Degrowth Economics – Greenwashing Fossil Fuels and Nativism for Authoritarian Autarky?

Is ‘degrowth’ genuine economics theory or astroturfing for greenwashing the status quo i.e. by demanding degrowth that leaves already wealthy or <1% with existing economic and social mobility or status, but precludes upward mobility for 99%> of future generations?

Why? Creates confusion and delay for the economic, industrial and fossil fuel status quo of over a century to transition away from carbon to renewable sources.

Although not cited by either The Conversation or Grist below, the degrowth, steady state and autarkist constructs are not new, see 1930s Italy and Germany, then fast forward to the Club of Rome which promoted the construct ‘limits to growth’; good things like technology grow linearly vs. bad things like emissions and people grow exponentially. 

Aided both the fossil fuel ‘free market’ Atlas or Koch Network and nativist faux environmental movement related to Tanton Network demanding closed borders, immigration restrictions, withdrawal from trading blocs e.g. EU & multilateral agreements in favour of bilateral agreements, that favour more powerful nations and entities over the less powerful; suggests eugenics?

From The Conversation:

If you follow the degrowth agenda, it leads to an economy that looks a lot like the sickly UK

The degrowth movement has become very popular in recent years, particularly among younger people who appreciate its critique of the endless pursuit of economic expansion. The problem with growth, advocates argue, is that it implies the use of more and more resources and energy, as well as ever larger quantities of waste.

Well, the good news for the movement is that one of the world’s leading economies has offered itself up as a case study. If you look past the debate about whether the UK’s recent technical recession is going to deepen or peter out, the economic situation is pretty dire.

One main reason for the UK stagnation is a lack of investment in productivity, which advocates of degrowth would argue is an essential part of moving away from a resource-hungry economy. So what can we learn from the UK’s experiences so far?

The degrowth perspective

Degrowth has become the latest element in a long line of critiques of economic growth. One leading proponent, the Spanish ecological economist Giorgos Kallis, defines it as the “socially sustainable reduction of society’s throughput”, which is “incompatible with further economic growth, and will entail in all likelihood economic (GDP) degrowth”.

Pursuing GDP growth is criticised, both because of its increased use of resources and for “unrealistic expectations” that technological improvement and productivity growth would allow us to stay within so-called “planetary boundaries” (meaning the limits beyond which humanity will be unable to continue to flourish).

Kallis argues that degrowth implies reduced spending on goods and new technology, while distinguishing “good” and “bad” investments:

We will have to do with less high-speed transport infrastructures, space missions for tourists, new airports or factories producing unnecessary gadgets, faster cars or better televisions.

We may still need more renewable energy infrastructures, better social (education, and health) services, more public squares or theatres, and localised organic food production and retailing centres.

Yet this fails to appreciate that a reduction in GDP implies lower investment in technologies across the board, including those underpinning renewable energy. It also misunderstands that modern economic growth is not driven by accumulating and using more resources, but by innovation through investment. Witness what has happened in the UK…

….Degrowth advocates will not welcome this kind of approach, but technological improvement is ultimately likely to be a better way of achieving their goals than impoverishing people.

From Grist:

How to ‘decouple’ emissions from economic growth? These economists say you can’t.

For nearly 200 years, two transformative global forces have grown in tandem: economic activity and carbon emissions. The two have long been paired together, or, in economist-speak, “coupled.” When the economy has gotten bigger, so has our climate footprint.

This pairing has been disastrous for the planet. Economic growth has helped bring atmospheric CO2 concentrations all the way up to 420 parts per million. The last time they were this high was during the Pliocene epoch 3 million years ago, when global temperatures were 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter and sea levels were 65 feet higher.

Most mainstream economists would say there’s an obvious antidote: decoupling. This refers to a situation where the economy keeps growing, but without the concomitant rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Many economists and international organizations like the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development celebrate evidence that decoupling is already occurring in many countries. 

“Let me be clear, economic growth coupled with decarbonization is not only realistic, it has already been happening,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, or IEA, in a commentary published in 2020.

It’s an alluring prospect — that we can reach our climate goals without fundamentally changing the structure of the global economy, just by swapping clean energy in for fossil fuels. But a band of rogue economists has begun poking holes in the prevailing narrative around decoupling. They’re publishing papers showing that the decoupling that’s been observed so far in most cases has been short term, or it’s happened at a pace that’s nowhere near quick enough to reach international climate targets. These heterodox economists call decoupling a “neoliberal fantasy.”

The stakes of this academic debate are high: If decoupling is a mirage, then addressing the climate crisis may require letting go of the pursuit of economic growth altogether and instead embracing a radically different vision of a thriving society. That would involve figuring out “how to design future livelihoods that provide people with a good quality of life,” said Helmut Haberl, a social ecologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. Rather than fixating on growth, he argued, “We should engage more in the question of, ‘What future do we want to build?’” 

The basic idea behind decoupling has been ingrained in mainstream environmental thought for decades. The 1987 Brundtland Report — a landmark publication of the United Nations designed to simultaneously address social and environmental problems — helped establish it through the framework of sustainable development. It argued for “producing more with less,” using technological advances to continue economic growth while decreasing the release of pollutants and the use of raw materials.

Decoupling continues to underlie most global climate policies today. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, has spent nearly two decades promoting it under its “green growth” agenda, urging world leaders to “achieve economic growth and development while at the same time combating climate change and preventing costly environmental degradation.” Decoupling is also baked into the IEA’s influential Net Zero Emissions by 2050 policy roadmap, which assumes that full decarbonization can take place alongside a doubling of the global economy by 2050. 

That economic growth should continue is simply assumed by virtually every international institution and government. Policymakers connect growth with more jobs and better living standards, and use it as the primary measure of societal well-being. They also point to growth as a way to keep pace with the rising energy demands and economic needs of a growing global population…. 

….Degrowth advocates say that deprioritizing growth could allow countries to redirect their attention to policies that actually boost people’s quality of life: shorter working hours, for example, as well as minimum income requirements, guaranteed affordable housing and health care, free internet and electricity, and more widespread public transit. 

“Degrowth is as much oriented toward human well-being and social justice as it is toward preventing ecological crises,” Vogel said.

Crucially, degrowth advocates mainly promote the concept in high-income countries, which are historically responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions. They acknowledge that many developing countries still need to grow their economies in order to raise populations out of poverty. Those existing inequities, they argue, put even more onus on developed countries to shrink polluting industries and cut their consumption, in order to balance out other countries’ necessary growth.

Several experts told Grist it was a “distraction” to ask whether decoupling greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth is possible, as this question elides many areas of agreement between green growth and degrowth advocates. Both sides agree that moving off fossil fuels will require a massive buildout of renewable energy infrastructure, and that countries need to urgently improve living standards and reduce inequality.

“The goal is to get to zero emissions and climate stabilization” while improving people’s well-being, said Pollin, the University of Massachusetts Amherst professor. “Those are the metrics I care about.”

They also broadly agree that it’s time to move past GDP as a primary indicator of societal progress. But that’s easier said than done. We are “structurally dependent” on GDP growth, as Raworth put it. Publicly traded companies, for example, prioritize growth because they’re legally obligated to act in the best interest of shareholders. Commercial banks fuel growth by issuing interest-bearing loans, and national governments face pressure to grow the economy in order to reduce the burden of public and private debt.

Making any meaningful shift away from focusing on GDP would require dismantling these structural dependencies. “It’s massively challenging, there’s no doubt about that,” Vogel told Grist. “But I think they’re necessary changes … if we want to avert a real risk of catastrophic environmental changes and tackle long-standing social issues.”

For more articles and blogs on Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Fossil Fuels, GDP Growth, Global Trade, Koch Network, Nationalism, Political Strategy and Tanton Network, click through: 

Limits to Growth – Jorgen Randers – Club of Rome

Posted on April 5, 2022

Reposting a 2012 article from Renew Economy Australia from Giles Parkinson on Jorgen Randers of Norway in ‘Randers: What does the world look like in 2052?’

Randers had been a proponent of the Club of Rome ideas including the promotion of the ‘limits to growth’ (debunked by University of Sussex research team in ‘Models of Doom’), resource depletion, climate and population.

Greenwashing – Club of Rome – Limits to Growth – Astroturfing Fossil Fuels – The Guardian

Posted on July 27, 2021

The Guardian in article following, is a victim of astroturfing again on the environment, presenting the Club of Rome and MIT’s ‘Limits to Growth’ model as science, and resurrected by media as contemporary, along with obsessions about Malthusian ‘population growth’ (and ‘immigration’) by non-scientists i.e. ZPG and other related ‘theories’ such as Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’.

Following is an article written by presumably a non science journalist Edward Helmore highlighting KPMG’s Gaya Herrington (econometrics and sustainability studies, again not science) who is a researcher and advisor for the Club of Rome predicting catastrophe.

Tactics Against Bipartisan Climate Change Policy in Australia – Limits to Growth?

Posted on November 30, 2019

A recent ABC article ‘The day that plunged Australia’s climate change policy into 10 years of inertia’, endeavoured to describe how climate change consensus was broken by former Liberal MP Andrew Robb who claimed he had followed the ‘Limits to Growth’ (LTG) theory via the Club of Rome but changed his mind, hence withdrew support on bipartisan support on carbon emission measures.

Degrowth and Steady State Economy or Eugenics for the Environment Debunked

Posted on June 30, 2022

In recent years with pressure on fossil fuels and the need to transition to renewable sources, now compounded by Russian invasion of Ukraine, has seen renewed promotion of ZPG Zero Population Growth with Herman Daly and Club of Rome inspired ‘steady-state economy’ and ‘degrowth’ as scientific theories; part of a crossover between nativist Tanton Network and libertarian Koch Network.

Anglosphere Triangle – Immigration – Environment – Population Growth – Radical Right Libertarians

Posted on August 4, 2021

While the fossil fuel supported ZPG Zero Population Growth, with Malthusian and eugenics based arguments round the environment, population growth and immigration being mainstreamed, especially by the time of Trump, who were the prime movers of the past?

The following article and excerpts of Berger, looking through Focauldian prism, follows some of the history of this movement including now deceased John Tanton (‘the most influential unknown man in America’), Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) et al. and organisations that emerged from ZPG including FAIR, CIS, US English, then IRLI and SLLI with their links to the Koch Network ‘bill mill’ ALEC, leading up to the Trump White House.

Buy Local – Not Global – Issues of Nationalist Trade Policies

Many people including voters are encouraged to think that exports and self sufficiency are good, while imports are bad.  Many economies have degrees of protection for supposed societal or national benefit but closed economies and tariffs although good for some companies or a sector, are not good for local industry nor consumers.

 

With the rise of Trump we have witnessed trashing of trade agreements, attacks on trade blocs or regions e.g. the EU European Union, WTO and claiming GOP policies protect workers’ jobs.

 

In fact it seems more of a libertarian trap appealing to voter sentiments and beliefs but bypassing rational analysis and allowing rentier class or dominant corporate entities to take policy advantage, behind political power, how?

 

The libertarian right has been successful both economically and socially in claiming autarkist or closed national socialist economies as good for the environment and workers, back grounded by simultaneous attacks on immigrants, imports, globalisation and trade agreements.

 

In fact the early ‘70s Club of Rome (sponsored and hosted by corporate oligarchs) promoted the ‘Limits to Growth’ theory (or PR construct) which was then applied socially to population and immigration by ZPG (also sponsored by corporates) Zero Population Growth’s Paul ‘population bomb’ Ehrlich and John ‘white nationalist’ and ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton, viewing any growth as bad, especially non WASP humanity.

 

Further, Herman Daly applied the same ‘limits to growth’ to his autarkist ‘Steady-state economy’ theory which also presented antipathy towards the ‘other’ and anything new by dismissing the need for free trade agreements, trade blocs, globalisation, migration, economic growth etc.  predicated on simply constant capital and people; similar was promoted during Brexit, by Trump and used to persuade the left or unions.

 

A more vivid example, has been demands in the Anglo world to do less trade with PRC or China, driven by US corporate lobbyists and the right, whose clients see their influence waning and China rising.

 

Why a ‘libertarian trap’?  Because those corporates who support the promotion of such theories and implementation would benefit from already existing global infrastructure, influence in national politics, shaping of opinions, then being outside of trade regulations and standards while precluding new competitive threats.

 

The following article from Inside Story looks into the disadvantages of trying to closely manage the balance of a national economy, with more losers than winners.  This has been back grounded by US trade tensions with China and Australia supporting the US with claims that Australia is too dependent upon trade with China (not true), therefore must decrease its dependency, and then find new markets to replace China…..

 

The trouble with “buying Australian”

 

Adam Triggs – 10 AUGUST 2020

 

The campaign risks reducing our living standards and hurting poorer Australians the most.

 

‘Buy Australian’ has been the catch cry from many in politics, business, trade unions and industry bodies for as long as I can remember, and Covid-19 has upped the ante. But while many groups advocate Buy Australian, one group is conspicuously absent: economists. The reason for this is counterintuitive: Buy Australian doesn’t help Australians, it hurts them, and particularly the most disadvantaged.

 

To understand why, consider that Australia, like any country, has scarce resources — workers, capital, energy, materials — with which it can produce goods and services. Since producing more goods and services in one area at any point in time means producing less in another area, the question is: what should we produce?

 

Without trade, the answer is easy: everything. Without trade, anything we want to consume we must produce ourselves. This means we have to make the things we are really good at making compared with the rest of the world, such as agriculture, mining and education, as well as the things we aren’t very good at making, like airplanes, defence equipment and LCD TVs.

 

This is not ideal. Luckily, trade offers an alternative. Trade allows Australia to focus its resources on making the things that it is good at making (and earn an extraordinary $400 billion each year on international markets in the process — more than a fifth of our GDP) and then import the rest. This is the whole point of trade: it is about specialisation. When trade is properly understood to be about specialisation, it becomes clear that imports are just as important as exports.

 

This is the problem with Buy Australian. If we decide to stop importing a particular product, then we have to start making that product (or, at least, more of it). If we have to make that product ourselves, it means we have to divert labour, capital, energy and materials from producing the things we are good at making (and that earn us a lot of money overseas) so that we can make more of the things we are bad at making (and that earn us barely anything overseas). This is a recipe for a poorer, less productive Australia. It means lower living standards for Australians.

 

For proof, look no further than the land of the free and the home of the brave. Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel imposed a government-mandated “Buy American” policy that made foreign-made steel much more expensive than domestic-made steel. This was fantastic news for America’s steel mills. They saw an increase in production, an increase in employment and an increase in the prices of the steel they sell.

 

But, sadly, there are no free lunches in economics. The benefit to those in the steel mills came at the cost of their sisters and brothers in their neighbouring industries. American industries that use steel to make cars, whitegoods and building materials saw the cost of their inputs skyrocket. They begged the Trump administration to reverse its decision, but with no success. Many had to lay off workers. Some closed up shop.

 

The result of Trump’s policy was textbook economics: the Buy American tariffs meant the United States was now producing more of the stuff it is bad at making and producing less of the stuff it is good at making. America was left poorer, with higher unemployment and more government debt as a result….

 

…..So why is Buy Australian so popular? There are two main reasons. One reason is that Buy Australian sounds like a good idea. It’s intuitive. Exports sound good. Imports don’t. But when we understand that trade is not about “opening markets” and “boosting exports” — the rhetoric we normally hear from politicians that implies (suspiciously) that there are no losers from trade (a free lunch) — and is in fact about specialisation, suddenly Buy Australian doesn’t make much sense.

 

The second reason is that there is a big difference between the incentives of the individual and the incentives of society. It is perfectly rational for individual businesses or industries to advocate Buy Australian when it comes to the products they produce, since they get all the benefits while their neighbours suffer the costs. It made perfect sense for US steel mills to stand in the Oval Office and applaud Trump’s tariffs, just as it makes sense for individual Australian industries and firms to advocate Buy Australian….

 

….The risk is that Covid-19 encourages policymakers to institutionalise Buy Australian policies through tariffs, quotas or the onshoring of supply chains. This is a recipe for a less prosperous Australia and a slower recovery from Covid-19, the overwhelming burden of which will fall on poorer Australians. As the old proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So is the road to a prolonged Australian recession. 

 

For more blogs and article about the Asian century, Australian politics, climate change, economics, environment, EU European Union, GDP Growth, global trade, libertarian economics, limits to growth, political strategy, populist politics and WTO.

 

History of Globalisation and 21st Century

Globalisation has been more apparent in public, political and media narratives whether for economic or national reasons, mostly negative.  However, globalisation is a fact of life and can be positive for individuals, communities, sole traders, small and medium enterprises.

 

In fact, those promoting negatives of globalisation in favour of nativist policies, along with anti-immigration sentiment and antipathy towards educated elites, often have a need to manipulate ageing electorates.  This was seen with Brexit and Trump with the promotion of antipathy towards the EU European Union and multilateral trade agreements or trade blocs; giving advantage to existing global corporates avoiding regulation, taxation, competition and other constraints.

 

From The Mandarin Australia article excerpts from Peter Vanham is head of communications, Chair’s Office, World Economic Forum.

 

A brief history of globalisation

 

When Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2018 announced it had chosen the ancient city of Xi’an as the site for its new regional headquarters, the symbolic value wasn’t lost on the company: it had brought globalisation to its ancient birthplace, the start of the old Silk Road. It named its new offices aptly: “Silk Road Headquarters”. The city where globalisation had started more than 2,000 years ago would also have a stake in globalisation’s future.

 

Alibaba shouldn’t be alone in looking back. As we are entering a new, digital-driven era of globalisation — we call it “Globalisation 4.0” — it is worthwhile that we do the same. When did globalisation start? What were its major phases? And where is it headed tomorrow?

 

Silk roads (1st century BC-5th century AD, and 13th-14th centuries AD)

 

People have been trading goods for almost as long as they’ve been around. But as of the 1st century BC, a remarkable phenomenon occurred. For the first time in history, luxury products from China started to appear on the other edge of the Eurasian continent — in Rome. They got there after being hauled for thousands of miles along the Silk Road. Trade had stopped being a local or regional affair and started to become global.

 

Spice routes (7th-15th centuries)

 

The next chapter in trade happened thanks to Islamic merchants. As the new religion spread in all directions from its Arabian heartland in the 7th century, so did trade. The founder of Islam, the prophet Mohammed, was famously a merchant, as was his wife Khadija. Trade was thus in the DNA of the new religion and its followers, and that showed. By the early 9th century, Muslim traders already dominated Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trade; afterwards, they could be found as far east as Indonesia, which over time became a Muslim-majority country, and as far west as Moorish Spain.

 

Age of Discovery (15th-18th centuries)

 

Truly global trade kicked off in the Age of Discovery. It was in this era, from the end of the 15th century onwards, that European explorers connected East and West — and accidentally discovered the Americas. Aided by the discoveries of the so-called “Scientific Revolution” in the fields of astronomy, mechanics, physics and shipping, the Portuguese, Spanish and later the Dutch and the English first “discovered”, then subjugated, and finally integrated new lands in their economies.

 

First wave of globalisation (19th century-1914)

 

This started to change with the first wave of globalisation, which roughly occurred over the century ending in 1914. By the end of the 18th century, Great Britain had started to dominate the world both geographically, through the establishment of the British Empire, and technologically, with innovations like the steam engine, the industrial weaving machine and more. It was the era of the First Industrial Revolution.

 

The world wars

 

It was a situation that was bound to end in a major crisis, and it did. In 1914, the outbreak of World War I brought an end to just about everything the burgeoning high society of the West had gotten so used to, including globalisation. The ravage was complete. Millions of soldiers died in battle, millions of civilians died as collateral damage, war replaced trade, destruction replaced construction, and countries closed their borders yet again.

 

Second and third wave of globalisation

 

The story of globalisation, however, was not over. The end of the World War II marked a new beginning for the global economy. Under the leadership of a new hegemon, the United States of America, and aided by the technologies of the Second Industrial Revolution, like the car and the plane, global trade started to rise once again. At first, this happened in two separate tracks, as the Iron Curtain divided the world into two spheres of influence. But as of 1989, when the Iron Curtain fell, globalisation became a truly global phenomenon.

 

Globalisation 4.0

 

That brings us to today, when a new wave of globalisation is once again upon us. In a world increasingly dominated by two global powers, the US and China, the new frontier of globalisation is the cyber world. The digital economy, in its infancy during the third wave of globalisation, is now becoming a force to reckon with through e-commerce, digital services, 3D printing. It is further enabled by artificial intelligence, but threatened by cross-border hacking and cyberattacks.

 

Technological progress, like globalisation, is something you can’t run away from, it seems. But it is ever changing. So how will Globalisation 4.0 evolve? We will have to answer that question in the coming years….

 

From The Lowy Institute:

 

Globalisation Is Still Not A Bad Thing

 

Originally published in the Australian Financial Review by Natasha Kassam

 

COVID-19 signals the end of peak globalisation. Borders have hardened. Tourism has withered. Medical supplies have been blocked at ports. Citizens have been prioritised while foreigners were sent home.

 

Globalisation has been much maligned in recent years – already struck by the financial crisis and the US-China trade war. Growing hostility towards global institutions and trade competition has characterised politics of several countries. And with concern about so-called globalism came attacks on the so-called globalists: “The future does not belong to globalists, the future belongs to patriots,” said President Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly last year.

 

Australians, by contrast, have remained largely immune to these trends. New Lowy Institute polling finds seven in 10 Australians say globalisation is mostly good for our country, unchanged from 2019. While the United States has succumbed to protectionism and negativity towards migrants, Australians have remained supportive of free trade. Anti-migration sentiment has always lurked in Australia, but years of polling show that most Australians agree that immigration makes our country stronger and wealthier and contributes to our national character.

 

Ongoing struggles in Australia’s relationship with China, our largest trading partner, could fuel further distrust of globalisation. Disputes over beef and barley exports could just be the beginning. Most Australians already say we are too economically dependent on China, and the recent ambiguous threats of economic coercion against Australian exports will only deepen that concern.

 

Globalisation may have been dealt a grave blow by this virus, and Australia can’t save it alone. As a trading nation, that only succeeds by embracing globalisation – even the devastation of COVID-19 hasn’t yet shaken our fundamentals. It may well do so, deep into a global economic slowdown. But to date, Australians have leaned into their national character, and continued to show resilience in the face of populism and protectionism.

 

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