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Rethinking Scale and Growth for a More Sustainable World
The Plenitude Path to Sustainability
Despite the lack of policy progress on climate change and ecosystem
degradation there is no shortage of solutions currently on offer. While
the specifics may differ, those getting most attention share one
characteristic-they focus on technological change. Whether it's Pacala
et al's wedges, Jeffrey Sachs' plan to reduce carbon emissions through
plug in hybrids and carbon capture and storage, McKinsey's cost
abatement curve approach, or Jacobson and DeLucchi's 100% renewables by
2030 plan, the emphasis is on technology. Most conspicuously lack a
number of obvious changes that would reduce emissions and footprint.
They barely address households' lifestyles and "behavioral" changes (the
first McKinsey report calls these too "difficult"), ignore changes in
distribution of assets and structure of enterprises, and are light on
the conditions of knowledge generation and dissemination. Furthermore,
with the exception of the green jobs literature, they generally fail to
integrate their analyses with current labor market conditions. As
readers of this blog are well aware, the dominant discourse also pays
scant attention to the equity implications and opportunities of
environmental policy.
In Plenitude: the new economics of true wealth, I argue against the techno-fix approach. We also need deeper, systemic change that incorporates economic structures, the rate and pattern of growth, as well as alterations in cultural and social norms. Technology is heroic, but the task of making a grossly unbalanced system sustainable on its back alone is asking too much. Grappling with not only emissions reductions, but the full material requirements of a shift to a new energy paradigm, plus an additional 2 billion people requires technology plus.
But even more importantly, a wider array of changes is also a desiderata for a transition to a truly sustainable economy. That's because what was efficient (or even just profitable, to put a finer point on it, and differentiate between true efficiency and profitability) in an industrial economy is not what is efficient, optimal or profitable in an ecologically-oriented economy.
Both for households and firms, shifting to sustainability opens up new possibilities, and intersects with ongoing changes in the economy. In Plenitude, I lay out a number of principles that should inform our thinking about how to solve the climate and eco-crises. These include re-thinking the question of scale, knowledge transmission, the role of informal economies and social capital, new consumer patterns, and the relation among productivity growth, output and hours of work. Here I will address two of these: scale and worktime.
Mainstream thinking on the shift to clean energy has a bias toward large-scale installations, such as nuclear power stations, big wind farms, concentrated solar, CCS and other capital intensive approaches which will be dominated by large energy providers. Both the technologies and the firms are outsized. But is big and even bigger the right future as we transition out of the industrial era? There are good reasons to think not, and that small is finally becoming not only beautiful, but also efficient. Information technology is key to why. We need a lot more research on this issue. But at a minimum, scale is one of the variables that needs to be seriously raised as we contemplate economic futures. The argument that the optimal scale of enterprise is falling relies in part on the role of information technology in undermining the need for the (classically inefficient) command and control functions of the modern corporation and making possible efficient, low-cost communication among distributed networks. Networks can share certain functions, while competing on others. Indeed, the experience of the US economy over the last few decades suggests that it's the small and medium firms who have provided the bulk of innovation and employment growth.
There are other reasons why leaving the sustainable future to large corporate entities is problematic: their excessive political power makes them capable of blocking needed policy reforms, a problem that will only get worse in the US after Citizens United. Furthermore, resilience models suggest that highly centralized systems are vulnerable, a point hammered home by the financial meltdown of 2008. With climatic uncertainties predicted to increase, and financial crises occurring regularly, a shift to smaller enterprises, operating in a more de-centralized way is both prudent and likely to be more efficient. These arguments are in addition to the more conventional one that local or regionalized economies are less transport and energy intensive. Finally, de-centralization promotes equity, by making small-scale ownership, either in cooperatives or small businesses, more economically feasible.
A second area is the nexus of output growth, productivity and hours of work. There is now growing evidence that de-carbonization and de-materialization (the de-linking of production from materials flow) are only occurring on a limited basis. The material flows associated with a dollar of GDP have been declining by about 1% a year for decades, a phenomenon known in the literature as relative de-coupling. However, increases in total production have lead to rising materials use, including fossil fuels and their emissions. Since 1980, total materials use (including fossil fuels) climbed 45%. GHG emissions have also continued to rise, with a sharp acceleration since 2000. We haven't yet cracked the nut of translating efficiency gains into lower emissions, nor are we likely to without addressing the rate of growth of output.
One approach, which is getting more attention in the last few years, is that the wealthy countries of the global North should reduce their growth rates in order to provide ecological space for the global South. (Indeed, even mainstream figures such as Lord Stern and Anthony Giddens have begun to question Northern growth. See also the recent statement of a global group of economists, of which I and other E3 economists are a part.
But how to achieve such a feat? As I first argued in 1991 in World Development, and have elaborated in Plenitude, the key is to reduce average hours of work. The economy will continue to produce productivity increases. If they are not absorbed by rising output, then equilibrium needs to be restored through declines in hours. People can work shorter weeks or years, or less of their lifetimes. That's flexible. What matters is that productivity growth isn't channeled into more production, but into more time off the job. Shorter hours are associated with lower emissions and less ecological impact.
This path also has two other virtues. It yields a significant benefit to employees in the form of more time off the job. It won't be possible to get global North populations to accept slow or no growth without a corresponding benefit. This at least creates the possibility of political feasibility. And once hours reductions begin, they tend to be popular.
Second, if average hours fall, it becomes far easier to create new jobs, because firms need to generate less revenue for every new position. In the long-hours US it is now necessary to generate between 15 and 25% more revenue per job than in shorter-hours Western European countries. To date the recover has failed to produce job growth anywhere near the pace which is required to restore pre-crash levels, and opposition to additional federal stimulus is hardening. Hours reductions represent a fresh, possibly politically feasible approach. States are turning to the unemployment insurance system to subsidize hours reductions, and these policies are currently seen as politically neutral and even business-friendly. Reducing hours of work is a policy reform that satisfies the three E criteria: it reduces eco-impact, improves economic efficiency, and enhances equity.
Taken together a decline in enterprise size and a reduction in average hours of work can facilitate the growth of a low-impact sector of self-providing households, self-employment and small-scale businesses and coops. That's because people will have more time away from their formal jobs and the competition from large enterprises will abate. Fostering such a sector will help individuals build skills and assets, reduce their personal footprints, and lay the groundwork for functioning local and regional economies. The web and digital technologies are central to this vision: because so much knowledge and skill can be readily transmitted digitally, it is far more feasible to have high productivity household and small-scale production. Indeed, household production should no longer be seen as an antiquated pre-industrial paradigm. Rather, it's one of the new possibilities that are available to us in the 21st century. In addition to its economic and ecological aspects, it can also be a highly desirable lifestyle, allowing people more creativity, freedom and flexibility.
The silver lining of the recession is that we could use it to accelerate a movement toward this kind of systemic change. We could re-balance the labor market with policies that facilitate shorter hours, the development of cooperatives and small businesses, and skills-training in small-scale green technologies and knowledges. In the process, we'd be on the road to reducing CO2 emissions, lowering footprints, and creating a more equitable and well-functioning economy.
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43 Comments so far
Show AllI don't understand much about the economic stuff in this article but her solution at the end interests me. :)
That's because economists inhabit a parallel universe that has long ignored biology, ecology and evolution by externalizing pollution and other forms of degredation, all the while creating models based on a wizardly, supernatural, and pure "invisible hand." The "solution" might work on some other planet, but not here, not now. And besides that, I think Jeffrey Sachs has fucked things up quite enough.
Yeah, they have great theories, but generally discount human nature. And right now, our 'universe' is populated by increasingly uneducated Serfs, and increasingly greedy and sadistic Lords.
What we need are fewer economists, politicians, bankers and soldiers, and more farmers and technicians (of all kinds).
Milton Friedman won a Nobel prize in economics. 'Nuff said.
"And besides that, I think Jeffrey Sachs has fucked things up quite enough." -- FastEddie75
I agree -- Naomi Klein documents some of his missteps in her book, The Shock Doctrine.
Sachs was in Russia -- was he also in Latin America? Sorry, I can't recall.
She is right about decentralization. It's better to have individual solar systems on each home as opposed centralized corporate systems whereby prices will increase and corporations will have the funds to unduly influence policy at the expense of the people. A scaled down centralized system will still be necessary to provide power in times of special need. Hydro electric power would probably fill the gap. Wind would also assist if wind generators were designed to function in an environment of volcanic ash. It is possible that the super volcano in Yellowstone will blow and leave half the country in ash. Smaller volcano's can also create havoc. I'm not sure that wind generation engineers have ash in mind.
Decentralization is also a disincentive to terrorists.
Slow growth is underway but will be difficult to implement because it requires a redistribution of wealth to work. It can happen however if the public is educated.
Slow growth [to decentralize] is underway but will be difficult to implement because it requires a redistribution of wealth to work.
And how is that working out? Sorry to bring a cloud to your sunny day, but: A) that wealth ain't gonna redistribute itself, B) vast sums of money are being spent to de-educate the public--they are being fed lies and distortions and then asked to form an opinion based on those lies and distortions--the Truth has no funding, and C) evolutionary progress is made in quantum leaps, get ready to jump.
Cool. I've always wanted to have my own individual solar system.
If you want to see scale and growth in action, just have a peep at my shower!
On second thought, don't.
LOL :)
and I thought I was the only one on a roll tonight! Must be a full moon somewhere!
:)
>^^<
This is an excellent article, obviously written with a great deal of careful thought and experience. It's also a needed reminder to step back a little and look for an alternative way forward.
>>Mainstream thinking on the shift to clean energy has a bias toward large-scale installations, such as nuclear power stations, big wind farms, concentrated solar, CCS and other capital intensive approaches which will be dominated by large energy providers. Both the technologies and the firms are outsized. But is big and even bigger the right future as we transition out of the industrial era? There are good reasons to think not, and that small is finally becoming not only beautiful, but also efficient.<<
Although it doesn't say explicitly, it clearly points to the finite nature of resources. And it has the courage to talk of the "transition out of the industrial era" - something that is inevitable.
>>There are other reasons why leaving the sustainable future to large corporate entities is problematic...<<
No kidding!
>>The silver lining of the recession is that we could use it to accelerate a movement toward this kind of systemic change.<<
Yup. There's no point in repeating the same mistakes in our desperation to "solve" the current crisis. I have also posted on the article on Cuba:
"Missing the Boat on Cuba"
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/13-2
It is high time to start thinking of a sustainable future. That would require a great deal of simplification and asking the right questions.
"We could re-balance the labor market with policies that facilitate shorter hours, the development of cooperatives and small businesses, and skills-training in small-scale green technologies and knowledges."
Of course we can. But this kind of practical socialism has never been popular with some factions in the US...
Or we could let the Chinese supply all our baby formula, that'll assure a steady infant mortality rate, leading to less people, less need for stuff.
Or remove the lead filters on TV's and computer screens, that stop secondary radition, that would cut into life-spans, that could help too!
>^^<
I have lots of good ideas for population control. :)
Anything that can top Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapagos"? He humanely wipes out all of mankind except a rag-tag band stranded on the Galapagos. Brilliant!
I'm eager to read Juliet Shor's book.
It reminds me (also see Alycon's comment below)of "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered" by E. F. Schumacher written in 1975.
I like Stone's comment below on decentralization. In some things, this may be the way to go.
Recipes for Cannibals?
My favorite is; TO SERVE MAN!
>^^<
An excellent road map for the New American Way of Life.
Now, if we can just cure Greedism...
And find a way to communicate to the 40% of the country who believe liberals, progressives and everyone else who isn't a conservative Christian are the 'enemy,' who believe terror-anchor-babies are an evil Mexican invasion plot, who believe a return to the Bush GOP agenda will 'save America' and help them 'take their country back,' and who still - STILL - believe Climate Change is a conspiracy by lefty loony researchers and scientists to steal more government grants.
Neither will be easy...
"Since 1980, total materials use (including fossil fuels) climbed 45%. GHG emissions have also continued to rise, with a sharp acceleration since 2000."
Worth repeating: A sharp ACCELERATION since 2000.
It's sorta like we're living on Easter Island. Used to be a lush forest. But we have this 'fetish' for erecting monuments toward the Almighty Whatever...and it turns out, in order to move the behemoth stones to our preferred place of interest, it costs us our forest, our environment, our "material(s) flow" (from the article). So now we've arrived at a point where we realize that, even though we try to "re-use" (conserve) some of the logs and our 'technology' has taught us how to use smaller yet sturdier "tree trunks" for transportation, our natural growth, coupled with our fetishistic addiction, is actually accelerating the process toward our demise.
The disconnect I always feel from these articles is between "knowing" what to do (and Bucky Fuller suggested reducing working hours as a way of conserving energy thirty years ago, so contrary to the article, this is nothing new) and actually turning the corner and pursuing that "path" with the zeal it will take to avoid oblivion.
BP was helpfull by letting all that methane get loose from under the gulf. That alone should speed up global warming by a bit. A few more volcanoes or that pocket of methane BP cracked get loose and you won't have to worry, mankind will be toast.
Or the Sun could blow-up.
Or a big rock like Apoths will hit from the sunside where we can't see it coming.
Or We get cooked by Gamma radition from a local star going nova, since gamma radition moves at the speed of light, we'll never see it coming.
Or somebody decides to use a nano-device/bacteria to eatup the oil in the gulf and it mutates on the coexit and turns the whole surface into grey-goo including all of us.
Or you try to sleep in, and your cat gets tired of waiting for the can to be opened, and eats your face,, clean off!
So don't worry be happy
>^^<
Too little too late.
The time to start re-thinking things is long gone.
As long as Capitalism exists in it's current form...
as long as investors demand ever increasing profits the environment and all of us are done for.
The air, oceans, and the soil will all be more polluted tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.
This is a fact.
re: FastEddie75....Friedman was WRONG, you are WRONG.
'Nuff said.
Yo, not sure how to take your last two paragraphs. I also know deep in my heart and brain that US society is a lost cause. But what is sensible or self-caring about bailing out? And where is this "better place" you speak of? I lost interest in the article, something Utopian and worthy of Hogwarts I'm sure, but not practical to an American currently up to their ears in debt. But is your dilemma simply one of should I stay or should I go? Is it pure survivalism--if 90% of mankind is wiped out, where will the surviving 10% live? (My recommendation is a small island in the south pacific.) Or does it go deeper, how should I try to position myself to survive the impending crises about to be unleashed. I think that would be best done by networking locally. I would rather have a strong support group of principled people than be a stranger in a strange land. (That island, I've lived there and have called it my home. When I was there--1980-1982--I was sure the world was going to come crashing down and I felt safe and secure. Most world events we didn't hear about, and those we did hear about we heard about a month after the fact. Those good people will suffer very little when the rest of the world comes crashing down.)
Only problem is, the Earth climate change will probably put many of those escape islands under water....
Both approaches will be required. And, we need to call the economic "theory" on which all calculations of cost-benefit are based what it is -- a crock. Our vaunted economists base arguments on the viability of proposed policies, be they economic, environmental, financial, education, medical, or social, on the flawed notion that growth is the key indicator of a healthy economy. We need to realize that resources are not infinite, that the planet has already exceeded the solar carrying capacity of the human population, and that our model of a healthy economy ought to be circular (or triangular, like the recycle symbol), not a linear x,y graph where if the line isn't going up, we are failing. We need to measure economic health in terms of social well-being and environmental well-being. Can we sustain? If the answer is no, then it is bad policy. It might hurt for awhile, but pulling the figurative tooth now is better than dying of untreatable septicemia later.
After weighing all the options, I think I'll just wait for the big die-off that happens every time our population gets too big, It's happened before and will again.
Afterwards there'll be plenty for whoever is left.
>^^<
I've seen many dates for the End Times' die-off come and go in my life. What's different about the 2012 prediction, is that people seem to "want" it to be true. Waiting is.
Count me as someone who hopes you are one of the ones who doesn't make it if a die-off happens. It's people like you who refuse to do anything to prevent the worst, who just wait for it to happen, who deserve to be the ones who go.
Die-off doesn't have to happen. We waste most of the energy we use.
Well said,tommy_slothrop. It makes me sick to hear of such mindless defeatist talk.
I think I'll do my part to reduce consumption, starting with not buying this book.
And turn off your computer,, odviously this guy has no idea how much electricity the inter-web uses. Servers, lines, switches, satellites. None of ever designed to fit in any economical way, just the oppisite in fact the main idea is to be atom-bomb proof, large sections can be rempved and data still gets through. That takes a lot of redunant power right there.
Anybody useing the internet to convince me at all about sustainability. I know is ignorant of these facts or nuts!
>^^<
:)
I'm going to buy as many copies as I can afford and give them to all the people I know who don't seem to have their heads up their asses.
It's that important.
As soon as someone gets a whiff that "information technology" could enable something different...is that when they start shutting down the library at 7 PM? I've been disappointed by boingboing and bavatuesdays, but someday they might improve. At that time could we reduce the amt of paper literature we require in our dwellings? At any rate, it seems imperative that we demand no cut backs for libraries if info tech is gonna play a big part in survival with decreased "growth."
When I consider fewer wk hrs I automatically think of healthcare. Somewhere our nation got something wrong, and now there are a lot of burnt out, sick people. Plus there's the so-called boomer phenomenon. Not to mention disabled vets and vets with PTSD. Not to mention (re Substance Abuse Counseling) vets returning home addicted to hard stuff...
"It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan"
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/07/afghan_heroin
The business end of healthcare knows how to get max hrs out of every wrking human unit out there. Until that's changed direct care folks'll be working too much, as usual. But here's another thing: Suppose the "business" decided to hire more staff, rotate more staff in, pay more, and give greater benefits to pt timers. At that point many young employees would be "tempted" to take on additional hrs at second jobs. Such a "temptation," however, would in fact help meet humongus HUMANITARIAN NEEDS in the nation. [Where the CONCERN and/or humane bedside manner is gonna come from is another whole question.] BTW, a lot of STUFF in healthcare facilities is gonna get produced, used once, and thrown away (thanks to conditions that fostered superbug proliferation, the victims of which were low on our list of activist concerns; though, true, pharma could have warned us more often). Factor that in for sure. It's way more necessary than a lot of toys out there.
A lot of matters, it seems, go back to the public option and or single payer. IMO this sphere needs to come under a massive public works paradigm. Imagine cutting hrs for folks building the Appalachain Trail, there were always more hrs available. Or think of Cuba. Cuba has realized there are always too many hrs available out there in the world for doctors. Or imagine picking bugs or picking weeds in fields that in prior times would have been sprayed (I could be wrong about this, though, and better pay might find/yield enough workers so that time would be left over).
yours,
one suddenly try'n to outlast wiggy nation
Nice thoughts. I hope there are real world examples of these trends. Do we all know what plenitude means here or do we have to read the book? The root is plenty, which is having more than enough. There is also a philosophical principle of plenitude that says that everything that can happen will happen sometime, which is a kind of universal Murphys law.
The dismal science of economics plus the entropy law, says that we have a a long term limited supply of energy and materials in useful form. We have sunshine aplenty. Our limits to growth are the resources we use but are unable to recycle. This is the throughput of the economy. The degradation of the environment from both stealing from it and putting waste into it is another throughput.
What we have in plenty is our planet filled with lots of people who are badly organised at supporting themselves, because of far too much throughput. Throughput is the permanent degradation of the environment, the reduction in the available quantities of first class resources as a result of our activities, and relates directly to increases in entropy.
We should be applauding and studying hard all ways and means of living better by reducing throughput. This would mean spending less time in such activities. Its logical enough that individual work hours that cause throughput must decrease accordingly. As resources are drained, this will become a necessity. There is not enough people and methods available to clean up the messes we make, gulf oil spills for example, so ideally we have to be doing less. Other sorts of jobs that are throughput nuetral, or are sustainable should be available in plenty. There is a dependency tree of jobs. We have to minimize the jobs that do throughput, and maximise those that recycle, provide equity and enjoyment. Let us adopt every social organisation, market systems, regulations, that works best towards these goals, and use our current people surplus to this good effect.
Then what do we do with our time here? Many jobs are required to clean up our messes, and more time and energy spent recycling once primary resources run out. Shipping toxic e-waste to the third world for resource reclamation is a temporary measure. Soon it will have to be local. Big solar energy projects may still be necessary to take power from the sun, for material resource reclamation. Doing reclamation of some materials without more unwanted byproducts is hard. Energy will be needed to take back all our waste stuff, and bring it back to reuseable form. Detoxification processes for the whole biosphere may take entire ages.
As well as hard industrial energy and materials resupply, we need more biological recycling of soil and ecosystems, because these supply the majority of our food, clean water and air, and wood for building materials. Until we get all of these cycles fully working, with a reduced human population load, nothing of our current civilisation is sustainable. The carbon emissions cycle is only the first of several major sustainability and survival challanges, since climate change threatens our major life support systems.
Well now, Alice is still in Wonderland.
I had no idea you could pile B.S. so high in just a single column.
A Harvard educator, who still worships at growth and profit churches.
Human constructs such as the fiction of profits existing in a closed system were inconvenient costs are removed to meet the exploiters aims.
The jig is up. Business growth [gain} produces nothing but loss for those not engaged in the enterprize. Always was always will be,
Tell me, how can you build a viable system of living on such a Harvard, Yale, Wall Street, et al, system of deception and distraction?
As we speak, the pigs among us are sucking the system dry.
"Off with they're heads"
That we are discussing the merits and feasability of a social system where sustainability and decentralized economic structures are more reasonable both for survival and individual well being illustrates just how far we have fallen. For profit Healthcare, for profit, education, for profit War, for profit, food, for profit child care, for profit sex. We missed the slow sign, left the road, and as we near the rocks, wonder if we should have taken another route.
All interesting Ms. Schor, and yet you dance around the underlying problem. We are overpopulated for any of your ideas to work. We need to address the problem of to many people and to few resources. Sustainability is a impossibility as long as we do not address population counts and what to do about it. It just seems to me that no one wants to address the problem on a serious level and are just hoping for some nasty virus to solve the problem. We are better than that, or could be.
Mass vasectomies would be a wonderful start; education and elimination of poverty would be great steps to get us there. 350mp (million people) rather than 350ppm (of CO2) would be tangible goals. Diverting war (and other idiotic) funds into development of useful technology should be on the list. I'd settle for that, and see where it takes us.
All good solutions. I guess the big problem would be to consciously over come the biological imperative and to show that having one child would be enough and of course using funds as you suggest into better development that actually would be useful not just profitable at the expense of the over all good.
Tax deductions for abortions.
We need more creative ideas of this type. This is the potential of networking - to spawn and develop awareness, plans and action from the resources of the many.
I work a Corporate job from home part time (25 to 30 hrs/week). The biggest benefit to fewer hours (as well as no commuting) is the space, the gaps, the silence it allows into my life. I have time to consider what is important beyond money and career. I have time to live.
One of the most important steps toward achieving what Dr. Schor describes in this article would be universal health care. Real, single-payer, universal health care. Work to elect people who will do something to implement this.