3 Comments

1. Simon Bond

   Posted October 27, 2009 at 10:21 pm | Permalink

   I’ve registered for the event. Are any other followers of this blog going?

   
   
2. Simon Bond

   Posted November 5, 2009 at 11:21 am | Permalink

   The launch of Tim Jackson’s book ‘Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet’ (www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=92763) proved a worthwhile event.

   Tim Jackson (of the Sustainable Development Commission http://www.sd-commission.org.uk) summarised the case for a new economics that is fit for purpose and ceases to ignore ecological limits. He identified three boundaries to continued conventional growth: biodiversity, the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles and climate change. There are two particular problems with the present system, material consumption growth and investment to increase labour productivity (which leads to unemployment if growth falters). This brings us to the central dilemma: that continued growth is ecologically unsustainable, whilst ‘de-growth’ appears unstable (as we have experienced during the last two years).

   The book investigates an alternative economic model that does without continued consumption growth and yet achieves stability! One element is a switch in the goal of investment and innovation from labour productivity to reducing emissions and materials productivity.

   Other important elements are sharing work to improve the work / life balance and changing the consumerist ethos. Consumerism is deeply embedded but does us a disservice as we need to flourish in ways that are truly human.

   Anthony Giddins of the LSE identified five ‘myths’:
   1)Scaring people will get them to change their behaviour – we also need a positive vision (I don’t think he has read ‘Against being Positive’ on this blog)
   2)If we all do a little it will add up to a lot – though worthwhile, structural change is also needed
   3)Investment in renewable energy will reduce emissions – Spain is heavily into renewable energy but its construction boom caused relatively high emissions
   4)Large scale behaviour change can be achieved solely through persuasion – incentives such as environmental taxes will also be needed
   5)A green new deal will create jobs – it depends on the overall position and where jobs are lost, e.g. in coal mining (it was also said that China and India have put more into a green stimulus than our government).

   The Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson spoke on the political dimension. She is the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics. I had no idea that there was such a thing, maybe its existence bodes well for the dissemination of new thinking?

   The last speaker was Ed Crooks, a Financial Times journalist, who discussed some of the problems of doing without growth from the perspective of conventional economics. Whilst useful as a contrast to the previous speakers, I did not find his arguments sufficiently robust in the face of the realities we are facing of environmental boundaries and continuing global poverty.

   For me, the event posed a number of questions, such as:
   - how can the majority of people be encouraged to engage with these issues and change their behaviour, when they barely appreciate that climate change is a call to individual and collective action?
   - how can human flourishing be promoted in non-elitist ways?
   - what would I like the government to do (or to stop doing), e.g. on environmental taxes?
   - what do I think of Anthony Giddins’ five ‘myths’?
   - what will the new economy be like and what sort of society would I like to see?

   
   
3. David Maxwell

   Posted November 8, 2009 at 7:17 pm | Permalink

   I bought Giddens book and found it disappointing. It lacked a sense of the possibility of a new paradigm with new priorities. I will try Jackson.