Jason Hickel: Economics in an Age of Climate Breakdown

Talk given by Jason Hickel at the Advaya event Economics of Happiness: Post-Growth, Localisation & Wellbeing, 20 June 2017.
About the Talk: Economics in an Age of Climate Breakdown
Virtually every government on Earth has economic growth as its primary objective. Politicians rise and fall on their ability to deliver growth at all costs. But in a world of ecological breakdown, this approach is becoming dangerous and untenable. Scientists tell us our only option for surviving the Anthropocene is for high-consuming rich nations to scale down their economic activity. What does this look like? How do we get there? Can we maintain and even improve human well-being in a post-growth economy?
About the Speaker:
Jason Hickel, The Guardian & LSE
Dr. Jason Hickel is an anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has taught at the London School of Economics, the University of Virginia, and Goldsmiths, University of London, where he convenes the MA in Anthropology and Cultural Politics. He serves on the Labour Party task force on international development, works as Policy Director for /The Rulescollective, sits on the Executive Board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) and recently joined the International Editorial Advisory Board of Third World Quarterly.
Jason's research focuses on global inequality, political economy, post-development, and ecological economics. His most recent book, The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions, was published by Penguin Random House in 2017. Jason's ethnographic work focuses on migrant labour and politics in South Africa, which is the subject of his first book, Democracy as Death: The Moral Order of Anti-Liberal Politics in South Africa (University of California Press, 2015), as well as the co-edited volume Ekhaya: The Politics of Home in KwaZulu-Natal (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2014).
In addition to his academic work, Jason writes a column for The Guardian and contributes to a number of other online outlets, with bylines in Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Fast Company, Jacobin, Prospect, Le Monde Diplomatique, Red Pepper, Truthout, and Monthly Review. His media appearances include Viewsnight, the Financial Times, the BBC World Service, Business Matters, Thinking Allowed, Renegade TV, NPR, TRT World, the LA Times, and Russell Brand's podcast Under the Skin.
Jason has received a number of teaching awards, including the ASA/HEA National Award for Excellence in Teaching Anthropology, and his ethnographic research has been funded by Fulbright-Hays, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust.
About the event:
We all know that our current economic system isn't working. It is an economy based on ravaging the Earth's finite resources and on immense social injustice. To ensure a more democratic, sustainable and prosperous future we need to look to radical, ethical solutions that go beyond the debt-growth trap. We need to find an economic system where ecological sustainability, social justice, and financial stability go hand in hand: an economy that meets the needs of all, not just the privileged few, and allows us to thrive.
At this event we were joined by HELENA NORBERG HODGE, the groundbreaking activist and pioneer of the local economy movement, and JASON HICKEL, anthropologist, author and spokesperson on global inequality, post-development, and ecological economics.
We explored the growing worldwide movement for de-growth and economic localisation and came to understand the situation our economic system has put us in in order to mobilise ourselves to take a stand against current economic thinking.

[@steve37341]

As always, great analysis. He should point out in future examples of the case of Cuba and their economy and the welfare of the population after the Soviet collapse and Cuba lost access to Russian oil. Cuba's GDP did decline but the people innovated and survived. Some even noted that the general health of the population increased as they had to rely on more walking and also better food as local agriculture, even in the cities, became very widespread.

[@stevenlewis4376]

Easter Island died because of Rats. They ate all the seeds and small seedlings. Humans didn't help matters.I agree with you about Capitalism and continued growth on a limited planet being impossible. Easter Island is just not a great example.

[@incognitosecret2377]

Great talk!

[@farinshore8900]

Love that you are laughing through the story of Easter Island.

[@kurtklingbeil6900]

Brilliantly Obvious & Obviously Brilliant

[@TomAnitaMorgan]

In our looong American experience, people have learned to live beyond their means through easy credit.This has facilitated overspending and competition to have moar. To change this will require a sea-change in social attitudes and a major redistribution of wealth in America. Lets get started by raising taxes on the rich!

[@publicdomain1103]

ShakeUp! XR. Time has come today.

[@tuckerbugeater]

released right before the plandemic

[@ctmhcoloradotreasureminehu8385]

I appreciate your points of view and agree we have many of the problems you describe, but I was left with a couple of questions. Starting from the end, @27:36 "with alternative currency systems that are debt free, public money or positive money" What the hell does that even mean? "Alternative currency systems", more commonly known as fiat money systems are basically what got us where we are. I am guessing you are referring to some sort of crypto, maybe even Bitcoin, if you will check the price fluctuations and today's market you should take pause on that. Do you even know how much real energy is completely wasted mining Bitcoin? The funny part is all of it evaporates if the grid goes down, poof gone. @25:29 "shorter work week" This will be glorious for the totally non-productive food consumers of the world who have never actually produced anything real in their entire lives. A very small minority of the population provide food for the rest of the population. We are called farmers and ranchers; in the USA we are 1.3% of the population. My farm does not run on a "shorter work week" it runs on hard work and long hours. Where is the equity you seem to prize so highly for farmers? Why the made-up story about Easter Island? You have a great subject and some interesting ideas, yet you start with basically a lie. Makes no sense.

[@tuckerbugeater]

you won't have a choice in the end. The crises will add up!

[@joepvandijk7949]

Check for yourself: take a calculator, write "100" and then 20 odd times do "+3%=" (tick the times you do this on a piece of paper to keep track of it) and by 23 times you arrive at some 197 and by 24 times at some 203, so a bit more than 20 times, but still astonishing... I'm poor at arithmetics, but this I understood and could replicate.

[@benwoodruff1321]

There is a handy heuristic known as the rule of 72. Divide the number 72 by the interest rate and it will give you an approximation of the number of years for the sum to double. The actual number would be closer to 70 but 72 is divisible by so many numbers it became the standard.

[@kevincrady2831]

9:51 - Yeah, but if the ancient Egyptians had enough stuff to fill a billion solar systems, the Assyrians wouldn't have stood a chance against them. XD But then, as you've already pointed out, that's why GDP became the measure of societal success: geopolitical competition.

[@Mark-en3ig]

The reason people "need" GDP growth is to maintain the monetary value. If you do not have GDP growth, your country becomes poorer. No country would want this, because it means you get less for exports and to import costs more. That is why GDP needs to grow, and it is quite logical. He seem not to have quoted simon kuznets, but made his own interpretation of what he said. In terms of scaling down, the problem is who gets what. Will it change the current power relations? Because if it does, people in power will make sure it doesn't happen. Changing the measure of GDP to something else is a good idea, and something that I have thought of myself, but how do you convince states to do this? Again the problem seems to be power relations. The same with the rent suggestion. I think most economists actually agree that high rents are dysfunctional to the economy

[@NS-pj8dr]

" If you do not have GDP growth, your country becomes poorer. No country would want this, because it means you get less for exports and to import costs more. " correct me if I'm wrong, but GDP is not equivalent to the relative value of a nation's currency, and it is the strength of their currency which determines their purchasing power when it comes to imports no? For sure I could see GDP being tied to currency value today, but if nations began switching to a different measure, then currency would not be related to GDP anymore. it would require a few trailblazing nations, for sure, but if the EU got on board, then a lot of other nations would consider it as well. "In terms of scaling down, the problem is who gets what. Will it change the current power relations? Because if it does, people in power will make sure it doesn't happen. " Yes of course, but the the problem of who gets what has always been a problem for as long as humanity has been around, that is politics, essentially. the natural response would be democratic processes. this is of course easier said than done. It is true that the real elephant in the room here is power relations, which is essentially the same thing as inequality. who has access to capital, who derives rewards from capital. this will have to be addressed directly. luckily, a UBI is becoming more and more popular as a potential response to redistributing the fruits of capital. for example a carbon tax, and a land value tax could be levied, the money from which could be distributed as a UBI or to fund a jobs guarantee program. power will always get in the way, but who is backing up the powerful? who comes to their defense and allows them to get away with what they do? the powerful are powerful because we allow them to be, because they have created propaganda which legitimizes their power. this is why questioning growth and spreading knowledge of post-growth, steady state, sustainable economies so important: if people are exposed to alternatives, and believe in them, then those in power have less lobbyists, politicians, news outlets etc. to spread their gospel.

[@juliusb7713]

Thats not likely what happened with easter islr tho

[@lenwilkinson672]

After a few minutes I became absolutely booted and turned him. Off whewwwww