Episode 125 – Degrowth with Lorenz Keyszer

Macro N Cheese – Episode 125
Degrowth with Lorenz Keyszer
June 19, 2021

 

[00:00:03.540] – Lorenz Keyszer [intro/music]

I use the ecological-economic definition, which sees degrowth as a process of an equitable downscaling of energy resource use in an economy which is coupled to gross domestic product. So GDP is likely to decline or stagnate in such a transition, but societal well-being should be maintained.

[00:00:28.120] – Lorenz Keyszer [intro/music]

This is really, I think, a key point of degrowth as well that we can secure livelihoods and access to the goods and services people need no matter what happens to GDP if we change how our economy functions and what things we prioritize.

[00:01:35.230] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:43.030] – Steve Grumbine

All right, everybody, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. We are going to talk about the environment today in terms of modeling, a concept that I think I get mentally, but I’m going to get deeper into and that is degrowth and the MMT space.

Different people that I know and love pointing me in the direction of folks like Jason Hickel and others that are seen as the leading voices in the degrowth movement. But in this process of digging, I found a gentleman who had written a white paper, and I was fascinated not only by what the white paper said but just his perspectives.

And so I invited my guest. His name is Lorenz Keyszer and Lorenz wrote a paper called One Point Five Degrees Celsius: Degrowth Scenarios Suggests the Need for New Mitigation Pathways. I said, well, let me get this gentleman on. Let’s see what it’s all about, and he was kind enough to accept my invitation not once but twice.

The first opportunity I had to try and get him on with me was on a holiday and I lost track of time and he was kind enough to not make me shame myself further. He accepted the reinvite. And so with that, let me bring on my guest, Lorenz Keyszer. Welcome to the show, sir.

[00:03:13.590] – Lorenz Keyszer

Thanks so much for having me. I’m really glad to be here and talk to you today.

[00:03:18.080] – Grumbine

I really appreciate. So one of the things that I guess for a lot of people, the concept of degrowth runs counter to every economic thought they have. Many in the activist space may say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but a lot of folks have no idea what this means. And I’ll be honest with you, as much as I think I might know, I’m going to say I don’t know anything. And so I wanted to see if before we get into your white paper, maybe first of all, you could tell us a little bit about who you are and then segue into basically what the degrowth space is all about.

[00:03:57.430] – Keyszer

Yeah, sure. Thanks so much again. I am basically a master’s student of environmental systems and policy here in Zurich at ETH, and I started digging into degrowth while I was in an exchange semester at the University of Leeds. And I started writing this paper about which we are going to talk today, together with Manfred Benson at the University of Sydney, where I lived for one year.

And there I did a visiting studentship and there we dug deeper into degrowth and also modeling of common scenarios. So this is where my research focused on during the last years. And regarding degrowth, maybe just to start off, I totally understand that the word really creates confusion for some people because it was designed initially as a missile concept.

To sort of contrast a for many people, negative work with a positive vision, actually, I think the vision of degrowth that’s a really positive one. And this was done also from a marketing perspective, actually, to really subvert the positive meaning aura of growth, which really is omnipresent everywhere in correct discourse really, and to say, you know, it actually isn’t that positive or it’s not necessarily that positive.

And we really need to dig deeper into what things we really want to see increase or grow and other things which we want to decrease. And in this sense there are different definitions to degrowth. I usually use the ecological-economic definition, which sees degrowth as a process of an equitable downscaling of energy resource use in an economy which is coupled to GDP, gross domestic product.

So GDP is likely to decline or stagnate in such a transition, but societal well-being should be maintained or secured in such a transition. So this is sort of a prosperous descent scenario which really tries to decouple well-being from GDP growth and focus on the things that matter directly, no matter what this means for GDP growth. So this is my definition, or approach to degrowth, which is based on a lot of other people, of course, I’m citing here, basically, Giorgos Kallis for his definition.

[00:06:52.440] – Grumbine

It’s interesting because in the MMT community, we always kind of laugh about the term GDP because it really is an indiscriminate measure that doesn’t really tell you a whole lot of anything. If a tornado comes through and destroys Dallas, Texas, any kind of economic activity associated with that counts to GDP. If you have an oil spill in the middle of fresh drinking water and you spend a lot of money to clean it up, it goes to GDP.

And so I guess the question that I’d like to start off with to frame this is when we talk about a degrowth environment, I hear you speaking in terms of energy, which I like, and I guess that would translate next to real resources on the planet as well. But in terms of diminishing GDP, this is one of those things where I would imagine you’re going to have some significant pushback. So help me understand just a little initially, what exactly do you feel would be the focal point for an activist trying to enter into this degrowth space?

[00:08:02.000] – Keyszer

I really think this comes to one core of the degrowth project, really, which is to create a societal democratic discussion about the ways, how we want to live together and how we want to design our societies around which aims we want to design our societies. And this more participatory process than is expected to end up in really discussing, OK, which sectors, for instance, of the economy do we really need and which ones not so much.

[00:08:37.830] – Grumbine

Get rid of finance, right?

[00:08:40.690] – Keyszer

And also, which things do you want to prioritize in the view of the crisis we face because we have brought awareness that we really need to tackle fossil fuel, carbon emissions, and biodiversity laws, etc., and in this sense, we can really have this discussion, OK? We are really in an emergency situation here, although one needs to be careful with this concept, but still we need to act quickly.

And which sectors, which areas of life do we prioritize or which others could be reduced? For instance, one thing comes to mind, which is very prominent with which was very prominent before the pandemic in Europe was reducing air travel, which could be one sector, which is primarily used by a fairly affluent group.

And these discussions are aimed to be had in the society and then from there to go to which are the best, what can we produce? So it’s really about the process and also achieving this outcome of reducing energy and material use, which entails reducing the most polluting activities.

[00:10:05.900] – Grumbine

Very good. We spoke with Rohan Grey on the crypto space and understanding the power pole that’s used currently for their complex mathematical mining operations as they shift to different ways of managing that space. Seems like that’s a major draw of energy as they’re trying to carve out that new governance.

It seems like there are two different important areas that are converging in opposite ways and possibly in conflict. If you don’t have anything to add, it’s fine, but if you did, I would love to know. What are your thoughts in terms of the ecological impact of the crypto space?

[00:10:49.880] – Keyszer

Yeah, so I don’t think that I have much to add because I’m really not an expert in this area. What I just know is that, I mean, there are more or less energy-intensive ways of doing this, I think. And since Bitcoin, I think is one of the worst ways of doing this, because you really push up really high the energy consumption of this. I’m pretty sure there are better ways of doing this if you want to pursue this. And in this sense, I think that Bitcoin could be one sector which we could shrink without noticeable impacts on well-being. So this could be one outcome of this discussion, right? Do we really need that? And is it worth destroying other things for this which impact other people, which are a lot less affluent in the sense? I think there’s also a big discussion about equity and justice, which we need to have.

[00:11:48.900] – Grumbine

Absolutely agree 100 percent. So in your paper, your abstract starts out talking about the IPCC, I guess it was 2017, they came out with a report that said they gave us 11 years. Clearly, time is ticking and physics, as they say, doesn’t negotiate. I am curious, what kind of a time frame do you think we have to take action before we jump into this white paper? When you say we’re looking at a rather urgent situation that requires relatively immediate addressing, what do you think our time frame is if we do nothing?

[00:12:29.010] – Keyszer

Yeah. So I really think this discussion about these deadlines is sort of dangerous in the sense because climate change really harms people already, right? We have a lot of catastrophes already being substantially worsened by climate change and it is progressively becoming worse. And in order to stay below this target of one point five degrees, which was included in the Paris agreement, in order to achieve this target, we really need to immediately and drastically reduce carbon emissions. So out of this 12-year timeline, which was given by the IPCC, really referred to 2030 by which we need to have reduced global CO2 emissions by 50 percent – so half the emissions within the next eight and a half years from now on. And this is really an incredible transformation, which needs to start now or better yesterday. And what I want to emphasize, though, is that even if we reach one point five degrees or even two degrees, it’s always worth fighting for limiting the warming even more because it only gets worse, more and more. It’s most likely not like we hit this no return point after which everything is lost, but it’s really gradually more harm which can be avoided.

[00:14:05.110] – Grumbine

Sure.

[00:14:05.580] – Keyszer

But this really still supports the point we need to act now and we need to act fast and every ton of carbon more in the air is one too much. And I really think that this is enough to really act as quickly as possible.

[00:14:24.490] – Grumbine

Very good. So in your paper, the title being ‘One Point Five Degrees Celsius: Degrowth Scenario’ suggests the need for new mitigation pathways, and that is written by you. And as you stated, Manfred Lenzen. Can you explain the origins of this paper and what the problem is you were attempting to address?

[00:14:47.800] – Keyszer

Yeah. Thanks. So we started to write this paper in early 2019, and this was shortly after this IPCC report you mentioned came out, I think the year before, and I read this report and parts of it, not all of it. And what struck me was that all of these scenarios they look at in order to limit of the warming or climate crisis is the better word. These were about more than 200 scenarios, like many, many scenarios. And all of them really assumed growth and gross domestic product and the pathways with lower growth, such as some of the SSPs are, they called the shared socioeconomic pathways, which are sort of a subset of these scenarios. The lower growth scenarios among them, they combined lower growth with higher challenges to mitigation. So they view lower growth as negatively correlating, more effecting mitigation efforts or as inhibiting mitigation. And so there is no degrowth pathway or no post-growth pathway which combines low or negative economic growth with achieving climate targets and satisfying human needs, securing well-being. And this struck me and I talked about this with Manfred Benson, and he came up with this simple computer model which we use in our paper to sort of compare degrowth scenarios with established modeling. And this was important to us because we also noticed that all these established scenarios, or most of them really, in order to combine economic growth with achieving climate targets, they assume some really unprecedented, far-reaching technological changes. And some of them are really controversial, such as removing hundreds of gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere. And we reviewed this incredibly challenging technological transformation, which they assumed. And then they neglected another pathway, which is uncertain how this pathway could avoid these risky assumptions, right. So we wanted to know, OK, how could a degrowth pathway perform compared to these established pathways in terms of these risky assumptions? Could they perform better than these scenarios? So we took this simple model of energy consumption and carbon emissions and compared the mainstream scenarios with degrowth scenarios which we modeled. And this was the starting point for this paper. And what we found basically was that degrowth performs a lot better in these technological areas than the established scenarios, and it really needs to be researched much more than it currently is.

[00:18:02.100] – Grumbine

That’s very good. One of the things that I find fascinating is so many of the models that we use in economics are just absolutely ridiculous, just rational expectations, and the IS-LM. There’s so many of these what I consider to be fake news, cleric-based neoclassical kind of economics that don’t really tell us anything at all other than how we can lie to one another.

And a friend of mine, you, I’m sure you know Professor Steve Keen has written extensively against guys like [William] Nordhaus, who have used a lot of fake research, as he would say, to basically say that 90 percent of GDP won’t be affected by climate change. And Steve Keen is vocal in his concerns about the destruction of the environment and the use of energy in his own models that he’s been trying to work through himself.

I’m curious, what has been the reception to your paper and the models in general that you lay out? Because I know that models are usually the most picked apart item, especially as other scholars come to the table to review the documents. What has been your reception so far?

[00:19:23.200] – Keyszer

We agree on many aspects with what you just said. Also in the paper, we call on the modeling community to try different paths than the established ones of neoclassical optimization equilibrium model path and call for also a more plural economic perspectives being recognized in the modeling space. The reception so far has been mostly good.

Actually, I was a bit surprised because I also expected more deconstructing of the model itself. And maybe that’s yet to come. We will see. But so far, we have received a fair bit of questions about how we approached this question and we answered them, and so far there was not a big negative response, as far as I can tell. But I think the reason for this is really that our approach was very simple.

I really have to stress this, that our model is really simple and has a lot of limitations in this sense, which were also discussed in the paper. And because it is so simple, it’s very transparent and very obvious where the limits are. it’s not that there are a lot of huge, debatable assumptions and that I think.  So, this makes it a bit resilient against its perspectives appeal. But we will see what happens. It’s still fairly new. So . . .

[00:20:49.260] – Grumbine

Yeah, give it time, I’m sure. I guess starting off, one of the things that you had talked about was the integrated assessment modeling community summarized by the IPCC assume continued economic growth even in wealthy countries, while lack of growth is assumed to hamper mitigation. So start there before we even dive any further. What exactly are the IPCC assumptions? Describe that, and where are they wrong?

[00:21:23.850] – Keyszer

First of all, I really want to stress that the IPCC only summarizes the literature which exists so they don’t do modeling themselves. So basically what we criticize in the paper is more the broader modeling community itself, not specifically the IPCC. And with regard to the scenarios themselves, I think there’s a lot of great work that I really have to stress this, that there’s a lot of really detailed and complex work being done, which is important for addressing climate change.

But there are some really big limitations, I think, of the modeling, which are more and more recognized as well. First of all, because these models are so complex, it’s really hard to evaluate them and to look behind this black box and look at specific assumptions. So this makes it really hard for non-experts to look at them. And I have to say that I myself, I also don’t know like one model very well.

I think if you want to do that you need years of detailed engagement with that. So this is really a big limitation, I feel. And this then leads to other problems, which is that the model structure, how they are built, is mostly cost minimization approach, that they aim at achieving a certain temperature target and do this with the least economic effort.

And this then is done via cost curves, which evaluate technological and behavioral options based on their carbon mitigation potential and costs. And what this leads to is that always the cheapest option is chosen first before the more expensive ones. The problem is that technological options are much more easier to evaluate in these times than, for instance, behavioral changes or more systematic social changes, such as switching to car-sharing and reducing food waste, etc.

I think this is more and more coming to the models, but it’s really harder to detail this in the model. And adding to this, this also leads to some sort of cost reductionism, right, that we don’t look at other aspects which are important. For instance, many models really privilege bio-energy to carbon capture and storage.

It’s called BECCS which is a technology to soak carbon out of the atmosphere and by planting biomass and then burning this, creating energy and pumping this underground. But this has really severe consequences, for instance, for ecosystems, water usage, land use, etc. But the model really only looks at costs. And this is one big criticism.

And the other is that there’s hardly any feedback between energy efficiency and growth in the sense that rebound effects are not taken into account or mostly not taken into account, which reduce the effectiveness of efficiency improvements. If we have an electric car, which is much more efficient than a combustion engine car, then people would drive it more because they feel like, yeah, this is now green and sustainable and this leads to less reductions originally planned.

And so these are like many aspects which are in these models which are not taken into account, which lead to this sort of growth optimism as we see it in these models.

[00:25:15.310] – Grumbine

Do you think that any of these kinds of changes would happen organically, or will this require governments regulating these things out of existence and regulating the business community to change how they evaluate themselves?

[00:25:31.500] – Keyszer

Do you mean these technological options?

[00:25:34.920] – Grumbine

Well, when you think about the opportunity for businesses to maximize what they would look at as shareholder value as they grow, they focus on growth beyond GDP. In this capitalistic world that we live in, unfortunately, companies have a bottom line that they’ve got to meet to address shareholders, and shareholders are looking for growth, always looking for growth.

So my question is, it may be this is a question for a larger conversation, but in general, so many of these concepts and ideas assume several things, right? If there’s an actual mitigation plan put in place, either a central authority has made these decisions. The businesses themselves see the need to regulate themselves and make choices based on that, or I don’t know how these things come to be.

And I’m curious, given the extreme nature of the problem, what it might take to enact even to push forward with any of this stuff is this more of ‘this is the right thing to do – here’s the model to see it.’ And whatever you do, I mean, it’s not my territory. Or do you have some ideas on how mitigation plans might get enacted?

[00:26:52.030] – Keyszer

I really think this depends on what kind of mitigation plan you want to pursue in this, because currently what is often talked about, and I agree that you need a more active role of the state here to direct massive investment programs into renewable energy that you need to probably put the fossil fuel industry and the social control to regulate them on a just transition pathway, which enables workers to transition into sunrise sectors, away from sunset ones.

And I think what degrowth really brings to the table additionally is that it highlights that this quick transformation, which we need, really needs to be much more participatory democratically than we are used to also because to address the dangers which come from this state-focused approach in terms of authoritarianism.

But on the other hand, to really increase acceptance and by and by the people for such a transformation and to ensure that it’s a just transition, that equality is respected and this transition does not go on top of all the burdens which are already there for marginalized people and also people with less financial resources, etc.

[00:28:35.170] – Intermission

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[00:29:22.560] – Grumbine

We have championed in the United States anyway and really around the world the concept of a right to a job, a government job guarantee, and in our Green-New-Deal-focused minds, it incorporates a couple of things. Number one, it keeps people prepared to mobilize in their local communities. But number two, it also provides a challenge against the concept of what work even is.

By shifting to care work and more socially redeeming work within the communities that have long since been left behind and ignored because they weren’t deemed as profitable. It seems like this is another opportunity here to converge multiple heterodox viewpoints into a coherent plan. It seems like there’s an opportunity there to really provide an angle. But you said something else, too, which is equally important. And that’s the just transition.

All those people working in sunset or dirty jobs that are causing damage, those individuals are still people. Their families still need to eat. Just because they work in an industry that has done damage doesn’t make them any less worth saving. So the just transition is very important there. I’m curious as to what your thoughts are, what that just transition might look like.

[00:30:52.550] – Keyszer

So I think these are really complex questions, which we really need to look much more into, and this was also the core point of our paper that we really need to look into these questions much more thoroughly than it is being done. And in terms of what you said about the Green New Deal and job guarantee, I think they’re really big opportunities to work together.

And also from degrowth perspective, these are really important projects which we need to pursue, and which I think there’s a lot of potential alliances there. In terms of just transition, I think a big step in the right direction is definitely to work together with unions within these industries because oftentimes also the workers themselves notice that something’s not right and that we need to do things differently.

And what is wanted is the security that they’re not left behind. And this can be pursued, as you said, through things like a job guarantee, which is locally anchored, or also things like universal basic services and basic income. These things to take away this fear of people to lose their livelihoods, to lose access to social participation, etc., and this is really, I think, a key point of degrowth as well, that we can secure livelihoods and access to the goods and services people need, no matter what happens to GDP, if we change how our economy functions and what things we prioritize. I mean, how all of this works in detail is . . .

[00:32:40.550] – Grumbine

Complicated.

[00:32:41.630] – Keyszer

Yeah, definitely. And I also think that we can chart rough pathways which can be pursued. But in the end, it’s really crucial to work together with the people there which are locally in place experiencing things, are affected by it, and build this bottom-up grassroots counterpart in the sense to ensure that this is a really just transition.

[00:33:11.750] – Grumbine

One of the nicest guys I know, his name is Phil Lawn and he’s an environmental economist out of Australia and he has been advancing this genuine progress indicator as a more sustainable view of economics as opposed to GDP. This is more of a sidebar than anything else, but have you heard of the genuine progress indicator?

[00:33:34.800] – Keyszer

Yes, I have heard of it, but I haven’t dug into it in detail, but I think these tentative indicators are really important work. And they also show that in many rich countries where GDP has grown over time, but these are tentative indicators such as the genuine progress indicator have not because they account for the costs of growth much better than GDP can.

And they really yield very good support for the thesis that in rich countries, more growth is not needed but many different things, such as, you know, more time for social relations, more care work and also less stress in the sense . . .

[00:34:20.880] – Grumbine

Let everyone share in the Commons, if you will, and the good life, instead of allowing automation’s benefits to benefit only the top. A gentleman the other night said, imagine a 28-hour workweek, visualize the 28-hour workweek as opposed to 40. I know a lot of other countries have better working arrangements than they do in the United States.

We quite literally have pretty awful ones. But on a global scale, one of the things that jumped out at me and I’m going to come back to Steve Keen. We had talked and he said, “I’m terribly afraid that we won’t do the right things in the right time and that the only reason will even take action is because things become so unbearable that we’ll have to.”

And he envisioned a takeover by the military basically as a centralized authority to make these changes happen. You think about what climate migrants might look like and some of these groups are natural enemies. You look at India and Pakistan, and as climate change turns various areas more arid and very inhospitable to living conditions, I can see a lot of mass migrations as a result of this.

And I am curious as to what your thoughts are in terms of the human factor within this space as coastal communities are endangered either by rising sea tides or algae blooms and other things that come as a result of melting. What are your thoughts on the idea of climate refugees, and I think we’re already seeing it now, but I suspect it can only get worse if we don’t take action.

[00:36:06.180] – Keyszer

So first of all, I want to say that degrowth is opposed to these more authoritarian views, that we need some sort of dictator to implement these changes, and it’s really trying to prevent this by strengthening these grassroots democracy and empathy among people and cooperation among people, really. Also, if crisis hit and I mean, they are hitting, as you said already in many, many places that we can react to them well, justly and with respect to the most harmed and most affected people, really.

And in terms of climate refugees, I really think that this is also a lot of work which needs to be done in the rich countries, that we really take responsibility for the damages we have inflicted on other countries. What matters for climate change and the impacts from this climate breakdown is cumulative carbon emissions and rich countries.

The EU and the US in particular, they have by far the highest responsibility for that. And in this sense, we really need to help these people as good as possible. And this implies to me really reparations, some form of reparation. And we really need to have this discussion. How can we support these people and prevent the mistakes which have been done through new colonial structures which are dominant in many global institutions such as the World Trade Organization?

These topics we really need to talk about how can we empower these people to demand more just global systems? And this could mean, for instance, a deep democratization of these institutions. And this can really, I think, do a lot to also increase resilience because then they have the freedom to really invest in their own well-being independently of the debt payments to the global north and really develop their own ways of well-being.

And I think this is a really complex topic, but all these things need to be taken into account. And degrowth sees itself as a contribution from the global north to increase this freedom and space for the global south to address climate change and to increase this global justice in a sense.

[00:38:47.460] – Grumbine

That’s great. I work with a gentleman named Fadhel Kaboub, who focuses most of his time on a global green new deal with reparations, as you just said. And he works within the Rosa Luxemburg group with a gentleman named Ndongo Samba Sylla, who is just phenomenal. Both of them are focused on a global green new deal and the global south.

And so many of these nations that lack food sovereignty, lack energy sovereignty and some of the technological wherewithal to produce things in a clean fashion, in a sustainable way. And the idea of giving reparations as we’ve destroyed those communities and extracted so much of their nation’s wealth through these global conglomerates and predatory entities, it seems like degrowth, I should say, is only a part of this.

And this is an angle you’re saying can provide a lot of opportunity to restructure society if I’m reading between things in a way that provides a more just and equitable distribution. But one of the things that I guess comes to mind here as we go through this is the fear that people have with both the concept of degrowth, just a fear of the term like in the U.S. we had so many fears of socialism and communism that are founded in propaganda.

But in this particular sense, as you’re advancing these models and ideas, it seems like that kind of grassroots fire that you’re talking about is the absolute best way to overcome that, a shared destiny kind of approach. I hate to see the U.S. become imperialistic in their love for humanity as they try to bring them into the new climate world, right. Just see so many things that terrify me there.

But in terms of determination that these local levels where they do lack sovereignty in terms of food production and so forth, what would you say would be an equitable, non-imperialistic way of helping them through this process?

[00:41:04.530] – Keyszer

So I think this is really difficult because we are in such a bad place historically, right? That’s a lot of debt and mistakes made and damage done. So I think the first step is really to listen and to learn what are the demands and the views from these people and countries. And there are a lot of social movements down there in the global south which have their own visions of how we should go forward on this.

And this what’s also called the two rivers, right where they are two rivers or approaches to the good life to in the sense paths of development. And the global north really has, I think, the obligation to really listen and act on the demands from the global south. And, for instance, the Cochabamba Declaration from many social movements and many social movements in the global south, they demand degrowth in the global north in order to decrease all the extraction, all the resource use which occurs in the global south, and the pollution as well, in order to support northern growth, right?

So I think this is really a big part of this humility and also a reciprocal learning because maybe we in the north can learn a lot from these social movements down there in terms of how one can live well without destroying life. But in this sense, it needs to be like a reciprocal thing, I mean, sure, the north also has a duty to support technological developments or we can also talk about the pandemic, you know, patent waivers.

[00:42:54.460] – Grumbine

Oh, yes.

[00:42:55.490] – Keyszer

Could be a big one, which would free up a lot of resources and do a lot of good. So this is really like a conversation which needs to be had, and that’s a lot of listening work to do, I think from the global north.

[00:43:11.530] – Grumbine

Absolutely. One of the things that you had brought up and we’ve kind of touched on in various ways through this conversation, is the idea of still maintaining well-being during a degrowth movement. And I think that ends up becoming somewhat subjective. Survival’s not subjective. You either live or you die. But in terms of what qualifies as maintaining well-being, is that strictly a health-related thing? Is that joy and happiness? How do you measure maintaining well-being?

[00:43:48.880] – Keyszer

So this is a really good question, I think, and one which is also much debated in degrowth circles. And what’s usually pursued here is a real well-being in terms of satisfying human needs. And these needs, in terms of the human needs theories which describe them, they are really objective and satiable: You need food, you need shelter, you need health care, these sort of things.

In terms of how we satisfy these needs, there’s a lot of cultural and also subjective elements in that. For transport, we could choose a bike or an SUV, right? And this is how we as a society choose to satisfy these needs, depends on a lot of factors. So degrowth postulates that it could be maintaining well-being also in terms of subjective well-being, in terms of happiness.

If a lot of things change also in terms of values, what we value as people, if you are super attached to your yearly or monthly, even aviation trip around the globe, then probably you will feel the sense was an ethical issue because you won’t have that anymore. But if you combine this with realizing, OK, I don’t even know my neighborhood and this is actually very exciting to get to know what’s around here.

And then this change doesn’t need to be perceived as a loss, can actually be perceived as a huge enrichment because you learn a lot, you feel a lot better because, you know, you don’t burn the future and present of many people. But in this sense, it’s probably clear that for some groups of people, this would be a hard change to make.

And will come not without its conflicts for sure, but this is exactly this discussion which needs to be had, that we come together, you know, for instance, through citizens assemblies and discuss what’s actually really necessary. And I think what’s also shown by experience is that oftentimes these assemblies when people talk to each other, there are some surprising things which come out of that.

[00:46:13.690] – Grumbine

It’s great to see so much energy finally being focused on mobilization for these types of things, and I think it’s been a long time coming. I think you’ve seen niches in pockets of people, but I think you’re seeing a much larger energy, if you will, personal energy in terms of bringing this to the fore. One of the big questions I have, I guess, to close us out here is on the technology side.

I’ve heard an awful lot of technology solutions that are founded on some idea of something that maybe we could develop things like thorium reactors and these deep, well, filtration things where we can provide not only irrigation for arid areas, but also produce energy from the water coming through these devices. It seems like we probably need a pluralistic approach to this. We can’t throw out technology, but we can’t necessarily depend on it either. Is that a fair statement or do you think this really comes down to degrowth?

[00:47:20.550] – Keyszer

So what we found often in our modeling of degrowth scenarios, which we did in a very simplified way, was that if we are to hit one point five degrees, you need a huge technological revolution in every scenario. Also, we had a one scenario which is called the Decent Living Energy Scenario, which was based on a recent paper which estimated the minimum energy, which we would need to have a decent standard of health care, housing, transport, internet, etc.

And this is a massive reduction compared to today. But you still need these technological changes. You need super-efficient technology and renewable energy. We really need that and very quickly, but you can combine it with efficiency, with reducing production and consumption to a level which is necessary. And this makes it a lot easier, this technological transformation faster.

The mitigation rates which rich countries need to achieve are huge. And I think it’s really problematic to leave out one lever, one mitigation effort by reducing consumption production. But we definitely need technological measures. What degrowth really adds is that we need to discuss what are the measures and who controls them.

Who is affected by them, and how do we negotiate and create convivial technologies that respect ecosystems and are controllable by people. And these additions come together in degrowth. So degrowth really is not anti-technology or something. It’s really about the kind of technology and the scale.

[00:49:13.430] – Grumbine

1. Would you say that there might be a spike in GDP prepping for this, or is this something where you walk in and you just cut? Seems to me like the changes and transformations that would need to take place directly impact not only the way cities are managed in terms of energy and transportation and personal choices.

But also it seems like there might be more opportunities there to expand investments in, like we said, the technology. But it seems like expenditures on reframing society to be able to prepare for this might create a spike in growth for a bit anyway. What are your thoughts there?

[00:50:01.320] – Keyszer

Yes, so this is the one line of green growth arguing that if we invest in renewable energy and this technological transformation, then this will cause GDP to grow and not shrink. Right? But the thing is that there’s no evidence that we can reduce carbon emissions fast enough without affecting growth, because the decarbonization rates, which we have seen, they’re very low compared to what we need – at least three times too low.

And if we would prioritize reducing energy material use, because climate breakdown is not the only problem we have, right? We have other problems as well, other planetary boundaries, such as biodiversity and avalanches, change and so on, which are very much affected also by material use in many ways, such as mining, for instance.

And if we prioritize reducing carbon emissions and focusing on sufficiency, which means repairing things, not by new focusing on labor-intensive job creation, implementing a carbon tax to make polluting more expensive, which will also affect energy prices for sure, and things like reduce air travel or reduce the size of homes, then these are all changes which will in all likelihood reduce the growth of GDP.

The same thing happens when you look at things which are socially desirable, that we work less, we automate only things which are not pleasant to people when we shift to more labor-intensive jobs, which are less polluting, then this is also things which are not the most GDP productive activities. So from this, it follows basically the degrowth analysis.

If we do the right thing, we reduce energy consumption, reduce carbon emissions, increase social welfare through less working time and more enjoyable activities, more care work, etc., then this will likely negatively affect GDP. But that’s OK. GDP is not a good indicator of welfare in rich countries. So what we need to discuss is then what keeps us from doing these right things?

And oftentimes it’s the fear that people lose jobs and social security is missing, etcetera. So these are the growth dependencies or imperatives within the system and we need to reduce these and become growth independent in terms of our well-being. And then we can do the right things no matter what happens to GDP growth.

[00:52:54.210] – Grumbine

Lorenz, thank you so much for this time. I’ve learned a lot from you, and I appreciate being able to synthesize some of the things that were in my mind with the work that you’ve done. I guess for our listeners, please let us all know where we might be able to find more of your work and how we might be able to follow you. I really appreciate it.

[00:53:17.380] – Keyszer

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was really a great pleasure to talk to you. And people can find me on Twitter under Lorenzclimate. Yeah, I think that’s the best way to find me. The paper can also be found online or on Researchgate. It’s all there, I think.

[00:53:35.580] – Grumbine

Yes. It’s under Nature Communications 12, article number 2676 from 2021. And I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this. I’m going to try and get hold of Jason Hickel and folks like Kate Raworth and try to get these things out there more. I’m a really big believer in your work. I really appreciate the time you took with me today and our audience, and I hope we can talk again in the future.

[00:54:02.580] – Keyszer

Same here. Absolutely. A pleasure to talk to you. And thanks so much also for your important work. I think it’s really important to bring across all this complicated language, which is often also unnecessary in the papers to a wider audience of activism. That’s absolutely crucial.

[00:54:21.060] – Grumbine

Thank you so much. So this is Steve Grumbine and Lorenz Keyszer with Macro N Cheese. We’re out of here.

[00:54:33.900] – Ending credits

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Mindy Donham. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.