By Karl Johan Bonnedahl
Starting points for this reflection were stock prices which rose when Corona related unemployment and deaths were still mounting, and the massive amounts of money made available to get mainly the same economies going again. Not that this surprised me, but at times like these, we can both see some of the deeper societal structures from new angles and get a little hope for change. Hence, this reflection relates to some of the earlier blog posts here, not least the ones of Lisa Juangbhanich and of Toni Ruuska and colleagues.
As a background, decades of research and talk about humanity’s ecological challenges has not changed the course of the human enterprise. Like our predecessors on Easter Island, but with other objects to worship, recent generations have continued on a path of exploitation. This ugly truth is hidden behind a smokescreen of technological improvement and eco-efficiency. The latter is an economic concept telling how productive we are when we use nature and should not make us believe that our ecological dealings is getting better. In other words, it is about the relative improvements often connected with “development”, while the absolute environmental impact continue upwards.
As a global illustration, last year’s SDG report of the UN showed that developed countries, compared to the developing, just used a fifth of the natural resources for the same amount of economic value. In ecological terms, these are useless facts. The same report told us that the material footprint per capita has increased at an alarming rate, and that it is strongly related to the income-level of countries (the average inhabitant of high-income countries being 13 times ecologically heavier than the one of low-income countries).
Quite obviously, the goal of this development has not been to reduce biodiversity, increase temperature or spread substances and waste from our industrial and consumerist systems. These are just, since a long time, well-known and accepted side-effects. When we are confronted with facts about these, we normally don’t stop with the causing acts; we start talking about how we can get rid of the effects without changing the acts or the values and priorities behind the acts. This approach can only lead to relative decreases in environmental impact, while absolute pressure continue to rise.
What we may need is some kind of acute social or economic crisis to react in appropriate ways to the permanent ecological crisis. Will the Corona situation be used as such an opportunity?
As regards ecological challenges, both effects and causalities often appear unclear to us. It is easier to go for what’s seen and voiced clearly in the crisis, like failed companies and unemployment. In principle, all the governmental money invested now could be spent on new types of (“green”) jobs, but an obstacle is that governments, probably like the former rulers on Easter Island, are too unwilling to see the root causes to problems. Some of the money will certainly be spent on trying to cover the chimney (e.g. criteria for Air France to receive support), but can we really expect attempts to extinguish the fire?
As root causes, one crucial category has to do with ethics. Unfortunately, I believe that the universal care for others and the future, presumed in the sustainable development discourse, is quite far from the reality. It may even be a definite obstacle to a sustainable future. Instead, I will comment on the role of money as one of the system components of contemporary society. It’s relevant as means in the attempts to recover economies, but it’s not enough that we change what money is used for (“green investment”); we should also change its role. I see the following problems:
Money is based on debt in a system of continuous expansion, implying a continuous chase for economic return.
The chase drives a commodification and market exchange of what entrepreneurial people can find in nature.
These processes have detached the use of money from the usefulness of objects, spaces and systems (a move from use value to exchange value).
Money is also largely detached from real goods and services (money is invested to get money), which increases the role of financial capital in relation to other types of capital.
Together with preferences, money is also the key component demand, the central mechanism of the markets. This means that markets will not allocate resources in relation to needs (which are unrelated or negatively related to the possession of money).
While it is close to a tautology that money is a servant of the financially wealthy, a reflection over these systemic features is necessary if we really want to save our house from the fire. In relation to the governmental money now spent on recovery, I would first suggest three simple principles:
Don’t support any of the old fossil-dependent industries, like airlines and car manufacturers
Spend money on people rather than on companies. This is more likely both to promote change and to meet needs.
Link any company support to strict sustainability criteria
To bring more systemic change, I would add the following more difficult issues related to money:
Bring the financial system under political control (which would include reduced possibilities for large private banks to create money)
Reduce the relative role of market transactions in society by introducing other allocation mechanisms than demand/money
Replace the use of quantitative (monetary) economic growth as indicator of progress with relevant qualitative indicators
Introduce caps (absolute criteria) for the protection of common resources (including the use of products such as petrol), under which markets may still operate
Similarly, combine costs with personal quotas to make transition more fair (e.g. permits for the use of private car or flights)
Introduce formulas for maximum salaries or wage differences (e.g. no more than a one to five or one to three quota between the lowest and highest pay in organisations)
Among other needed changes related to money is the need to reduce or even phase out the possibility to privately buy and own natural entities such as land and genetic material. A sustainable society also needs modernized forms of organisation, not based on the reduced financial risk of the investor. Rather, forms which promote responsibility and the common good must be found.
Changing direction isn’t easy, but today is a good time to begin.