Finding the good life in a finite world - 'Post-Growth' author Tim Jackson
Every society clings to myths to live by. Ours is the myth of economic growth, says economist, author and playwright Tim Jackson, who is in New Zealand this week. As a society, were rushing headlong in the opposite direction of where we need to go. But we stay locked in a cycle of over-consumption thanks to business exploiting a side of human nature which is avaricious, novelty seeking and hedonistic, says Jackson. The result is were persuaded to spend money we don't have, on things we don't need, in the attempt to create impressions that won't last, on people we don't care about. Meanwhile, the world burns, the icecaps melt, and countless species are being driven to extinction . The solution, argues Jackson, starts with establishing where the planetary boundaries are and then changing the economic system to operate within them. And theres a kind of social logic which has to be addressed as well: the idea that more and more is always better. It doesn't work very well, yet that is what's driving the system. Its not a new argument. Jacksons 2009 book, Prosperity without Growth, made the case for systematic change. Originally an advisory to the UK government, it was dismissed by sceptics as logically impeccable, politically impossible. It became the Sustainable Development Commissions most downloaded report at that time. In 2010, it was named a Financial Times book of the year. In 2016, Jackson was awarded the Hillary Laureate for international leadership in sustainability. Before then Jackson had written a book with an early diagram of the circular economy, now a mainstream concept. He was also a playwright of numerous BBC radio plays, including the award-winning environmental drama series Cry of the Bittern. A lot has happened since 2009, and the state of the ecological world has got measurably worse. Has his message changed? In some ways things have also got better, in the sense that its now possible to have that conversation, more politicians are prepared to have that conversation. In other ways, of course, we're still rushing headlong towards climate change and biodiversity loss, the consumption of materials, and a consumer lifestyle that doesn't seem to have changed very much. Jacksons response is to keep working on the scientific and logical arguments, but also to add to them. His more recent book, Post Growth Life after Capitalism, published 2021, is not a policy document. Rather than try martial statistics or convince with graphs, it told stories of people who, over the ages, have been saying very similar things about the direction of travel of western society, or had been trying to do something different. The story isnt everything you still have to have the data. But theres a balance between understanding the statistics, the logic of it, and understanding the narrative and the vision. Being able to access that narrative and vision is also really important. We can instinctively relate to the idea that the world is finite, that consumerism is not always satisfying, and that inequality is unacceptable. We have a general sense of these ideas, but we don't always know how to express them. We don't always know how to engage with them. Jackson says its important to covey the many places where intervention is possible, and the number of life stories of people who have tried, and sometimes succeeded, in making big changes. He cites the example of the late Wangari Maathai , the founder of the international Green Belt Movement, who starting with planting trees in her native Kenya as a means of improving the lives of rural women living in poverty. This idea that change is impossible is sort of an illusion. Because we know that the world changes all the time. It changes, but not in a linear fashion: one step and then another step, and then things will change progressively and predictably. It doesn't work like that. Sometimes a very small change can lead to a very big change. That sense of change being possible and that starting with what we do in our lives and in the world, that isn't just an aspirational thing. It's born out by historical evidence, and it's born out by the evidence in our lives. Change starts with us and ripples outwards. British Council New Zealand and the Pacific brought Professor Tim Jackson to New Zealand to engage in discussions with New Zealanders about climate change, arts and culture, economics and sustainability.