Philosophy Now

Green Army: Communications

Avatar (2009)

James Cameron (1954)

[You] are stupid, like a child!

The wealth of this world isn't in the ground, it's all around us.

I'll do [the forced relocation] with minimal casualties to the indigenous. …
It'll be humane — more or less. …

Our only security lies in pre-emptive attack. …
We will fight terror with terror.

See the world we come from.
There's no green there.
[The Sky People] killed their Mother.
They're going to do the same here. …
They're going to come like a rain that never ends. …

Ockham's Razor

ABC Radio National

[The] multiple of anecdote is not evidence.
[And] a single anecdote is certainly not evidence.

— Eran Segev, The importance of evidence, 9 May 2010.

Terry Krieg:
[Australia exports] yellowcake to over 20 countries for them to produce emissions free energy. …
[We] have a responsibility to take back [that waste] for final disposal.
… Australia should offer the world the Officer Basin for the development of an international nuclear waste repository for the final disposal of what will be [following the advent of Integrated Fast Reactors] an increasingly smaller volume of waste.
(Nuclear waste disposal in Australia, 10 March 2013)

Asa Wahlquist:
[For every one] kilogram of beef 24 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent is produced.
Lamb produces 16.8 Kg.
The figure for pork is 4.1 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of meat and for chicken it is just 0.8 kg.
(Pigs and poultry, 6 January 2013)

Participatory Democracy and Majoritarian Tyranny

William Grey: Honorary Research Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Queensland

[Unlike participatory democracies, representative] democracies embody checks and balances which help to insulate them from the prejudices and delusions disseminated by special interest advocates, who often float happily in a fact-free parallel universe.
One important balance is the evidence-based expertise which bureaucracies and universities provide to our elected representatives.
Evidence-based expertise makes an important contribution to policy development in our science-based technological society, and sound policy in many areas (including health, energy, agriculture, the environment) depends crucially on scientific expertise.
This is a critically important component of the institutional structures of representative democracy but it is something which is downplayed or ignored by the populist processes of participatory democracy. …

Participatory democracy's hostility to science is a serious strike against it.
A related role of scientific experts is to challenge and correct a mountain of error and confusion and to defend evidence-based beliefs against delusional belief systems promoted, for example, by anti-vaccinationists or deniers of climate change. …

[In Australia, there] is no tradition of consulting the people (aside from elections) for the resolution of socially contested issues.

• Compulsory national service was introduced during the Korean and Vietnam wars;
• women were given the vote;
• the death penalty was abolished;
• homosexuality was decriminalized;
• no-fault divorce was introduced; [and]
• the White Australia Policy was abolished

— all without consulting the will of the people.
Why should legalizing same-sex marriage be any different? …

To those who suggest:

Let the people have their say,

I reply:

The people have had their say.

We have elected our representatives who are invested with the authority to make policy decisions on our behalf.
It is the duty of these elected representatives to act with the power invested in them by the Constitution.

Those who think there is little likelihood of public discourse degenerating into hate speech should study the Irish experience.
There is a very real risk that opponents of marriage equality —

• the shock jocks,
• the tabloid press and
• political voices from the lunar right

— would vilify and denigrate opponents.
The [risk] of inflammatory hate speech is [simply one] not worth taking. …

[The] death penalty was [abolished] not because it was popular, but because it was right.
Had the endorsement of a plebiscite been sought, it would never have happened.

[Justice] and majority opinion [do not always] coincide. …
Plebiscites are a dangerous and capricious instrument of governance and should play no role in determining policy outcomes when questions of social justice are at issue.
It is the job of our [elected] leaders to lead — to shape and direct public opinion for benefit of everyone — not to follow. …

(Plebiscites, 13 November 2016)

The Spirit of Things

ABC Radio National

Contents

Breaking Religion's Monopoly on Spirituality and Ethics

The Spirit Of Things

Rachael Kohn

• Forced marriage, 29 July 2012.
• A Secular Bible, 15 April 2012.
  Anthony Grayling (1949): Former Professor of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London.
  
  [AC Grayling] bills himself as 'the maker' not the author of The Good Book: A Secular Bible …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  You must be wondering why you're on a program that's usually dedicated to religion and spirituality, but you have written a secular bible after all.
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  [T]hat was to encourage people to think that there are other ways of thinking about the good … life, which if I may use the word 'spiritual' in a non-religious sense, would also be a spiritual life.
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  [Atheists] have come under fire for behaving as if they are a religion.
  [Is] your secular bible going to feed that perception?
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  No, I don't think so …
  The [central feature of] religion is a commitment to belief in the existence of a deity or deities and a … need for a relationship between the individual and that deity. [Atheists] are people who simply don't take that [view of] the world. …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  [Another aspect of religion is a] commitment to a [sacred] book or books ….
  … I wonder whether your secular bible is going to be used in that way.
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  One reason for formatting it in the way that I did [is that it's a] very accessible and inviting way of laying out text …
  
  [The] real purpose behind it is [to outline] the tradition of classical thinking, [that predates Christianity by nearly 1,000 years,] about the nature of the good and well lived life …
  [T]his was the outlook of educated people for [many centuries, before] Christianity, became dominant in Europe.
  
  [What I have done is to] collect together non-religious texts from the poets and historians and philosophers, to show people that there is a tremendous amount of insight and wisdom and consolation and inspiration in those ways of thinking about things, fundamentally a humanist way of thinking about things.
  [This] really is a humanist bible, it is not an atheist bible.
  [The] primary purpose of it is the ethics of atheism, which is humanism. …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  [Of] course the Old Testament on which your parody bible is partly modelled was written well before the New Testament, centuries and centuries, almost 1,000 years before. …
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  … Christianity, as an organised religion, came into its dominance in Europe around about the 1st century of the Common Era …
  [While some] of the books of the Old Testament [do] date from quite early, perhaps as early as 1,000 years before the beginning of our Common Era, … most of them are [from] much later, and … the organisation of the Old Testament is only a couple of centuries before the beginning of the Common Era.
  
  It's interesting history, the way all these different texts got together.
  They are … a regional set of texts, coming … from what we now think of as Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East.
  
  [My] reason for choosing the format of a book that has come to be so influential in history is that the thinkers, the philosophers and their writings were pretty well marginalised or were shunted aside …
  They were once very much available to [the literate] minority in society [who] read people like [Aristotle,] Pliny and Cicero …
  [This formed] the substance of their thinking and their discussion about matters ethical.
  
  [The Church] in the late 5th century [CE] closed down the philosophical schools because they were in competition with Christianity …
  [A] whole tradition of thinking, a way of looking at the world which is very rich and deep, was set to one side and people were encouraged to concentrate on just one book …
  
  [I first read the Bible] at about the age of 14 [and] was very struck by … some of the awful things in it.
  The deity of the Old Testament seemed to me to be a sort of monster in a way, committing genocide whenever he was angry or dissatisfied.
  And there were some stories in it, like the story of Lot and his family [which are hardly edifying.] …
  
  [Bertrand Russell once commented that] Socrates was more intelligent than Jesus and the Buddha was more compassionate than Jesus …
  [It's an] accident of history or a victory of propaganda, that Jesus should be the one that people turn to when they try to think about a model for the ethical life …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  Well, philosophy is dedicated to the rational exercise of the intellect, but your secular bible is earnestly seeking to produce a wise person.
  Philosophers of course are not always wise, especially those that don't venture beyond their ivory towers.
  Have you sensed a certain failing amongst your academic colleagues to go out and really speak to the common man, to care about the common man?
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  I think in the last 100 or 130-odd years the academy has become far too professionalised, too inward looking, too jargon laden, too technical …
  … I feel that those of us who have had the great privilege of being given time to read and to study should try to share some of these things with other people …
  [To] invite them into that … great conversation of mankind that [they] are missing out on …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  And in your defence of sexuality you counsel the man to

  be quiet while you argue for the inexpressible charms of the sexual embrace.

  [It] sounds a bit quaint for our times, doesn't it Anthony?
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  … I was very careful not to give references to the texts that I drew from …
  What I wanted is just to address the ideas. …
  
  [The point of that passage was that] moralistic anxieties about love and sexual enjoyment fail to recognise how when two people have a great deal of mutual feeling for one another, among other things, among the pleasure that it gives them and the bond that it creates, it might also very well result in children and the tremendous responsibility and pleasure of bringing up children together.
  It's a very beautiful ethic …
  [It] incorporates the idea of our human loves and human reproduction in a story of nature, making it one with nature, [a] part of the good aspect of nature.
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  Yes, it certainly is, I just don't know whether there are many moral anxieties these days about having sex and embracing anything for pleasure, if it's anywhere in your reach. …
  
  [We are told in the chapter on the creation of Man] that
  • knowledge is freedom from ignorance and fear …
  • legends are limitations, [and]
  • science is the world's greatest endeavour, achievement and promise …
  [There] have been some dubious achievements [of science], not to mention some of its promises can be a bit way out and scary …
  [It] can be cruel, fearsome and utterly unpredictable.
  [Knowledge] is not always used for good.
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  [Certainly] science has been misapplied, the creation of … the atom bomb, [as] an instrument in the Holocaust … in the Second World War …
  But I think the majority story about science is that the lives of greater numbers of human beings have been vastly enhanced …
  [The challenge is] to be not be merely cleverer … but to be wise in the use of the cleverness. …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  You echoed the Stoics … who warned that emotions [may] hinder thinking.
  But isn't thinking which is unhindered by emotions a pathology … both clinically as well as historically? …
  
  Anthony Grayling:
  [Our] rationality is our highest and most distinctive gift …
  [But] in order to be fully reasonable you have to … give the emotions their place … but educated emotion.
  [Unbridled] uneducated emotion — lust, aggression, jealousy, selfishness — [are] obviously very destructive things.
  [When we raise] our children … we try to help them to manage their emotions, to express the positive ones, to allow themselves to feel affection and love, but to understand the wellsprings of jealousy and anger so that they can manage them better. …
  
  [The truly] reasonable person is going to recognise that, as a compound of emotion and reason, [the educated] reflective sensibility [is] one where you try to enhance and give expression to positive emotions like affection and love … especially in intimate relationships.
  When I think about my children … I think that the greatest gift that one can give them [is the] sense of being loved, it gives them confidence and a certain sort of poise.
  Children who are never loved spend too much time and energy in misdirected ways trying to find love. …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  [In] the Genesis chapter … you urge people to do nothing against their will, to covet nothing of anyone else's, and in so doing they will encounter no resistance and they will be free then to do what they wish and life will be lovely.
  There's a wonderful sense of order there, that everyone behaves according to the best intentions, but surely, [b]ad things do happen to good people.
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  They most certainly do [and] that is a reality that forces us … to think as carefully as we can about what kind of world [would be] a fully good world, and then to try to … to work towards it. …
  It's not fair on other people that we should impinge on their possibility for making and living a good life, any more than we would want them to impinge on ours.
  [So] there's this reciprocal thing, there's this relationship requiring thought, [understanding and experience.]
  Experience … not just through actual [encounters] with other people but through our reflective reading, our understanding of history, and our best use of the kinds of insights that the various sciences give us about ourselves and the world we live in.
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  … I can easily see your secular bible being quoted out of context at the way the Bible often is, and people … saying,

  It says there to do nothing against my will, so I'll just go ahead and do this.

  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  [You] could just as easily quote St Paul where he says 'love and do what you will', which seems to be a kind of a licence for everything.
  [Nobody] who has any capacity for reflection would [take] a few lines out of context and act on them. …
  
  In the case of Consolation … I remember once many years ago at a time of bearing with a very considerable loss, coming home one day and finding that somebody had baked a cake and left it on my front doorstep for me …
  It was completely anonymous, I never found out who did it, but it was such a tremendously kind thought.
  It was probably … of that whole experience, it was one of the most moving things.
  
  [My] sister was the victim of murder, and my mother, who was unwell at the time … died very soon afterwards as a result …
  
  [If] you think about families in Iraq and Afghanistan and people in the Second World War and all places of strife, really awful things do happen to people, and grief is a great fact of life …
  
  [This] reminds us that whenever you establish a relationship with another person, for example when you fall in love, you're entering into a contract in which one or both of you are going to suffer because [even] if you live together for 50 years, one of you is going to die first and the other one is going to be grief stricken.
  It's just a brute fact that all the good things in life have these potentials connected with them.
  
  [We've] got to confront it, and we've got to understand the nature of loss and grief …
  [We've] got to understand something about how we can offer consolations … and if it's at all possible … to do something good to try to mend the harm …
  
  [Those] texts of Consolation [address the fact that] life goes on …
  [We] have to incorporate those griefs and become better because of them in a way …
  [To] be more conscious of the fact that other people suffer them and [learn] how we might help to console them …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  [In] your last chapter, you seem to quote Paul.
  [Of] all the virtues and values, you say the greatest of these is affection.
  [One] can't help hearing Paul in this who extols faith, hope and love and says the greatest of these is love.
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  I wasn't quoting him there …
  [200 years before Paul] Mo Tzu … taught his followers [that] brotherly love … is the greatest bond that we can create between us … or the Buddha himself, or Aristotle …
  [T]hose are [the real] sources for that, the idea of the human bond. …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  [Alain de Botton] recently said he is going to build a temple to atheism. …
  Do you think there would be a role for The Good Book in its weekly meetings?
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  [They'd be] very welcome to make use of it, but [my] hope is that [The Good Book] might move [people] to read some of the original texts themselves and to become part of … the great conversation that is carried on through literature [-] through our reading [and] thinking about it.
  [It's] not only [about] the philosophers, but … also the poets [novelists and dramatists] who portray different aspects of our human experience …
  [The] result … should be a re-description of things that we've sort of lost sight of …
  [Again,] if I'm allowed to use the word in a completely non-religious sense … the spiritual dimension of life … our sense of the great yearning that we have for the whole, for the universe, for the absolute, for everything, for the interconnectedness of things, which a lot of people [just assume] must have a religious dimension.
  It doesn't, it's about this world and about this life in it now.
  
  [What I] would like to encourage people to do is to re-describe, as spiritual exercises, a walk in the country or listening to music or having dinner with friends or lying in bed and twiddling your toes on a Sunday morning, or reading something pleasant, or laughing, that those are the things that refresh and nourish the spirit, those are the things which are important, which give real value, a real significance to our daily lives.
  [Religion has] hijacked that sense that what's important and good and valuable sort of belongs to Holy Communion on Sundays and that everything else is just of the world.
  But it's the world itself which is that important …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  … I think you're sort of polarising it a bit.
  [Those] who gather in temples, synagogues and churches once a week are mandated or encouraged to go out and live their lives infused with the spiritual awareness of everything that they do. …
  Those who truly are religious are also truly spiritual, so that they live their lives according to these great ideals.
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  [From a secular viewpoint] the conflicts and divisions and the strife and even indeed in the mayhem caused by people who become very zealous at the other end of the spectrum [show] that there's something … very tainted about that well.
  It's a world view which … stems from people who knew nothing, or very, very little indeed, 3,000 years ago tending their sheep on the hillside …
  [Illiterate] people who told themselves stories and came up with beliefs in order to try and make sense of their world …
  
  [They provided] the foundations of [today's religious] outlook.
  [It's] sin to be autonomous, to think for yourself, to take responsibility for your morality.
  [The] sin of pride in Christianity is the idea that you don't need to rely on God.
  Islam, the very word means 'submission' …
  
  It's no accident that [the Abrahamic religions] took their major rise in a period of history [when] monarchy was the [dominant] political model.
  [The] idea of a supreme ruler to which everybody has to bend the knee is embedded in this view.
  [It needn't] be like that [now].
  We have reason and we are capable of managing our emotions …
  [We] ought to be … encouraging that and accepting that this life, in this world, and our relationships with the people around us, are the things that we should be focusing on …
  [Not] distracting ourselves with … fairy stories.
  
  
  

  Another New Republic

  
  Rachael Kohn:
  [Is] your intention as master of New College of the Humanities, a private university which you and others have founded … to train up the new wise leaders of tomorrow? …
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  [Any] higher education institution exists to help people learn how to think [not] to tell them what to think.
  So there's no aim … to train up a cadre of people who share my views.
  I very much hope that [our students] will test and challenge all the views that they meet, including mine and my colleagues'.
  [It's] about helping them to [become] questioning thinkers …
  [It's] their responsibility to come to the views that they will eventually live by.
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  [Who] you would look up to as the pre-eminent embodiment of a wise man?
  
  
  

  Imperfect Exemplars

  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  … I admire many, many people … people like Einstein and Russell, right the way back through history to David Hume, to Descartes, to Copernicus, to Galileo, to [anyone] who ventured to think and to use [their] insightful, incisive, creative intellect to understand our world a bit better and to move us forward …
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  … I must say Einstein and Russell … may have been brilliant, but there has certainly been a lot of criticism [of] on how they behaved in their personal lives. …
  
  Anthony Grayling (1949):
  [If] we allowed people to go through our (figuratively speaking) rubbish bins, each one of us would not escape whipping, as somebody once said.
  We're all human with our failings, and we would admire nobody if we didn't [behave generously] by looking at the best things that they managed. …
  
  The wonderful thing about the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne is that, probably for the … very first time in history, [we're seeing] people who don't have a religious outlook, [coming] together with a wide variety of … other political and ethical views, to discuss how we deal with a world which is now moving … beyond the dominance of religion.
  
  People think [that] in the last 10 or 15 years … religion has come back much more into focus, whereas what's actually happened … is that the religious voice has been amplified … because of the polarisation following the 9/11 atrocities …
  [The] horror that many … felt that religion was positioning itself to become as destructive and violent and bloody as it had been in the 17th and 16th centuries … or during the medieval period with the Crusades.
  [The] opposition to [being] taken over again, having won this great liberation of mind, [enquiry,] diversity and plurality that resulted from the Enlightenment.
  
  [This] movement is a coming together of people who share … that view …
  [A] movement, that [argues that we] have to take responsibility for the ethical, and [do] it far better than the religions have … in the last 2,000 years.
  
  
  

  Excerpts

  
  Genesis, Chapter 1
  
  
  1. In the garden stands a tree.
  2. In springtime it bears flowers; in the autumn, fruit.
  3. Its fruit is knowledge, teaching the good gardener how to understand the world.
  4. From it he learns how the tree grows from the seed to sapling, from sapling to maturity, at last ready to offer more life.
  5. And from maturity to age and sleep, whence it returns to the elements of things.
  6. The elements in turn feed new births; such is nature's method, and its parallel with the course of humankind.
  7. It was from the fall of a fruit from such a tree that new inspiration came for inquiry into the nature of things.
  8. When Newton sat in his garden, and saw what no one had seen before: that an apple draws the earth to itself, and the earth the apple.
  9. Through a mutual force of nature that holds all things, from the planets to the stars, in unifying embrace.
  10. So all things are gathered into one thing: the universe of nature, in which there are many worlds: the orbs of light in an immensity of space and time,
  11. And among them their satellites, on one of which is a part of nature that mirrors nature in itself,
  12. And can ponder its beauty and significance, and seek to understand it: this is humankind.
  13. All other things, in their cycles and rhythms, exist in and of themselves;
  14. But in humankind there is experience also, which is what makes good and its opposite,
  15. In both of which humankind seeks to grasp the meaning of things.
  
  The Good, Chapter 4
  
  
  5. There is not one single kind of good that suits and fits everyone; there are as many good lives as there are people to leave them.
  6. It is false that there is only one right way to live and one right way to be,
  7. And that's to find it we must obey those who claim to have the secret of a 'one right way' and a 'one true good'.
  8. If there are guides to the good, one must eventually leave them behind and seek the good of one's choice, and which suits one's own talents.
  9. This is the ultimate responsibility: to choose, and to cultivate the talents for one's choice.
  
  Wisdom, Chapter 6
  
  
  1. The meditation of the wise man is a meditation on life, not on death.
  2. The wise see the necessity of things, and by this they free themselves from distress:
  3. For the pain arising from loss is mitigated as soon as its inevitability is perceived;
  4. And likewise no one pities a newborn baby for being unable to speak or walk, because this is natural to its state.
  5. Thus the recognition of necessities is a liberation, and the wise are those who distinguish between necessity and contingency.
  6. Emotion is bad if it hinders the mind from thinking.
     An emotion that opens the mind to contemplate several aspects of things at once is better than one that fixes thought to an obsession.
  7. By framing a system of right conduct and practical precepts, one better bears adversity and resists evil.
  8. The wise thus remember what is to their true advantage, and the good that follows from friendship, and the fact that men act by the necessity of their nature.
  
  Lamentations, Chapter 11
  
  
  1. Every state of well-being, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative;
  2. It merely consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.
  3. It follows that the happiness of any given life is to be measured not by its joys and pleasures,
  4. But by the extent to which it has been free from suffering.
  
  Consolations, Chapter 4
  
  Of grief, to a friend.
  
  
  1. I am grieved to hear that he is dead whom you loved, but I would not have you sorrow more than is fitting.
  2. That you should not mourn at all I should hardly dare insist; and yet I know that it is the better way; for he is at peace, safe from any further harms,
  3. And you and his other friends will cherish the best memories of him, and speak of him, thus making him part of life still.
  4. But what man will ever be so endowed with that ideal steadfastness of mind, unless he has already risen far above the reach of chance, not to mourn?
  5. Even the most stoical would be stung by an event like this, though for him it were only a sting.
  6. We, however, may be forgiven our tears, if only our tears have not flowed to excess.
  7. We may weep, but we must not wail.
     Do you think that this advice is harsh?
  8. Well: only consider the reason for lamentations and weeping.
     It is because we mourn for ourselves as well as for he who has left us; we are sad because we are bereft.
  
  The Good, Chapter 9
  
  
  1. Seek always for the good that abides.
     There can be none except as the mind finds it within itself;
  2. Wisdom alone affords everlasting and peace-giving joy, for then, even if some obstacle arises,
  3. It is only like an intervening cloud, which floats beneath the sun but never prevails against it.
  4. When will you attain this joy?
     It will begin when you think for yourself,
  5. When you truly take responsibility for your own life,
  6. When you join the fellowship of all who have stood up as free individuals and said,
  7. 'We are of the company of those who seek the true and the right, and live accordingly;
  8. 'In our human world, in the short time we each have,
  9. 'We see our duty to make and find something good for ourselves and our companions in the human predicament.'
  10. Let us help one another, therefore; let us build the city together,
  11. Where the best future might inhabit, and the true promise of humanity be realised at last.
  
  Rachael Kohn:
  That's the last chapter of A Secular Bible …
  [There's] a lot more to it, including … Songs, which is something of a parody of the Song of Songs from the Bible.
  
  Would you like know more?

Prosperity Without Growth 3

Tim Jackson

The Independent on Sunday:
We do not agree with the anti-capitalists who see the economic crisis as a chance to impose their utopia, whether of a socialist or eco-fundamentalist kind …
Most of us in this country enjoy long and fulfilling lives thanks to liberal capitalism: we have no desire to live in a yurt under a workers’ soviet.
(2008)

The Economist:
As every hunted animal knows, it is not how fast you run that counts, but whether you are slower than everyone else.
(November, 2008)

Contents

Prosperity Without Growth

The Myth of Decoupling

Confronting Structure

Keynesianism and the 'Green New Deal'

Tim Jackson (1957)

Director, Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP).

• Prosperity without growth?, Sustainable Development Commission, 30 March 2009.
  
  

  The Myth Of Decoupling

  
  The conventional response to the dilemma of growth is to appeal to the concept of ‘decoupling’.
  
  Relative decoupling refers to a decline in the ecological intensity per unit of economic output.
  [Resource] impacts decline relative to the GDP [but] don’t necessarily decline in absolute terms. …
  
  In the case of climate change … absolute reductions in global carbon emissions of 50-85% are required by 2050 in order to meet the IPCC’s 450 ppm stabilisation target.
  
  
  

  Relative decoupling

  
  [Relative] decoupling is about doing [things more efficiently]:
  • [More] economic activity with less environmental damage;
  • more goods and services with fewer resource inputs and fewer emissions. …
  [The] amount of primary energy needed to produce each unit of the world’s economic output [ie] global ‘energy intensity’ is now 33% lower than it was in 1970. …
  
  Energy intensity in both the US and the UK is some 40% lower today than it was in 1980. …
  [In] some southern European countries (Greece, Turkey, Portugal e.g.) energy intensity has increased in the last twenty five years. …
  Across the Middle East, energy intensity more than doubled between 1980 and 2006 …
  [In] India it increased at first but has declined slowly since the peak in 1993.
  In China, energy intensity fell by over 70% to the turn of the 21st Century but has now begun to climb again.
  
  Overall … energy [and material] intensities declined significantly during the last three decades, [particularly in] OECD countries … (p 48)
  
  [There have been] steady improvements across the OECD countries [in carbon intensity.]
  Significant [worsening] across the Middle East and during the earlier stages of development in India.
  China witnessed some striking improvements early on … partly offset … in recent years.
  (p 49)
  
  [The] declining global trend in carbon intensity has also faltered in recent years, even increasing slightly since its low point in 2000. …
  
  For decoupling to offer a way out of the dilemma of growth, resource efficiencies must increase at least as fast as economic output does. …
  
  
  

  Absolute decoupling

  
  Despite declining energy and carbon intensities carbon dioxide [actual] emissions from fossil fuels have increased by 80% since 1970.
  Emissions today are almost 40% higher than they were in 1990 — the Kyoto base year — and since the year 2000 they have been growing at over 3% per year [due to a] surge in [the] world consumption of coal … What’s true for fossil resources and carbon emissions is [also] true for material throughputs more generally. …
  (p 50)
  
  [Modern] developed economies [typically move] away from domestic manufacturing [to relying on] more and more [on] finished and semi-finished goods … imported from abroad. …
  
  In the case of carbon dioxide … recent studies for the UK have confirmed that national accounts systematically fail to account for the 'carbon trade balance'. …
  An apparent reduction in emissions of 6% between 1990 and 2004, as reported under UN FCCC guidelines is turned into an 11% increase in emissions, once emissions embedded in trade are taken into account. …
  (p 51)
  
  Extraction of iron ore, bauxite, copper and nickel is now rising faster than world GDP …
  
  As the emerging economies build up their infrastructures, the rising demand for structural materials … put an upward pressure on commodity prices during 2007 and the first half of 2008 …
  Worldwide cement production has more than doubled since 1990, surpassing growth in world GDP by some 70 percentage points. …
  
  [History] provides little support for the [notion that] decoupling [is viable a] solution to the dilemma of growth. …
  • A massive technological shift;
  • a significant policy effort;
  • wholesale changes in patterns of consumer demand;
  • a huge international drive for technology transfer to bring about substantial reductions in resource intensity right across the world …
  [These are the] changes … that will be needed to [avoid an] inevitable collapse in the resource base [in the not too distant] future. …
  
  [Could] relative decoupling really proceed fast enough to achieve real reductions in emissions and throughput, and allow for continued economic growth? …
  
  It’s far too easy to get lost in general declarations of principle:
  • growing economies tend to become more resource efficient;
  • efficiency allows us to decouple emissions from growth;
  • so the best way to achieve targets is to keep growing the economy.
  (p 52)
  
  [Air] pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and particulates … sometimes show an inverted-U shaped relationship with economic growth [ie] emissions grow in the early stage of growth … then peak and decline.
  
  [This] relationship only holds [true, in some cases, with] visible environmental effects like smoke, river water quality and acid pollutants …
  [It] doesn’t exist at all for … carbon emissions, resource extraction, municipal waste generation and species loss.
  (p 53)
  
  

  Box 3: Unravelling the Arithmetic of Growth

  
  The Ehrlich equation states that …
  
  [Environmental Impact (I) = Population (P) × Affluence/Income (A) × Technological Intensity (T)]
  
  [As applied to] carbon dioxide emissions …
  
  [Total Carbon Emissions (C) = Population (P) × Income ($/person) × Carbon Intensity (gCO2/$)]
  
  {In 1990 [population was] 5.3 billion … average income was $4,700 [and] carbon intensity was 860 gCO2/$ …
  
  5.3 × 4.7 × 0.87 = 21.7 billion tonnes of CO2.}
  
  [Carbon intensities have declined on average by 0.7% per year since 1990. …
  Population has increased at a rate of 1.3% and average per capita income has increased by 1.4% …]
  
  [By] 2007 … global population was about 6.6 billion, the average income level … was $5,900, and the carbon intensity was 760 gCO2/$ …
  
  6.6 × 5.9 × 0.77 = 30 billion tonnes of CO2. …
  
  The cumulative growth in emissions between 1990 [and] 2007 was 39% (30/21.7 = 1.39) with an average growth rate in emissions (ri) of almost 2% (ri = (1.39)1/17 − 1 = 1.96%). …

  
  

  The Arithmetic of Growth

  
  The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment report suggests that achieving a 450 ppm stabilisation target means getting [emissions] below 4 billion tonnes per annum by 2050 [—] an average rate of [reduction of] 4.9% per year …
  [Australia's current target is a 5% reduction over the next 8 years]
  
  [The] world’s population is expected to reach nine billion people by 2050 — an average growth of 0.7% each year.
  Under business as usual conditions, the decline in carbon intensity [0.7%] just about balances the growth in population [so] carbon emissions [would grow] at about the same rate as the average income — 1.4% a year.
  [By 2050] carbon emissions [would be] 80% higher …
  [At the higher end of the UN’s population estimates [e.g.] almost 11 billion people — business as usual would more than double global carbon emissions …]
  
  To achieve an [annual] reduction in emissions of 4.9% with 0.7% population growth and 1.4% income growth [— carbon intensity] has to [fall] by approximately 7% [4.9 + 0.7 + 1.4] each year — almost ten times faster than [the current rate.]
  By 2050 the average carbon [intensity] would need to [36] gCO2/$, a 21-fold improvement on the current global average [768/36].
  (p 54)
  
  [However, if] we were … serious about fairness and wanted the [whole] world’s nine billion people [to enjoy incomes] comparable with EU citizens today, the economy would need to grow [6 fold by 2050 i.e.] at an average rate of 3.6% a year.
  Achieving the IPCC’s emission target [in this scenario means] pushing down [carbon intensity] by 9% [annually.]
  By 2050, the average carbon intensity would need to be 55 times lower [14 gCO2/$].
  
  [Factoring in] a 2% increase per annum in the current EU average income [for developed countries, the] global economy grows almost 15 times … and carbon intensity must fall by over 11% [annually.]
  By 2050 the carbon [intensity] has to be no more than 6 gCO2/$.
  That’s almost 130 times lower than the average carbon intensity today.
  (p 55)
  
  
  

  Stark Choices

  
  [The] International Energy Agency… has the demand for primary energy growing by 45% by 2030, on-track for the 80% hike in carbon emissions …
  
  [One can never] discount the possibility [of some unforeseen technological miracle.]
  But it’s clear that early progress towards carbon reduction will have to rely on options that are already on the table:
  • enhanced energy efficiency,
  • renewable energy and perhaps
  • carbon capture and storage. …
  
  Stern [estimated an annual cost of] 2% of GDP [would be needed to achieve] a stabilisation target of 500 ppm …
  The UK Climate Change Committee’s first report [2008] came up with costs consistent with Stern.
  … Price Waterhouse Coopers estimated the costs of achieving a 50% reduction in global carbon emissions at 3% of global GDp …
  
  [These] numbers may underestimate the economic impact of addressing climate change. …
  [Carbon] abatement policies [could] interfere more seriously with productivity than many macro-economic assessments suggest [and] early climate change impacts could themselves reduce potential growth.
  (p 56)
  
  [No] attempt is made to develop scenarios in which incomes are distributed equally across nations. …
  [There] is as yet no credible, socially-just, ecologically-sustainable scenario of continually growing incomes for a world of nine billion people.
  [Simplistic] assumptions that capitalism’s propensity for efficiency will allow us to stabilise the climate or protect against resource scarcity are nothing short of delusional. …
  [It] is entirely fanciful to suppose that ‘deep’ emission and resource cuts can be achieved without confronting the structure of market economies.
  (p 57)
  
  
  

  Confronting Structure

  
  With a massive policy effort and huge technological advances, perhaps we could reduce resource intensities the two or three orders of magnitude necessary to allow growth to continue — at least for a while.
  And yet, the idea of running faster and faster to escape the damage we’re already causing is itself a strategy that smacks of panic. …
  
  [Two] interrelated features of economic life … are central to the growth [dynamic:]
  • the profit motive [which] stimulates newer, better or cheaper products and services through a continual process of innovation and ‘creative destruction’ [and]
  • expanding consumer demand, driven by a complex social logic.
  These two factors combine to drive ‘the engine of growth’ on which modern economies depend and lock us in to an ‘iron cage’ of consumerism.
  
  
  

  Economic structure

  
  [Firms] employ labour (people) and capital (buildings and machinery) to produce the goods and services that households want and need.
  Households (people) offer up their labour and capital (savings) to firms in exchange for incomes.
  Revenue from the sale of goods and services is what allows firms to provide people with incomes.
  People spend some of this income on more consumer goods [and rest is saved. …]
  (p 60)
  
  Missing from this over-simplified ['circular flow'] picture of the economy are …
  • the public sector (government),
  • the foreign sector (overseas firms, households and governments) and
  • the financial sector — which mediates the financial flows of the circular economy. …
  Global credit markets facilitate one of the most fundamental features of capitalism: the dual role of saving and investment. …
  
  [Household] savings are invested — either directly or through an intermediary [back into] businesses to generate profits.
  (p 61)
  
  Firms … seek profit [to:]
  • [provide] them with working capital (cash) …
  • pay off the company’s creditors — people who’ve lent the firm money in expectation of a return. …
  • pay dividends to shareholders — people who’ve bought a share in the company. …
  • maintain its capital stock [buildings and equipment] and invest in new processes and technologies. …
  • improve efficiency — in particular labour productivity. …
  
  The driver for efficiency is … the need to increase the difference between revenues from sales and the costs associated with … factor inputs — capital, labour and material resources. …
  
  [Capital] investment is [needed] to achieve [such cost reductions in] labour and materials. …
  This … motivates the search for low-cost credit and highlights the dangers of credit drying up …
  
  In a growing economy, wages rise in real terms.
  Until very recently … material costs have been falling in real terms.
  So … companies have invested preferentially in technologies that reduce labour costs even if this increases material costs …
  
  [Higher] labour productivity lowers the cost of its products and services.
  Foregoing that possibility runs the risk of the company [delivering] lower profits to its shareholders, and [risking] capital flight from the company.
  
  [Producing] the same quantity of goods and services with fewer people … creates a downward pressure on employment that’s only relieved if output increases. …
  
  Labour productivity more than doubled in the UK between 1976 and 2005.
  But the GDP grew even faster (by 133%) and this allowed for the unemployment rate to fall by half a percentage point over the period. …
  
  By reducing labour (and resource) inputs, efficiency brings down the cost of goods over time … stimulating demand and promoting growth.
  [Technological progress thus] serves to increase production output by reducing factor costs. …
  
  Money saved through energy efficiency, for example, gets spent on other goods and services.
  These goods themselves have energy costs that offset the savings made through efficiency, and sometimes wipe them out entirely (a situation described as ‘backfire’). …
  (p 62)
  
  [This is why] efficiency will never be sufficient to achieve the levels of decoupling required for sustainability.
  [Relative decoupling may perversely] decrease the chances of absolute decoupling. …
  
  [Novelty,] the process of innovation, is vital in driving economic growth {— even successful companies cannot survive simply through cost-minimisation.}
  Capitalism proceeds … through a process of ‘creative destruction’.
  New technologies and products continually emerge and overthrow existing technologies and products.
  
  The ability to adapt and to innovate — to design, produce and market not just cheaper products but newer and more exciting ones — is vital. …
  [And when] credit dries up, so does innovation. …
  
  [Is] there a point at which enough is enough … ?
  
  [Apart from] the structural reliance of the system itself on continued growth … proponents also point to [advances in medical science] which have contributed to increased longevity; or the sheer variety of experience which now contributes to our modern quality of life.
  
  [But] there is something even more deep-rooted at play here, conspiring to lock us firmly into the cycle of growth.
  
  
  

  Social logic

  
  [Material] artefacts constitute a powerful ‘language of goods’ that we use to communicate with each other — not just about status, but also about identity, social affiliation … our feelings for each other, our hopes for our family, and our dreams of the good life. …
  
  [Stuff] is not just stuff. …
  Material things … facilitate our participation in the life of society. …
  (p 63)
  
  [Material possessions form] part of the ‘extended self’ [and] we even feel a sense of bereavement and loss when they are taken from us.
  Some of these attachments are fleeting. …
  Others last a lifetime. …
  
  New products are inherently expensive [and] may even be launched at premium prices deliberately to attract those who can afford to pay for social distinction.
  
  After distinction comes emulation. …
  [The] sheer wealth and enormous variety of material goods has a democratising element to it, [allowing] more and more people to go about inventing and reinventing their social identities …
  [This] continual re-invention of the self [is arguably what] distinguishes consumer society from its predecessors. …
  [It is] because material goods are flawed, but somehow plausible, proxies for our dreams and aspirations, that consumer culture seems, on the surface, to work so well.
  [And] it is this social dynamic, rather than physiological flourishing, which [explains] why our desire for material goods appears so insatiable.
  
  
  

  Novelty and anxiety

  
  [The] extended self is ultimately an ‘empty self’ …
  (p 64)
  
  [There is a] perfect fit between the continual consumption of novelty by households and the continuous production of novelty in firms.
  The restless desire of the ‘empty self’ is the perfect complement for the restless innovation of the entrepreneur. …
  
  [Unsurprisingly] this restlessness doesn’t necessarily deliver genuine social progress. …
  
  Thrive or die is the maxim of the … the consumer society.
  Nature and structure combine [to lock us] into the iron cage of consumerism.
  
  The relentless pursuit of novelty may undermine wellbeing.
  But the system remains economically viable as long as liquidity is preserved and consumption rises.
  
  [Such is the] enormity of the challenge [of] delivering a truly sustainable form of prosperity.
  [To] develop a different kind of economic structure. …
  [And to escape] the institutional and social constraints that lock us into a failing system.
  [We] need to identify opportunities for … changes in values, [lifestyles and social structure] that will free us from the damaging social logic of consumerism.
  
  Only through such changes will [we get] ‘unhooked’ from [our addiction to] growth …
  [Will we] free ourselves from the relentless flow of novelty that drives material throughput and [achieve a] lasting prosperity … within ecological and social limits.
  (p 65)
  
  
  

  Keynesianism and the "Green New Deal"

  
  

  Kick-starting the economy

  • [Stimulate] credit to businesses and consumers (for example by cutting interest rates),
  • [Increase] people’s spending power (for example by cutting taxes) or
  • [Increase] public spending on jobs and infrastructure. …
  
  Stimulating credit increases the availability of investment capital to firms and at the same time reduces the cost of debt to consumers. …
  But making credit … cheaper also played a critical role [in creating the] crisis …
  Reducing the interest rate also reduces the incentive to save …
  
  One of the dangers of [putting more money in people’s pockets] is that [they] are more inclined to save during a recession.
  (p 68)
  
  … Keynes called [this] the ‘paradox of thrift’. …
  It’s entirely rational for each individual (or firm) to save a bit more in a crisis.
  But [increased] saving reduces high street spending still further, deepening and lengthening the recession. …
  
  
  

  Green New Deal

  
  Targeting that investment carefully towards energy security, low-carbon infrastructures and ecological protection offers multiple benefits. …
  • freeing up resources for household spending and productive investment by reducing energy and material costs
  • reducing our reliance on imports and our exposure to the fragile geopolitics of energy supply providing a much-needed boost to jobs in the expanding ‘environmental industries’ sector
  • making progress towards the demanding carbon emission reduction targets needed to stabilise the global atmosphere
  • protecting valuable ecological assets and improving the quality of our living environment for generations to come. …
  
  [The UN Environment Program's] global Green New Deal [extended investment to include] sustainable agriculture and ecosystem protection.
  Ecosystems already provide tens of trillions of dollars worth of services to the world economy. …
  (p 69)
  
  The IEA has estimated that energy investment needs between 2010 and 2030 will be in excess of $35 trillion.
  Bringing forward some of this investment and targeting it … at renewable energy, low-carbon technologies and energy efficiency could pay massive dividends later. …
  
  [The] Political Economy Research Institute … identified six priority areas for investment:
  • retrofitting buildings,
  • mass transit/freight rail,
  • smart grid,
  • wind power,
  • solar power and
  • next generation biofuels.
  [Spending $100 billion] over a two year period would create [an estimated] 2 million new jobs.
  
  
  

  Strategies for job creation

  • [The] direct creation of public sector jobs,
  • financial support to boost employment in specific sectors, or
  • indirect support for jobs through measures to stimulate demand.
  
  [Public] sector employment … benefits to the economy from investment in productive infrastructure (roadbuilding, for example, in the New Deal).
  [It generates] a part of what has been called the ‘social wage’ — a return to households from government spending in the form of wages, health and education benefits and social services. …
  
  [Enormous] sums of money were committed to the direct support of the financial sector.
  By the end of 2008, an estimated $7 trillion had been spent globally in underwriting toxic assets, recapitalising banks and attempting to restore confidence … and stimulate lending. …
  [The] car industry received direct support in both the UK and the US. …
  
  [Broader] fiscal recovery packages [included] a mixture of tax cuts, social spending and public investment. …
  (p 70)
  
  [The] Obama administration brought in a fiscal stimulus package equivalent to 5% of US GDP …
  The $787 billion package [included] around $290 billion in tax cuts …
  (p 71)
  
  
  

  The potential for "green" recovery

  
  In the UK [the] ‘green stimulus’ element [of the 2008 budget was] a little over 1% of the GDp …
  
  [The] US ARRA explicitly identified about $130 billion of spending (16% of the total stimulus) in environmental investment. …
  • $32 billion investment in the electricity grid,
  • $22 billion on energy and carbon saving in homes …
  • $31 billion in the public estate,
  • $19 billion in ecosystem maintenance and flood protection and
  • $10 billion on public transport.
  
  [The] likely annual investment needed to achieve a low carbon society could be as high as 3% of GDP per annum.
  For the US, this would [amount to] over three times the size of the environmental investment outlined in the ARRA.
  [In] the UK, [about] £45 billion a year [would be needed], massively higher than anything proposed so far … The SDC has … identified a range of possible investment targets. …
  • [a] 20 year plan to retrofit the existing housing stock to high energy performance standards
  • substantial investment in renewable energy …
  • the reinforcement of the electricity grid to facilitate decentralised energy technologies, support renewable energy companies and improve control
  • to reduce car use through a combination of better public transport, investment in walk-ability, cyclability and the roll-out of personal travel planning …
  • massive investment in the energy efficiency of the public estate with the aim of delivering low carbon public services across the country.
  
  [Green] investment packages … offer the potential for direct financial returns [most obviously] in the form of fuel and resource savings.
  [Improvements in] the energy efficiency of the domestic housing stock have payback times of less than two years. …
  
  {[The] UK Department for Transport has estimated that each £1 spent in reducing car use saves up to £10 in the economy through a combination of fuel savings, reduced congestion costs, and lower pollution levels.
  (p 71)
  
  [The] recovery packages put forward in the immediate response to the 2008 crisis … were based on deficit spending over the short term in the hope of stimulating sufficiently robust growth that national debt can be reduced [over] the longer term. …
  [Kick starting the cycle of business] innovation (creative destruction) and consumer demand (positional spending) [to drive] consumption forwards.
  And with employment depending on it, [no means of] getting off the treadmill.
  (p 72)
  
  
  

  Beyond recovery

  
  Massive investment is required to achieve sustainability.
  The current crisis is exactly the right time to commit to that investment.
  And … the employment and resource saving benefits might be considerably better than for other kinds of spending. …
  
  The poorest [are] hardest hit [by] recession …
  Income inequality is higher in the UK today than it was in the mid-1980s.
  (p 74)
  
  An unequal society is [one readily given] to ‘positional consumption’ that adds little to overall happiness …
  
  [In] the longer term, we’re going to need something more …
  [The] systemic drivers of growth push us relentlessly towards ever more unsustainable resource throughput.
  A different way of ensuring stability and maintaining employment is [needed in] an ecologically-constrained world.
  (p 75)

Cultural Cognition Project

Green Army: Research and Development

Dan Kahan:
[If] the problem is that culture is preventing you from appreciating what the best scientific information is, maybe we can do something about that. …
There are techniques we can use and those techniques are not substitutes for rational thought, THEY ARE RATIONAL THOUGHT.
There's no system of human rationality where people can figure out things for themselves without being able reliably to receive information certified by other people that they ought to trust, that they can rely on, even all scientists do it.
So why can't we get our system in a state like that, so … people can [become] participants …

The White Male Effect

[Identity-protective cognition] is a powerful explanation for gender and race variation in risk perception. …
That white males seem to be less concerned with all manner of risk than minorities and females.
Call this the White Male Effect.
What explains the White Male Effect? …

[Perhaps it is] a product of the interaction between:

• gender and race, on the one hand, and
• cultural orientations on the other.

The hierarchical and, to the lesser extent, but still the individualistic ways of life assign social roles to people in a way that's sensitive to social differentiation.

• It's the white hierarchical male who's the hunter, father, protector, so forth, [and]
• it's the individualistic male not the individualistic female who's got the gun to be courageous, to be self reliant …

Because they have the biggest stake in those things, they have the greatest motivation in being sceptical about the claim that guns cause risk, because that is threatening to their cultural identity.
White hierarchical males … acquire status, by succeeding in civil society.
White hierarchical women don't.
They acquire status by successfully occupying domestic roles … that's what they should be doing, society works best when that's the case.
[If] its hierarchical white males, individualist males generally, who have a bigger stake in the roles that are afforded to them in commerce, in industry, that's status conferring for them within their way of life, they again, have the greatest motivation to resist the claim that those activities [are] dangerous, and therefore should be regulated.
[It] turns out that all the gender and race variation … can be attributed to the EXTREME … aversion that the white hierarchical individualistic males have to the claims of risk that are directed at the activities — gun ownership, participation on commerce and markets and so forth — that are status conferring for them within their cultural way of life. …

It turns out, that these people … are not afraid of anything!
They don't think that private gun ownership is very dangerous …
Mad cow disease? no problem [—] they want more hamburgers.
Nuclear power is not dangerous.

(Dan Kahan, The Cultural Cognition of Risk Perception, Water Institute Lecture, 10 August, 2009)