How much growth is enough

Scientists’ warning on affluence – Julia Steinberger, Nature, June 19 2020

Large inequality in international and intranational energy footprints between income groups and across consumption categories – Julia Steinberger, Nature, March 16 2020

Roots, Riots, and Radical Change—A Road Less Travelled for Ecological Economics – Julia Steinberger, MDPI, April 4 2019

Governing for Future Generations: How Political Trust Shapes Attitudes Towards Climate and Debt Policies – Malcolm Fairbrother, Frontiers in Political Science, May 11 2021

The reason we’re starting to be more and more interested in de-growth is just because of the magnitude of the challenge and the lack of evidence for alternatives. So it’s like, okay guys, we’ve tried this for like, I dunno, three decades now. We’re not really seeing the effects.

I mean at this point, even the IPCC is using language, like, you know, a complete transformation of all our production consumption systems. That’s not a little twist on something that exists. That’s really a fundamental change in our economies and yeah. Degrowth might mean different things to different people, but it does mean fundamental change. 

It does mean moving away from the current paradigm. So I think that that’s one of the reasons why we’re here now.

Denise: If you’ve heard the term degrowth, you’ll probably have noticed that it’s popping up more and more frequently.

Last month, for example, degrowth was covered on the front page of the international edition of the New York Times. It was an opinion piece called “Degrowth as a saviour to the planet”.

Ezra Klein talked about it on his podcast in August. He said “I understand its appeal, but I don’t understand its politics.”

You can study degrowth. There’s a masters programme at a university in Barcelona in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice.

So what’s driving this interest in degrowth, and how is degrowth different from green growth?

Green growth is the idea that we can have economic growth and sustainable development at the same time. It’s an idea that’s been around for over a decade. And it’s the underlying assumption of almost all current policy discussions about net zero.

What’s changed is that that assumption is starting to come under scrutiny as being not fit for purpose for the scale of our crisis.

So is degrowth the alternative to green growth? Or are they two sides of the same coin.

To find out, I talked to two experts in the field – Julia Steinberger, from the University of Lausanne and Malcolm Fairbrother of Umea University in Sweden.

The first thing I learned is that degrowth is not what it seems. It’s not about less economic growth, nor is it about voluntary simplicity.

Don’t miss this episode if you’re curious about what it is and why it matters for the coming decade.

Denise: So today we’re going to talk about, uh, green growth at de-growth, uh, which is, um, a very hot topic. And I feel like it’s become hotter since, uh, the pandemic, uh, perhaps people noticed during the lockdown that they were spending less and traveling less, uh, perhaps they developed a deeper appreciation for, uh, wellbeing, benefits of spending time in nature.

Next year we have the 50 years anniversary of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth. Uh, so this is a very exciting time to talk about what’s changing in politics and economics and in society. And, uh, I’m thrilled to have two brilliant guests here to, uh, debate this topic, uh, Malcolm Fairbrother and Julia Steinberger.

And, um, could I ask you both to just briefly introduce yourself?

Julia: Uh, so my name is Julia Steinberger. I’m a professor at the university of Lausanne and also, uh, a researcher in the topic of living well within limits. I happen right now to be a lead author for the working group 3 of the IPCC. There’s probably more acronyms around that. So I think I’ll just leave it there.

Malcolm: And I’m a professor of sociology at Umea in Sweden. University of Graz, and the Institute for future studies in Stockholm.

Denise: Great. So, um, I I’d love to kick off by just getting some definitions straight because, uh, there’s a lot of confusion about what is green growth?

What is de- growth, uh, are they just two sides of the same coin or are they actually very separate? Um, could I ask you both to just very simply define, you know, what you understand by these two. 

Malcolm: I think I’ll leave Julia to say what she thinks how we should define de-growth.

I would say green growth for me is a term I’m a little bit reluctant to use just because I think it’s very elastic and different people use it in different ways. Some of which I think are helpful, some of which are not. It can be a useful term. I think, in so far as it refers to ways of reconciling growth with, with environmental sustainability, which I do think are possible.

Uh, but I think it can also be used to refer to economic growth with a bit of sustainability concerns, sort of tacked on as an afterthought. And in that sense, um, I think it can be so sort of vague that it’s not, it’s not actually that useful analytically. That’s why personally I would generally prefer to contrast de-growth with decoupling. So the idea that, uh, economic growth could be de-linked from a negative environmental impact. So we could have both sustainability and prosperity, but, uh, that’s, you know, a big conversation. Why doesn’t Julia jump in with her view of de-growth.

Julia: Yeah. So I agree with Malcolm that the main topic here hinges around this idea of decoupling and so that green growth is this idea that we should be able to continue with growth as a goal. but at the same time, try to decouple, um, environmental resource use and impacts to the extent where they go down within sustainable limits. That’s sort of the generous version. Like Malcolm said, there’s, there’s other ones where sustainability is, is much more decorative than actually saying we need to actually make our resource use and emissions sustainable, uh, at sustainable levels.

One place where degrowth changes from that is, um, actually by challenging the idea that economic growth itself is synonymous with prosperity. So I think that the goal of degrowth is to decouple human prosperity and wellbeing from environmental degradation and resource use and emissions.

And to try to see if we can have both wellbeing, prosperous societies and sustainable levels of resource use and emissions. And within that goal, based on, um, based on the evidence, uh, the proponents of degrowth say actually to get there, we actually need to get rid of economic growth as a goal. At least we need to get rid of, if we care about it enough to keep it as a policy goal, to keep it as a linchpin of a lot of the ways our institutions function and our economies, because growth is structurally baked into a lot of ways our economies function.

So as de-growth is trying to get there, it’s saying, you know what, In order to get to this place where we want to, we need to get to, we have to move away from an economic GDP understanding, um, of, of that, of that economic growth as a goal in itself. 

And we have to just sort of let it go and, and do the things we really need to do and focus on and move away from growth dependence of our economies and our institutions.

Malcolm: I think Julia touches on a couple of the, what I would say are the key ambiguities in this conversation. I think there’s a bit of a distinction to be made between treating GDP as a goal and saying that GDP growth can actually be reconciled with sustainability.

So I don’t personally care much about GDP growth. I agree with Julia that there’s quite a, you know, kind of wide gap between GDP as a measure of wellbeing and real wellbeing. I don’t think it’s a great measure of wellbeing and I don’t particularly prioritize GDP, but nor do I particularly think that GDP has to decline for us to achieve sustainability.

So as a policy goal, I totally support de-emphasizing GDP, but as an agenda for sustainability, I also don’t support prioritizing shrinking GDP. 

The other thing I think she said that I think is really important is there’s probably a spectrum of views about how good a measure of well being GDP per capita is.

I think you could find smart people who think the GDP per capita has absolutely nothing to do with well being. I do think there’s some smart people who probably would come up with very sophisticated statistical arguments to suggest there’s a strong relationship between GDP per capita and well being.

I’m probably somewhere in the middle of that conversation. I think it has something to do with wellbeing. I don’t think it’s a good measure of well being.

Denise: Um, so I want to ask you, uh, both of you, why this topic of de-growth is getting more and more traction in recent years.

Do you think it’s a reflection of just the decarbonization agenda or is it coming from bottom up? Is this really something that’s being driven by, um, civil society, you know, youth activism, uh, or is it just simply a reflection of changing consumer behaviors and aspirations?

Julia: That’s so that’s a big question. I actually don’t know where the general interest in de-growth comes from. I mean, there’s a, there’s a research community and sort of an activist community around it. I would say I probably come from a specific direction of the research community, which is people who are looking at, uh, in fact how difficult it is to do this decoupling. 

So I came to de-growth because I looked for evidence of decoupling of economic growth and resource use and found a lot of relative decoupling, but pretty much no absolute decoupling. And that, that sort of led me to, to say, what does that mean?

Denise: Could you explain ?

Julia: It’s actually the distinction Malcolm was talking about at the beginning where you have this sort of fluffy tacked-on sustainability, which is like, that would be relative decoupling. 

And we’re still making everything worse, but actually we’re making it a little less worse than we used to so we’re going to give ourselves a medal. So it basically means like environmental impacts are still growing, are still unsustainable. But they’re slightly less than unsustainable than they were before compared to the level of economic growth we have. 

And absolute decoupling is no, you know, you’re ramping your emissions down. You’re ramping your impacts down and growing at the same time. 

I would say the people in my community are talking about it more and more because we’re seeing, um, the real challenge. I mean, it’s not impossible to decouple GDP from CO2 emissions or from, uh, certain types of resource use as many as possible to try to do some of this stuff.

But most countries are not doing it. And, um, those that are doing it are doing it too slowly for the kinds of change we need to avoid the worst of climate change for instance. So there’s a, there’s a question of, um, Yeah, there’s a, there’s a question that challenge, and I forgot what your original question was that I was trying to deal with, which is, oh yeah.

So my research community, the reason we’re starting to be more and more interested in de-growth is just because of the magnitude of the challenge and the lack of evidence for alternatives. So it’s like, okay guys, we’ve tried this for like, I dunno, three decades now. We’re not really seeing the effects.

We need to be looking into other options and we need to be making these other options viable. So let’s think differently.

Malcolm: I think I agree with Julia that the attention to lots of different solutions to environmental problems, uh, is growing because of how terrifying a lot of these environmental problems are and the level of urgency with which, you know, people who study these things know that we need to deal with them.

I have to admit this summer with some of the impacts of climate change, being so visible in so many places, I’m feeling psychologically, uh, more sort of depression about this than I personally ever have before. And I look for sources of hope where I can get them. I guess I would say that the range of thinking and the sense of urgency maybe, is growing a little bit compared to before in a constructive way.

I don’t know if I can say that with certainty, but I think there is a sense in which people are looking for solutions because it’s so serious and because things have not been taken seriously enough until now. 

That said, um, while I think the term de-growth is definitely more prevalent and in the air more now than it has been in the past, I don’t know that that’s a changed sentiment on the impacts of economic growth per se. 

So I’m a sociologist and a lot of early environmental sociology was basically measuring public attitudes towards environmental issues and environmental problems and the sort of theoretical framework around which a lot of that work was done from the beginning was something called the new ecological paradigm.

And this was the label that researchers gave to the kind of constellation of attitudes that characterized environmental thinking. And from the beginning, you know, as far back as we have measures, environmental concern was linked to a rather negative view of economic growth. So I don’t think that’s actually a, a new sentiment and I don’t know that that’s actually any different than it was maybe 50 years ago as captured by, um, as you mentioned at the start, the Limits to Growth report, which attracted so much attention at the time.

Denise: I guess my question is what do we learn from that? If attitudes towards economic growth have been negative for the last 50 years, um, why are we still here?

Julia: Aha, that’s one of the main criticisms of the sort of green growth perspective is sort of in a stereotypical way that the degrowth camp has is that when people, for instance, in the area of ecological modernization, which is definitely dominant and sort of people who come and say, listen, we can do this with growth. We can do this with investment in technology, that’s all we need. 

Um, and they’ve been very dominant in policy circles and in public communication for the past decades and, um, and have failed.

Right? So, because part of the problem is that. When we communicate on the basis of saying we don’t need to change our economic systems, we can just keep doing what we’re doing now, which is throw a bit more money at research and development and innovation, at modern technologies. And we’ll be fine. What policymakers hear is you don’t have to do anything.

So that’s one of the main, um, main reasons why I would say that degrowth is coming more to the fore is because of the failure of these sort of eco-modernist approaches and people saying, actually we need to make real changes.

I mean, at this point, even the IPCC is using language, like, you know, a complete transformation of all our production consumption systems. That’s not a little twist on something that exists. That’s really a fundamental change in our economies and yeah. Degrowth might mean different things to different people, but it does mean fundamental change.

It does mean moving away from the current paradigm. So I think that that’s one of the reasons why we’re here now. Okay.

Denise: I mean, you mentioned that you’re an author in working group three of the IPCC’s assessment, which is coming out sometime next year, I guess. Is there a lot of, is there a, do you see a significant growth in literature in this field?

Julia: Uh, there’s certainly a growth in literature in this field. Well done for asking a question I could answer, because I can’t answer anything about the actual reports. Bravo to you, but in the literature, yes. We’re seeing more and more literature, not just sort of putting forward more radical alternatives in terms of what the economy could be doing differently and what degrowth pathways might look like.

But we’re also seeing literature that’s more critical of the existing models because the existing models basically equate human prosperity with growth. And, you know, so that that’s sort of baked into the way the current models are designed. And so these models are pretty much not fit for purpose When it comes to trying to assess what futures are possible. There are a whole bunch of futures that should be possible that are not, um, considered by these models. So we’re also seeing some of that literature come out as well.

Malcolm: I guess this is where I diverge from, from Julia a little bit.

Denise: I was going to ask where you diverge actually, because you, you so far, do you agree? So it’s interesting.

Malcolm: Well, I think, I think it’s important to recognize that, um, you know, you can be just as freaked out about the state of our global environment and climate change and, and have a very different view of some of these things.

So, I guess I’m, I guess I am an ecomodernist. Um, I don’t see ecomodernism as a failure. I see eco modernism as a great success. It just isn’t used enough. So, you know, we had tremendous success in solving the problem of, um, you know, the ozone layer. For me, I think we’ve had a lot of successes in solving environmental problems, uh, by using environmental policies to induce shifts in production and consumption in ways that make them far less environmentally damaging.

So, you know, we used to have hairspray that was basically destroying the protective layer around the earth, which, you know, we got rid of. We now have ways of styling our hair in different ways. These are really trivial, but nonetheless, in a sense, important example.

We used to make electricity, we still make far too much electricity using fossil fuels. Now, at least we’re starting to make a little bit more using solar power, wind turbines, et cetera. And I guess I feel optimistic that we could, if we wanted to make a lot more electricity that way. 

So what I always say about environmental problems is when we try we succeed, we just don’t try enough.

So, you know, we’ve gotten a lot better urban air quality in many cities around the world because we closed a lot of the most polluting facilities. We required others to clean up their act. You know, we found different ways of doing things. So my view is that new technologies can achieve a great deal where the policy framework is in place to sort of incentivize their innovation and their deployment.

What I see as one of the crucial distinctions between the de-growth and the decoupling views is how much good can environmental policies themselves do? So I think, you know, technology mandates, subsidies, taxes, emissions, trading, systems, standards, all of those things are phenomenally effective.

And if we just use those things to their full capacity, I think we could basically save the earth. 

Um, I think the definition of the degrowth view is that those things alone are not enough. We need a more fundamental sort of transformation of our economic systems as Julia said.

The original question you asked is why have we failed so much? I guess from my side, I agree with large parts of Julia’s diagnosis. Um, I just think politicians have not done their jobs. The question is to me, why have they not done their job? I think there’s been tremendously damaging corporate lobbying. I suspect Julia and I would agree with that and that’s taken many sort of insidious forms and I think those people have a circle of hell waiting for them.

I think there’s a tremendous amount of public confusion about what I just talked about, which is how effective environmental policies are when we use them. So I would say what we actually could do to change that is to convey to the public how unbelievably successful these things have been when we have used them and just that we should use them more.

I don’t think people actually appreciate that. So I think in a sense we should be simultaneously emphasizing how terrifying the unresolved problems are. And at the same time, what a tragedy it is that we have the tools to solve those problems. And we’re just not using them.

Denise: I want to ask something about public attitudes. When we spoke earlier, both of you actually said, let’s, we’ll talk too much about public attitudes because we don’t have enough evidence on this, but it is, um.

Can we trust politicians to take this in hand and, you know, move at the pace that’s appropriate to the level of the challenge?

Or do we need to take it into our own hands? 

And so, um, I’m going to ask you Julia first, because you have a very interesting pinned tweet on your, uh, thread on your Twitter, which talks about the demand side, which is all about consumer behavior and, and, um, a lot of this, you know, uh, generational drive for change as well at the level of values.

Julia: Yeah. I mean, I’d like to, I think that, actually we can, we can come to that, but by, by going back to one of Malcolm’s questions, which is who’s failed here and honestly, there’s failure for everybody.

This is a situation where, uh, there was a huge amount of blame to go around. I actually completely agree with Malcolm’s point that these economic tools of carbon taxes and, technology standards and all of that are tremendously effective. The problem is they would have been effective if they had been put in place, you know, in 1990 or even 2000, like at that point, there was still time for a smooth transition. 

At this point, those tools are not sufficient for the transition that needs to happen, which is very abrupt, um, by any standard. And I think that the other thing that’s very effective here is industrial policy. And so I think that one of the things which is not in vogue. Very few governments do proper industrial policy anymore.

And it’s not modeled in the IPCC models, which do things based on carbon prices basically. So you’re assuming a market is going to then tell the industrial actors what to do, but industrial policy, basically government stepping in and saying, you know, you’re going to do this now, and you’re going to do that now.

And we’re going to make sure that this happens. We’re going to make sure that that happens. That’s what we did for the COVID vaccines. For instance, we have a recent example of a great emergency where we have industrial policy stepping in and making things happen that need to happen. So I think that that’s just one thing that we should also remember is that we have more instruments than just.

Um, market-based ones. Um, and, and in that sense, and I also agree with Malcolm that, um, technology, these modern technologies are the source of great hope because we definitely are going to rely on them to reach a low carbon, low impact future. I think the, the difference here is that I don’t, I think that part of the failure, part of the reason we’re we’re in the space right now, Is because of a lack of understanding or a lack of willingness to grapple by everybody in civil society and academia, about how intertwined our current economic and political system is with the large industries that benefit from fossil fuel use.

So for those industries, it was never going to be enough for positive alternatives to exist. And we should have targeted our action much more on both counts, not just ramping up the positive, but ramping down the negative. So you need a sunrise of some industries and you need a sunset of some others. And this, again, it can be done through market measures, if you’ve got time.

Otherwise through industrial policy. Um, otherwise through civil society, basically stepping up right now and saying these actors are terrible and we need to get them out of our, out of our economies, but we need to do both. And I think that there was too much of, um, we’re willing, I guess, that that’s one of the things I was sort of saying in terms of the eco ecomodernist or green growth perspective is that there was too much of a faith that ramping up the good would be sufficient to ramp down the bad and that faith was not realistic, given the large scale systemic sort of corruption, basically within our economies and politics that we see very much to this day. 

And also within academia. I mean, there was a paper published just in the last couple of days by Ben Frantic showing the active involvement of the economists in making the case for the continued use of fossil fuels and making the case for inaction on climate change.

Yeah. Um, so now I’m going to try to come back to your question too. Sorry for taking this time, I’m just trying to make clear some of the distinctions here, which is that in terms of public attitudes, um, I think that everybody’s struggling. I wouldn’t say that de-growth is just consumer behavior or that demand is just consumer behavior or that it’s some kind of generational drive towards voluntary simplicity.

There are people of all ages with different perspectives on this. Although maybe one has more than the other. Um, what I do think is a de-growth perspective takes into account, not only these alternative technologies that are now available, um, but also tries to put at the forefront aspects of distribution.

So pointing out that there is a huge inequality and how much different people of different incomes use. And it’s not just with green technologies that you’re going to get rid of that and that even green technologies have resource use impacts. So you have to sort of try to take that into account. And so there’s a distribution aspect and there’s also a sufficiency aspect.

Some people will not have enough. So we need to make sure that everybody has access to basic standards for a good life. Um, and to think about those. And I think that both the distribution aspect and the sufficiency aspect are very much against a lot of the political winds of our time that have to do with neo-liberalism where basically once again, you go into the market and whoever can afford whatever it is, they get the right to do that thing. So if they’re rich, they get to over consume. If they poor, they get to be poor and be in deprivation. And that’s one of the things that de-growth is trying to confront. Um, and that makes it less popular with policymakers because they’d rather deal with an environmental crisis without having to deal with a social crisis.

They’d like to be able to not think about the two together. Um, I don’t think that’s really possible to be honest.

Malcolm: There’s a, there’s a lot in what Julia just said, many things I agree with. I was trying to write some notes, so I wouldn’t forget some of the points I wanted to make, but I think there was too many for me to keep track of, but I would, I would make a couple of comments about that.

Industrial policy is another term that can be a little bit elastic and use to refer to different kinds of things. I mean, I kind of agree with Julia’s point about it that, uh, there’s, there’s a lot that can be done. Unfortunately, some of what’s being done is going in exactly the wrong direction. So, uh, I’m originally from Western Canada and, uh, the Canadian federal government, you know, bought a pipeline and it’s literally being built right now.

I just think this is madness. Uh, but this is a political choice. So I think where Julia and I diverge a little bit is. Where do you put your emphasis?

So my emphasis is always on the politics, so I just think this is a political choice and it’s dumb. It’s driven by wrong-headed thinking. I think it’s driven by industry lobbying. I think it’s driven by public misunderstanding of what would happen to Canadians’ livelihoods if they basically killed the fossil fuel industry, which is obviously what Canada should do.

Julia: In terms of your final point, then the question of, is it politics or is it economics. My perspective would be that the two are really interconnected and this is why I’m focusing on the economics, because I think the economics is determining the politics and not just economics in terms of, um, a market with GDP and sort of, you know, sort of abstract, but just in terms of very specifically.

Who are the actors that have access to government budgets who have access to politicians who built up these relationships with them in such a way that they now have state capture. You know, so Canada is a captive state of the fossil fuel industry. Some people are probably trying to get out from under it, but it doesn’t have to make economic sense for them to be captured.

They might not be doing it for economic reasons at all. The economic reasons that the industry is bringing to them will help the climate denial reasons. The industry is bringing to them will help. So the lobbying and disinformation by industry helps politicians justify to themselves and to their constituents, why they’re doing this horrible stuff, but they’re doing it because powerful economic actors have a very strong influence on them.

And, and so that’s, I guess, where I’m coming from is that the reason that we need to change the economy is because we need to attack those powerful actors in the economy directly because they are the ones determining our politics. And so we need to expose the kinds of institutional structural corruption that’s been happening like the fossil fuel industry paying for, uh, econ economists to make bogus studies, which are then used as evidence in US Congress to stay out of the climate agreement. That we need to explain to people that has been going on for decades alongside climate denial and so on. 

Um, but we also need to challenge those actors in the economy directly, and we need to challenge their way of operating and their way of operating is very much around ‘You need us to grow. You need us to over-consume. If you get rid of us, your lives are going to be terrible.’ And that’s what, that’s what I’d really like us to break open is to say, no, we can actually live very well without you. And we’re willing to blow up this big hole in our economy and do things totally differently because it’s worth it to get rid of you because that’s what we need to do to survive.

Denise: Um, can I jump in and ask you, uh, both about, um, the generational question just briefly, uh, because, um, you know, anecdotally, uh, Somebody who’s in a master’s program here in Paris at Sciences Po told me that Lord Nicholas stern, you know, gave an inaugural address in which, uh, he was very strong on the potential for, uh, finance to drive transformational change.

And one of the questions from the audience of, you know, 25-year-olds was, um, whether he thought sustainability was only possible through de-growth, uh, and, and his answer was no, um. 

Malcolm: I’m a public opinion researcher. So, um, you know, I’m trying to use surveys and survey experiments to try to understand how the general public thinks about these kinds of issues.

And, um, some collaborators. And I published a paper earlier this year that I think, uh, we found something that really raises a big question about how we message environmental transformation, um, along intergenerational lines. 

And what we did is we basically said to people in, in four countries, Sweden, Spain, China, and South Korea, we said, would you be willing to sacrifice your standard of living so that future generations can, can live better basically.

And we, we asked some other questions and we sort of related them. And one of the things we found is that people were more willing. Uh, to sacrifice their own standard of living for the benefit of future generations. If they think future generations are going to be richer than us. And that’s very counterintuitive because normally we don’t make charitable contributions to people who are richer than ourselves.

It would be weird to do that, right? Like, oh, let me help you out. Um, even though you’re richer than me, I mean, we do nice things, but generally when we think about societal issues, we try to help the poor, not the rich, um, The reason we found that pattern, I think is that you can have people with very different views of societal functioning.

If you think society basically works, that institutions do what they say, people aren’t always lying to you. Then you probably think the world is going to get better and human life is going to get better in the future. And you also think that if you make a contribution to the future, it will work. If on the other hand, you have a very dark view of the functioning of your society and its major social and political institutions, then you probably think things are going to get worse.

We’re going to go to hell in a handbasket. Um, and if you make a sacrifice, you’re probably just going to be a sucker. Someone’s going to take your money and it’s not going to achieve any positive benefit for the future. And so much as I think, as I said before, we need to emphasize how badly policymakers have failed in dealing with environmental problems.

I think there’s a very big risk that if we don’t point to positive things they can do, which we should expect them to do. And reasons why those measures will succeed. People will just get very cynical and turned off. And I think we could end up in a, in a really negative sort of social downward spiral where basically people think nothing can, nothing good can come of can come, uh, politics or policymaking.

Denise: I mean, when people come to the two of you, I’m going to ask this to both of you and they say, what should I do? How do you respond?

Malcolm: I personally say, spend a little bit more time learning what politicians are really doing or not doing both on the positive side and the negative side. So, um, sometimes when I’ve talked to people in Canada, They’ll go on and on about how tragic it is that, you know, there’s forest fires every year.

We didn’t used to have these in Western Canada. Um, oh, aren’t these floods sad, you know, wherever they’ve happened that year. And then they seem to have no understanding of what different political parties are actually proposing to do about climate change concretely. And again, for me, it’s always about the politics and I’m just really, sometimes very demoralized at how people seem to appreciate the problem and spend very little time learning who they might vote for.

Or campaign for, or give money to, or, you know, demonstrate for, or against or whatever. Um, that would actually make a real difference to, for example, Canada’s or, you know, any other countries’ actual environmental impacts. It’s for me really about political action

Denise: And Julia, when people ask you, what should I do?

Julia: Well, once again, I agree with Malcolm it’s, it’s absolutely all about political action. So, um, that’s something that is really required. It really requires active engagement and, you know, there’s the idea of who to vote for. But honestly, at this point, we’re past it. We need to react faster than election cycles.

So it doesn’t even matter who your politician is. You need to make their life a living hell until they do the right thing. You know, so there’s this idea of, you know, whoever’s in charge, you just pressure them and get together with your neighbors and pressure them, get together with your friend groups or whoever, and just do this.

So, that’s something that I think is absolutely the core, most important thing that anybody can do right now is to become politically active and to really have a voice in what’s happening.  So understand what’s happening, but then also don’t be afraid to express yourself, demand a meeting with your representatives at all levels, but you can do this.

I really want to get away from this idea that de-growth is about voluntary simplicity or about sacrifice. It’s about a shift in the way the economy works. Which doesn’t mean that individual action on the consumption level is inconsistent. I mean, we always should try to have integrity in everything we do.

It’s about this trade-off for instance, what George Monbiot calls, private frugality and or private sufficiency and public luxury. So it’s about really good prosperity, really good public services. Um, you know, where you don’t have to own a car, you don’t have to have lots of private consumption in order to live a good life.

So I think it’s again about differentiating prosperity from material consumption level.

Um, that that’s one of the things we need to do.

Malcolm: Going back to the question of how should we think about GDP as a measure of wellbeing?

I mean, we know that from psychology research that, you know, people spend too much time worrying about how much money they make and buying new stuff. When really, you know, aside from ensuring your. Health is good. Uh, the number one thing that makes a difference for human wellbeing is basically the quality of one’s relationships with others.

I still don’t think we totally understand how. The public thinks about some of these issues. I think there’s a tremendous amount of, I mean, as an academic, I mean, it’s a very sort of egghead response to give, but we need more research.

I think we really are still learning. What sort of messaging works? What kinds of policies, what kinds of economic or social or political transformations are more appealing to people that might help achieve the kind of sustainability that we want? I think the degree to which public opinion even matters relative to industry lobbying. You know, that’s a huge question in the literature on, you know, environmental politics basically. And I don’t think we have a definitive answer. So, uh, you know, unfortunately the world can’t wait for academics to sort out the literature on this issue. But the reality is it’s kind of a huge question in the background and as a researcher, that’s what I’m trying to tackle.

Okay, well, thank you so much to the both of you. 

Malcolm: Thank you. 

Julia: Thanks. And thanks Malcolm. And I hope that, um, somehow or another, we get better at this.

Denise: That’s it for this episode, thanks for listening to New Climate Capitalism. If you’d like to learn more about Julia and Malcolm’s work, please go to the show notes at climatenarratives.co. You’ll find the full transcript of our conversation, plus links to their latest publications. And make sure you follow them on Twitter @JKSteinberger @malcolmfair

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