How to Save the Planet: Degrowth vs Green Growth?

yes okay well um thank you everyone for coming today i have never seen this lecture hall so full so i'm i'm joy i am a recent graduate of this department and i want to welcome you all to this very very very anticipated event that we have a shocking amount of people actually signed up to watch this i think over 2 000 people have signed up to watch a live stream so it is really really incredible to see all your faces here and i think it's probably a testament to this growing sense of urgency you know the questions that we're grappling here today i think are really reflective of the sense that especially after the summer we can't ignore any longer that something is going wrong if you guys have been following the news in pakistan you know scenes flooding out of pakistan kind of feel almost like we're watching a sci-fi post-apocalyptic movie except it's actually happening and it's happening today this summer we've seen floods in sudan in china germany europe u.s heat waves across the entire world it has been a devastating summer to say the least but i do not intend to kick this event off with this doom and gloom attitude but actually we're here today because we're not here to talk about the end of the world we're here to talk about what comes next and what we can do how we can intentionally and purposefully design and build a better world so it is with my great pleasure and honor that i'll introduce our three guests here today so first we have sam finkhauser who will be arguing for green growth now sam finkhauser is a professor at climate economics and policy here at the university of oxford he's also the research director of oxford net zero and before joining this beautiful oxford institution he was the director at grantham research institute on climate change and the environment at the london school of economics where he is still a visiting professor next we have kate who will be moderating and guiding the discussion so kate rayworth is a renegade economist who is looking to design economics to bring us forth into the 21st century you guys might have come across her brainchild and concept donut economics which is about how to bring humanity into a space that is not just ecologically safe but socially just lastly we have jason hickle who is uh he's a professor he's an economist he's an anthropologist he's currently a professor at the institute for environmental science and technology at the autonomous university of barcelona he's also a visiting senior fellow at the international inequalities institute at the london school of economics and you guys might have read his books the divide which is a searing indictment on global inequality and less is more which i believe you guys will all get a taste of today now clearly the three of them have more acronyms and accolades that then i have the brain capacity to memorize so i'm going to hand it off to them but quickly before i do that i just want to run through the order of events for today so we're going to quickly open with introductory remarks then we're going to move into a moderated discussion and then after that we'll open up the floor for a q the q a panel and lastly i just again want to thank you all for showing up here today without public participation in these types of conversations it is not really possible to achieve transformative change so thank you for showing up and also for the hundreds of people who are watching this online also thank you for joining us thank you to our camera crew back there who are making it possible to be accessible to the public thank you to school of geography and environment and the smith school to mark hearings our course director for helping facilitate this um also a shout out to my dear friend and colleague nanak narula who was you know a champion for this event and this event would not have happened without him fortunately he can't not be here today and lastly thank you to our speakers for embracing the responsibility to come out and guide this discussion for us today all right hand it off [Applause] thank you joy and let me start by thanking you and nanak and all the students who've been involved in organizing this event as is so wonderfully the case these days it's so often students who are bringing their really critical discussions into the university so thank you for making this happen just at the time that you should be handing in your dissertations so welcome to everybody here this room is packed and i have no doubt the lines are crackling online and it should be because this is a critical conversation we are going to have a critical debate and discussion and i'm going to lean us towards discussion around this topic as joy just set out we know these are extraordinarily challenging devastating times the climate ecological crisis is no longer something we imagine it's in everyday's headlines there's been human suffering for millennia but it is so visible to us all now and it's right in our own high-income countries where we may no longer have expected it to be so how do we meet the needs of all people within the means of the planet as i would put it how do we do that it's so clear we need an economic transformation but what kind and there are of course at least two very compelling different perspectives on this and it's brilliant that we have both sam and jason here today two of the leading proponents of both of these perspectives so i'm really looking forward to the debate we're going to have now the the title has put up here is how to save the planet i reckon the planet if she were here she might say i'll do me you do you because she's going to evolve and look after herself so i just want to nuance this theme so that we don't end up debating about how to save the planet okay so i'm gonna say perhaps we can and i think jason and sam have already agreed just to nuance it a little bit how do we secure a thriving future for humanity and the rest of the living world whatever that means that thriving future how do we secure a thriving future for humanity and the rest of the living world is it through the vision of green growth which sam is going to set out for us or is it through a vision of degrowth that jason's going to set out for us now we are really lucky to have two of the best proponents of this in the room and i think we're even more lucky to be doing this in a university setting because debates like this are ten a penny on the radio or in tv but they last about seven minutes and they are rhetorical they are snap they are quick and they're often there's no room for being reflective but we have the privilege here in a university setting of respectful disagreement and asking ourselves how can it be that two highly informed people and by the way all of you holding very different views how can it be that people with so much information and opportunity to learn and understand can reasonably hold such different perspectives about the future so in the words of the slam poet taylor marley changing your mind is one of the best ways of finding out whether or not you still have one so i invite you as an audience as you listen to this conversation i invite each one of us first to appreciate what you hear in both of these perspectives and aim to appreciate even more what you hear in the perspective you don't think you agree with i invite you to listen for the deeper roots of disagreement is it over different definitions are they talking about different regions of the world are they focusing on different ecological challenges is it different beliefs about human motivation or possible futures in terms of technological and political and economic and social scenarios or something else why do people disagree and i invite you to ask yourself as we talk what would it take for you to change your mind on these topics so as joyce said we're going to kick off sam's going to launch us with 10 minutes putting forward a perspective on why a thriving future is best secured through pursuing green growth then jason will propose why it might be through d growth then we'll have a conversation i'm going to invite you to have a quick buzz conversation with each other just what are you hearing and then we'll open up to questions okay everybody in the room so listen with your best ears come up with the best questions that you think will help us all go even deeper into this so that we all leave with more understanding and more appreciation and a better thought of what we do next okay with that sam would you like to kick us off thanks kate and let me also start with a word of congratulations to uh to join nanak and the student team for organizing what must be the event of the summer also for uh surrounding me on this panel with you know the a list of people on this topic so well done on that so i'm going to make the case for green growth or climate compatible growth as it's known in one of the programs i'm involved in which is sort of sponsoring what i'm doing i'm going to start with some perhaps sort of more conceptual things in in search of things that we might agree on uh but i'm just because that might be boring i will then work out the things we don't and then i want to also uh finish on a few words on climate change and then there i'm hoping to say things that we definitely disagree on so that's the plan and some some of the sort of more conceptual things where i where i assume we are in agreement the first one of those is that the gdp is a lousy measure of human progress and prosperity i assume we're de-growing gdp we could de-grow other things but i assume we're de-growing gdp and most people including most economists would agree that gdp is a measure of economic activity it's the pile of stuff that an economy produces it's not a measure of prosperity or human welfare or human happiness now that's not a particularly novel or controversial statement uh each economist's each economist probably learns that in economics 101 you're being given the reasons why uh what what's all excluded in gdp uh unpaid work uh defensive expenditures are in there and and sort of wealth is not their flows are in there we learned that a car crash is a good thing for gdp it gives income to the doctor and the car mechanic and clearly there's something something wrong there but again that's not the sort of a controversial thing to say most people will agree with that and their measures on in the making which are hugely important to have a broader dashboard of human uh development of prosperity of progress and the system of environmental economic accounts for example the human development indicators so those are all that's all stuff we need more often need to pay more attention to so i think that we agree on um let me now add the nuance on on gdp um it so happens in my opinion that a lot of things that we do care about actually are correlated with gdp and the reason why i say that is that gdp isn't just the pile of things we produce there's another way in which you can measure gdp and that's in the sources of income uh producing these things generate so it's the sum of wages of of rents of profits of taxes and it turns out that the income is correlated with a lot of things we care about health outcomes health care is expensive covet vaccines were expensive poverty outcomes clearly income helps on poverty outcomes uh the one close to my heart climate uh climate outcomes climate vulnerability uh it tends to or adaptive capacity tends to improve uh with income so we we have uh that sort of empirical evidence no it's correlation it's just a correlation and you can find exceptions to uh each one of those rules but exceptions are just that they're exceptions uh as a as a broad trend it turns to be the case that if you have less of a budget constraint if you have more income some problems are easier to solve so that's the gdp story and the second thing where i i'm pretty sure we agree on is that the economic activity must must respect planetary boundaries that for me is a given so we're not talking about singapore on thames sunup versus trust type growth we're talking about green growth we're talking about growth that understands uh planetary boundaries and lives within those planetary boundaries so you can think of a sort of you optimize a happiness or prosperity however you want to measure it subject to a binding constraint so that you stay within your planetary boundaries and it's then an empirical question either prosperity goes up or it stays constant or it comes down gdp which isn't the same as prosperity either goes up or comes down it becomes an empirical question i would say i would probably agree with chase and if you look at the very very long run there must surely be at some point limits to uh to growth because uh if you sort of gdp that grows at two and a half percent or prosperity that grows at two and a half percent uh increases by a factor ten over a century so that's a factor hundred over two centuries and the factor thousand over three so clearly you sort of expect somewhere at some point this thing will have to level off but you know human ingenuity is is a wonderful thing um thomas maltes 200 years ago thought that there would be constraints to agricultural productivity in terms of poverty and population control turns out he was wrong and another example that i quite like is the sort of the productivity improvements in in knowledge generation if you think about all the information that we ping around in in in twitter on on social media the stuff that's being live streamed now if you had to communicate that in the way of the 19th 19th century you have a post rider on a horse the number of horses you would need to communicate all that would be wholly unsustainable and the amount of food you would need for those horses completely unsustainable but we have found a way of communicating of making communication works within environmental constraints there are other examples that that very i think we've solved them while remaining prosperous um hours on layer depletion is usually a good example also the hole in the ozone layer is is closing one of the reasons why it's closing scholars who have looked at that people like scott barrett will tell you one of the reasons why this was a problem that could be solved was that there was an industrial solution industry built into it there was a green growth solution to it which made it easier there's another reason that there's it killed rich people but the green growth the green growth reason played a role as well so those are some of the nuances that make me believe environmental boundaries matter perhaps we can grow at least for a little bit longer within them let me know how much time do i have left five minutes okay perfect half time um so let me now turn to climate change where i will make three statements where i'm pretty sure we're going to disagree the first statement is that we can solve climate change without degrowth i will then sort of say that a little bit of income growth a little bit more prosperity actually helps in solving climate change and finally i'm going to say the green or the d growth narrative is absolutely disastrous in the politics of climate change so let me let me expand on on on those three points can we solve climate change without d growth we have a lot of you know there's a cottage industry of people who calculate uh decarbonization paths to calculate how we can technologically economically behaviorally bring our economies down to net zero by the middle of the century those solutions the international energy agency has has produced those pathways in the uk the committee on climate change has produced those pathways they achieve that environmental objective they stay within that particular planetary boundary without damaging prosperity it costs a little bit but it doesn't sort of affect prosperity in the long run how do they do that they do that by focusing not in reducing gdp but on two other factors that sort of determine carbon emissions one is the amount of carbon that goes into energy if we just talk about energy related emissions for a moment the amount of carbon that goes into energy can be radically reduced can be reduced to things like renewable electric vehicles moving to hydrogen and so on so it can radically reduce carbon per unit of energy you can also reduce the amount of energy for gdp that's the resource efficiency the energy efficiency where you can do a huge amount still more than we have done so far and if you reduce those two you can bring emissions down by enough that you don't have to tinker a lot with gdp that's what those sorts of paths and their sort of models they're you know they're scientific they're technologically economically grounded models they tell you that this uh that this is feasible and they also tell you that it generates economic opportunities it generates new jobs uh it generates uh sort of trumpeterian growth spurts that that that's a bit like the iphone or it have have generated innovation and made us more prosperous clean technology can do the same thing so that's my first climate point you can actually solve the problem without the growth you can solve it through green growth the second point was that a little bit of growth or a little bit more income is actually a good thing to solve to go down that path and the reason for that is that all those solutions that we talked about the ones i just mentioned renewable energy um electric vehicles a hydrogen economy um if you want to convert our capital stock our stock of infrastructure that we have today if you want to convert that to green that's going to cost people have estimated these things that's going to cost trillions of dollars of investment a year that capital has to come from somewhere and there's yet another way in which you can calculate gdp it isn't just the stuff of things you can also calculate gdp by asking what what we use the gdp for and that's the sum of consumption plus investment plus government expenditure that also gives you gdp now i just told you need a hell of a lot more investment you need a hell of a lot more of government expenditure how do you do that if you how do you increase the slice of that in the pie if you also shrink the pie it makes it so much more difficult it also makes it more difficult politically that's another empirical observation that that we have that people's interest in environmental problems wrongly in my opinion but it's an empirical observation people's interest in environmental problems goes down in economically difficult times we sort of did the statistic the number of climate change laws that were passed in the world relat most of those laws were passed in economically good times in the share of in a relative share the laws passed in economically difficult times is a lot less so people's attention wanders to more important or short-term more important things when the economy is bad so again a little bit of growth however measured prosperity however measured makes it easier to solve the climate change problem my final point the one i'm sort of making deliberately most provocatively is that the politics of green growth is just disastrous for the climate change problems eco radiant slip radiant slip right in slip the the the politics of the growth is disastrous just to be very clear about that and why why do i uh say that um there is a sort of look at look at the narrative that that the skeptics of net zero use the whole narrative that they use is about this is a story of hardship here's a bunch of salads who want to take away your steak your job your holiday and your car and it's an incredibly effective narrative people listen to that and they start having second thoughts you can go and i did that it's a sort of a perverse kind of pleasure um i went to the a website of net zero skeptics it's called net zero watch that's the uk mps who are critical in the net zero and you just go through their twitter account and it's one statement after the other after the other after the other that says about britain's economic suicide plan is the net zero plan they talk about biden's green energy agenda is a b line for d growth so their whole narrative their whole way of fighting what we have to do so urgently is a story of the growth and and so you just basically play into that narrative you just make their job so much easier if you tell a story of misery of hardship when you can tell a story of prosperity so we have a problem to solve here we have 30 years to solve it it's a difficult problem why do you make it pragmatically why do you make that problem more difficult than you have to why do you tell a story of hardship that turns people off when you can tell a story of prosperity which happens to be true that makes people excited about it let me stop here thank you thanks um can i ask phil just one point of clarification so at the beginning you said uh green growth is climate compatible growth but then you also said well it's actually growth that would happen within all planetary boundaries that happen here's some plans your boundaries i whipped up yeah i was waiting yeah i had to bring it out so so but then when you were giving us the examples of the scenarios that show that it's possible to have radical reductions in environmental impacts compatible with growth you were using um carbon emissions data i think or you were speaking to carbon emissions so this one so i just wanted to ask whether you believe or have seen or i believe there will be evidence not just on climate on carbon emissions but on material footprint on fertilizer use on water use that these also can be radically reduced within a growing economy yeah that's a good point if you look at your your uh your doughnut there i talked about ozone layer depletion and climate change air pollution those are all things we can solve very easily within a green growth framework ocean acidification to some extent to a large extent is co2 related climate related so that will solve itself as well so for me the difficult ones water fresh water withdrawal can can probably done as well through efficiency measures so the difficult ones for me is biodiversity loss the the the nitrogen cycle those are those for me are the difficult one the other ones i am very convinced we can solve them with green growth no problem at all great thank you and just hearing your your take on d growth i think one of the i'm going to guess that one of the sources of where we our disagreement may be is around a definition of what's meant by degrowth for which i'm going to turn to jason to set out his perspective thank you thanks very much um is it okay if i stand absolutely go for it wherever you would like to um and we'll have a chance to respond to points made by someone you can respond now or you can set out your perspective whatever you think it is whatever you'd like perspective i shall rather than just let me take water okay it's so good to see you all and thank you for coming and greetings to all of you who are following online um so let's see this is very challenging because this is a big and difficult topic that i have to now present in 10 minutes which is hard but let me try we stand at a difficult juncture in history to quote antonio gramsci the old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born so let's start with the old world the global economy is driving dangerous ecological breakdown with existing government policies we're headed for 3.2 degrees of global heating this century within the lifetimes of present generations humans have never lived on such a planet scientists warn of severe displacements crop yield decline species extinction and political upheaval and climate is not the only crisis that we face we're also overshooting five other planetary boundaries including a staggering collapse of biodiversity this is not because of ignorance or individual behavior or a lack of concern it is due to structural features of the capitalist economy and by capitalism here i do not mean markets and trade and businesses these existed for thousands of years before capitalism and they're innocent enough on their own what distinguishes capitalism from other economic systems is that it is organized around and dependent on perpetual growth ever-increasing levels of industrial production it's the first and only intrinsically expansionary economic system in history if it does not grow it collapses into crisis which happens of course every few years with the devastating consequences for working-class people and the poor this system is profoundly unstable crucially also capitalism is undemocratic decisions about what to produce and how to use labor and resources are controlled by the one percent who own the majority of corporate shares and who appoint the directors of firms and as far as their concerns the purpose of increasing production is not primarily to improve people's lives or to achieve specific social goals it is not about youth value or social progress rather for them it is to extract and accumulate an ever-increasing quantity of profit that is the overriding objective and this leads to perverse forms of production such as suvs instead of public transit or gadgets designed to break down and increase product turnover the result is that we have an economy that massively overuses resources and energy and yet remarkably nonetheless still fails to meet basic human needs it is dangerously inefficient now scientists are clear that it is the rich economies of the global north that are that are overwhelmingly responsible for the ecological crisis their use of energy and resources is extremely high and vastly in excess of what we know is required to meet human needs even at a good standard what is more growth from the global north relies on a large net appropriation from the global south this is draining poor countries of resources and energy necessary for developments colonizing their atmosphere and ecosystems and offshoring the social and ecological costs of growth onto vulnerable communities and yet notes that despite this immense production and appropriation in the u.s which is the richest country in the world a quarter of all people live in substandard housing half cannot afford health care in the uk we have 4.3 million children living in poverty why it's because the enormous productive capacity of these countries is organized in the interests of capital rather than in the interests of people so what do we do what does the new world look like for 50 years our ruling classes have promised that green growth will save us they say that efficiency improvements will allow capital to continue increasing production and profits while at the same time reducing ecological impact to sustainable levels it sounds nice but of course it hasn't happened and now scientists are challenging this narrative on empirical grounds let's start with emissions we know of course that it is possible to absolutely decouple gdp from emissions if that wasn't possible we'd be doomed and this happens by shifting to cleaner energies indeed several nations are already on this path but what we face here is a question of speed to meet the paris agreement target we have to cut emissions in half in seven years and reach zero by 2050 and remember that is a global average target rich countries must decarbonize faster than this since they've contributed most to cumulative emissions that's a basic climate justice principle this requires a rapid rate of mitigation and growth makes this task extremely difficult the reason is because more production means more energy demands and more energy demands makes decarbonization harder to achieve it's like trying to run down an escalator that is accelerating upward against you green growth proponents know this problem and they deal with it in several ways that are apparent in the green growth scenario models first they assume efficiency improvements big enough to achieve an unprecedented decoupling of gdp or production from energy to an extent that is not supported by the empirical literature and the main problem here is that in a growth oriented economy savings from efficiency are leveraged to expand the process of production and accumulation thus wiping out many of the gains the second feature is that these green growth scenarios assume a mass deployment of speculative negative emissions technologies mostly in the form of bex which stands for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage right this would require biofuel plantations up to three times the size of india with substantial deforestation biodiversity loss and constraints on human food systems so you solve one crisis while exacerbating others moreover bex is unproven at scale and if it fails we're stuck in a hot house trajectory from which it would be impossible for us to escape this is a dangerous gamble with the future of human civilization and all of life on earth third green growth scenarios maintain excess energy privilege in the global north and among the rich by suppressing energy use in the global south and by appropriating southern land for biofuel plantations that's built into these models this approach perpetuates colonial inequalities it is clearly immoral and unjust finally even if we imagine these problems away we have to deal with another issue regardless of the type of energy that we use more growth means more material extraction which is the single biggest driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem damage several major scientific reports in recent years have found that sufficient reductions in material use are unlikely to be achieved if growth continues as it is in rich nations even in high efficiency scenarios this is not good enough we can and we must do better in our vision for the new world we must be attentive to scientific evidence and insistence on global justice in its latest report the ipcc points out that scholarship in d growth offers an alternative now some people will quickly assume that d growth is somehow anti-technology this is not accurate in fact d-growth embraces efficiency improvements and feasible and safe technological change but it recognizes that this alone is not enough and therefore also calls for rich nations to transition to a post-capitalist eco-social economy abandon growth as an objective and focus instead on equity sufficiency and human well-being we need to re uh to recognize that when it comes to well-being it's not aggregate production that matters what matters is what we are producing whether people have access to essential goods they require and how income is distributed this focuses the mind on what is important the first step is that we need to decommodify and expand essential public services health care education housing public transit energy water internet nutritious food mobilize the productive forces to ensure that everyone has what they need to live a good life regardless of fluctuations in aggregate output this stabilizes the economy directly cuts the cost of living and improves the welfare purchasing power of income second introduce a public job guarantee with workplace democracy and living wages to empower people to participate in the most important collective projects of our generation building renewable energy capacity insulating homes restoring ecosystems this approach abolishes economic insecurity improves the bargaining power of labor delivers high levels of well-being and enables us to pursue radical climate action without anyone getting hurt this is the bread and butter of a just transition in other words we need to improve socially necessary sectors and with this foundation in place we can then scale down socially less necessary forms of production private jets suvs air travel mansions beef fast fashion single used packaging advertising and obviously the widespread practice of planned obsolescence in other words forms of production that are organized around capital accumulation and elite consumption and which are largely irrelevant to human well-being as part of this we can of course also introduce policy to extend product lifespans and guarantee rights to repair if our products last twice as long we will consume half as many right next we need to curtail the purchasing power of the rich using policy tools such as wealth taxes and maximum income ratios this may sound radical but think about it it is irrational and unjust to continue to devote energy and resources to supporting an over-consuming class in the middle of an ecological emergency now this is powerful in terms of climate mitigation because policies like these would dramatically reduce energy use and allow us to achieve a much faster transition to renewables and as our society requires less aggregate production we can shorten the working week give people more free time and share necessary labor more evenly this approach has been shown to have a strong positive effects on health mental well-being and gender equality finally the central pillar of d-growth scholarship economic democracy democratized workplaces democratize public services democratize the media we know empirically that when people have democratic control over production they choose to use resources more wisely they focus on what is required for human welfare and they sustain ecosystems into the future radical democracy is the antidote to a socially and ecologically destructive economy it should therefore come as no surprise that core degrowth policies happen to be wildly popular universal services a job guarantee working time reduction living wages an economy focused on well-being and ecology rather than growth polls and surveys repeatedly show strong majority support for these ideas and official citizens assemblies in spain and france recently have called for the very policies that i've mentioned with this path we can build a more efficient more rational more just economy that is capable of ensuring good lives for all with less energy and resources people often say that 1.5 degrees is dead there's no feasible path to sufficiently rapid decarbonization but this is only true if we assume continued growth in rich countries if we liberate ourselves from this assumption then 1.5 degrees is back on the table models show that with a post-growth post-capitalist transition we can achieve our ecological goals and improve social outcomes at the same time it is technologically feasible ecologically coherent socially just and anti-colonial that is a future worth fighting for and fight we must because none of this will happen on its own it will require an extraordinary struggle against those who benefit so prodigiously from the existing structure of the economy but so has every struggle for a better world thank you [Applause] [Applause] thanks jason um i just want to ask you again just a clarifying before we go into a debate can you just define for us when you say degrowth what you mean by the term degrowth because it's something that's often misunderstood is characterized whether willfully or or unintentionally misunderstood so can you just say for the roman for the sake of our discussion here what when you're talking about deep growth what is it you're actually advocating so it can basically be defined as a kind of planned and democratic uh reduction of less necessary forms of production in rich countries to bring economies back into balance with the living world in a safe just and equitable way i think that hopefully captures the core values of this literature so it's a planned reduction of less necessary consumption well we focus on production actually okay production okay production in rich countries that's right in a just way that's right great okay so i'm just holding that and i want to ask you because you said in rich countries can i just therefore say and so if somebody from turkey a middle-income country or malawi a low-income country said so what does degrowth mean for us just just to clarify again what would you say i'm not this isn't meaning to be a long complex question but because you said it's for rich countries and therefore is it not about those countries or well there's no need to degrow uh any form of throughput uh material or energy throughput in cases where countries are within planetary boundaries right or using sustainable levels so it would not apply to any countries along those lines but we should note that um there's a strong literature actually from global south scholars and economists who also are also growth critical in their own regions right this is very powerful particularly in latin america and so i think that we should also create room for growth critical points of view from the from the global south recognizing that forms of growth uh in capitalist countries in the periphery uh are destructive and damaging to uh to ecosystems and human well-being and are also deeply inefficient in the ways that i've described uh but there's certainly no prescription coming from uh from the degrowth scholarship more broadly for any kind of uh reduction in aggregate throughput in in poorer countries the opposite is certainly the case and i should emphasize this uh an increase in production to meet human needs is necessary in lower income countries um and including an increase in the use of energy and resources right to achieve core human development objectives and to eradicate permanently the health gap and other forms of development gaps between rich countries and poor countries in terms of social indicators that's the goal degrowth i think aids this degrowth in the rich countries aids this because it's um it cuts off this net appropriation of resources and energy and productive capacity from the from the south that presently constrains uh development possibilities right under things like structural investment programs and uh and so on so uh addressing that is is really critical i think great so your definition of d growth actually doesn't mention gdp right so then it's i mean somebody could say oh i i'm i'm i'm all for a a reduced you know planned reduction in production and use of earth's resources in a more equitable way i'm i think actually there are many people in the world who support green growth who say well i'm all for that i just believe we can do it with a growing gdp whereas i sense that you're saying and i believe that if we're going for that it won't be compatible with a growing gdp in high-income countries right that's where we're talking about right now and so therefore does this come down it it's going to be a future empirical question as to whether or not it's possible of course we can't see the future we can only look at data from the past that's informed us up to now but i heard you saying yes there's absolute decoupling of carbon emissions just nothing like the speeding scale that's required to come back within plant your boundaries whereas sam can i just invite you to respond to that so just on the empirics the belief about the the speed that's required and that's possible on carbon and beyond you believe it is possible to have a planned reduction because we're all actually talking about coming back within plantar boundaries but you're saying yes it will be possible to do this yeah i mean it's i agree it's it's an empirical question in the end you know you just have to sort of find out whether it works or not the speed point is interesting for me because we we both argue in terms of speed and i don't know how we're going to empirically figure out who's who's right here your argument is d growth is a faster way of solving the climate problem my argument is d growth is one of the slowest ways of solving the climate change problem because you just have too many political arguments about it by the time you have the societal consensus for degrowth it's too late okay and that's a really interesting point of as you said you know jason said i i heard exactly the same we needed at much greater speed but you're arguing the political transformation for people to understand what the agenda is and to get on board with the agenda and actually transform a much deeper change in the system we can't do that at the speed that's required do you want to respond to that yeah i mean to me the existing arrangements and the existing narratives including green growth which is dominance right are also not working right i mean you still have the same enemies that you're accusing the growth of having they're there the right woman will accuse you of impoverishing them etc etc so it's not like you're protecting yourself from those critiques right um as far as i see look i don't think it's necessary for politicians to stand at the podium and call for a de-growth i think the d-growth is critical as an analytical term uh it focus it organizes our thoughts it focuses our minds on what's wrong with our economy and one needs to change right but there's a variety of different words or slogans that one could use and and are already in use um at the level of political parties calling for and again the word is not is not important when it comes to uh to political communication calling for the policies that i've outlined which are popular right now um the idea of consensus i think it'll be easy to establish a consensus uh among the people who will benefit from this uh from these sorts of policies but we're not gonna we're not aiming for and we will not succeed in winning in consensus with those who presently block these kinds of policies right i don't think we should try i think we're at a point now where we have to we have to start building the social movements and political movements necessary to unseat those people right um so i don't know i guess i approach it a bit differently i'm not i'm not here to convince bill gates uh of the value of these policies or elon musk etc uh i consider them to be a problem and i think we need to build movements um capable of of changing the world um changing our societies and this has been done before and must be done again and for instance i think it's difficult for us to grasp what's required because we most of us here in the room have grown up in an era where social organizing is not a major feature of our society but but we can draw inspiration and knowledge from the anti-colonial struggle of the 1940s 50s 60s and 70s from the civil rights movement in the usa from the labor movement to the 1940s these mov from the from the movement for women's suffrage these would these these movements changed the world permanently um and that's the scale of transformation i think we need to start achieving uh and that doesn't happen easily and we don't have a lot of time and i think that's what we need to focus the mind on here okay sam do you want to respond yeah and i think we sort of agree on the on the sort of the weightless economy the direction towards the weightless economy if you can build an economy that uses few resources to achieve the same level of prosperity um i don't think too many people will be against that and you can sell that one politically quite easily um you could probably also sell the sort of the technological fixes uh but they do cost money you know there's a lot of investment needed in the infrastructure that turns current cars into electric cars and so on um i sort of one other point i want to make it's just probably a definitional one a lot of what you sort of said jason wasn't actually about the growth it was about other things where we can have a debate about um you know capitalism uh income distribution um you know we certainly agree that the income distribution in the world isn't the way it should be i'm not sure to just redistributing income gets you to solve the problem i'm also not convinced that redistributing income is a terribly easy thing i noticed you sort of turkey we don't know where turkey is on the you know can they grow can they not grow but the uk is in a can't grow camp and we're actually currently going through a phase of d growth that's exactly what the cost of living crisis is and and you just see the political dynamics that comes out of it we are de-growing for all the wrong reasons we're not growing for environmental reasons but the way it feels in the households that are worried is is roughly the same and these are very very difficult things i disagree with this this is um this to me this is analytically messy actually because what's happening now is basically a cost of living crisis um and a recession produced by a capitalist growthist economy right that is that is failing us um to call it degrowth is just as analytically nonsense i mean we have recessions every 10 years that's not degrowth it's a recession we have to have different categories for different things the growth is very clearly described in the literature very clearly defines there's nothing planned about what's happening here there's nothing just about what's happening here right there's nothing about decommodification or decolonization et cetera the core goals that we're after what's being what's being reduced is is poor people's livelihoods which is exactly the opposite i mean effectively there's a constraint on the consumption of working-class people this is exactly the opposite of what de-growth scholarship calls for which is constraints on the consumption of rich people and of capital right so i think we have to be very clear about that um so can i can i ask you the poorest 10 percent or poorest 20 in the uk with the lowest income death size can they grow should they be grow i mean of course they can't access basic goods no they can't access i mean have you seen the sort of housing conditions that people live in in this country i live right next to a council say i know i see it every day right it's it's absolutely abominable and this has hap this has happened as a result of policy during a period of incredible growth incredible capital accumulation so i'm over this to be honest um uh what's essential as i pointed out is to mobilize production around meeting people's needs at a good standard we're abolishing poverty here right there's no reason for us to have it we're abolishing income and security there's no reason for us to have that um so we have to focus on on what's required uh in that respect to the question of speed i want to briefly address this the uk is often held up as a a climate progressive nation and of course there's no question they've made great great strides in reducing emissions um but uh but the rate of emissions reduction is not in line with 1.5 degrees and a minimal conception of climate justice or equity in fact uh it's about it's at least a factor of two off uh including climate uh pledges and this is demonstrated by a recent paper by kevin anderson in 2020. um right now there's no country not even sweden that's on track for 1.5 degrees uh with a minimal conception of equity um so in terms of speed we're failing and that that's the reality uh and that's before you account for um for claims about negative emissions technology etc which the uk government does rely on can i ask sam a question building on that so the data that jason's citing is saying that there's no country in the world that has the rate of just carbon emissions reduction that's required for 1.5 for example and yet the the the framing of green growth is very strong and very prominent and you know the world bank and the imf and all the governments it's it's spoken as if it's already a thing but i think the argument here is it's not yet existing on the scale that's required to justify its name so what gives people the confidence that it will be achieved in the future if we if there's no evidence yet that it's achievable on the speed and scale that's required not just on carbon emissions but on material footprints i mean the the sort of the cost of the decarbonization path we're going through will be you know will be an empirical question we'll find out just how how costly it is but there is a climate change is for me uh as i said one of the the problems we we can solve within the the sort of the the growth paradigm yeah because they are they are nations that are that are decarbonizing or not they're decoupling their emissions from their from their gdp their issues related to consumption emissions versus production emissions but we can see uh you can see see emissions coming down we can also see the they're coming down too slowly we we can agree on that but we can also see the path we can see the the technologies the investments the possibilities that would accelerate that speed we we know we understand what we have to do we understand what we can do to the car fleet to turn it over we can understand how we can electrify the economy and then use that clean electricity to to clean up other sectors of the economy those are all sort of scenarios that have been modeled and stress tested and the the thing that's holding them back actually isn't the technology or the behavioral unwillingness it's the political will and and it is that political will we have to we have to work on technologically uh there's a good line of uh one of the people who sort of study these things very thoroughly are there turner the first chair of the climate change committee who sort of has that flippant remark that sort of says if you make me dictator of the world i will solve the problem for you because i have my blueprint i know exactly what i have to do um of course you shouldn't make anybody dictator of the world but what what he means by that is that it is a question of political dynamics as opposed to technological discovery do you want to respond to that on that on the technological possibilities whether it's on carbon emissions or on other ecological impacts um yeah so i was at pains and my doctor to point out the the various measures that green growth scenarios modeled by the ipcc rely on to accomplish green growth right and there's i mean the truth the truth is there's a science there's an emerging scientific consensus against uh many of these core assumptions which i outlined right um we simply can't rely on negative emotions technologies to that extent we can't uh we can't justly suppress energy use in the global south et cetera et cetera we need um we need we need a feasible conception of technological change and efficiency improvements there's an amazing paper published by some colleagues of mine in nature recently on 1.5 degrees and how if we assume more reasonable rates of technological change which are more in line with with what we understand empirically to be feasible then something like a dramatic reduction in energy use in rich countries is required and then the question becomes who suffers that energy use reduction i mean if if that's if that's necessary then then who's that imposed on right under our existing arrangement it will be and already is being imposed on poor people on the working classes right we see that here in the uk we see that in france um and that's not acceptable we have to fight against that um we want to get rid of other forms of of energy specifically related to forms of production that are just not necessary or organized primarily around capital accumulation right i mean it's it's madness to be devoting energy to producing suvs um in the middle of a climate emergency now the thing is you talk about political will the thing is that we know there's we know there's strong majority consensus around what needs to be done and how to achieve it uh so in a real democracy that would happen if we had a democratic economy we would not be in this situation almost guaranteed um so who blocks it uh the concern is that even many of the policies that green growths call for such as very high carbon taxes and so on those are also blocked by who by people who would uh who would who would lose out in such a situation because it makes growth more difficult to achieve it makes capital accumulation more difficult to achieve right um and so when we think about this question of political will i i think the question is whose will do we need to to shift here right who's willing to shift and um i very briefly want to address this uh a claim you made in your talk uh where you say that's that's that the richer people are the more they care about climate change right effectively or in higher gdp countries gdp per capita you're more likely to care about climate change this is not true um if that's the case then why are indigenous people in the amazon or across latin america and in africa and in asia fighting with their lives against climate change and ecological breakdown right the poorest people on the planets care more than anyone here can bring themselves to because for them it's life or death right they see this uh this reality very starkly um so that theory about income being associated with with concern for the climate i don't buy okay i can i bring that back to sam is that was that the point you were making yeah no it was a slightly different point but it's first of all we agree on the sov suv things we can sort of uh legislate them out of existence i don't have a problem with that and the the um i sort of made the point of cyclical you know business cycle as opposed to structural fluctuations people get at the bottom in the middle of a recession at the bottom of the business cycle people are not very keen on the environment yes that's that's that's that's sort of an imperative so you're agreeing on that that's valuable to know no no no really really it's true yeah it's true and actually this is a very important point it's absolutely right that at the bottom of the business cycle people don't support environmental policies they support things that are much more necessary for their daily survival right but we want to abolish the business cycle right why should we put up with that um so we want an economy where people don't end up having to wonder how they're going to pay for food or heating in their homes right we have an economy that can provide those things it just doesn't because it's not controlled democratically when you abolish insecurity of livelihood through what i called for job guarantees shorter working weeks universal public services affordable housing et cetera then you'll let you eliminate that concern don't you and that's very powerful that's very liberating if people aren't concerned about daily life then they can and they will care about about climate because we know that's high on their agenda so let's deal with that problem okay so yesterday about democracy um i mean we we're all in favor of empowering people and making it democratic and you know having people having a say and i i like uh citizens assemblies i think those are powerful good things the counter example that i often use i grew up in switzerland which just sort of thinks democracy to its bitter end with this sort of four referendums a year and within within switzerland one of the most democratic places is a little area called up and cell where democracy entails physically people meeting in the town squares and voting about stuff and they do that four or five times a year so you can't make it much more directly democratic than that it also happens to be the place that introduced the right to vote to women in 1991 because the men would meet on the town square and vote against it and the argument was if the women were there there wouldn't be enough space on the town square and and it was you know it was irrational so you can't you can't always sort of rely on people having your opinion as well every now and then they have opinions that you wouldn't share okay and just we are going to you're going to have more time to discuss but when i open up to questions i know they will bring out more points that you both want to make so on the point about people's opinions i'm going to ask you both a really difficult question and i invite everybody in the room to ask yourself this question i want to ask you each to say what would it take for you to change your mind like and we can give vote you know decades here yourselves going forward what would it take sam for you to say what would you need to see experience logically deduce for yourself have an epiphany about or not see for you to say actually you know what i actually no longer believe that green growth is going to be possible to secure a thriving future and while you think about that and then jason i'm going to ask you what would it actually take for you to say you know that that that definition of de-growth that you speak to what would it take for you to believe for example that it's not going to be feasible without growth or that some that would make you say i actually i'm going to let that go it's never going to happen the narrative's not going to happen or for whatever reason you lose your conviction that you speak with that this is the way forward okay sam can i ask you first and i and actually this is a really i i thank i said to both of them before i was going to ask this question it's a very very generous thing to be able to discuss and i invite everybody to imagine if you were asked this question on a topic you're passionate about so yeah it's i suppose i need the passage of time and a lot of observation if we sort of have that that scenario where we really respect uh planetary constraints climate constraints and in the thing we talked about so we really go ahead and we put in place the policies and the investment and and all the things that you know the decarbonization plans have in it um and and then you one or two things happen either emissions don't come down or people sort of cancel the policies and then eventually you have to sort of admit defeat and sort of say that the carbonization plan didn't work we have to do something else whether that some what that something else is at that point we'll have to see it could but isn't it very possible that you put those plans in place and the emissions are coming down but there's no growth well that is possible that's an empirical observation yes right okay just that was a the third possibility that right so it's possible so you'd want you you'd say you change your mind if you if after some time you're just not seeing the the iea's projections saying we can do this we can do this with growth that just starts to not materialize yeah i mean if evasions come down we should all celebrate and if you know gdp will be what it is and can i just follow on with that you said earlier um i think growth can go on a little longer and with that you actually have to never leave the house without a host fight um so so you know this is the story of gdp i'm doing it for the room uh you know this is how every politician and economist has spoken the gp growth it goes up and up and up and what i heard you say is it can go up but at some point we should expect it to level off now you're in good company there adam smith said the same uh um john stuart mill said the same john maynard keynes i would say said the same that yes growth and at some point we'll get beyond and so you said i think growth can go on a little longer and i'm gonna this is a really tough question so just speculate as much as you like like how much longer are we talking we can do this through to 2050 so you know could we have an era of green growth with the speed that we need that works politically but then after that then we need to go to a no growth future would it be after 2050 or are you thinking sort of well well after 2100 just a sense of because you said that many economists won't say that that well of course at some point it's going to come to an end so i just wanted to get a sense of the time scale you were thinking about that on yeah that's a difficult one see how unboxing um [Music] 2050 definitely we can go up to 2050. on climate grounds i don't think that's that's uh i think that i'm confident about that i would also sort of observe that adam smith was got his time frame wrong thomas malta's got his time frame wrong everybody who's sort of you know stan william stanley chavin's worried about uk prosperity when we run out of coal he got that one wrong and so so far we we have been too pessimistic um so i would say we probably have yeah definitely till 2050 but there is quite a lot going wrong now i mean we've got growth but it's not looking good right it's not going well yeah but we have the blueprint of doing it right okay we can we can have a sort of a plan that solves the problem and we won't be poor in 2050. okay because there's a lot of problems to turn around already okay jason i know you'd love to respond to this i'm good no i'm gonna no i'm gonna ask you to do the same generosity of sam what would it take for you to say actually i'm no longer going to pin my colors to degrowth because it's not delivering i'm going to stand for something else um yeah so i actually think i think about this question a lot so i'm glad you asked it because the truth is that i used to be a green grower so this is just an aberration a cyclical blip you can you can read the story in uh in the um in the final part of my book uh what's it called the last not the preface but the end epilogue afterward or whatever epilogue yeah whatever it's called in the end of less is more in the end of lessons more actually tell the story i think um and it has to do with i mean i might as well tell it now i suppose so it's kind of fun um so so there's a good feminist angle to this actually uh my partner and i had gone to a talk at lse by um uh paul krugman who i was enamored with at the time uh because i felt you know uh he's a progressive economist he's saying things that i agree with um etc cetera and one of his main things was we have to get out of the recession uh by stimulating growth in the economy um and i was like yeah that makes sense to me uh obviously the economy needs growth uh i just assumed this as like a basic feature of the economy it has to happen i mean we're taught this when we study economics right i had never questioned it um and as we were walking home my partner asked me um uh why do you think that the uk and u.s economies need more growth when countries that have less gdp per capita than they do have better social outcomes right and i i mansplained in the worst way i went on and on about how no it's necessary you don't understand the economy but that question was like a brain a brain bug for me i couldn't get over it i realized i've never asked this question before and it set me on a very long path of of research that remains my work today um and i'm gonna bring you back to my question and i'm going to mention that so so if i saw if i saw evidence um in the existing mitigation models and also to do with with material use and so on that's uh that continued growth enriched in rich nations was necessary for improved social outcomes as in there's no other way to improve to get rid of poverty for example no other way to end child poverty in the uk but through more growth right if i saw that and also saw that it's also feasible technologically and without screwing anybody in the global south um to bring throughputs down to sustainable levels back within planetary boundaries then why not why not right what's wrong with such a vision why would anyone be against that um and and so and so yes and so if i see something that's technologically feasible ecologically coherent and socially just then i'll embrace it but you haven't seen it and you don't but i haven't right but i haven't right but i haven't and i look for it every day because that's my job because every day i face people that despise my point of view and that's a that's a hard life i really you laugh you laugh it's fine on both sides it takes a real tall it takes a real toll um and so i read everything that people throw at me and i'm ready to change my mind and i and i don't see it yet um okay and i'm going to ask you the same tough question about the host pipe so let's just say uk us a high income economy right this is generally with with some business cycle in here that i can't crinkle into a host pipe this has generally been the direction of high income economies gdp is just rising more slowly than it used to but rising so what do you think for a thriving future on planet earth for humanity in the living world what do you expect is the going to be the necessary shape of gdp in countries like the uk and the us could they plateau out say let's say from now we could just go level or would you say that's just gonna not enough it's gonna have to go dip or are you gonna say to me it doesn't matter what happens to gdp which what so i mean it's very very difficult to predict and i'm not saying this as a cop-out let me explain why because gdp is ultimately a measure of market prices right and so depending on how we change the economy depending on the balance of power between labor and capital depending on the extent of decommodification then gdp could be different but all that being said um it seems pretty clear to me that with the kind of policies that we call for um it's likely that gdp is going to decline in rich countries right and that's okay because what matters again is not aggregate production as measured in market prices okay but rather again what we're producing and other people have access to what they need and as long as we're guaranteeing that then we're not worried about it but we need to be prepared and right now here's the problem even a minor disruption in gdp growth in our economy is catastrophic we're seeing that now right we saw that during the pandemic um and so if it's true that that sam introduces policies that in that that do decarbonize but also don't lead to growth or maybe even lead to less growth and if we're not prepared for that people get hurt and we can't let that happen right and so um not only that but also our political enemies will immediately get rid of us if you sell a story that what we're going to do in terms of decarbonization will also lead to growth and it doesn't lead to growth you're out right they'll get you on your own criteria so why sell that story promise decarbonization and good decent lives for all within planetary boundaries that should be the narrative that we have great okay i've got my eye on the clock which is moving too that's one thing that does have the speed that's too fast i'm gonna open this up to the room hand shoot up okay so before i ask i invite you to ask questions that will deepen our understanding here our collective understanding for what's going on what's really being discussed enrich what we're seeing okay yes and and if you want to say to one person or another you don't both have to answer both we have 11 minutes people so i ask for brief questions and concise answers i think hello okay it's fine um hi thanks both for the great talk i think there's a lot going on here about what should be done normatively and also what should be done realistically or feasibly and potentially the question should have been how free should markets really be um but the question i have for jason now is basically you outlined that for decades we've been promised this sort of green growth is the solution narrative but also for decades and centuries we've been promised that the class revolution will come and if only we all unite as workers like everything will be solved and you outline this very clear like class divide the one percent and everybody else but what about the middle class that's quite comfortable and like not willing to make sacrifices i mean i study one of the courses which probably people who care the most about climate change study and many of us still travel we're not willing to give up sacrifices and such so yeah if you could answer that thank you um it's a very good question um look i think that's uh that's for me uh i mean i have to rely on the empirical evidence that we have and so when i see surveys indicating strong majority support for things like we want an economy that actually prioritizes ecology and human well-being over economic growth or even at the expense of economic growth i think that's a powerful finding um when we see democratically selected or randomly selected citizens assemblies coming up with these same ideas that's powerful and there's a recent a recent nature paper that i find very inspiring it finds that about 70 percent of people when given direct control over how to manage a resource will choose to sustain it for future generations um even if it means taking a financial and immediate financial loss for themselves right now of course as a selfish minority 30 but in in a democratic situation they get overridden right and in fact you can even bring them on board through democratic deliberations so i really do think that democracy becomes crucial here um so that's the most i can say and i'm open to more evidence and i look for it as well so please please feel free to send it my way great thank you yes gentlemen second right at the back yes that's right you yes can you pass the microphone to him it's just coming hang on yes thank you very much for the great talk my question is from professor sam can you speak very loudly so everyone yes my question is for professor sam you were talking about uh achieving green golf within the planetary boundaries but when we look at the ipcc report and all the scenario to achieve net zero by 2050 they are all relying on geo-engineering solution and from the climate scientist perspective we don't know how of a climate system will react so we don't yet know the climate feedback of the system so how are you attending as a green golf scholar to achieve net zero by 2050 if we don't know our climate system will react to waste mitigation solution thank you great question thank you yeah it was a very good question thank you for it because i was sort of waiting for the opportunity to say something about net zero the net in net zero first of all the term geoengineering needs to be defined if you're sort of talking about things like solar radiation management that's scary stuff don't go there if you talk about the greenhouse gas removal that's not so scary stuff do go there um let me let me sort of explain what i mean by that um you write them all the models have sort of a an element of negative emissions in them to to make them work and that sort of inbuilt in the term net zero if you don't like the negative emissions you don't talk about net zero talk about growth zero and so that sort of negative bit is in there you you can do that through tree planting for example so that's a relatively tested technology and the the where you have to have there is the permanence of it um you know the fossil fuel in the ground has been there for thousands of years that sort of means that the forest has to be there for the same thousands of years and you have to worry about the sort of ecological context in which that forest exists and you know the pests and diseases and and all those sorts of things that might happen to the forest so there is a case for when we're doing research on that on on sort of more geological storage and technology carbon capture and storage and you're right those things are are they only exist in sort of small scale pilot pilot installations but you know we need we need to do to that technology the same as we've done to offshore wind which used to be expensive to batteries which used to be expensive to solar which used to be expensive the reason why i say that is not because this is the first and main thing you should do this is our insurance policy this is what we have to do if for some reason and we can sort of imagine what those reasons might be if we don't bring emissions down fast enough it's the same you know the best remedy against heart problems is is a healthy lifestyle doesn't mean open heart surgery is necessarily a bad thing as a backstop that's the sort of thing we're talking about great thank you yes thank you my question to jason so two weeks ago um uh the guardian reported that african countries or some african countries are planning to expand their uh fossil fuel production in order to deal with the energy crisis and provide development what would be your stance on such an announcement um yeah what would you be a stan considering the fact that those countries have historically not contributed to a problem but this is not in line with the 1.5 goal what would be your response to those countries um yeah i don't think anyone could ever in their right mind to blame any poor country for expanding fossil fuel use if necessary um so that's yeah i mean who would say that uh that said i think that there are much uh there are other factors we need to account for and push for right um we need climate reparations for the global south uh urgently and on a very large scale to ensure that that they can achieve also a rapid transition to renewables right if that is difficult for them financially then we need reparations to ensure that can be achieved and that should include also uh ending patents on essential technologies that that may be required so i would start with these right there should be an urgent international effort to ensure that there are no obstacles to any global south governments pursuing energy sovereignty through renewable energy um so i would start there uh and look like also i i really worry about the uh the appropriation of energy in the global south we know that huge amounts of energy in the global south are appropriated effectively to service capital accumulation in the global north this is a totally irrational and unjust use of energy resources right global south countries should have the right and the ability to to reclaim their energy resources and other forms of productive capacity and organize that around meeting human needs and what's very exciting is that we know that's that's uh through bottom-up uh modeling studies like a recent one by by joel millard hopkins and uh julia steinberger that it's possible to to meet human needs at a good standard universally around the world for 10 billion people with significantly less energy than the world presently uses right about 60 less depending on your assumptions about technology um which we can change uh and that's that's very exciting news right but it requires a much more equitable distribution of energy and i think that has to be front and center so so i would approach the question that way i think from a more justice oriented angle great joy can we run over five minutes yeah the room up for that yeah okay yes daniel wait a moment for the mic i'm coming yeah hello thank you for the talk very very cool so my question is about the the global nature of capitalism right so basically the fact that if investment goes down in certain country then the rich people would go somewhere else so just to have investment and the tax heavens and all what's happening around this global nature of capitalism so in that sense like my question to jason would be do you see this movement behind the growth having to be structured throughout the sovereignty necessarily of a country or do you see it as having to happen like in a more like not sovereign country kind of way because like for example what has happened a lot in latin america has been that the countries that start going very hard in some left left-sided policies the all of the investment goes down there and then like they become unviable for various reasons so like that's like my question to you great great question it's a very good question um and look i should actually take this moment to emphasize that degrowth scholarship does not have all the answers and there are many research questions that remain to be explored um and i hope that some of you at least will will pursue some of those questions because we we need much more scholarship on this and this is actually one of them right there there are real geopolitical questions about about first mover uh disadvantage and about free riders and so on if the uk is fortunate enough to have a government that prioritizes ecosocial policy and this leads to a decline in gdp and say a decline in uh in their power within the world bank and imf where gdp counts for a lot or their their military power if if that's a concern then this raises questions about uh about uh competitive advantage um i think and look i don't have answers to this but i think that's um something like the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty is important here we need international collaboration on this in the same way that we have it already around to some extent around climate uh so an international agreement where the rich countries lead on this is essential now that's a that's a tall ask um but let me say this the question about capital flight doesn't worry me too much there are there are well-known strategies for preventing that or dealing with it such as capital controls right which were used regularly and even advocated by people like keynes uh in the middle of the 20th century there's no reason we can't bring those back on um even though it is unthinkable for anyone who grew up with a neoliberal mindset right that's okay we can change our mindsets um the other thing here is that i'm not too worried about about capital moving finance abroad necessarily because ultimately money or finance is simply an abstract representation of control over productive capacity labor and resources real productive capacity right i think mmt scholarship is very strong on this that's uh that's that that governments that have sovereign command over their currency can can issue the public currency in a way that allows them to mobilize uh productive capacity towards democratically ratified social goals right there but thereby effectively constraining uh the the um the control that capital has over our national economy so i guess i guess that's how i'd address it but again these these questions have not been dealt with extensively in the literature and perhaps uh perhaps you can advance that can yes absolutely yeah make a comment on on capitalism uh for me first of all that's not exactly the same thing as growth second uh there is ninety percent of of of companies in in in the developed world certainly probably in the world as a whole are smes or small and medium-sized enterprises so the sort of the the portrayal of of the global economy as a sort of you know the private equity uh uh guys sort of you know barbarians at the gate type economy that's not the way the economy actually looks most of most of the economy is smes over half of people work in smes so it's a slightly different form of economic model than than many of us imagine then the second point is is the one about investment investment is actually something we need more of um we both sort of tended to agree that the technology the right type of technology clean technology is is part of the solution is a good thing and that technology has to be invested in and and you know a lot of the technologies we we're talking about are capital intensive uh that they're expensive to buy and cheap to run uh a solar or a wind farm is probably a better example is expensive currently to buy and set up you need capital for that it's incredibly cheap to run you don't have any fuel cost an electric car same thing the battery is expensive incredibly at the moment quite expensive to buy incredibly incredibly cheap to run so you do need a lot of capital you do need a lot of investment to get those technologies that we both think we need to get those going that sounds like like we need an era of green growth but then you're saying perhaps we can have actually an economy that doesn't depend upon endless growth because you need upfront investment but then it's very cheap to run again that's an empirical question no no i think it's a it's a it's a really important one actually because um clearly if you're investing in something like wind farms and solar and solar energy those sectors clearly will grow and that's a good thing i think we can all agree right um we also need to grow public transit in terms of the actual production of the trains that we need et cetera et cetera we need to decommodify it as well but that's a different story but but that's quite different from saying that we that we that this will create or that we once aggregate growth which is worrying because aggregate growth means again more energy demand which actually works against the goals of decarbonization so we do want growth in those sectors but we should worry about calling for aggregate growth we actually don't we actually don't want that so let's scale again scale down less necessary sectors while we actually improve socially necessary ones so i'm afraid the clock says five plus seven i know we we're only just getting and i i just want to acknowledge that both sam and jason are engaging in such a way that we are are going deeper and uncovering and the questions are coming and this is a very rich space i'm going to invite both of them just to give a final reflection recognizing that we have to wrap up one thought that they want to leave you with one thought that may have occurred to them in this conversation in the spirit of how can we be so curious about how we respectfully disagree what is it we're disagreeing on and again this isn't just a question to them this is a question to every one of us to understand our own views that reasons that we hold our convictions and what it would take to change our own minds would you like to go sam okay so the first thing to i think we sort of agreed we on the objective as it were we have sort of a dashboard of indicators that we care about which include prosperity which include fairness which include inclusivity and and all those and that's we sort of agree on that because of the disagreement probably is how one how one gets there and in in in my sort of opinion um more income is associated with many of those things that we care about so that's sort of one observation i would make the other observation i would reiterate is the political point that i'm a pragmatist we there's a problem we have to solve and i don't quite care how we solve it really as long as we do it fast um and sort of my sense is that the green growth narrative is a much easier way of selling the solutions to the problem politically you sort of said at some point if i promise green growth and then it doesn't happen i get voted out if i promise d growth i don't get voted in in the first place okay jason do you want to just give us your final reflection for this moment um um yeah uh so i should first say i'm very grateful for this space because it's it's nice to have a civilized conversation with a colleague on important empirical points which which is difficult to have say on twitter um so and thank you also kate for your for your moderation uh it's it's been really helpful i think um yeah i mean i think look i think that it's true that we uh we're interested in solving similar problems um i think that we have a different reading of of the literature that is a that is addressing these questions um which is changing quickly um i think that's uh that's i i don't see uh the promises of green growth um panning out uh in a feasible and most importantly just way that's very important to me and i think that's what i see in the degree scholarship i find to be more honest right it's not easy it's a hard concept it challenges you um it forces you to rethink your assumptions but i think that's good right especially in university spaces where that's our job our job is to change the way that we think uh to expand our horizons i think that d growth does a really good job of that um there are big questions that still remain right what kinds of political movements uh are necessary for the kind of transition we have to achieve what kinds of narratives and framing are necessary i think these are open questions uh and we don't have answers and i think that's uh that this is where this is where you honestly uh come in so i'm excited to see where you will take these issues great so let me close this by saying i hope that all of you in listening to us discuss in these two debates so openly and generously i hope all of you appreciate more about each of these positions especially the one you came in the room thinking you didn't agree with and can empathize with more with the reasons why somebody might hold that view i hope each of you have listened to what are the deep reasons for disagreement because it's in every debate that we're in let's listen for those and try and understand them and let's get rid of the ones that are just misunderstandings we're talking about different things different definitions different places and then let's have more interesting reasons to disagree and i hope each one of you has asked yourself what would it take to change your mind on this topic and many other topics as jason just said that's what universities are for so sam jason and to all the students who organize this debate thank you very much [Applause] you

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Length: 93min 5sec (5585 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022