrowthers can be.
Very serious people think that punks don’t get very far: no one listens to them, no one empathizes with them. Why not focus on the establishment, why not bribe them with words that are easier to swallow?
We beg to differ. Think of the Occupy movement. With little plan beyond stirring shit up, those punks redefined politics and forced politicians to finally pay attention to inequality. Think of the Windows employees who spent their time at the office coding open-source programs, using Microsoft money to pave the way for a new kind of cyberspace: one based on sharing and mutual aid. It wasn’t the soothing March on Washington For Jobs And Freedom that convinced President Kennedy to sign the civil rights act; it was the threat of disaffected black youths rioting in the streets in every major US city.
This fall, we stood with Standing Rock. The Lakota gathered against the DAPL not to be nice, but to register their dissent, to stand in the way of a system that has tried to crush them for centuries. Their dissent delivered a striking victory against the establishment.
We understand, but don’t agree with, those who voted Brexit and Trump as a big “f*ck you” to the establishment. They are punks too, and we lament that the Left has been so preoccupied with being nice, professional, and reasonable, encouraging many of these promising punks to vote for a new breed of white supremacists and oligarchs.
We think the suburbanites tinkering in their backyard are punks as well—their DIY creations objections to the industrial economy. We are in solidarity with the foot-draggers, the wildcat strikers who don’t care about their company’s competitiveness. We agree with Paul Lafargue, who scoffed at “the right to work” and demanded “the right to be lazy!”
To us, nurses, teachers, small farmers, and childcare workers are punks too. Capitalist society considers these jobs basically worthless, but people do them anyway, because f*ck you, that’s what they do.
At home, many of us degrowthers are squatters. Some of us dumpster dive and graffiti over advertising. We cook big meals for each other. We throw big weddings and big funerals. We are weirdos who’ve never quite fit in in board rooms.
Last week, one of our own presented degrowth inside the pearly halls of the UK House of Commons. Federico Demaria, one of the co-editors of the book Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era, shared the parliamentary stage with Kate Raworth, who coined the unobjectionable phrase Doughnut Economics, Tim Jackson, who wrote Prosperity without Growth, and two of the authors of the 1972 book Limits to Growth. Unlike the other panelists, Federico was willing to be radical, willing to think differently. The audience loved it: he wasn’t boring. Of course, some of his very serious co-panelists patronized him as a big-dreaming, radical youngster.
The serious people tell us that politicians will never support degrowth. They tell us to stop acting like teenagers, put on suits, and come up with innocuous words that the representatives of every country will applaud in the UN General Assembly.
We know that sort of work is necessary. Sometimes you will find us putting on those awkwardly fitting suits and creeping through the halls of power, our tattoos and piercings and bad haircuts not very well hidden.
But that’s not our audience. Our sympathies lie with the misfits, the outcasts, the mischief-makers, the queers. They are our kind of people. And that’s why people like us: at heart, whoever feels like a political outsider is a bit of a punk.
Aaron Vansintjan studies ecological economics, food systems, and urban change. He is co-editor at Uneven Earth and enjoys journalism, wild fermentations, decolonization, degrowth, and long bicycle rides.
Originally published by Common Dreams
And here is a response from Rob Hopkins of the Transition Network initiative:
Sam Bliss (author of the wonderfully-named blog ‘The Bliss Point‘) and Aaron Vansintjan recently wrote a blog called Degrowth is Punk as F*ck which defended the term “degrowth” as “a little middle finger to the establishment” and urged the reader to “take your positivity and shove it”. It’s a fiery and passionate defence of degrowth, and contains much, in its spirit and in its message, that I agree with. But it does raise some key points that I want to explore here and to challenge.
First thing I want to do here is to challenge their version of ‘punk’. Yes, of course punk is, as they put it, “nonconforming, anti-establishment, DIY”. Amen to that. But there were always two sides to it, for me at least. I was too young to be there for punk when it happened but it shaped my music tastes and radicalised my politics. Yes there was the middle-finger-raising, brash, in-yr-face side to it. But there was also the deeper, more constructive, solutions-building, but on their own terms, side. And their music was just as good, fortunately.
Where I despair with this blog is that it rather paints itself into a corner. Let’s take the “technology adoption cycle” as a model. For any idea to take hold, first you have to bring on board the ‘early adopters’, then the ‘early majority’, the ‘late majority’, and finally, if you’re really lucky, the ‘laggards’. What the authors fail to recognize is that the us/them attitude that runs through this blog means that while they might attract some early adopters, they then pretty much close the door to anyone else, which would be a huge mistake, as degrowth is, in many ways, a much-needed and timely idea.
So here, in a spirit of deep affection for the degrowth movement (many of whom wouldn’t recognize the version of themselves painted in this blog) are six respectful suggestions that 48 year old Rob (less hair) might offer to 15 year old Rob (quite a lot more hair) which also address some of the points in this blog:
1. This is not Year Zero: Degrowth, like Transition, like permaculture, like anything, stands on the shoulders of the generation that came before, and their work. The article’s swipe at Tim Jackson (author of ‘Prosperity Without Growth”) and Kate Raworth (author of the forthcoming “Doughnut Economics”) is rather inexcusable, and reads as a bit childish. It hails the degrowth speaker at a recent event in the House of Commons, Federico Demaria thus:
“…unlike the other panelists, Federico was willing to be radical, willing to think differently. The audience loved it: he wasn’t boring. Of course, some of his very serious co-panelists patronized him as a big-dreaming radical youngster”.
I know both Tim and Kate, and they play a vital role in this larger movement of imagining, designing and implementing a new economy, a new future. They think differently, are willing to be radical, and no doubt have the scars to prove it.
While we may not all agree on different aspects of this thing, these are potential friends, comrades, connectors, mavens, allies. I doubt very much that they “patronised him as a big-dreaming radical youngster”. It’s one thing to be patronised, another to be so prickly, defensive and committed to feeling like an outsider that any feedback is interpreted as patronising.
Perhaps the authors will read this piece and think I am doing the same to them. All I can say is that on my path through activism, permaculture, natural building, Transition and so on, I have always appreciated it when an elder in this movement has given me feedback, whether I agreed with it or not, or however uncomfortable it may have left me feeling. That’s how societies, communities, families work after all. There’s no reason to discard or disparage the pioneers in our movements just because we can.
2. There are things to learn from “serious people”: throughout the blog, the authors take exception to what they term “very serious people”, un-named folks who seem to exist purely to undermine their arguments, playing the role of what in the 60s would have been called “the Man”. The article would have you dismiss everything such people say. This rather brought to mind Michael Gove’s statement during the Brexit debates that the UK “has had enough of experts”. “Serious people” is used here as a rather disparaging catch-all for anyone who disagrees with the authors.
But an openness to criticism, to people who have a different approach, is vital. Respectful debate is too. Just as some punks were happy to dismiss anyone who they perceived as being “old farts”, this piece closes the door to many potentially useful relationships. At least the “serious people” are interested enough in your ideas to engage with you, to put forward a view. That’s far more promising that all those who have no idea what you’re even talking about. Reach out.
3. Don’t be so defensive: the blog opens with a big defence of the term “degrowth”. “We actually don’t give a flying f*ck. We don’t want to be fake-nice about it. We want to name and shame our enemy”, they rail. I agree. Degrowth is a powerful term, and an important one. It has been defended before. Move on. Tell us what you’re going to do with it that’s actually going to change things. Celebrate it.
4. Common ground is powerful ground: as I said earlier, this blog paints degrowth into a very unhelpful corner, an unnecessary isolation of its own making. They write “that’s not our audience. Our sympathies lie with the misfits, the outcasts, the mischief-makers, the queers. They are our kind of people”. So degrowth has nothing to offer to unionists, single mothers, people working in call centres, people with landscaping businesses, welders, planners, train drivers?
They mention the Lakota at Standing Rock, who they see as operating in the same ‘punk’ spirit. But one of the things that has been so powerful with Standing Rock is how they have reached out, how they’ve brilliantly harnessed social media to appeal beyond the activist world, to appeal to a fundamental sense of right and wrong, of injustice, around the world. And they have done so with a degree of compassion, strength, respectfulness, patience and centredness that is conspicuously absent from this piece.
Working to do actual community-scale change in actual communities, with all their complexities, their infuriating, chaotic, charming, creative ways, requires finding common ground with “serious people”, with “normal people”, rather than being stuck in our own “otherness”.
5. Invite in the imagination: this article rather shuts down imagination, thinking, creativity. What if punk means nothing to you, or you just associate it with violence, dreadful music and yobbishness? It’s one thing to say that you draw some inspiration from its spirit, another to say that in order to play any useful role in the future of our world you need to be “punk as fuck”. Hardly fires the imagination does it?
6. Haircuts open doors, and close them too: while no-one would suggest that “tattoos and piercings and bad haircuts” should be covered up, hidden away, in my own experience, a haircut can open more doors. And at this point in time, as the Arctic melts and the deserts spread, getting behind those doors matters more than the haircuts.
Punk gave me the first big kick up the backside of my life and still propels me forward (Bill Mollison provided the second one). While it is tempting to imagine approaching our work of rebuilding communities and resilience, of creating new economies in the spirit of The Clash striding out of the dressing room with their guitars on their hips, I’m not sure that’s especially useful. Well, saying that, it works for me, but if it has the potential to exclude and isolate others, then it’s not too helpful to vocalise it.
The authors write that degrowth is “forward-looking and positive”, but then do nothing to prove that that is the case. I went to the degrowth conference in Venice a few years back, and struggled to find anyone who was translating the ideas of degrowth into real, on-the-ground projects. Indeed some were adamant that that really wasn’t the point. While I hear that that has changed a bit since, I wonder if this blog speaks as much to the experience of those within the degrowth movement, including the authors, trying to actually change things, as much as it speaks to degrowth’s relationship to the rest of the world?
I deeply share the value the authors place on “a healthy refusal of the present”. But creating something beyond that refusal requires putting less labels on ourselves rather than more, seeking what we have in common with others rather than isolating ourselves. If we have to be “punk as f*ck” to be part of this revolution, then many people I know doing phenomenal things wouldn’t be able to take part. And that’s a shame.
NB: By the way, that reason we chose to write “f*ck” the way we have here isn’t because we want to censor the spirit of the original piece, but rather because to spell it unadulterated means that it won’t get through lots of our readers’ spam filters…
Rob Hopkins is the cofounder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network.
Originally published by Transition Culture
Tags: Degrowth
Is being “punk as f*ck” really where it’s at? - Transition Network
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment