One of the most interesting divides in the sustainability field is around degrowth. The idea of degrowth is hard for many business people to embrace. I must confess, as you will see, I find that the logic of the degrowth people often eludes me. As such, I was interested to see what Christopher Marquis had…
Search Results for: degrowth
Better But Sadly Not Perfect
Can we become more sustainable as we grow the economy? This hope of ‘green growth’ is appealing but to some it seems too good to be true. As I’m relatively optimistic about our chances of doing better socially and environmentally while also growing the economy it is helpful to read more downbeat views. A paper…
Growth Can Come From Climate Action
The Stern Report (2006) was a milestone in the UK’s action against climate change. Commissioned by the Labour government at the time they, and their immediate Conservative successors, took much of report’s advice to fight climate change. And they gave the economist author a peerage — he is now Lord Stern — but that is…
Learn About Business Before Discussing Business
Businesspeople can often think they know more about the world than they do. CEOs share their barely coherent thoughts on current affairs. It is annoying. People involved in sustainability are right to be irritated when they hear such nonsense. Yet, the opposite is also true. If you don’t know anything about business, it is not…
Applying The Genetic Fallacy To The Carbon Footprint
I have just finished Hannah Ritchie’s Clearing the Air. More on that later — spoiler, it is a great book. As such, I was interested to see what a review that appeared in The Guardian newspaper had to say about it. The writer overall liked the book, which makes sense. But he didn’t stop there….
Cliches About Disruption Aren’t Public Policy Advice
In my last post I noted that I worked at the Labour Party during Tony Blair’s time. He is easily the best UK prime minister of my lifetime, so I really wanted to be positive about his institute’s report on climate change. The approaches outlined are quite sensible, but the overall report is just plain…
What To Do About Climate?
I was Finance Director of the Labour Party when Tony Blair was Prime Minister. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, it was a more optimistic time. There were notable problems of course; but at the least the mood music was positive. The Labour Party was proudly European, it wasn’t trying to…
It Isn’t Good Enough To Be Just Against Things
Ezra Klein‘s and Derek Thompson‘s Abundance tackles how those who believe that the world can be better have to achieve more. It isn’t good enough to be just against things, i.e., stopping things getting worse. To make the world better, you need to be for positive progress. What you want also needs to be deliverable on a…
Limits And Self-Limits
Giorgos Kallis, a proponent of Degrowth has a paper on limits. He links this to the work of Malthus (see here). Indeed, to my mind, one way to see Kallis’ work is an attempt to distance ecologists from Malthus. I don’t blame him for that aim. Kallis also investigates the nature of limits. He rejects…
Q&A On Sustainable Business
What Is Sustainability? The most common definition is from a United Nations report, (Our Common Future, the Brundtland Report from 1987). This informally defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/sustainability). Is Sustainable Just Green? Note that the idea of meeting…
