Written by
Allan Todd
You just
never know what to expect! Keswick’s annual literary festival, Words By The
Water, has previously thrown up some ‘interesting’ events: including the
appearance of a war criminal in 2013 (Jack Straw) and, this year, of a
neoliberal now desperately trying to claim that, despite voting FOR the Bedroom
Tax, he was always against austerity (Vince Cable)!
This year’s
festival has just ended. Whilst I expected to be buying several books connected
to the various interesting talks for which I’d booked tickets, I never expected
to come away convinced of the need for a doughnut! But that is exactly what
happened!
However, the
‘doughnut’ in question isn’t one of those delightful sugary & fatty ones
that, sadly, aren’t that good for you: instead it’s one that is VITAL for the
health of the planet! It’s a ‘doughnut’ that we all really need - but one that
is especially needed by the world’s current crop of politicians and economists.
Though it’s not one neoliberals will be keen on. Maybe, like the women who went
on hunger strike 100 years ago, as part of their struggle to gain the vote, we
shall just have to force feed these particular economists and politicians!
The essence of the Doughnut: a social
foundation of well-being that no one should fall below, and an ecological
ceiling of planetary pressure that we should not go beyond. Between the two
lies a safe and just space for all.
Kate Raworth,
2017.
Early Eco-Socialism and the planet
In early
1848, The Communist Manifesto - written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - was
published. While it is widely known that Marx and Engels wanted social and
economic justice, these two - until recently - have not been seen as having
been very concerned about environmental issues.
However, it
is now increasingly recognised that they were, in fact, early Eco-Socialists
who were fully aware of how the capitalist Industrial Revolution of the 19th.
C. was threatening the environment, and of the need for economic development to
be in harmony with the natural world and thus sustainable.
Their short
1848 book began with this famous short sentence:
‘A spectre is
haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism.’
Now, 170
years since their book was first published, a new spectre is haunting planet
Earth - the spectre of catastrophic climate breakdown as a result of global
warming. This spectre is now threatening the very stable conditions of the
Holocene epoch which have lasted for about 12,000 years. These are the climatic
conditions which have enabled the human species to thrive via agriculture.
The Anthropocene
In fact, the
growing threats to, and mounting pressures on, planet Earth have led most Earth
scientists to conclude that the geological epoch known as the Holocene has
already been left behind. Instead, they argue that, since about 1950, we have
been living in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
In the
Anthropocene - unlike previous in previous geological epochs and ages - the
overwhelming majority of factors now affecting the global climate are the
result of human activities, NOT the usual natural changes. Most of those
human-led changes are down to the great increases in greenhouse gas emissions
resulting from the use of fossil fuels - mostly since the start of the ‘Great
Acceleration’ in economic growth that began after the end of the Second World
War.
The Doughnut
A previous
article - Living in the Anthropocene, August 2017:
- dwelt on
the various causes of current climate breakdown. However, as in medicine, the point is to move
on from diagnosis of a particular problem to the cure of that problem. And this
is where that ‘doughnut’ comes in! That
‘doughnut’ - an economic and ecological one - has been ‘cooked’ by Kate
Raworth, currently a Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s
Environmental Change Institute, and a Senior Associate of the Ambridge
Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
Previously,
she has worked as Senior Researcher at Oxfam, as a Fellow of the Overseas
Development Institute, and was a co-author of the UN’s Development Programme.
In addition, she has been named by the Guardian as ‘one of the top ten tweeters
on economic transformation.’ For those interested in these issues - and perhaps
wanting to contribute to on-line discussions - here is a useful link:
What makes
her book, Doughnut Economics (2017), so valuable at this present time is that
she goes beyond identifying problems to mapping out, in a very accessible way,
how we can go about dealing with these problems - before it is too late. If her
book is read widely and purposefully, it has the potential to be much more
influential than Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto.
A picture IS worth a thousand words!
Her book is
especially accessible for non-economists because her points are usually made -
deliberately - via interesting illustrations. Particularly important is her
whole concept of the ‘Doughnut’ -
that ‘safe
and just space for humanity’, between the social foundation and the ecological
ceiling:
Now IS the time!
This whole
concept is based on the need to develop a ‘new economics’ for the 21st C. and
its current problems, which is focussed on regeneration and redistribution.
However, the point of this book is not just to read it - it is to act on it.
This is especially true as she, like most Earth system scientists, is fully
aware that four key planetary boundaries (out of the nine which have been
identified) have already been breached - as a direct result of human economic
activities:
These
breaches have thus already gone beyond the ecological ceiling that Kate Raworth
has identified as the upper limit for a ‘safe and just space’. Hence the
importance of what she has termed
‘The
twenty-first-century challenge’: to get into, and stay in, the space in which
‘we can meet the needs of all within the means of the planet.’
The Seven Ways
The bulk of
the book deals with the seven main ways she has identified as essential to
getting people to think like 21st. C economists:
1. Change the
Goal (from continuously chasing after ever-rising GDP)
2. See the
Big Picture (recognise the contribution of the home and the commons to a
genuinely socially-embedded economy)
3. Nurture
Human Nature (moving from individualistic economic goals to focussing on the
nurturing of social adaptable humans)
4. Get Savvy
with Systems (by developing economic systems that are based on dynamic
complexity)
5. Design to
Distribute (ensuring that economies are distributive by design, in order to
create social and economic justice, rather than leaving it to the market)
6. Create to
Regenerate (instead of leaving it up to growth and the market to ‘solve’
problems of pollution, economies are deliberately designed to be regenerative)
7. Be
Agnostic about Growth (moving to a situation where ‘growth’ per se becomes less
important - putting quality of life above continuous growth in products)
Hopefully,
there’s enough outlined above to get you running to your local bookshop - and
then you can put into practice what Gandhi said:
‘Be the change you want to see
in the world.’
Allan Todd is
a member of Allerdale & Copeland Green Party, an anti-fracking activist and a Green Left supporter
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