Having more, or living better?

“This human community is in danger due to climate change which is related to the accumulation of riches by countries and social groups…. We have to change the belief that to have more is to live better”.
Evo Morales Ayma, President of Bolivia, 22 December, 2012

To see what this means in Manchester, see our reports, Living Well and In Place of Growth:  http://steadystatemanchester.net/our-reports/

Evo Morales speaking on climate and accumulation at the celebration of the December solstice.

Who’s putting pressure on the planet? | Doughnut Economics

Who’s putting pressure on the planet? | Doughnut Economics.

Useful video, especially at this tie of continued inaction by the rich nations (and especially the USA) seen for example at Doha.  Interesting too in the light of Lord Stern’s comments on the need for the BRICS to cut emissions.

Steady State Manchester’s first reports published: “In Place of Growth” and “Living Well”

https://steadystatemanchester.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/our-first-reports-published-in-place-of-growth-and-living-well/ Also see the launch event on Tuesday 20th November.

Event - We need to talk about growth

Reblogged from Steady State Manchester:

Growth of the economy is generally taken to be an unqualified measure of success, but scientists from a range of disciplines are asking whether we might already have had too much of a good thing. Meanwhile, political economists are returning to the fundamental question of what the economy is for and what the consequences of setting other goals might be. In Manchester, the City Council and civil society groups are considering the practicalities at a city scale and wondering if the financial crisis means that regional economies may struggle to return to economic growth in the long term.

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“But we need growth to deal with poverty and fix environmental problems” – or do we?

Another video featuring the author of this blog (see these previous ones)

From steadystatemanchester.net

EL BUEN VIVIR

Reblogged from lacocinadelasideas:

28 Sep 2012

‘Alternatives to development’: an interview with Arturo Escobar

 

At the 2012 Degrowth conference in Venice one of the highlights for me was the talk by Arturo Escobar(my notes from which can be found here). He is the author of Encountering Development and Territories of Difference, among others.  His talk looked at how Transition might look in the context of the Global South, and held many fascinating insights.  

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An interesting interview with Arturo Escobar about the Andean concept of 'Buen Vivir' or 'Good Living'. This is close to the ideas being explored and promoted by GreenDealmanchester and SteadyStateManchester - we do need to find our own local articulation of this thinking, drawing on the best of our own cultural traditions (as for example in the work of Raymond Williams in his seminal essay Socialism and Ecology).

Two videos

Two recent video interviews with the author of A Green Deal for the  Manchester-Mersey Bioregion:-
1) 1970s and now (ecological crisis and eco-action)

2) Steady State and “decoupling”

Economic growth: a fable

Reblogged from Steady State Manchester:

Economic Growth a Fable.

This is a Chinese story, maybe 1,000 years old, Wang’s jar.

Wang, a poor peasant who could hardly feed his family, found a large empty jar and took it home.  While cleaning it, he dropped the brush he was using into the jar and suddenly the jar was full of brushes: brushes and more brushes and, for each one that Wang took out, another magically appeared inside the jar. 

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This post has appeared on SteadyStateManchester. While not unlike some traditional stories about the perils of unlimited abundance (the goose that laid the golden eggs, Midas, the men who sought gold and found death...) it adds some other dimensions - division of labour, exploitation, generational issues, exponential growth - despite being some 1000 years old. It is a small contribution to renewing our understandings of real prosperity.

Reclaiming the language of austerity

Reclaiming the language of austerity:  an ecological, people’s recuperation of the cuts discourse.

We’re all in this together.
Yes we really are, because we all depend on the ecosystem to make our life possible on the surface of the earth.  Nobody can buy their way out of the crisis and in the end, nobody can make the crisis hurt some and not others.  The ecological crisis makes us equal again and it requires action for and by all.  That isn’t to say that some should not lose more than others: the millions living on less than £5 per day have nothing to give up and a lot to gain  from a fairer and sustainable system but those who consume disproportionate resources will lose that privilege, and justly so.

Austerity
How do you sell austerity?  Because it is a kind of austerity that is needed.  We have to reduce drastically the throughput of resources, reducing the exhaustion and extinction of the and the production of their polluting end products to levels that are consistent with the rate of replacement or substitution (inputs) and safe absorption (outputs).  But that kind of austerity does not mean that people should endure poor housing, that old and disabled people should not get enough help and care, that people should work for longer, or indeed that people should be unnecessarily idle.  By and large, these things have nothing to do with the necessary, real, ecological austerity but everything to do with the strategic austerity imposed by the rulers of a system that forces people to pay for the failures of a false economy disconnected from the real real economy that provides food and air and water, the conditions for life on earth.

We’ve been living beyond our means
Oh yes, the system has.  It has squandered its resources on the production of horrible trinkets, trinkets that break or decay very quickly, trinkets that offend against the harmonious living in community with one another and with the earth’s systems.  It has wasted its resources to produce millions of tons of effluent which has meant we are beyond the safe operating limits of the natural systems that sustain human life.  And while doing this it has condemned millions to poverty, exclusion and fear, increasing want as it increases false needs.  But we have not been wrong to expect comfort, fairness and freedom from want, illness and idleness.  To construct a system that satisfies these needs is not to live beyond our means; it is to live fairly in accordance with them.

 

The wisdom of Robert Owen

Robert Owen, pioneer socialist and co-operator (and ethical entrepreneur):

Nature requires its own time to mature all things, whether mineral, vegetable, animal or mind and spirit.

- topical as we zoom past the safe operating margins for life on this planet.  It expresses three key rules of ecological economics:
2. Extract renewable resources like fish and timber at a rate no faster than they can be regenerated.
3. Consume non-renewable resources like fossil fuels and minerals at a rate no faster than they can be replaced by the discovery of renewable substitutes.
4. Deposit wastes in the environment at a rate no faster than they can be safely assimilated.
(number 1 is : Maintain the health of ecosystems and the life-support services they provide.)

and Owen again:-

The ever changing scenes of nature afford not only the most economical, but also the most innocent pleasures that man can enjoy.

- which recalls the buen vivir, or good living principles of the Andean indigenous movement.

Thanks to “Scottish Nature Boy” whose blog has photos of plaques with these quotations there: http://scottishnatureboy.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/signs-i-like-8.html )