New Scientist article on economic growth

I spoke to an economist at the conference last week and asked him about steady state economies. He (and he is an economist who works in the same environmental science institution as me so I found this pretty depressing) dismissed the idea - positing the idea that we can grow the economy through the knowledge sector.

I"m not so sure and even less sure now, given the New Scientist (18th Oct. 2008) article I've just read called 'Beyond Growth'. In the end the basis of our economy is consumption and actually from the point of view of the sustainability of our society in a world that has shown time and again that it has limits, consumption is something we have to cut.

I suppose from a positive point of view the economic crisis that looms might offer some ways for us to look hard our our economic system (after all, it has already made governments throw out the idea of not intervening in the market!) and to find some new ways of providing for our needs. Or of course, it might not.

What of holidays in a post peak oil world?

I"ve just returned from a tourism research conference up in Hanmer Springs. Overall I enjoyed the conference - it gave me the opportunity to meet and talk with some very interesting people.
One of them was Ian Yeoman a futurologist with a tourism focus, who, as he put it, gets paid to "make stuff up" - although it does appear that there is quite a lot of interesting thinking behind the er ... stuff! It struck me that "futuring" is something that really benefits from integrating the information and knowledge from a very wide range of stakeholders.

I guess as someone who spends quite a lot of time thinking of the future in terms of environmental sustainability and who has a head full of books/ information like Jared Diamond's "Collapse," Rob Hopkins' "Transition Handbook" and of course Chris Martenson's Crash course, (amongst others) I would say Dr Yeoman is perhaps more positive about the future of tourism than I am ... (although to be fair he talks in terms of scenarios but I do note that people travelling a lot less did not seem to be one of them!).

I would hope, for example, that we don't have space tourism because something like that would indicate to me (and this is just an opinion here!) the likelihood of a an unstable society in which the gap between rich and poor is just massive (when in my opinion it is already too big).

Personally I'd much prefer to live in a stable and happy society in which people know and appreciate each other and there is a more even spread of opportunity across the population of the world. Such a society could work together constructively to cope with the changes that face them - whether they be positive or negative. And , I suppose, to those ends I remain interested in the question of how we create the positive futures we want.

Looking at this I guess I could seem like a bit of a grump who doesn't want to to create fantastic tourism futures. I suppose I would prefer to work toward seeing a more even spread of opportunity across the population rather than preparing for amazing opportunities for a priviledged few. In the end, like any decision or use of intuitive processes, it's all a matter of what and how you prioritise information and principles.

;-) CH

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!