On the pathway to a sustainable civilisation, environmental protection and social justice must be addressed together

Mark

<p>Collectively we are driving Earth and civilisation towards collapse. Human activities have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html">exceeded planetary boundaries</a>. We are changing the climate, losing biodiversity, degrading land, contaminating freshwater, and damaging the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles upon which we all depend.</p>
<p>We ask how this could happen. Also, why democratically elected governments ignore the wishes of the majority of their people. Why some governments continue to export fossil fuels despite commitments to climate mitigation. Why some go to war in distant lands without any debate in parliament or congress. Why some give tax cuts to the rich while those on the dole struggle below the poverty line. The answers to these questions all come down to one thing: decision-makers and influencers are captured by vested interests. That is the inconvenient truth revealed in <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-99-0663-5">our new book</a>, The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological, Socioeconomic and Political Change. But these forces can be overthrown.</p>
<p>We argue it is not sufficient for citizen organisations and governments to address specific environmental, social justice and peace issues. It&rsquo;s certainly necessary, but we must also struggle for systemic change. This means challenging the covert driving forces of environmental destruction, social injustice and war, namely, &ldquo;state capture&rdquo; and the dominant economic system.</p>
<h2><strong>Confronting state capture</strong></h2>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Shadow_State.html?id=84toDwAAQBAJ&amp;redir_esc=y">Political scientists</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351983848_State_Capture_Analysis_A_How_to_Guide_for_Practitioners">political economists</a>&nbsp;argue governments, public servants, the media and indeed the majority of decision-makers and influencers become captured by vested interests.</p>
<p>This is known as&nbsp;<a href="https://australiandemocracy.org.au/statecapture">state capture</a>, where state means the nation-state. The captors include fossil fuel, armaments, finance, property and gambling industries.</p>
<p>State capture can also involve foreign governments. There is justifiable concern in Australia and elsewhere about&nbsp;<a href="https://clivehamilton.com/books/hidden-hand-exposing-how-the-chinese-communist-party-is-reshaping-the-world/">subversion by the Chinese Communist Party</a>.</p>
<p>Yet there is little discussion of the fact that, since 2015,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/australia-nuclear-submarines-us-admirals/">six &ldquo;retired&rdquo; US admirals</a>&nbsp;worked for the Australian government before the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.defence.gov.au/about/taskforces/aukus">AUKUS</a> announcement on nuclear-powered submarines.</p>
<p><strong>Figure 1. </strong>The forces driving the collapse of civilisation, in a nutshell</p>
<p><img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/4d025446346b4161f632d9f6c194f572c7d8147d.jpg?" alt="The forces driving the collapse of civilisation" /></p>
<p>State capture could explain why Australia&rsquo;s defence is being shifted to the South China Sea&nbsp;<a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2022/06/sleepwalk-to-war">under US sovereignty</a>.</p>
<p>Confronting state capture involves reversing several undemocratic practices. Of particular concern is the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/donations-australia-federal-politics-foreign/10768226">funding of political parties</a>&nbsp;by corporate interests as well as the&nbsp;<a href="https://australiandemocracy.org.au/statecapture">revolving-door jobs</a>&nbsp;between government and corporate interests.</p>
<p>There is also the concentration of media ownership and the influence of&nbsp;<a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-liberal-party-and-the-institute-of-public-affairs-who-is-whose,8837">so-called &ldquo;think tanks&rdquo;</a>&nbsp;funded by vested interests.</p>
<p>The first step is to set up coalitions or networks to oppose the power of vested interests. This would bring together diverse civil society organisations with common interests in democratic integrity and civil liberties.</p>
<p>One example is the&nbsp;<a href="https://australiandemocracy.org.au/">Australian Democracy Network</a>, which campaigns for &ldquo;changes that make our democracy more fair, open, participatory, and accountable&rdquo;. The Network was founded in 2020 by the Human Rights Law Centre, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Council of Social Service.</p>
<h2>Challenging economic ideology</h2>
<p>Conventional economic theory&nbsp;<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/155970/collapse-neoliberalism">failed us</a>&nbsp;when it came to recovery from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/february/1319602475/kevin-rudd/global-financial-crisis">Global Financial Crisis</a>&nbsp;of 2007&ndash;09 and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/02/covid-and-the-crisis-of-neoliberalism">COVID pandemic</a>. Nevertheless, many governments still accept its prescriptions.</p>
<p>The dangerous and destructive myths of conventional economics include the claims that:</p>
<ul>
<li>economic theory can treat the natural environment as an infinite resource and infinite waste dump</li>
<li>endless economic growth on a finite planet is feasible and desirable</li>
<li>wealth trickles down from the rich to the poor</li>
<li>wellbeing and welfare can be measured by GDP</li>
<li>government intervention in the market must be avoided.</li>
</ul>
<p>Although these myths have been refuted many times, even by&nbsp;<a href="https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2011/5/of-the-1by-the-1for-the-1">world famous economist Joseph Stiglitz</a>, they still determine much government policy.</p>
<p>Australian economist Steve Keen first published&nbsp;<a href="https://archive.org/details/debunkingeconomi0000keen">Debunking Economics</a>&nbsp;in 2001. The financial crisis of 2007 gave him plenty of material for a revised edition in 2011. Richard Denniss gave us&nbsp;<a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/econobabble">Econobabble</a>: How to Decode Political Spin and Economic Nonsense in 2021. Yet, as John Quiggin so eloquently puts it, dead ideas still stalk the land&nbsp;<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691154541/zombie-economics">(Zombie Economics</a>.</p>
<p>They have devastating impacts on our life support system (the biosphere) and social justice. One of the principal destroyers of our planet is excessive consumption, especially consumption by&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/affluence-is-killing-the-planet-warn-scientists-141017">rich individuals and rich countries</a>.</p>
<p>A more appropriate economic framework for human and planetary wellbeing is the interdisciplinary field of <a href="https://islandpress.org/books/ecological-economics-second-edition">ecological economics</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike neoclassical economics, ecological economics gives priority to ecological sustainability and social justice over economic efficiency. It works towards a transition to a steady-state economy. That is, one with no global increase in the use of energy, materials and land, and no increase in population.</p>
<p><strong>Figure 2.</strong> <span class="caption">Human activity is crossing planetary boundaries. E/MSY is Extinctions/Mammal Species Years; the biogeochemical flows beyond the safe operating limits are nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P)</span></p>
<p><img src="https://illuminem.b-cdn.net/articlebody/c4ed18c8f4903bad9ee9c83283f6f0a40c28272b.jpg?" alt="Human activity is crossing planetary boundaries" /></p>
<p>Since planetary boundaries have already been exceeded and low-income countries must develop, social justice demands that the rich countries undergo&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more">planned degrowth</a>.</p>
<p>On the pathway to a sustainable civilisation, environmental protection and social justice must be addressed together. Because the rich are responsible for the biggest environmental impacts, reducing the gap between rich and poor is critical.</p>
<p><a href="https://ubshub.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/social-prosperity-network-ubs.pdf">Universal basic services</a>&nbsp;such as improved public health, education, housing and transportation &ndash; and a government-funded&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fullemployment.net/publications/reports/2020/CofFEE_Research_Report_2000-02.pdf">job guarantee</a>&nbsp;&ndash; can achieve greater equality and give people incentives to support the transition.</p>
<h2>Citizen action</h2>
<p>Why would governments free themselves from state capture and discard economic ideology? Former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt once told a delegation: &ldquo;OK, you have convinced me. Now get out there and make me do it!&rdquo; In other words, pressure from voters is needed to make government action politically feasible.</p>
<p>That&rsquo;s why we need citizen-based environmental, social justice, public health and peace groups to form alliances to challenge the overarching issues of state capture and flawed economic ideology.</p>
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<p><em>This article was originally published on <a href="https://theconversation.com/saving-humanity-heres-a-radical-approach-to-building-a-sustainable-and-just-society-205566" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability &amp; Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.</em></p>
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Saving humanity: here’s a radical approach to building a sustainable and just society

Many climate activists, scientists, engineers and politicians are trying to reassure us the climate crisis can be solved rapidly without any changes to lifestyle, society or the economy. To make the vast scale of change palatable, advocates suggest that all we have to do is switch fossil fuels for renewable power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency technologies, add seaweed to livestock feed to cut methane and embrace green hydrogen for heavy industries such as steel-making.





<p>Many climate activists, scientists, engineers and politicians are trying to reassure us the climate crisis can be solved rapidly without any <a href="https://theconversation.com/study-australians-can-be-sustainable-without-sacrificing-lifestyle-or-economy-50179">changes to lifestyle</a>, society or the economy.</p>
<p>To make the vast scale of change palatable, advocates suggest that all we have to do is switch fossil fuels for renewable power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency technologies, add seaweed to livestock feed to cut methane and embrace green hydrogen for heavy industries such as steel-making.</p>
<p>There’s just one problem: time. We’re on a very tight timeline to halve emissions within eight years and hit net zero by 2050. While renewables are making major inroads, the world’s overall primary energy use keeps rising. That means renewables are chasing a retreating target.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/PD8ZAEUFKUDFTKI94QQJ/full?target=10.1080/14693062.2022.2061407">new research</a> shows if the world’s energy consumption grows at the pre-COVID rate, technological change alone will not be enough to halve global CO₂ emissions by 2030. We will have to cut energy consumption 50-75% by 2050 while accelerating the renewable build. And that means lifestyle change driven by social policies.</p>
<h1>The limitations of technological change</h1>
<p>We must confront a hard fact: In the year 2000, fossil fuels supplied 80% of the world’s <a href="https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-product/world-energy-statistics-and-balances">total primary energy consumption</a>. In 2019, they provided 81%.</p>
<p>How is that possible, you ask, given the soaring growth rate of renewable electricity over that time period? Because world energy consumption has been growing rapidly, apart from a temporary pause in 2020. So far, most of the growth has been supplied by fossil fuels, especially for transportation and non-electrical heating. The 135% growth in renewable electricity over that time frame seems huge, but it started from a small base. That’s why it couldn’t catch fossil fuelled electricity’s smaller percentage increase from a large base.</p>
<p>As a renewable energy researcher, I have no doubt technological change is at the point where we can now affordably deploy it to get to net zero. But, if energy consumption continues to grow, the transition is not going to be fast enough on its own, even after taking account of improvements in energy efficiency. If we don’t hit our climate goals, it’s likely our planet will cross a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0">climate tipping point</a> and begin an irreversible descent into more heatwaves, droughts, floods and sea-level rise.</p>
<p>Our to-do list for a liveable climate is simple: convert essentially all transportation and combustion heating to electricity while switching all electricity production to renewables. But to complete this within three decades is not simple. Even at much higher rates of renewable growth, we will not be able to replace all fossil fuels by 2050.</p>
<p>This is not the fault of renewable energy. Other low-carbon energy sources like nuclear would take much longer to build and leave us even further behind growing consumption.</p>
<p>Do we have other tools we can use to buy time? CO₂ capture is getting a great deal of attention, but it seems unlikely to make a significant contribution. The scenarios I explored in my research assume removing CO₂ from the atmosphere by carbon capture and storage or direct air capture does not occur on a large scale, because these technologies are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2020.1728209">speculative, risky and very expensive</a>.</p>
<p>The only scenarios in which we succeed in replacing fossil fuels in time require something quite different. We can keep global warming under 2℃ if we slash global energy consumption by 50% to 75% by 2050 as well as greatly accelerating the transition to 100% renewables.</p>
<h1>Individual behaviour change is useful, but insufficient</h1>
<p>Let’s be clear: individual behaviour change has some potential for mitigation, but it’s limited. The International Energy Agency <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050">recognises</a> net zero by 2050 will require behavioural changes as well as technological changes. But the examples it gives are modest, such as washing clothes in cold water, drying them on clotheslines, and reducing speed limits on roads.</p>
<p>The 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on climate mitigation has taken a step further, acknowledging the importance of collectively reducing energy consumption with a chapter on “Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation”. To do this effectively, government policies are needed.</p>
<p>Rich people and rich countries are responsible for far and away the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16941-y">most greenhouse gas emissions</a>. It follows that we must reduce consumption in high-income countries while improving human well-being.</p>
<h1>We’ll need policies leading to large scale consumption changes</h1>
<p>We all know <a href="https://www.irena.org/policy">the technologies</a> in our climate change toolbox to tackle climate change: renewables, energy efficiency, electrification, green hydrogen. But while these will help drive a rapid transition to clean energy, only energy efficiency is designed to cut consumption and its potential is limited, although significant.</p>
<p>The following policies would cut consumption further:</p>
<ul><li>a carbon price and additional environmental taxes</li></ul>
<ul><li>laws to encourage design of products for reuse, recycling and remanufacture</li></ul>
<ul><li>wealth and inheritance taxes to reduce consumption by the rich</li></ul>
<ul><li>non-coercive policies to end population growth, especially in high-income, high-consumption countries.</li></ul>
<p>Why would the vast majority of people support these policies? Because they would receive benefits in the form of:</p>
<ul><li>a substantial increase in government spending on poverty reduction, green infrastructure, health-care, public education and public transport as part of a shift to <a href="https://ubshub.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/social-prosperity-network-ubs.pdf">Universal Basic Services</a>​ </li></ul>
<ul><li>a shorter working week to share the work around</li></ul>
<ul><li>a <a href="http://www.fullemployment.net/publications/reports/2020/CofFEE_Research_Report_2000-02.pdf">job guarantee</a> at the basic wage for all adults who want to work and who can’t find a job in the formal economy</li></ul>
<ul><li>a substantial increase in pensions.</li></ul>
<h1><br/>Funding the transition</h1>
<p>The federal government funded the economic response to the pandemic by borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars via <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quantitative-easing.asp">Quantitative Easing</a> (QE). This is not responsible for the inflation we are currently experiencing, namely <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/costpushinflation.asp">cost-push inflation</a>. This is driven mainly by a shortage of raw materials during pandemic recovery, leading to increases in costs and hence prices. According to the <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/smp/2022/feb/inflation.html">Reserve Bank</a>, in Australia in the December quarter “price increases for newly constructed dwellings, consumer durables and automotive fuel, which together comprise around one-third of the CPI [Consumer Price Index] basket, accounted for around two-thirds of the increase in the headline CPI in the quarter”.</p>
<p>As I understand it, the type of inflation arising when the governments and/or the private sector spends very large amounts of money, is known as <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demandpullinflation.asp">demand-pull inflation</a>. If the resulting increased demand exceeds supply, prices will likely rise. The key to avoiding or minimising demand-pull inflation is to limit spending to within the productive capacity of the national economy. This can be assisted by using part of the spending to increase the nation’s productive capacity by, for example, funding education and training, incentivising new (clean) industries and building essential infrastructure. Then there is <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/stephanie_kelton_the_big_myth_of_government_deficits">low risk of driving inflation</a>.</p>
<p>As an alternative to QE, a federal government guided by <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/stephanie_kelton_the_big_myth_of_government_deficits">Modern Monetary Theory</a> could simply create the funds in its own currency instead of borrowing them. Spending this created money has no more risk of demand-pull inflation than spending money borrowed via QE, because demand-pull inflation arises from the spending of money, not its source (provided it’s not overseas currency).</p>
<h1>Change is happening</h1>
<p>We can cut consumption and emissions, while improving the quality of life for the vast majority of the population. However, these policies mean major change. But, like it or not, major disruptive change in the form of climate change is happening regardless. Let’s try to shape our civilisation to be resilient in the face of change.</p>
<p><em></em></p>
<p><em>Energy Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Energy &amp; Sustainability writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.</em></p>


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Mark Diesendorf

Mark Diesendorf

Saving humanity: here’s a radical approach to building a sustainable and just society

We must reduce global energy consumption to reach net zero emissions by 2050

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