Could a recession be good?

Well maybe.

Nicholas Stern has suggested that recession is a good time to build a low carbon future in this article although he doesn't seem to be suggesting that perhaps we should be looking at how to reach some kind of steady state economy. I suppose that I still think it is a bit of a mistake to think only in terms of climate change which I think may be what Stern is doing. Still, he may be right that a time of crisis can actually make it easier to change.

But what should I do about all this? I keep coming back to the need to work at community level to build whatever I can to support and develop resilience so that when people do change it is more likely to be constructive rather than destructive. To me resilience means knowing where to locate skills and resources, being able to work with the people who can supply those things to make things happen. And when I look at this I see with some surprise that it implies that we need to foster strong "service" leadership at different levels.

:-)

Londoner with a tiny carbon footprint

Now here is someone a little different - I guess you could call her an integrated scientist - practicing what she preaches - the ultimate urban sustainable living. And of course right now we'd have to worry about what it would do the world economy if we all lived this way - but then that's another story.

New Government, Economic Recession, New Directions?

Well we have a new government here in New Zealand. More right wing if we are to judge by coalition partners although it is good to see the Maori party in there to - to maybe temper the influence of ACT!

Still, it's got me thinking because all the talk is now about fostering economic growth (admittedly not something I think that would have been any different if a more left wing government had got in). I wonder about that. How will promoting more consumption (because that is what economic growth relies on) help us meet the challenges of peak oil, the increasing gap between rich and poor, food security, climate change and diminishing resources that are all symptoms of a finite world?

Where is the work on fostering our capacity to change and adjust to meeting the limits of our lifestyles? Where is the work on developing community resilience? The whole focus is on our economic system and on short term fixes, which, it seems possible are only going to make the situation worse further down the track! What of the work around moving towards a steady state economy? Where are the people that really care about the lives of their children and grandchildren?

Could this economic recession be an opportunity for fostering some change in approach here? How might we as a nation and as a number of communities tap into that opportunity?

The Jevons paradox

What is the Jevons paradox you ask? Well, its the observation that (I guess) someone called Jevon's made, that increasingly efficient technology does not lead to more the use of fewer resources. Quite the opposite in fact!

In fact, as efficiency increases, resource use also increases. For example according to this video, increasingly efficient cars means that the money people save by using more efficient cars then is sloshing around looking for something to do and gets spent (in this example) on more trips. This of course leads to an increased consumption of oil. We've seen the same effect with heat pumps in New Zealand. Installing heat pumps has led to an increase in electricity consumption because people can heat their homes better for less cost. The video points out that the only way to counter this is to increase leisure rather than increasing productivity. Looked at this way, going part time or taking more holidays is doing the planet a favour because we need to produce and consume less stuff if we are going to become sustainable. Any other ploys simply increase consumption, which is not the point.

So slow down, work less, enjoy more of the flowers, become more physically active and spend more time with those important others in your lives. Working long and hard is not sustainable and as others have pointed out, not many people regret that they haven't spent more time at work when they are on their deathbed!

The joys of connecting sciences etc.

I"ve just been away at an interesting conference on making connections across science and between science and other forms of knowledge. It was great. Perhaps the talks that stood out for me most (they made me laugh with considerable relief at the time too) was the difficulty that people experience as scientists trying to do work that spans disciplines and professional boundaries.

As Hugh Campbell put it, you have to get used to reviewers hating your papers, to feeling like an idiot rather than an expert.

On top of that you don't have such great outputs because building the relationships necessary takes a huge amount of time since it takes heaps to work out how to engage with other scientists and most of these kinds of projects also require researchers to engage meaningfully with research "subjects" and with other stakeholders.

And on top of that most science institutions have no idea of the difficulties and tend to view people involved in these kinds of projects as abject failures!

Oh dear!