Apparently, serious as climate change is, when you look at the ’safe operating space’ for humanity in terms of planetary boundaries (depicted in green above), biodiversity loss and nutrification are set to be even bigger challenges.
We learn this, almost as an aside, at the beginning of the London School of Economics Sustainability in Practice lecture, given by Professor Tom Jackson in February this year.
About a month ago I wrote:
This series of posts has been largely silent so far about the work of environmental progressive theorists. There does seem to have been some important work we can turn to here — and the comments threads on recent posts have suggested some examples — but my sense is that progressive ecological political economy has not yet seen its equivalent of Keynes’ General Theory (or Marx’s Capital or Smith’s Wealth of Nations, depending on your preference).
I haven’t read it yet and I suspect it’s probably going too far to call Jackson’s book Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet
In his lecture Jackson summarises the main arguments of Prosperity without Growth. This includes an critique of “eco-modernisation”, the idea that we “could evade these finite limits through the ingenuity of the human mind”.
But also, and most impressively in my view, he takes seriously the challenges inherent in making an economy work without growth. This is what Jackson calls “the second horn of the dilemma of growth”, which is that while growth is unsustainable, de-growth (decroissance) is unstable. He explains the logic of this as follows:
It exists in this very simple equation. Actually, it’s not even an equation, it’s an identity: GDP = Labour x LP. GDP, the villain of the piece, the output, the economic output of the economy, is equal to the number of people employed in the workforce times the productivity of that workforce. So Labour times Labour Productivity, the amount they produce in each hour, in each week, in each day.
And the fundamental dynamic of the capitalist economy is to pursue constant increases in labour productivity. So labour productivity’s going up and up and up. So any suggestion that the output, the economic output, could be stabilised or even decreased tells you what? That there is a continuing downward pressure on employment, so that people will become unemployed. As people become unemployed, they are unable to contribute to the economy, they can’t be out there buying stuff. That they can’t be out there buying stuff reduces the demand for people to produce it, reduces the demand for workers to work in the factories that produce it.
And so you get into, instead of the ‘virtuous circle of growth’, you get into a ‘vicious cycle’. And it’s the fear, it’s the visceral fear that sits at the heart of every politician in the face of any slowing down of the economy.
Given this, Jackson’s approach to is to find an alternative ‘engine of growth’, such as green technology markets and/or service-based activities, which doesn’t increase the resource impact of the economy.
The LSE has provided a podcast of the lecture (click to hear audio), as well as a copy of his presentation slides (click to download) (actually the slides don’t exactly seem to match the audio, but you’ll get the idea).
Prosperity with Growth is now on sale in New Zealand. I’ve seen a copy at Unity Books and I gather it’s also available at Whitcoulls and probably a bunch of other places as well. Definitely on my “must buy” list!
There’s also some thoughtful coverage of Jackson’s work in these blog posts:
- Bryan Walker (Sciblogs/Hot Topic) – Prosperity without growth
- Duncan Green (Oxfamblogs/From Poverty to Power) – Degrowth – is it useful or feasible?
Tags: climate change, decroissance, sustainability, Tim Jackson
One of my problems with the zero-growth school is that it seems to equate growth with using more stuff.
That’s not what growth is in an economic sense – although I’ll accept that it can be that.
Growth is about value; quality if you will, not quantity.
You could in theory grow while doing less.
I haven’t completely worked out exactly where Jackson stands on that from the lecture, but have now bought his book so will no doubt return to discussing his ideas in more depth in future.
James, read the book – Tim covers both the meaning(s) of growth and the (frequently claimed) dematerialisation of the economy quite well, I thought.
Actually, I’d recommend it to anyone.
cool – will add it to the ever expanding list