Given the finite nature of the earth system, do you think we can build a sustainable civilization within the confines of neoliberal global capitalism? If yes, how? How can we incentivize regenerative behaviour and disincentivize destruction of our ecological life support systems? If not, why not? Perhaps a less dramatic sounding way of asking a similar question is, can we continue to set indefinite GDP growth as our economic policy goal?
Note: some people see questions like this as a tacit endorsement of socialism (or similar). That is not my intent. People often talk about human ingenuity saving us from the climate crisis, and I believe it might, not through some deus ex machina technological miracle, but rather through the development of new, innovative social paradigms — distinct from any of the traditional western economic structures we’ve seen — that encourage regeneration.
OK, just chewing through some of this economic stuff, and I am loving it. I admit that I may be in way over my head here, some of this stuff is a little hard for me to really grasp, so I have been trying to think of specific examples that resonate with me. I am reading a book called "Welfare Ranching", and (I may be way off base here), but am feeling like "we are currently spending tons of taxpayer dollars to keep these 'cowboys' playing on our public lands (destroying them, actually), so what if we paid these same people the same money to just... not do anything." I mean, sure ride your horse, walk around in ropers, jerk off to the fictional, politically expedient, white male dominated culture that celebrates the story of genocide and conquest that we call 'western culture', but for god's sake stop running your damn cows. This is a tiny example of what (I'm hoping) I'm taking from these readings. That the idea that we have to keep producing something (in this case, beef), to keep our economy 'going' is a false narrative because what we're loosing is bigger than what we are producing. So what if we put the same value/money into the same things, but stop expecting to produce a THING, and start to expect the preservation of - everything else. Intimidated to join in the discussion thread, because again, feeling a little out of my league, but giving it a shot anyway.
Liz, if you liked Wellfare Raching, check out "Cattle Kingdom" by Christopher Knowlton. I agree with Nick that ranchers have a strong lobby (tied in with other conservative issues) that keep the cattle industry going. Early on they blocked out other, more sustainable, red meat industries (such as reindeer - there's a really interesting bit about how that market was made completely inaccessible in the US in the early 20th century). They're currently lobbying against the plant based meat replacement products having the label "meat" on them at all and trying to prevent them from being sold next to meat in the supermarket. This Freakonomics podcast was great on that topic: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/meat/
Perhaps the best thing we can do to “fight” the cattle industry is to use our consumer dollars on plant-based products?
I wonder what other industries cattle ranchers could use their land for. They’re proud, community-based people so I can’t imagine they’d be down to be paid to do nothing.
The lobbying against plant-based meat thing is absurd to the point of comedy (and despair). Mississippi actually passed a law last year banning the phrase "veggie burger." And in another state (can't find the reference right now), a meat lobby group is suing to stop a veggie burger company from calling their food veggie burgers. Veggie burgers have been around for literally decades!!!
Isn’t it crazy that these topics can get that much traction in the US (even after decades of a product being on the market) but something like the Equal Right amendment gets attacked by attorney General William Barr after 48 years and 38 states say they want to adopt it in the constitution. It’s mind boggling. 🤦🏼♀️
It IS crazy. And it's exactly what I mean when I say things like, "the systemic incentives are broken." This sort of unequivocally bad lobbying doesn't happen because there are a few evil guys at the top of the cattle industry, it's because they're incentivized -- by cultural norms, legal structures, and fiduciary responsibility to shareholders -- to do it. It's slightly less awful seeming than these other examples I'm going to give, but it's really no different from Exxon funding climate denial, from Phillip Morris (and now Juul) deliberately obfuscating the fact that tobacco products cause cancer -- and marketing them to children, from Johnson & Johnson promoting opioids despite knowing the likelihood and consequences of addiction, from Monsanto hiding the fact that RoundUp causes cancer. These things aren't happening because there are a couple sociopaths out there orchestrating societal demise. They're happening because of the ontological underpinnings of our culture, our economy, and our legal structure. We can't fix that by holding one group accountable for one action (i.e. the lawsuits against the actors I listed above). We need to fix the reason people feel like they need to take these actions.
Hey do you have an article or something about the Johnson & Johnson promoting opioids thing? That bleeds into my specialty (anesthesia, chronic pain and the opioid epidemic).
thanks Liz! The point of this is to have an open discussion so we can all learn and evolve our own thought processes so don't ever hesitate to comment!
I think what you're talking about is totally right -- why are we essentially paying for things that are useless if not entirely bad? It's a huge issue with government subsidies in the farming and livestock area, and also of course in fossil fuels...but the harder question I think is -- why can't we stop paying for things that are useless and/or bad? The ranchers have a pretty good lobby going on, but there are other even more widely frowned upon government subsidies that we somehow just can't get rid of. It's a systemic issue and one we need to solve if we're going to make any progress here.
Do we think that the goal of indefinite GDP growth is intrinsic to a capitalist system? As a resource economist, I believe in the idea of incorporating non-market values into the price system of capitalism. This is of course not totally a "free" market - it requires a functional government that applies and enforces taxes (and perhaps subsidies) - but to me this is still capitalism/ a free market that, if we could estimate non-market prices correctly, would maximize overall utility. It is interesting to think about applying these ideas to social issues as well, like inequality or community-building, but this seems harder to do...and, given the imminent environmental problems we face, I am tempted to continue the traditional economist's position of pushing these social problems to the side while we have bigger fish to fry.
I definitely have a much better understanding of/useful opinions about these pricing ideas of microeconomics than the macroeconomic system. Do we think environmental economics is missing from macroeconomics or just easier to focus on in the externalities framework of microeconomics?
Two thoughts here but I don't want to dominate the whole discussion...
1) While in principle and/or theory, I don't disagree, how long can we keep saying "if we just properly price externalities this will work?" That's what we've been saying for the entire life of neoliberal economics, and here we are. We've known about climate change since at least James Hansen's 1988 senate testimony. Exxon and others have known about it for even longer. And then, even if we are able to effectively price climate change contributors through regulatory hurdles, carbon taxes, et al...what about soil degradation? What about the nitrogen cycle? What about other chemical pollution? I think the fundamental problem with that strategy is that we don't -- and, essentially, can't -- have a 100% complete understanding of the earth system, of the impacts of specific actions, and of the limits we face. So given that, how do we price these things reliably?
2) I'm not going to dive down this rabbit hole too far here, but it's becoming increasingly clear to me (and to many thinkers in this realm) that to effectively fight climate change and other earth system crises, we also need to work to solve our social crises. High level thoughts on why are...at the macro level, if you have any belief in the "Kuznets curve" and even if you don't, in order to bridge the gap for developing countries to developed without cranking up emissions in the interim, we need wealth redistribution to those countries. At the micro level, it's because without bringing people up from poverty line, they're unable to change behaviors. On an anecdotal and sort of philosophical level, I even find this with people well above the poverty line. If you're working two jobs to support your family, or even if you just have student loans and a mortgage, you have no bandwidth to change your life in any way, let alone to even think about how you might. If you can't fix that, then the majority of people even in developed countries are unable to even take climate change seriously.
I think the donut economics model and capitalism could be intertwined (ie doesn’t require indefinite growth). Maybe if plastic and petroleum became more scarce or expensive, enironment-killing capitalist goods would just be replaced with more sustainable goods. Like individual solar panels in non-industrialized countries. Also, if we consider that social equality is a significantly larger component of the climate crisis that is popularly acknowledged then we certainly need capitalism to elevate the worlds poor. Historically, when socialized countries switch to capitalist economies, widespread poverty has declined. (Check out this film on Netflix or Amazon: https://youtu.be/4dAkP0f7VSs). If our economy exploited renewable sources like solar or changed agricultural practices, we could theoretically continue to grown GDP indefinitely couldn't we?
Also I think population size is a really big thing missing from these discussions. Is it just unpalatable? Is it not pc to talk about when overconsumption is *also* a huge problem? Are the authors just assuming it will flatten in a good amount of time so they don't need to address it explicitly? It seems that to be in the green doughnut, we would need an explicit tradeoff between the standards we set for the various human rights/social metrics that are "ok" and population size. Setting the standards for these social metrics seems like a whole other, impossible-feeling can of worms.
I think you're mis-reading the "standards" -- they're basic, agreed upon human rights that are meant to not be a can of worms; they are sourced from the UN Sustainable Development Goals and a lot of work (outside the Doughnut Economics realm) has gone into defining them and quantifying them (and how badly we're doing).
This population size thing came up in another conversation recently and I think it's a red herring for two reasons. First, it IS part of the conversation. Typical mainstream media fails to cover a ton of stuff that's "part of the conversation," but Project Drawdown -- which is pretty widely respected -- lists educating young women and family planning (combined) as the single most important "solution" for mitigating climate change. It's well known, its importance is well documented, and it's something people are working towards, it just isn't captured by reactive media coverage. And, of course, like with most mitigation strategies -- we can and need to be doing a hell of a lot more.
The second reason I think it's a red herring is what you say -- "the authors" (who do you mean here?) are not just assuming it will flatten in a good amount of time; generally accepted models yield 9bil by 2050, and then plateauing at 11bil by end of century. It's growing, but it's growth is slowing. It is an open question whether we can -- with the degraded state of soil, increasing feedback from climate change, etc. (see next newsletter on Monday) -- feed 11 billion. But we could feed and support the entire world (and some) today, with existing resources, if the system worked better.
OK, just chewing through some of this economic stuff, and I am loving it. I admit that I may be in way over my head here, some of this stuff is a little hard for me to really grasp, so I have been trying to think of specific examples that resonate with me. I am reading a book called "Welfare Ranching", and (I may be way off base here), but am feeling like "we are currently spending tons of taxpayer dollars to keep these 'cowboys' playing on our public lands (destroying them, actually), so what if we paid these same people the same money to just... not do anything." I mean, sure ride your horse, walk around in ropers, jerk off to the fictional, politically expedient, white male dominated culture that celebrates the story of genocide and conquest that we call 'western culture', but for god's sake stop running your damn cows. This is a tiny example of what (I'm hoping) I'm taking from these readings. That the idea that we have to keep producing something (in this case, beef), to keep our economy 'going' is a false narrative because what we're loosing is bigger than what we are producing. So what if we put the same value/money into the same things, but stop expecting to produce a THING, and start to expect the preservation of - everything else. Intimidated to join in the discussion thread, because again, feeling a little out of my league, but giving it a shot anyway.
Liz, if you liked Wellfare Raching, check out "Cattle Kingdom" by Christopher Knowlton. I agree with Nick that ranchers have a strong lobby (tied in with other conservative issues) that keep the cattle industry going. Early on they blocked out other, more sustainable, red meat industries (such as reindeer - there's a really interesting bit about how that market was made completely inaccessible in the US in the early 20th century). They're currently lobbying against the plant based meat replacement products having the label "meat" on them at all and trying to prevent them from being sold next to meat in the supermarket. This Freakonomics podcast was great on that topic: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/meat/
Perhaps the best thing we can do to “fight” the cattle industry is to use our consumer dollars on plant-based products?
I wonder what other industries cattle ranchers could use their land for. They’re proud, community-based people so I can’t imagine they’d be down to be paid to do nothing.
The lobbying against plant-based meat thing is absurd to the point of comedy (and despair). Mississippi actually passed a law last year banning the phrase "veggie burger." And in another state (can't find the reference right now), a meat lobby group is suing to stop a veggie burger company from calling their food veggie burgers. Veggie burgers have been around for literally decades!!!
Isn’t it crazy that these topics can get that much traction in the US (even after decades of a product being on the market) but something like the Equal Right amendment gets attacked by attorney General William Barr after 48 years and 38 states say they want to adopt it in the constitution. It’s mind boggling. 🤦🏼♀️
It IS crazy. And it's exactly what I mean when I say things like, "the systemic incentives are broken." This sort of unequivocally bad lobbying doesn't happen because there are a few evil guys at the top of the cattle industry, it's because they're incentivized -- by cultural norms, legal structures, and fiduciary responsibility to shareholders -- to do it. It's slightly less awful seeming than these other examples I'm going to give, but it's really no different from Exxon funding climate denial, from Phillip Morris (and now Juul) deliberately obfuscating the fact that tobacco products cause cancer -- and marketing them to children, from Johnson & Johnson promoting opioids despite knowing the likelihood and consequences of addiction, from Monsanto hiding the fact that RoundUp causes cancer. These things aren't happening because there are a couple sociopaths out there orchestrating societal demise. They're happening because of the ontological underpinnings of our culture, our economy, and our legal structure. We can't fix that by holding one group accountable for one action (i.e. the lawsuits against the actors I listed above). We need to fix the reason people feel like they need to take these actions.
Hey do you have an article or something about the Johnson & Johnson promoting opioids thing? That bleeds into my specialty (anesthesia, chronic pain and the opioid epidemic).
They lost a case in Oklahoma (although payout was way lower than it should've been, so it wasn't much of a loss): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/22/johnson-and-johnson-opioids-crisis-lawsuit-latest-trial
I believe there are other lawsuits still ongoing
Amen 🤣
thanks Liz! The point of this is to have an open discussion so we can all learn and evolve our own thought processes so don't ever hesitate to comment!
I think what you're talking about is totally right -- why are we essentially paying for things that are useless if not entirely bad? It's a huge issue with government subsidies in the farming and livestock area, and also of course in fossil fuels...but the harder question I think is -- why can't we stop paying for things that are useless and/or bad? The ranchers have a pretty good lobby going on, but there are other even more widely frowned upon government subsidies that we somehow just can't get rid of. It's a systemic issue and one we need to solve if we're going to make any progress here.
Do we think that the goal of indefinite GDP growth is intrinsic to a capitalist system? As a resource economist, I believe in the idea of incorporating non-market values into the price system of capitalism. This is of course not totally a "free" market - it requires a functional government that applies and enforces taxes (and perhaps subsidies) - but to me this is still capitalism/ a free market that, if we could estimate non-market prices correctly, would maximize overall utility. It is interesting to think about applying these ideas to social issues as well, like inequality or community-building, but this seems harder to do...and, given the imminent environmental problems we face, I am tempted to continue the traditional economist's position of pushing these social problems to the side while we have bigger fish to fry.
I definitely have a much better understanding of/useful opinions about these pricing ideas of microeconomics than the macroeconomic system. Do we think environmental economics is missing from macroeconomics or just easier to focus on in the externalities framework of microeconomics?
Two thoughts here but I don't want to dominate the whole discussion...
1) While in principle and/or theory, I don't disagree, how long can we keep saying "if we just properly price externalities this will work?" That's what we've been saying for the entire life of neoliberal economics, and here we are. We've known about climate change since at least James Hansen's 1988 senate testimony. Exxon and others have known about it for even longer. And then, even if we are able to effectively price climate change contributors through regulatory hurdles, carbon taxes, et al...what about soil degradation? What about the nitrogen cycle? What about other chemical pollution? I think the fundamental problem with that strategy is that we don't -- and, essentially, can't -- have a 100% complete understanding of the earth system, of the impacts of specific actions, and of the limits we face. So given that, how do we price these things reliably?
2) I'm not going to dive down this rabbit hole too far here, but it's becoming increasingly clear to me (and to many thinkers in this realm) that to effectively fight climate change and other earth system crises, we also need to work to solve our social crises. High level thoughts on why are...at the macro level, if you have any belief in the "Kuznets curve" and even if you don't, in order to bridge the gap for developing countries to developed without cranking up emissions in the interim, we need wealth redistribution to those countries. At the micro level, it's because without bringing people up from poverty line, they're unable to change behaviors. On an anecdotal and sort of philosophical level, I even find this with people well above the poverty line. If you're working two jobs to support your family, or even if you just have student loans and a mortgage, you have no bandwidth to change your life in any way, let alone to even think about how you might. If you can't fix that, then the majority of people even in developed countries are unable to even take climate change seriously.
I think the donut economics model and capitalism could be intertwined (ie doesn’t require indefinite growth). Maybe if plastic and petroleum became more scarce or expensive, enironment-killing capitalist goods would just be replaced with more sustainable goods. Like individual solar panels in non-industrialized countries. Also, if we consider that social equality is a significantly larger component of the climate crisis that is popularly acknowledged then we certainly need capitalism to elevate the worlds poor. Historically, when socialized countries switch to capitalist economies, widespread poverty has declined. (Check out this film on Netflix or Amazon: https://youtu.be/4dAkP0f7VSs). If our economy exploited renewable sources like solar or changed agricultural practices, we could theoretically continue to grown GDP indefinitely couldn't we?
Also I think population size is a really big thing missing from these discussions. Is it just unpalatable? Is it not pc to talk about when overconsumption is *also* a huge problem? Are the authors just assuming it will flatten in a good amount of time so they don't need to address it explicitly? It seems that to be in the green doughnut, we would need an explicit tradeoff between the standards we set for the various human rights/social metrics that are "ok" and population size. Setting the standards for these social metrics seems like a whole other, impossible-feeling can of worms.
I think you're mis-reading the "standards" -- they're basic, agreed upon human rights that are meant to not be a can of worms; they are sourced from the UN Sustainable Development Goals and a lot of work (outside the Doughnut Economics realm) has gone into defining them and quantifying them (and how badly we're doing).
This population size thing came up in another conversation recently and I think it's a red herring for two reasons. First, it IS part of the conversation. Typical mainstream media fails to cover a ton of stuff that's "part of the conversation," but Project Drawdown -- which is pretty widely respected -- lists educating young women and family planning (combined) as the single most important "solution" for mitigating climate change. It's well known, its importance is well documented, and it's something people are working towards, it just isn't captured by reactive media coverage. And, of course, like with most mitigation strategies -- we can and need to be doing a hell of a lot more.
The second reason I think it's a red herring is what you say -- "the authors" (who do you mean here?) are not just assuming it will flatten in a good amount of time; generally accepted models yield 9bil by 2050, and then plateauing at 11bil by end of century. It's growing, but it's growth is slowing. It is an open question whether we can -- with the degraded state of soil, increasing feedback from climate change, etc. (see next newsletter on Monday) -- feed 11 billion. But we could feed and support the entire world (and some) today, with existing resources, if the system worked better.