BY MARK FABIAN :
Green growth is broadly optimistic about the capacity of liberal democracy’s incremental style to get the green transition done in time. It has faith in markets, and even as it recognises the need for green industrial policy it is cautious about Government’s ability to micromanage it. Degrowth believes something more radical is in order, with equality at its core. We need to understand what is “sufficient” for people to live good lives
NEARLY all the
world ’ s
Governments and
vast numbers of
its people are convinced that addressing human induced climate change is
essential if healthy societies are
to survive.
The two solutions most often
proposed go by various names
but are widely known as “green
growth” and “degrowth”. Can
these ideas be reconciled?What
do both have to say about the
climate challenge?
The crude version of green
growth – the solution that dominates the discourse of developed countries – is essentially
that technology will save us if
we get the incentives right.
We can stick with the idea
that economic growth is the
central determinant of human
flourishing, we just need technological fixes for unsustainable industrial practices.
These
will emerge if we get prices
pointing in a green direction,
which is first and foremost
about carbon taxes.
Yet this sort of thinking still
seems head-in-the-sand. Yes,
the emissions intensity of percapita GDP growth is generally falling, in part because added
economic value increasingly
comes from ideas not widgets.
Sweden, for example, has
increased its GDP by 76 per
cent but its domestic energy use
by only 2.5 per cent since 1995.
But we are still missing carbon
reduction deadlines by wide
margins and struggling to enact
meaningful carbon pricing.
Eco-socialism and political
suicide: the caricature of
degrowth: The crude version of
degrowth is that to ensure sustainability, GDP must contract.
Endless growth got us to where
we are, and endless growth
will kill us.
We need to throw out the
status quo and make our revolutionary way to eco-socialism. Rich countries need to
stop where they are and transfer wealth to poor countries so
we can equitably share what
we have.
This sort of thinking is easily caricatured as political suicide and more likely to undermine enthusiasm for sustainability than achieve it.
Where green growth and
degrowth agree: The first is that
contemporary industry is too
environmentally intensive – it
crosses multiple planetary
boundaries in its carbon emissions, ocean acidification,
nitrogen, phosphorus loading
and so on. Second, to avoid
ecological collapse, sectors
such as fossil fuels, fast fashion, industrial meat farming,
air travel, plastics and many
more need to draw down their
economic activity.
Meanwhile, other sectors
need to grow. These include
clean energy, obviously, but
also biodegradable materials,
green steel and pesticide-free
agriculture, on and on.
Effecting this structural transition will require both carbon
taxes and more muscular
industrial policy of the Green
New Deal sort.
Third, environmental damage is both licensed and exacerbated by a narrow policy
focus on gross domestic product (GDP).We need to shift priorities away from GDP and
towards frameworks and budgets – such as those used in New
Zealand, the Australian Capital
Territory and other places –
that do a far better job than GDP
does of measuring whether we
are using our resources effectively to advance human wellbeing. Green growth and
degrowth advocates also agree
that getting people to practise
less carbon intensive lifestyles,
especially in rich countries, is
politically and culturally difficult. Witness the recent outcry
in Spain when the government
legislated that public and commercial buildings could not be
cooled below 27 or heated
above 19 degrees respectively.
Where green growth and
degrowth disagree:What green
growth and degrowth advocates disagree most about is
how deeply we need to alter our
political economy to survive
climate change.
Green growth is broadly optimistic about the capacity of
liberal democracy’s incremental style to get the green transition done in time. It has faith
in markets, and even as it recognises the need for green industrial policy it is cautious about
Government’s ability to micromanage it.
Degrowth believes something more radical is in order,
with equality at its core.
We
need to understand what is
“sufficient” for people to live
good lives, and then redistribute from people who have far
more than they need to people who have much less.
This approach would include
the provision of energy-efficient social housing, and international aid for green development. Government must
adopt the climate transition as
its mission in the manner of
winning a total war. It must get
involved in the economy and
society in a big way, including
by regulating things like private
jets and low emission traffic
zones.
The problem for degrowthers
is that getting such a radical
agenda off the ground requires
first and foremost a change in
public values. But the movement's focus on international
political economy – its tendency to target its efforts at
bureaucrats and quasi-governmental agencies like the
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) –
undermines cultural change
by feeding populist narratives
about technocratic overreach.
Spain's experience illustrates
that citizens haven't internalised the sorts of lifestyle
changes degrowth believes are
required. Politically hopeless
slogans like “degrowth” that
don’t even capture the essence
of the movement need to be
tossed out, and much more
attention needs to be given to
marketing the experience of
living green in sustainable societies.
(The Conversation)