Green growth is an alternative to economic growth

Most of us believe that the present recession will end.  They always have done in the past. 

In a recent speech by President von der Leyen at the Beyond Growth Conference in the European Parliament on the 15^th of May.  She said:

If we look back, a little over 50 years ago, the Club of Rome and a group of MIT researchers published the ‘Limits to Growth’ report.  It mapped the interaction between population growth, the economy and the environment.  And 50 years ago, it came to a drastic conclusion: Stop economic and population growth – or else our planet will not cope.  As you know, this report has sparked a long controversy.  For instance, about the role of new technology in countering climate change.

But instead of prolonging these debates, I today want to concentrate on one point, and that is a point that the report got right beyond any doubt: That is the clear message that a growth model centred on fossil fuels is simply obsolete.  This assessment has been confirmed, time and again.  The recent IPCC report is just the latest reminder that we need to decarbonise our economies as quickly as possible.

She was commenting on a European Parliament briefing on ‘Beyond Growth’.

If she is right, and I believe she is, we must get used to the fact that the recession will go on and on, and on.

Which means we must now turn our mental clocks back. And think about the reverse of how the economy grew in the past. 

For maybe 25 years after World War II, growth in the domestic economy was limited to essentials.  Discretionary (non-essential) spending was almost non-existent except for those well-off.

Then consumerism burst upon us in the late 1960s.  Discretionary spending grew until it was about half of the UK’s total spending.  We bought cars, wined and dined and had holidays in faraway places.

Growth occurred in cycles of recession and recovery – decline and growth – within a process of overall growth.  This is why we think growth will resume in due course.

In the 2000s, growth depended on government borrowing (quantitative easing).

Gradually, a 40 per cent gap developed between the financial economy propped up by QE and the real economy of goods and services.  As a result, a misleading impression of economic growth was created.

The financial economy, boosted by lending, was growing.  Yet the real economy of goods and services was shrinking.

The economy is now in distress.  Inflation is outpacing wages.  It is becoming realised that wage settlements can only be paid for by further QE.  Otherwise, employment shrinkage cannot be avoided. 

These are all symptoms of the shrinking economy.

According to previous CBI director general Tony Danker: “Britain is in stagflation – with rocketing inflation, negative growth, falling productivity and business investment.”

So, what now?

Quantitative Tightening (QT) will probably be applied. 

 According to Wikipedia: “Whereas QE (quantitative easing) caused the substantial rise in asset prices over the past decade, QT may cause broadly offsetting effects in the opposite direction.”

The value of assets will now gradually decrease by up to about 40 per cent, referred to earlier.

We don’t know how long this reconciliation between the two economies will take.  It will be hidden within the overall shrinkage of the economy. 

To understand how shrinkage may develop, we must consider what happened during the economy’s growth.  

Essential spending is now under pressure and discretionary spending and associated employment are declining.  It is the opposite of 50 years ago. 

The costs of essentials are increasing, and families are reviewing their discretionary spending, which is becoming increasingly unaffordable.

Further economic shrinkage and declining wages will worsen the current mêlée. 

The reality of what is going on is confused by inflation.

And yet, at the grassroots

Migration from top-down jobs, especially from discretionary markets, will generate new grassroots activities.  All kinds of activities.  Employment, self-employment, undeclared work, unpaid caring and bartered activities.

New individual and collaborating businesses will develop.

Local economies will develop.  Mostly in essential markets.  Food producing, processing, selling and distributing and related support services. 

Wages for those coming down from top-down jobs will be much lower than they had before.  And  the consumer culture of the industrial era will decline.

Remember 60 years ago when average wages were about £1,000 per annum, and new houses cost less than £4,000?  That is the direction we are heading. 

My experience of life in the UK, when the economy was much smaller than today and much nicer!

In today’s terms, it was also much greener.

There were fewer cars.  Rural landlords didn’t allow tenant farmers to take hay, straw or manure off their farms.  Most of us had pedal cycles or walked to work,  school and shopping, with local bus services for journeys above three miles. 

Smallholders sold their fruit and vegetable on roadside stalls and sent them to city wholesale markets on early morning trains.  Dairy farmers sold their products from daily milk rounds.  Bakers and grocers had their products delivered on bicycles.  Heavy goods and parcels were delivered to local railway stations, with few lorries on the roads.  You could travel virtually anywhere by train.

Most of us grew our fruit and vegetables; some kept hens to barter eggs with neighbours.

I could go on from my memories.  Not all so nice!

The essential point was that the economy was much smaller, as it will be in the future.

If we let it happen, the future will be green.

Copied from The Conversation News Letter

A formidable ally in the fight against climate change is hidden under our feet. New research suggests 36% of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted from burning fossil fuels each year is taken up by a group of fungi called mycorrhizae, which live in partnership with plants in the soil.

All you’re likely to see of these organisms is a mushroom protruding from the earth. But underground, mycorrhizal fungi form threads called filaments that connect the roots of most plants, exchanging water and nutrients for sugars and fats made by photosynthesis.

The academics behind the new research believe scientists have massively underestimated the role fungi play in keeping the man-made gases driving climate change out of the atmosphere. And these fungi are in good company: countless species are active participants in the carbon cycle, and they need our help to ensure they can continue helping us.

You’re reading the Imagine newsletter – a weekly synthesis of academic insight on solutions to climate change, brought to you by The Conversation. I’m Jack Marley, energy and environment editor. This week, we meet the species working hard to slow global heating.

“On land, the natural carbon cycle involves a delicate balance. Plants take CO₂ from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, while other organisms emit it back into the atmosphere,” say Adam Frew, Carlos Aguilar-Trigueros, Jeff Powell and Natascha Weinberger, who study how plants and soil microorganisms interact at Western Sydney University.

“Now we know the carbon transfer from plants to mycorrhizal fungi isn’t a side note – it’s a substantial part of this equation.”

Animals release some CO₂ when they exhale. But they can also help bury carbon – and increase its duration in safe storage underground. 

While most of the carbon stored in trees is decomposed and recycled to the atmosphere as greenhouse gas in less than a century, the soil beneath grasslands with few trees but lots of large plant-eaters, such as elephants, can guard carbon for thousands – even tens of thousands – of years in hard-to-reach underground pools.

So how do these animals do it? Jeppe Aagaard Kristensen, a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford’s Ecosystems Lab, says that up to half of the plant matter eaten by elephants is excreted as dung or urine. Decomposers like beetles and earthworms can break this down more easily than dead leaves, for instance, since it’s already been digested, and the carbon contained within it then enters long-term storage in the soil.

“Large animals seem adept at reorganising where ecosystems store carbon, directing a larger fraction towards persistent and stable reservoirs underground,” says Kristensen.

“This shows how valuable intact wildlife communities can be, and should urge us to protect the few remaining herbivore-rich ecosystems on Earth, such as the African savanna.”

And it’s not just herbivores: a recent study showed how a 50-year campaign to restore tiger populations in India had unexpected benefits for the climate.

Project Tiger established nine tiger reserves in 1973. Today, 54 such areas exist across India – that’s 75,000 sq kilometres of jungle, mangrove swamp and dry forest which equates to 2% of the country.

“These habitats might seem very different, but the common link is of course lots of trees,” says Simon Evans, a principal lecturer in ecotourism at Anglia Ruskin University.

The strict protection afforded to tigers within this network of reserves prevented deforestation – and may have kept 1 million tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere as a result between 2007 and 2020.

Some species, such as the African forest elephant, can even increase the capacity of forests to store carbon. A typical three-tonne female must eat roughly 200kg of bark and leaves daily. Saplings are particularly popular as they have fewer of the chemical defences which make older trees in a tropical forest difficult or unpleasant to eat. By weeding out the small, fast-growing vegetation, elephants promote larger, woodier trees which lock up more carbon.

“The authors estimate that the disappearance of African forest elephants would result in a loss of as much as 7% of the carbon stocks in Central African forests”, Evans says.

It’s important to not get carried away, however. You may have heard that whales are good at drawing carbon down from the air and into the deep sea, for example.

“Their plumes of poo contain so many nutrients that phytoplankton blooms can form in a whale’s wake. These tiny photosynthesising creatures soak up carbon dioxide in their bodies. When they die, they can sink to the bottom and be covered in sediment, storing the carbon,” explains Olaf Meynecke, a research fellow in marine science at Griffith University.

However, Meynecke’s research suggests that whales are likely to only make a limited contribution to carbon storage. Of the 53 billion tonnes of carbon absorbed by the oceans annually (mainly as a result of photosynthesising algae), 4 billion tonnes sink below the surface and only 1% of that is stored in sea-floor sediment for the long term.

Not enough is known about the climate benefits of whale conservation. Trumpeting its usefulness could distract from proven solutions such as preventing the burning of fossil fuels, Meynecke says.

Even so, understanding how large wild animals in particular mitigate climate change exposes important connections between the multiple aspects of the ecological crisis, according to Heather Alberro, a lecturer in global sustainable development at Nottingham Trent University.

Alberro highlights how the captive rearing of animals for meat and dairy is one of the largest contributors to climate change. In contrast, animals that are allowed to embed themselves in natural cycles can help return carbon to long-term storage.

“Robin Wall Kimmerer, environmental scientist and citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, refers to the ‘honourable harvest’. When deciding anything — from how and where to build homes to how to produce food and source energy — principles to live by include taking only what we need, always leaving some for others, and sustaining those who sustain us.”

First published on the Radix Think Tank

For the past five years, I have been writing on Radix about the future: 60 pieces so far.

I have also been putting together Orcop.com –  a blog subtitled “The best place to find out what is being said about the future. Not what the Establishment is saying. What those without a vested interest in business-as-usual are saying.”

I have written this piece because I sense that most of us are stuck in a mindset which is obstructing our ability to think outside our box..

The box which is based on a mindset which belongs to the past. We now must get used to a mindset which is more relevant to the emerging future.  Not a new mindset, but one which discards out-of-date elements of our old thinking.  One which shifts our thinking away from how we thought in the past – onto a new direction of travel.

Some elements of the new mindset are quite easy to accept.  Others are not because they imply huge changes in our lifestyle.

The most important change – the key to everything else – is that transition to the new ways is already occurring. That change is afoot. We just need to open our minds to what is happening.

The muddle which exists now, of wage claims which can only be paid out of the depletion of other mostly hidden pots of money, is a reflection of our inability to recognise the change.

The future will be fundamentally different from the past.

In the past, we did what we could afford financially. Money led us by the nose, along the path of consumerism.  

We did not realise that everything we do involves the use of energy, which was based on the use of fossil fuels. Which were formed over millions of years, from the remains of dead organisms.  And cannot be replenished. Fossil fuels are finite. Their use is depleting them.  

Alternative energy sources are being developed – the most important being wind and solar. But these are adding to the total energy resource, not replacing fossil fuels. Moreover, fossil fuels are required to develop and maintain these alternatives.

As a result of more expensive electricity, non-essential activities will become discretionary and will increasingly be abandoned.   

About 50 per cent of UK economic activity is discretionary. As it becomes more expensive, because of the increasing cost of fossil fuels, discretionary activities are becoming unaffordable and, before long, will cease to exist.   

I remember when discretionary spending first became affordable, in the 1950s. The opposite is now imminent and before long most of us will only be able to afford essentials. As was the case in my early years. Even, then not all essentials will be affordable. As is happening today with whole-house heating becoming unaffordable.

Tim Morgan has pointed it out.

“1. Imagine someone adrift in a lifeboat, with a million dollars or its equivalent in anything you like – cryptos, gold, whatever. To that person, this money has no value, as there is nothing for which it can be exchanged. This brings me to the point about money having no function without the capability of exchange, making money a ‘claim’ on the output of the material economy. The latter, we know, is an energy system. We cannot lend energy into existence, and neither can central banks conjure it out of the ether.

2. These are the ‘two economies’ fundamentals. But they are not recognised, either by the authorities or the public, to whom it seems that the money can drive the material.

3. With energy-based prosperity deteriorating, there will be extensive hardship, with whole sectors contracting towards collapse, asset values tumbling and credit defaults looming.

4. Given (2), the stresses of (3) will put extreme pressure on the authorities to “help”. This suggests desperate acts of money creation, pointing towards runaway inflation.”

Our food supplies are in trouble. Another aspect of our inability to recognise that change is afoot.  And is not being planned for.

The BBC reports that “Vegetable shortages could last for up to a month

Speaking in the Commons, Ms Coffey told MPs she anticipated “the situation will last about another two to four weeks”.

Unemployed people previously in discretionary work could be employed in essential food growing, processing and distribution. Not just in their gardens, if they have them. Starting up smallholdings and picking vegetables and fruit.  

A national policy to grow our food makes more sense to me than subsiding wind power. A shift from industrial agriculture, dependent on fossil fuels, to small farming, using people-power, could be adopted now.

Why not spend agricultural subsidies on purchasing land from farmers, for temporary nationalisation and use by a new generation of farming families? Until they learn how to do it themselves.

Electric cars are seen to be good for the environment. But how many will be affordable in the future of declining prosperity? The cost of electricity to power them is as much as the cost of running your home. As purchase and electricity costs increase, discretionary travel will cease.  

Public spending on roads and diesel-powered buses and trains could be switched to public transport powered by electricity they generate themselves. Trams and light railways conveying passengers and goods must be planned now for when travel by car becomes unaffordable.

During World War II, the City Engineers’ department in Birmingham had a section of civil engineers, too old to fight, drawing plans for the Inner Ring Road. Ready to start building in 1956.  The City Engineer, Sir Herbert Manzoni (my boss), believed in a future dominated by cars. There should now be departments of public transport engineers designing tram systems and their power stations. Ready to build when a future government, or autonomous local tramway companies, can see they will be visible. An essential investment.

The NHS as we knew it is irretrievable. Food poverty is increasing. National economic statistics are at odds with how most of us see things. Poverty is increasing, whilst the top echelons of our country have unimaginable wealth. Social unrest is developing.

We feel unsafe.  The things we want seem to becoming out of reach.

All of which are undermining our old mindset. Which was based on hierarchies, big is better, wealth creation, formal education, top-down thinking, individuality, and so on.  

All were dependent on economic growth.   

The facts of the matter are simply stated. The harnessing of abundant, low-cost energy from coal, oil and natural gas triggered two centuries of remarkable economic growth. Now, though, fossil fuel energy has ceased to be low-cost and can be expected, in consequence, to become a lot less abundant as well. With no complete replacement available for the energy value hitherto sourced from fossil fuels, the economy can only contract.

The UK economy is on the cusp of fundamental change.  It is at a cliff edge. The government can’t decide what to do. Perhaps too frightened to contemplate the consequences of admitting that growth has ended.