Thanks for this Leo, you're bringing some clear-eyed thinking to the conundrum, I don't know how other people feel, but I've been swimming in the postgrowth-degrowth-donut-greengrowth waters to the point of treading water in stasis, it's so necessary to hold all the contradictions, be prepared to directly face them, and move forward, and you're providing valuable impetus.
In addition to your bit on green growth, see also slide #24 from Nat Bullard's Decarbonization trends report, shows ~15 yr trend of absolute decoupling in UK. https://www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations
For example, whether we can decouple to zero carbon before we hit 3 degrees heating is moot.
But the point is, we've got to do what we can *now* at the nitty gritty in the trenches level, and ok, there's the macro policy level carbon/biosphere wrangling, and sure, there's the quicksand of "sustainability-as-usual" (see recovering sustainability consultant https://blorrainesmith.medium.com) and yes we're seeing the evidence of market failures all around, but, whatever shape the green economy takes there will be money, markets and exchange. And any economy needs to create a surplus, and that in many respects is what marketing is here to do, so "thinking holistically across the value chain" is going to be seriously important.
Just as greenwashing is pernicious, and having been immersed in this since reading "Prosperity w/out Growth", on the flip side there is a dismissal of marketing, in Tim Jackson's words, as "spiritual impoverishment". I think this has taken hold in a pernicious, good vs evil morality myth that's detached from economic reality. I'm not here to wax lyrical about Edgar Wrights McD's ad, obviously we want to end factory farming & trivial ads for factory farming, but neither in the next 10-20 yrs are we going to witness a mass de-industrial-re-ruralization local agrarian economy a la Schumacher, nor is there going to be a straightforward transition to vegan-solar-punk-15-minute cities.
For a future-facing general Prosperity, the reality will be a bricolage of new ideas, stuff we haven't even started to think about yet, a re-engineering of consumption, beyond this simplistic "off switch", and that's part of the challenge, marketing has got to get beyond linear growth models to be part of designing ways of working & living, and making money, within planetary boundaries. Perhaps creative thinking and real world implementation can play a role in diffusing the "green growth or degrowth" academic squabble.
Rupert, thanks for the really thoughtful helpful and well referenced comment. Lots to dig into here. Either way, I love your pragmatism and the balance view you strike. Appreciate it.
Thanks for this Leo, you're bringing some clear-eyed thinking to the conundrum, I don't know how other people feel, but I've been swimming in the postgrowth-degrowth-donut-greengrowth waters to the point of treading water in stasis, it's so necessary to hold all the contradictions, be prepared to directly face them, and move forward, and you're providing valuable impetus.
In addition to your bit on green growth, see also slide #24 from Nat Bullard's Decarbonization trends report, shows ~15 yr trend of absolute decoupling in UK. https://www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations
And in the interests of being crystal clear here is degrowther Tim Parrique's lengthy dissection on the failures of decoupling https://timotheeparrique.com/decoupling-in-the-ipcc-ar6-wgiii/
For example, whether we can decouple to zero carbon before we hit 3 degrees heating is moot.
But the point is, we've got to do what we can *now* at the nitty gritty in the trenches level, and ok, there's the macro policy level carbon/biosphere wrangling, and sure, there's the quicksand of "sustainability-as-usual" (see recovering sustainability consultant https://blorrainesmith.medium.com) and yes we're seeing the evidence of market failures all around, but, whatever shape the green economy takes there will be money, markets and exchange. And any economy needs to create a surplus, and that in many respects is what marketing is here to do, so "thinking holistically across the value chain" is going to be seriously important.
Just as greenwashing is pernicious, and having been immersed in this since reading "Prosperity w/out Growth", on the flip side there is a dismissal of marketing, in Tim Jackson's words, as "spiritual impoverishment". I think this has taken hold in a pernicious, good vs evil morality myth that's detached from economic reality. I'm not here to wax lyrical about Edgar Wrights McD's ad, obviously we want to end factory farming & trivial ads for factory farming, but neither in the next 10-20 yrs are we going to witness a mass de-industrial-re-ruralization local agrarian economy a la Schumacher, nor is there going to be a straightforward transition to vegan-solar-punk-15-minute cities.
For a future-facing general Prosperity, the reality will be a bricolage of new ideas, stuff we haven't even started to think about yet, a re-engineering of consumption, beyond this simplistic "off switch", and that's part of the challenge, marketing has got to get beyond linear growth models to be part of designing ways of working & living, and making money, within planetary boundaries. Perhaps creative thinking and real world implementation can play a role in diffusing the "green growth or degrowth" academic squabble.
Rupert, thanks for the really thoughtful helpful and well referenced comment. Lots to dig into here. Either way, I love your pragmatism and the balance view you strike. Appreciate it.