Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics captures the essence of this new paradigm:
“a social foundation of wellbeing that no one should fall below, and an ecological ceiling of planetary pressure that we should not go beyond. Between the two lies a safe and just space for all”.
A key element of Raworth’s argument relates to economic growth: if GDP is to continue growing in high-income countries, its associated resource use must fall not just relatively or absolutely, but “sufficiently absolutely” to stay within planetary boundaries. Failure to achieve this level of resource decoupling implies that de-growth remains the only sustainable strategy for planetary survival.
Professor Ian Gough correctly identifies that welfare States will need to forge new policy instruments – eco-social policies – that underpin such an economic paradigm. These must simultaneously pursue both equity/social justice and sustainability/sufficiency goals within an activist innovation State, with substantial public investment and greater regulation and planning. Investment functions of social policy must be enlarged, therefore, to become more closely integrated with climate action investments. The important role that investing in nature can play in achieving a more sustainable, resilient, and healthy world must be recognised by governments.
This may, as Professor Gough has stated, “require tipping the balance of the economy from private to State investment”. This is now occurring as a consequence of COVID-19, and it is so critical that any COVID-related State bailout or investment is ecologically sustainable, and that funding to business is conditional on a greening agenda, as Mazzucato has advocated.
This is a central point: we need the State to lead, to be activist, interventionist and innovative, but also to demonstrate ecological responsibility. This requires substantial public investment and greater regulation, enforcement and planning. Subsidies and other incentives to private investment in climate action should not necessarily be seen as deadweight by default.
In much the same way that the best welfare States in the world promote universalism as a core principle, the move to an eco-social paradigm requires a universalist mindset, as well as additional, targeted measures to mitigate against any regressive impacts of decarbonisation policies on lower income groups, or cohorts who will be impacted most adversely by the shift to a low-carbon economy and society (such as, for example, those losing jobs resulting from the closure of legacy industries).
In Ireland this will mean that those impacted by the closure of unsustainable carbon-intensive electricity production, for example, must be offered re-skilling opportunities to enable them to find suitable jobs in other areas, such as the green economy, or upskilling opportunities that can achieve sustainable incomes in other parts of society. A model for such a just transition has been made available to us by the National Economic and Social Council, whose recent Report #149 provides a framework within which the transition to a new political economy may be a just transition.
Intergenerational Equity
Intergenerational equity, that is fairness between generations, is key, too.
Back in 1987, the Brundtland Report asserted that,
“Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
Such a conception of intergenerational equity is entirely consistent with a climate justice approach which links human rights and development to achieve a human-centred approach, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable, and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its resolution equitably and fairly.
The Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice argues that intergenerational equity can serve as a unifying theme that connects developed and developing countries, young and old, to advocate for bold action on climate change.
It is this awareness of the implications of our actions, or inaction, on future generations that increases the demand for an urgent response to the climate crisis. The onus, the moral imperative, is on us all now to make the necessary changes to our lifestyles – some may be costly and difficult, others relatively painless – if we have any sense of intergenerational climate justice, and if we are to have any hope of avoiding the bequeathment to the next generation of a hostile and volatile Planet Earth.
Resonance
As to society, there is a powerful, new sociological literature emerging that supports this change in theory, practice, policy, and indeed life itself. Professor Hartmut Rosa of Jena University builds on the paradigm, arguing for the need for society to move away from ‘consuming’ the world to ‘experiencing’ it and ‘resonating’ with it.
Professor Rosa argues that quality of life cannot be measured simply in terms of resources, opinions, and moments of happiness; instead, we must consider our relationship to, or resonance with, the world, or as Rosa puts it in his book, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World:
“from the act of breathing to the adoption of culturally distinct worldviews. All the great crises of modern society – ecological, democratic, psychological – can be understood and analysed in terms of resonance and our broken relationship to the world around us”.
This requires facilitating the transformative appropriation of every dimension of the world – how we are to exist, the relationships between ourselves and others and indeed with the natural world itself, how we may be transformed from consuming the world to resonating with it.
This, I believe, is a valuable contribution to the inter-disciplinary task of understanding the complex sources of, as I would put it ‘belonging in the world’, eschewing the modern-day preoccupation of being ‘consumed with consumption’.
I believe this “catastrophe of resonance”, to quote Rosa, which we have witnessed in modern times, is related to a growing narcissism, aggressive individualism and an emphasis on insatiable consumption and wealth accumulation, all of which is such a far cry from the social justice, solidarity and fairness principles that underpin the framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
In their recent book, Nurturing Our Humanity, Riane Eisler and Douglas Fry demonstrate how we can build societies that support our great human capacities for consciousness, caring, connection and creativity, revealing links between climate change denial and regressions to a so-called ‘strongman’ rule, assessing where societies fall on what the authors describe as a “partnership-domination scale”.
On one end of this scale is the domination system that ranks man over man, man over woman, race over race, and man over nature. On the other end is the more peaceful, egalitarian, gender-balanced, and sustainable partnership system. A more equitable and sustainable way of life is biologically possible and culturally attainable: we can change our course. Understanding that most of our intractable global challenges can be tied to the dominator worldview is a starting point for a sustainable and humane world, a point overlooked in much of the discourse on the climate crisis.
Conclusion
All of us, individuals, communities and professions alike, are asked to take ownership of the commitment to tackle climate change if we are to succeed in our low-carbon transition for our economy and our society. This is not optional. We, all of us as citizens, have a moral obligation to play our part in this great societal challenge.
We in Ireland need to continue to insulate our energy inefficient buildings, upgrade our heating systems to renewable sources such as heat pumps, switch to electric vehicles, build more public transport, and, overall, ween ourselves off our fossil fuel-dependent lifestyles. We also need to put in place the critical infrastructure that will enable the country to adapt and be resilient to climate change that is already occurring. Many of you here today will play a critical role, as engineers, in the design, construction and upkeep of such infrastructure, and I commend you in your endeavours to provide positive contributions in this regard.
However, we cannot continue with the mere placing of a green lens on economic policies any longer, policies that have failed manifestly and are continuing to cause damaging ecological impacts. A post-capitalist, eco-social future that I, and others like Professors Peadar Kirby and Ian Gough advocate, will entail difficult choices and pursuing policies of, potentially, de-globalisation, de-commodification, even de-growth should the required resource decoupling not be achieved, if we are serious about achieving the carbon mitigation that is required for a sustainable, equitable life on the planet.
A sense of justice not only for now but for the future requires that the capacity and power of our residual sense of a shared humanity be invoked to give us the energy to reconnect our lives through a balanced relationship between ecology, ethics, economy, culture and a lived experience of fulfilment.
We should never underestimate the strength of the resources and the influence of those who will oppose a paradigm shift, such as that of which I speak, to what is sustainable in all its forms, redistributive, more inclusive, empathetic, humane.
The time to act is now. The longer we wait, the more we intensify and perpetuate the injustice of climate change, and we run the risk of correctly being regarded by future survivors of our planet as having been in collusion with the destruction of the lives and life-worlds of some of the most vulnerable peoples of our human family and the biodiversity on which our planetary life depends.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir, is beir beannacht.
Thank you.
“a social foundation of wellbeing that no one should fall below, and an ecological ceiling of planetary pressure that we should not go beyond. Between the two lies a safe and just space for all”.
A key element of Raworth’s argument relates to economic growth: if GDP is to continue growing in high-income countries, its associated resource use must fall not just relatively or absolutely, but “sufficiently absolutely” to stay within planetary boundaries. Failure to achieve this level of resource decoupling implies that de-growth remains the only sustainable strategy for planetary survival.
Professor Ian Gough correctly identifies that welfare States will need to forge new policy instruments – eco-social policies – that underpin such an economic paradigm. These must simultaneously pursue both equity/social justice and sustainability/sufficiency goals within an activist innovation State, with substantial public investment and greater regulation and planning. Investment functions of social policy must be enlarged, therefore, to become more closely integrated with climate action investments. The important role that investing in nature can play in achieving a more sustainable, resilient, and healthy world must be recognised by governments.
This may, as Professor Gough has stated, “require tipping the balance of the economy from private to State investment”. This is now occurring as a consequence of COVID-19, and it is so critical that any COVID-related State bailout or investment is ecologically sustainable, and that funding to business is conditional on a greening agenda, as Mazzucato has advocated.
This is a central point: we need the State to lead, to be activist, interventionist and innovative, but also to demonstrate ecological responsibility. This requires substantial public investment and greater regulation, enforcement and planning. Subsidies and other incentives to private investment in climate action should not necessarily be seen as deadweight by default.
In much the same way that the best welfare States in the world promote universalism as a core principle, the move to an eco-social paradigm requires a universalist mindset, as well as additional, targeted measures to mitigate against any regressive impacts of decarbonisation policies on lower income groups, or cohorts who will be impacted most adversely by the shift to a low-carbon economy and society (such as, for example, those losing jobs resulting from the closure of legacy industries).
In Ireland this will mean that those impacted by the closure of unsustainable carbon-intensive electricity production, for example, must be offered re-skilling opportunities to enable them to find suitable jobs in other areas, such as the green economy, or upskilling opportunities that can achieve sustainable incomes in other parts of society. A model for such a just transition has been made available to us by the National Economic and Social Council, whose recent Report #149 provides a framework within which the transition to a new political economy may be a just transition.
Intergenerational Equity
Intergenerational equity, that is fairness between generations, is key, too.
Back in 1987, the Brundtland Report asserted that,
“Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
Such a conception of intergenerational equity is entirely consistent with a climate justice approach which links human rights and development to achieve a human-centred approach, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable, and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its resolution equitably and fairly.
The Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice argues that intergenerational equity can serve as a unifying theme that connects developed and developing countries, young and old, to advocate for bold action on climate change.
It is this awareness of the implications of our actions, or inaction, on future generations that increases the demand for an urgent response to the climate crisis. The onus, the moral imperative, is on us all now to make the necessary changes to our lifestyles – some may be costly and difficult, others relatively painless – if we have any sense of intergenerational climate justice, and if we are to have any hope of avoiding the bequeathment to the next generation of a hostile and volatile Planet Earth.
Resonance
As to society, there is a powerful, new sociological literature emerging that supports this change in theory, practice, policy, and indeed life itself. Professor Hartmut Rosa of Jena University builds on the paradigm, arguing for the need for society to move away from ‘consuming’ the world to ‘experiencing’ it and ‘resonating’ with it.
Professor Rosa argues that quality of life cannot be measured simply in terms of resources, opinions, and moments of happiness; instead, we must consider our relationship to, or resonance with, the world, or as Rosa puts it in his book, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World:
“from the act of breathing to the adoption of culturally distinct worldviews. All the great crises of modern society – ecological, democratic, psychological – can be understood and analysed in terms of resonance and our broken relationship to the world around us”.
This requires facilitating the transformative appropriation of every dimension of the world – how we are to exist, the relationships between ourselves and others and indeed with the natural world itself, how we may be transformed from consuming the world to resonating with it.
This, I believe, is a valuable contribution to the inter-disciplinary task of understanding the complex sources of, as I would put it ‘belonging in the world’, eschewing the modern-day preoccupation of being ‘consumed with consumption’.
I believe this “catastrophe of resonance”, to quote Rosa, which we have witnessed in modern times, is related to a growing narcissism, aggressive individualism and an emphasis on insatiable consumption and wealth accumulation, all of which is such a far cry from the social justice, solidarity and fairness principles that underpin the framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
In their recent book, Nurturing Our Humanity, Riane Eisler and Douglas Fry demonstrate how we can build societies that support our great human capacities for consciousness, caring, connection and creativity, revealing links between climate change denial and regressions to a so-called ‘strongman’ rule, assessing where societies fall on what the authors describe as a “partnership-domination scale”.
On one end of this scale is the domination system that ranks man over man, man over woman, race over race, and man over nature. On the other end is the more peaceful, egalitarian, gender-balanced, and sustainable partnership system. A more equitable and sustainable way of life is biologically possible and culturally attainable: we can change our course. Understanding that most of our intractable global challenges can be tied to the dominator worldview is a starting point for a sustainable and humane world, a point overlooked in much of the discourse on the climate crisis.
Conclusion
All of us, individuals, communities and professions alike, are asked to take ownership of the commitment to tackle climate change if we are to succeed in our low-carbon transition for our economy and our society. This is not optional. We, all of us as citizens, have a moral obligation to play our part in this great societal challenge.
We in Ireland need to continue to insulate our energy inefficient buildings, upgrade our heating systems to renewable sources such as heat pumps, switch to electric vehicles, build more public transport, and, overall, ween ourselves off our fossil fuel-dependent lifestyles. We also need to put in place the critical infrastructure that will enable the country to adapt and be resilient to climate change that is already occurring. Many of you here today will play a critical role, as engineers, in the design, construction and upkeep of such infrastructure, and I commend you in your endeavours to provide positive contributions in this regard.
However, we cannot continue with the mere placing of a green lens on economic policies any longer, policies that have failed manifestly and are continuing to cause damaging ecological impacts. A post-capitalist, eco-social future that I, and others like Professors Peadar Kirby and Ian Gough advocate, will entail difficult choices and pursuing policies of, potentially, de-globalisation, de-commodification, even de-growth should the required resource decoupling not be achieved, if we are serious about achieving the carbon mitigation that is required for a sustainable, equitable life on the planet.
A sense of justice not only for now but for the future requires that the capacity and power of our residual sense of a shared humanity be invoked to give us the energy to reconnect our lives through a balanced relationship between ecology, ethics, economy, culture and a lived experience of fulfilment.
We should never underestimate the strength of the resources and the influence of those who will oppose a paradigm shift, such as that of which I speak, to what is sustainable in all its forms, redistributive, more inclusive, empathetic, humane.
The time to act is now. The longer we wait, the more we intensify and perpetuate the injustice of climate change, and we run the risk of correctly being regarded by future survivors of our planet as having been in collusion with the destruction of the lives and life-worlds of some of the most vulnerable peoples of our human family and the biodiversity on which our planetary life depends.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir, is beir beannacht.
Thank you.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会 更新情報
-
最新のアンケート
-
まだ何もありません
-
