BLOG
The shortcomings of GDP have been widely recognised for several decades now, with a huge number and diversity of “alternative indicators of progress” being developed. In order to buy-in to a new indicator of progress, we don’t just need a new indicator. We need a new way of thinking about societal wellbeing that is grounded in sustainability and just distribution.
Climate change is increasingly being discussed as an existential threat to human civilisation. How should this affect the work of political scientists who are investigating environmental politics? CUSP researcher Richard McNeill Douglas offers this suggestion: by following Charles Taylor’s arguments for engaged social science.
“We owe future generations a better economy, not a bigger one”, Ben Gallant writes, recovering the concept of ‘usufruct’ for inter-generational politics. By focusing on growing the economy we forgot about all the other things that are handed down through the generations; not just the environment but cultures, communities and institutions as well. For many years now, we have consciously broken the terms of our ‘usufruct’—it’s high time we revisited the terms of the contract again.
Unexpected for Joanna Kitchen, her field work investigating socio-environmental accounting procedures in hybrid organisations led her to the ancient wisdom of First Nations communities, with thousands of years of unrecognised sustainable practices and innovation, and the relationship they hold with the land—it is undeniable, she finds, that having their voices heard can bring about new solutions to long-held challenges. But the concept of ‘inclusive growth’ may not be it.
‘Green growth’ is conventionally trusted to fix climate change—a highly risky strategy, Christine Corlet Walker argues, when the technology needed to decarbonise the economy is nowhere in sight. So why, if we can be so optimistic about humanity’s ability to develop fantastical new technologies to bend and overcome the limits of nature, can’t we lend that same optimism to developing new economic structures? (This blog first appeared on The Conversation.)
We are currently trapped between dysfunctional forms of populism and an increasingly defunct policy orthodoxy of market liberalism, Charles Seaford argues. But this is not inevitable. We need to reconstruct the moral foundation for politics, and build the alliances needed to give it political and practical expression.
In July 2019, the think-tank Policy Exchange put out a report that frames the Extinction Rebellion in terms of extremism with potential to terrorism, calling on government for forceful approaches to curb the XR movement. A worrying assessment that is far from being justified, Simon Mair and Julia Steinberger write in their defence of XR’s economic and political programme: Given the outlook of climate breakdown, what constitutes extremism, and who gets to decide this?
Climate emergency demands a wholescale shift away from fossil fuels. Tim Jackson and Andrew Jackson reflect here on the emerging concept of ‘transition risk’, a key element in the Bank of England’s response to climate change, and outline the challenges inherent in understanding and modelling it.
With every day that passes the climate crisis grows more urgent and the responsibility of scientists to intervene in policy grows. It’s a pressure, Ben Gallant describes his experience at the recent ESEE conference, that is changing identities and is creating tensions in the Ecological Economics research community.
‘System change, not climate change’ is the mantra for a new politically-charged ecological activism. In the wake of two key economic conferences, CUSP director Tim Jackson reflects on what this means for the financial and political stability of Europe.
The 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in 2009 was meant to launch an international framework that realigned our development trajectories towards a low carbon future. A decade later, with rising emissions, we still find a significant set of barriers to unlocking this low-carbon pathway to sustainable prosperity.
There are no silver bullets to the climate breakdown. Various scenarios offer a range of solutions to the same issue—all providing stories for a course of action sorely needed today. These opportunities can be put together to create alternatives to the prevailing business-as-usual approach. World Environment Day might have been a good conversation starter in the 1970s, the Agulhas Climate Hub write in this guest blog, but it needs a radical shakeup to get us where we need to be in time.
After the most profound shake-up in decades, European politics stands at a pivotal point in its long history. With nationalist parties drawing support from communities who have been left behind and green parties benefiting from a huge upsurge of concern around climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, there is a unique opportunity, argues Tim Jackson, to build a new vision for Europe that is green, prosperous and fair.
“Every society clings to a myth by which it lives,” Tim Jackson wrote in 2008, and “ours is the myth of economic progress.” For many economists, those who call for an end to the growth paradigm are utopian fantasists. But, as CUSP researcher Richard McNeill Douglas writes in this blog, the idea of eternal growth is itself deeply fantastical.
CUSP researchers have been awarded co-funding from the AHRC to investigate creative practices in design-led fashion micro and small enterprises (MSEs) as a driver for sustainable prosperity. As project work begins, Fergus Lyon is outlining the research agenda, and inviting fashion designers to participate in a short survey.
Can Nature Writing be a force for saving what we wish to conserve and carry on loving, and to hand on to future generations? Can it be a contribution to the political and social movements for a re-imagination of the good life, of sustainable prosperity? Taking seriously the claims of art to enable us to imagine other futures, CUSP is launching a call for entries for a new nature writing project: Nature Writing for the Common Good.
Part of our research aims to learn from grass-root initiatives operating in the circular economy in Nigeria; their hybrid organising strategies and, particularly, their attempts to propagate a circular economy culture at the individual, organisational and societal levels. Ahead of our forthcoming workshop in Lagos, CUSP researcher Adeyemi Adelekan reports from his PhD project and outlines some of the specific challenges developing countries such as Nigeria face.
“The circular economy is a very good idea, but it is a better idea when it is placed in the context of delivering prosperity, rather than aimed at increasing growth.” A conversation between Emanuele Di Francesco and Tim Jackson, discussing post-growth concepts of a circular economy, the limits of labour productivity and the dynamics of inequality.
There is a palpable sentiment across many liberal democracies that the status quo is not sustainable. Too often, the overwhelming popular desire for political action finds its outlet in a drift towards the far-right, Will Davies writes. The political task is to feel our way toward less paranoid means of connecting with one another.
Sustainable prosperity must involve equal respect for everyone, Priscilla Alderson argues in her guest blog, including traditionally excluded groups.
Research by Dr Denise Baden shows that solution based stories, or stories that smuggle in green ideas/characters in the context of an otherwise mainstream story are more likely to inspire greener behaviours than catastrophic tales of climate change. In her guest blog, she summarises some of her findings, and is putting them into the context of the first output of a green stories writing competition she led last year.
The last century has seen unprecedented economic and social progress for many people in many parts in the world. In light of climate change, and social and economic instability, the challenge is now to make ourselves at home with this wealth, to ensure, in the interests of equality, that everyone is included.
The 2018 Post-Growth conference at the European Parliament marked a milestone in the history of the post-growth debate. In this interview, Riccardo Mastini discusses the possibilities and challenges for imagining a world beyond growth with two key post-growth thinkers—Tim Jackson and Giorgos Kallis.
The Circular Economy Package and Plastics Strategy have set a high-level framework to improve the resource efficiency of the European economy. But to be effective, this framework must remain a policy priority for the next European Commission and Parliament, argues Nick Molho.
The hypothesis Richard Douglas is investigating in his CUSP research is that political resistance to environmentalism stems in part from a defence of modern ideas of infinity. The notion that there are inescapable limits to material progress, he argues, threatens the modern faith in humanity’s ability to control its own fate and journey into an unbounded future.
Our systematic failure to address existential anxiety robs society of meaning and blinds us to the suffering of others; to persistent poverty; to the extinction of species; to the health of global ecosystems. With this think piece, Tim Jackson adds to an eclectic set of essays, published in honour of Wolfgang Sachs.
With so much attention focused on what agreements come out of COP24, protesters should be seizing the initiative to attack the root causes of climate change, CUSP PhD researcher Christine Corlet-Walker finds. (This blog first appeared on The Conversation, 30 Nov 2018).
Richard Douglas introduces his new CUSP working paper, in which he uses ‘Listening Rhetoric’ to attend to the moral vision which environmental sceptics are keen to defend. The key to understanding their rejection of environmentalism—and doing more to counter the appeal of their arguments—lies in recognising their preoccupation with defending a moral vision of modernity, he argues.
XR is a rather potent campaign, CUSP researchers Joost de Moor, Brian Doherty and their colleague Graeme Hayes find, yet creating a movement that can have the impact XR aims for will require confronting the political as well as the moral challenges posed by climate change. (This blog first appeared on the openDemocracy website, 27 Nov 2018).
Cultural resistance to the need for a fundamental rethink of the way we conduct life is continuously fed by misleading words of charismatic thinkers such as Rutger Bregman and Steven Pinker, Teresa Belton finds. What we need instead are fresh holistic narratives to create a new common consciousness.
Rethinking our economic paradigms is an urgent and fundamentally important task. Giorgos Kallis’ new book Degrowth is adding to a joint endeavour of postgrowth thinking, CUSP PhD candidate Sarah Hafner finds. It offers both, a justification as well as a vision and new imaginary for the degrowth agenda.
The Entropy Law still matters. CUSP director Tim Jackson responds to Michael Liebreich’s essay on the ‘The secret of eternal growth’.
Claims of ending austerity ring hollow, Frank van Lerven and Andrew Jackson write, until we do away the ‘household fallacy’, and realise that public spending can be deployed as a potent weapon against many of the challenges we face today. (This blog first appeared on the NEF website).
Grassroots activism is widely considered a vital element in society’s shift to becoming more just and ecologically balanced. What is it about certain places/cities that makes them more conducive to the emergence and sustainability of environmental activism?
Coming at an interesting time for the city, Dan Lyttleton’s new photo book This Must be the Place prompts discussions of Stoke ‘free from cliches’. Given CUSP’s continued interest in the city, Mark Ball sat down with Dan to talk about his new book, the role of photography, and Stoke.
“What can children tell you about the good life? Oh popsicles are great, raisins suck.’’ — conversations like this can make for a good laugh, but exemplify an almost systemic scepticism towards children’s legitimacy in social debate, CUSP researcher Anastasia Loukianov finds. There are compelling reasons, she argues, for working alongside young people in defining what it might mean to live well in a world of planetary limits.