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Robert's areas of Professional Expertise: Transdisciplinary integration, ecological economics, ecosystem services, landscape ecology, integrated ecological and socioeconomic modeling, energy and material flow analysis, environmental policy, social traps, incentive structures and institutions. Website: https://www.robertcostanza.com/
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Robert's areas of Professional Expertise: Transdisciplinary integration, ecological economics, ecosystem services, landscape ecology, integrated ecological and socioeconomic modeling, energy and material flow analysis, environmental policy, social traps, incentive structures and institutions. Website: https://www.robertcostanza.com/
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| Robert's areas of Professional Expertise: Transdisciplinary integration, ecological economics, ecosystem services, landscape ecology, integrated ecological and socioeconomic modeling, energy and material flow analysis, environmental policy, social traps, incentive structures and institutions. Website: https://www.robertcostanza.com/ |
Thanks for joining our weekly chat Robert Costanza!
Picked up really well from the online discussion during last weeks show around whether the term 'degrowth' might be technically correct, but damaging to messaging to outside listeners. Thanks for expanding on what using wellbeing instead of GDP might look like.
Thanks for the real talk at the end Dan. Totally agree with your points. Climate impacts are looking so bleak that I find it strongly ironic that Ty's vision of job guarantee seems utopian in comparison – if only that it provides a pathway to survival.
Look forward to the chat continuing next time!
Glad you watched!
Boy the subject matter is worth hours of discussion. I still think for our own agency, we need to think locally. With policy still favoring solutions driven by billionaires, we kinda stupid expect them to fix it for us.
See Titan Sub or Musk's launch pad or NEOM or what is now apparently a completely unnecessary destruction of trains in East Palestine. The trains were probably blown to clear the tracks. Except it cost the town the resident's health and property values.
You always provide a good counter balance in the chat my friend.
@Ty Keynes mrmrmr despite Douglas' MMT victory lap, the expansion of interest income is coupled with a 30% rise in evictions and spiking credit card debt.
I still have the unquiet sense that mmt and even Keen is overly fixated on credit expansion while the real economy has long since bifurcated. On top of this, the decision making is left to wealth:
In addition to the fantasies wrt to the real dynamics in the economy is the additional delusional ideal that the privatized 'hero-entrepreneur' class is an adequate system to safeguard and forward 'civilization'.
Privatization is and was an ask for a people to cede their sovereignty to ultra rich totalitarian rule and it has been largely taken.
From Musk's launch pad fiasco, to Titan sub, to Norfolk derailment and the ongoing environmental and health disaster created only form the need to get the rail open again*, finance is a *tiny aspect of the real problem: a lack of will
Daniel Sanderson's suggestion about people growing their own food in their gardens is offensive to people in the lower middle and working classes who generally do not gardens – are they to starve? This is a " let them eat cake" argument. More generally, this is clearly from the perspective of a wealthy middle class person who does happen to have a garden advocating we move back to a subsistence agriculture based economy. This is the kind of thing that puts people off the "degrowth" nonsense. Most people see this as impractical and to the extent it were to be implemented would result in starvation and death. I agree that output needs to be redefined in terms of energy and entropy, output needs to be decoupled from the carbon cycle and wealthy people need to consume less, but arguing to those who are not wealthy that they must start farming their own food and reduce the consumption in other ways is not going to go anywhere and is in fact counter productive to realising required change.
It was me that said it… Not Dan. Living on a finite planet that is at extreme risk of being overexploited and the consequences that come from that should offend your sensibilities.
I finally figured out what you’ve got to call this. Stop calling it Degrowth. That’s nonsense and counterintuitive and counterproductive.
It’s REGROWTH! To grow again, to grow anew, to grow back, to grow better. To ReThink what has been done in the past, learn and do better. REGROWTH! Use it now!
Degrowth is perfect. Sustainability, steady state all the things people want to call it leave it so cooptable. Bezos and co can be in favor of sustainability but not degrowth. No growth, no capitalism (unless you trick yourself with neoclassical economics- like the steady state crowd). Its a good term.
@Ty Keynesrank Luntz, communications mastermind and evil genius behind Newt Gingrich’s devolution and Contract with UnAmerica, the rise of the Fascist Republican Party and it’s exportation around the world, coined that term, Climate Change. You can look it up. He was hired by the fossil fuel industry to do it. Global Warming is the proper term, he single-handedly changed it, and he got everyone to use his language, to fit his worldview, and activate that worldview in people’s minds. It’s how it works.
And the Authoritarians have been at this word game for 50+ years, first the Friedman Doctrine in 1971, then the Lewis Powell Memo, the establishment of their “Think” Tanks, James Dobson’s Dare to Discipline in the 1980s, etc… When you use their language, which they have carefully crafted and tested, you activate their frames. It’s Cognitive Science.
People haven’t come up with better language for Limits to Growth and stuck to it, otherwise it would’ve worked. Look, I’m reading the book, it’s fascinating. I sent that Jørgan Randers YT video from the Club of Rome to Douglas. Their model needs a Modern Money foundation so the proper conclusions can be derived. I want you to do this. If not you, then maybe Douglas can. If Douglas or yourself can’t, then I’m just going to have Douglas and Bijou teach me and I’ll do it.
And Ty, I agree with you about Corporations. If Modern Money states that Banks are agents of government, then anything registered to the government is an Agent, which would INCLUDE Corporations. Modern Money proponents need to take this reasoning to its logical conclusion, the Chartalist conclusion. The issue that cloud’s this and makes it difficult for people to see is, “how tight the leash is around the neck of that agent”. Obviously, the leash around member banks is much tighter than say your trucking company was, but nevertheless, their was a leash around your trucking company that in essence told you what you could do and not do in order to keep your privileges and benefits as a registered agent of the government.
@Botched Mandala no, Regrowth is better. Degrowth is DEpressing. And we are passed the point of “sustainability”, we actually need to give back to the Earth.
@Michael de Sousa Cruz So, your impression of what a word feels like is just objectively correct? I have a good emotional connection to it and so do so many others its being mentioned in the EU parliament. Anyway, it's direct, it tells us what kind of economic system it cant be…
Whatever we call it I hope we are all aiming for prudent stewardship of the planet, which means less consumption in aggregate and as much regenerative action as possible
On you mentioning trolly comments and making guests feel welcome; am i being a bit too much of a jerk in ripping on herman daly? It makes zero sense that post keynesians should be in the same circles as him, to me it feels like someone quoting mankiw … his books arent too different at all really, just shoving some eco stuff into a nce textbook (or applying nce to nature – natural capital, social capital – these concepts dont have a place outside nce) it just makes me so uncomfortable, why pull punches on these neoclassicals for some ecological credentials? Im not saying roberts a fool or anything, he says himself hes not really an economist, hes done tonnes of great work, but like many lean on sse for economics, pke seems to be leaning on sse for ecological clout… its a relationship that just cant last and there are really really good ecological economists out there
But i think ive probably belaboured all this already, wouldnt want to put off your guests and clog the chat with it if so… but, if theres a reason for it its lost on me
You are not being a jerk. Never pull punches, I love seeing your comments.
No civilization will be sustainable until a large percentage of its constituents are biologically properly functional. The fatal flaw of modern humanity is that we destroy all the complex molecular machinery of our fuel/food prior to ingesting it. We turn all the bio molecules into molecular "goo" and we expect good results. That is baaaad engineering.
Y'all (aka the gear heads like Douglas, Mike etc): Tipping points tip faster ->
In Nature: Earlier collapse of Anthropocene ecosystems driven by multiple faster and noisier drivers
I believe this is mostly mathy, so dig in. Of note is system behavior as it approaches tipping points: it lurches around. Kinda interesting because the various books on chaos I chewed through talked about something like it.