WEBVTT 00:30.000 --> 00:40.000 ♪ 00:40.000 --> 00:50.020 ♪ 00:50.020 --> 01:00.020 ♪ 01:00.020 --> 01:10.040 ♪ 01:10.040 --> 01:20.040 ♪ 01:20.040 --> 01:30.060 ♪ 01:30.060 --> 01:40.060 ♪ 01:40.060 --> 01:50.080 ♪ 01:50.080 --> 02:00.080 ♪ 02:00.080 --> 02:10.100 ♪ 02:10.100 --> 02:20.100 ♪ 02:20.100 --> 02:30.120 ♪ 02:30.120 --> 02:40.120 ♪ 02:40.120 --> 02:50.140 ♪ 02:50.140 --> 03:00.140 ♪ 03:00.140 --> 03:10.160 ♪ 03:10.160 --> 03:20.160 ♪ 03:20.160 --> 03:30.180 ♪ 03:30.180 --> 03:40.180 ♪ 03:40.180 --> 03:50.180 ♪ 03:50.180 --> 03:52.180 Thank you. 03:52.180 --> 04:09.180 Applause. 04:09.180 --> 04:13.180 Dear friends of Arne Næss, dear Rector, 04:13.180 --> 04:16.180 welcome to the 15th Arne Næss Symposium 04:16.180 --> 04:19.180 on Global Justice and the Environment. 04:19.180 --> 04:22.180 Now, the divine music you've just heard, 04:22.180 --> 04:25.180 very ecological, has been composed 04:25.180 --> 04:30.180 especially for our event by Lasse Thoresen, 04:30.180 --> 04:32.180 one of the leading Norwegian composers. 04:32.180 --> 04:35.180 And it's been played with a special 04:35.180 --> 04:38.180 brio and flair and mastery 04:38.180 --> 04:41.180 by Maiken Mathisen Schau. 04:41.180 --> 04:44.180 So I think, give them another round of applause. 04:44.180 --> 04:53.180 Applause. 04:53.180 --> 04:55.180 Thank you. 04:55.180 --> 04:58.180 Thank you very much for your generosity 04:58.180 --> 05:01.180 to music and to art. 05:01.180 --> 05:06.180 Now, I'd like to ask all absent-minded people here 05:06.180 --> 05:10.180 to turn off their iPhones, just in case, 05:10.180 --> 05:15.180 because we are going to hear our rector, 05:15.180 --> 05:18.180 who kindly agreed to say a few words 05:18.180 --> 05:20.180 and open the symposium. 05:20.180 --> 05:22.180 Svein Stølen, the floor is yours. 05:22.180 --> 05:23.180 Thank you. 05:23.180 --> 05:26.180 We're delighted to have you here with us. 05:26.180 --> 05:32.180 Applause. 05:32.180 --> 05:34.180 Thank you so much, and very happy to be here. 05:34.180 --> 05:36.180 The most important is that we are going to listen 05:36.180 --> 05:38.180 to the words of Jason Hickel, of course, 05:38.180 --> 05:40.180 but still, it's a great pleasure to be here. 05:40.180 --> 05:43.180 So, dear colleagues, dear students, dear friends 05:43.180 --> 05:46.180 of the university, it's a great pleasure to welcome you 05:46.180 --> 05:48.180 to this year's Arne Næss Symposium, 05:48.180 --> 05:50.180 the 2023 symposium. 05:50.180 --> 05:54.180 Special warm welcome to Jason Hickel, professor. 05:54.180 --> 05:56.180 He is, and hold your breath, 05:56.180 --> 05:59.180 professor at the Institute for Environmental Science 05:59.180 --> 06:03.180 and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, 06:03.180 --> 06:05.180 visiting senior fellow at the International 06:05.180 --> 06:08.180 Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics, 06:08.180 --> 06:11.180 and at last but not least, being here at the University of Oslo, 06:11.180 --> 06:14.180 chair professor of global justice and the environment 06:14.180 --> 06:16.180 here at SUM. 06:16.180 --> 06:19.180 Delighted to have you with us here today. 06:19.180 --> 06:22.180 The Arne Næss professors are leading international scholars 06:22.180 --> 06:26.180 working on the questions of global justice and environment. 06:26.180 --> 06:29.180 They are invited to engage with students, 06:29.180 --> 06:31.180 and that's important, I think. 06:31.180 --> 06:33.180 That's special here at SUM, engage with students 06:33.180 --> 06:37.180 and to inspire and discuss solutions to our environmental crisis 06:37.180 --> 06:40.180 in the spirit of Arne Næss' philosophy. 06:40.180 --> 06:43.180 Nest's relentless advocacy for social reforms 06:43.180 --> 06:46.180 to promote human and environmental justice 06:46.180 --> 06:48.180 has influenced generations. 06:48.180 --> 06:52.180 Both the University of Oslo and our society as a whole 06:52.180 --> 06:54.180 owe him greatly. 06:54.180 --> 06:57.180 While standing on his shoulders, we need to look ahead 06:57.180 --> 07:02.180 for fresh and perhaps even disruptive ideas. 07:02.180 --> 07:04.180 Earlier today, here at the University of Oslo, 07:04.180 --> 07:08.180 we organized a conference for the governmental committee 07:08.180 --> 07:10.180 on a just transition. 07:10.180 --> 07:13.180 Regeringens råd for rettferdig omstilling. 07:13.180 --> 07:16.180 A committee consisting of representatives 07:16.180 --> 07:20.180 from the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, LO, 07:20.180 --> 07:23.180 the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprises, NHO, 07:23.180 --> 07:26.180 and the state governments. 07:26.180 --> 07:29.180 We need to find solutions across sectors 07:29.180 --> 07:32.180 involving society at large. 07:32.180 --> 07:35.180 And today, and tonight, we are here. 07:35.180 --> 07:38.180 We are so happy that we see a full auditorium. 07:38.180 --> 07:40.180 This is a record, Nina. 07:40.180 --> 07:42.180 It's really nice to see so many people here. 07:42.180 --> 07:45.180 And it's a great pleasure that you want to take part 07:45.180 --> 07:47.180 in tonight's discussion. 07:47.180 --> 07:51.180 Perhaps the biggest question facing humanity today. 07:51.180 --> 07:57.180 How can we work in an age of a climate crisis? 07:58.180 --> 08:00.180 Can we continue economic growth, 08:00.180 --> 08:03.180 providing the growth is green? 08:03.180 --> 08:06.180 Or is a completely new economic model required? 08:06.180 --> 08:09.180 And of course, there is not one answer. 08:09.180 --> 08:11.180 It's not a simple answer. 08:11.180 --> 08:14.180 It's a quite difficult question, of course. 08:14.180 --> 08:17.180 What I do know is that we need to do exactly what Arne Næss did, 08:17.180 --> 08:19.180 namely challenge conventional wisdom. 08:19.180 --> 08:23.180 We need to remain curious, ask questions, and engage, 08:23.180 --> 08:25.180 and not shy away from utopian thinking. 08:25.180 --> 08:29.180 We need to dare to imagine a different world. 08:29.180 --> 08:31.180 And there, students, in this endeavor, 08:31.180 --> 08:35.180 I'm very grateful to you, and we are really hopeful for you. 08:35.180 --> 08:36.180 You need to be engaged. 08:36.180 --> 08:39.180 Some have suggested that younger generations' interest 08:39.180 --> 08:43.180 in the climate crisis is reduced, even waning. 08:43.180 --> 08:46.180 I have seen no such trend. 08:46.180 --> 08:48.180 On the contrary, I want to thank the students 08:48.180 --> 08:51.180 at our Green Office, who ensure that the environment 08:51.180 --> 08:54.180 is on the top of the agenda even today. 08:54.180 --> 08:57.180 We need to fight also in the years to come. 08:57.180 --> 08:59.180 Zoom's proud tradition of interdisciplinary 08:59.180 --> 09:02.180 and novel approaches to education give me hope 09:02.180 --> 09:04.180 and inspiration for the future. 09:04.180 --> 09:06.180 I know that the student population, 09:06.180 --> 09:09.180 the engagement at SUM is really strong, 09:09.180 --> 09:11.180 and that's important for us. 09:11.180 --> 09:13.180 Arne Næss left behind a rich philosophical heritage 09:13.180 --> 09:17.180 with sustainability, solidarity, and equality at its core. 09:17.180 --> 09:21.180 It seems even clearer today that one cannot be achieved 09:21.180 --> 09:22.180 without the other. 09:22.180 --> 09:24.180 It will not be easy, but that's a start. 09:24.180 --> 09:27.180 I look forward to hearing more about these challenges 09:27.180 --> 09:29.180 and possible solutions this evening. 09:29.180 --> 09:32.180 Let's all listen with an open heart and with a curious mind. 09:32.180 --> 09:34.180 Thank you so much for coming here today, 09:34.180 --> 09:36.180 and welcome again to the University of Oslo, 09:36.180 --> 09:39.180 and I'm sure we have a very interesting evening 09:39.180 --> 09:40.180 in front of us. 09:40.180 --> 09:41.180 Welcome. 09:41.180 --> 09:42.180 Thank you. 09:42.180 --> 09:53.180 Thank you very much, Svein, for these very uplifting words. 09:53.180 --> 09:57.180 And let me just start from the fact that, 09:57.180 --> 10:02.180 or stating the fact that the original Platonic Symposium, 10:02.180 --> 10:04.180 this is a symposium as we know, 10:04.180 --> 10:07.180 with Socrates as the star, 10:07.180 --> 10:10.180 involved a debate on Eros. 10:10.180 --> 10:11.180 I don't know if all of you know this, 10:11.180 --> 10:15.180 but this was Eros, the god of love and desire. 10:15.180 --> 10:20.180 Now, our debate is not on Eros, but on Oikos, 10:20.180 --> 10:24.180 meaning our original household, the earth, 10:24.180 --> 10:26.180 which is in Peril. 10:26.180 --> 10:34.180 Now, it is in great Peril, but Jason, Jason Hickel, 10:34.180 --> 10:39.180 our Arne Næss professor in 2023, has a solution. 10:39.180 --> 10:42.180 That's why there are so many of you here in the audience, 10:42.180 --> 10:45.180 because you're hungry for a solution and for a vision, 10:45.180 --> 10:48.180 and this man has a solution and a vision. 10:48.180 --> 10:53.180 Let's drop the fixation on economic growth, he says, 10:53.180 --> 10:56.180 and organize our economy around human well-being, 10:56.180 --> 10:59.180 pleasure, conviviality, and fun, 10:59.180 --> 11:01.180 and who wouldn't love that? 11:01.180 --> 11:04.180 You know, this is the world we are dreaming of. 11:04.180 --> 11:07.180 In his best seller, Less is More, 11:07.180 --> 11:12.180 now, I know that Jason is grimacing when he heard his best seller, 11:12.180 --> 11:16.180 you know, he doesn't want to talk about his best seller anymore, 11:16.180 --> 11:22.180 but okay, he offers both an inspired critique of capitalism, 11:22.180 --> 11:25.180 which I think is very convincing, but also very controversial, 11:25.180 --> 11:29.180 and compelling vision of the world that embraced de-growth. 11:29.180 --> 11:33.180 The vision certainly seduced many students, 11:34.180 --> 11:38.180 and one of them said, reading Hickel, I'm quoting here now, 11:38.180 --> 11:43.180 reading Hickel felt like getting an injection of Prozac. 11:43.180 --> 11:45.180 Oh, interesting. 11:45.180 --> 11:49.180 Now, this is the quotation verbatim now, Jason, 11:49.180 --> 11:51.180 but others have been a bit picky. 11:51.180 --> 11:54.180 De-growth, one of them said, yes, yes, yes, 11:54.180 --> 11:56.180 it's a bit like Christianity. 11:56.180 --> 11:59.180 It may be a good thing if anyone really tried it. 11:59.180 --> 12:03.180 So, there you are. 12:03.180 --> 12:08.180 I am free to introduce Jason now, not to mince my words. 12:08.180 --> 12:11.180 Jason Hickel, now a professor of economic anthropology 12:11.180 --> 12:15.180 at the University of Barcelona, but a very petty, pathetic scholar, 12:15.180 --> 12:18.180 as you know, and man who is very courageous, 12:18.180 --> 12:23.180 who is not afraid to propose bold and radical ideas 12:23.180 --> 12:26.180 in the best R&S tradition, 12:27.180 --> 12:30.180 who thinks beautifully and writes beautifully. 12:30.180 --> 12:34.180 If you haven't read his books, it's beautiful writing, 12:34.180 --> 12:36.180 not only beautiful thinking, okay? 12:36.180 --> 12:40.180 So, please appreciate the aesthetic part of it as well. 12:40.180 --> 12:44.180 And today he will speak about capitalism, ecological breakdown, 12:44.180 --> 12:46.180 and class struggle in the 21st century. 12:46.180 --> 12:49.180 Jason, the floor is yours at last. 12:50.180 --> 12:53.180 Thank you so much for the kind introductions. 12:53.180 --> 12:55.180 It looks like I'm unmuted, so we're good. 12:55.180 --> 12:57.180 The tech team is happy. 12:57.180 --> 12:59.180 It's a real honor for me to be here, 12:59.180 --> 13:02.180 and thank you also especially for the gorgeous fanfare, 13:02.180 --> 13:04.180 very touching music. 13:04.180 --> 13:07.180 I'm going to start by saying that I'm a big fan of your work, 13:07.180 --> 13:09.180 and I'm very proud of you. 13:09.180 --> 13:11.180 I'm a big fan of your work, 13:11.180 --> 13:13.180 and I'm very proud of you. 13:13.180 --> 13:15.180 I'm a big fan of your work, 13:15.180 --> 13:17.180 and I'm very proud of you. 13:17.180 --> 13:19.180 Very touching music. 13:19.180 --> 13:24.180 So, well, I hope that degrowth will be more interesting than Christianity, 13:24.180 --> 13:26.180 but let's see. 13:26.180 --> 13:29.180 But no, I'm very autumn for the kind words. 13:29.180 --> 13:32.180 So, in the past, during public lectures, 13:32.180 --> 13:36.180 I've opened by kind of describing the scale of the ecological crisis 13:36.180 --> 13:38.180 that we face, 13:38.180 --> 13:42.180 and what's likely to happen if we fail to arrest it. 13:42.180 --> 13:44.180 The science on this is striking and grim, 13:44.180 --> 13:47.180 and I'm sure that most of you are familiar with it now. 13:47.180 --> 13:50.180 And I find that, in fact, increasingly, this kind of description, 13:50.180 --> 13:53.180 this kind of introduction is actually not really necessary. 13:53.180 --> 13:56.180 We're all too already painfully aware of what's happening. 13:56.180 --> 14:00.180 The global economy is overshooting six planetary boundaries now, 14:00.180 --> 14:03.180 and we can see devastating Earth system changes 14:03.180 --> 14:05.180 playing out around us in real time. 14:05.180 --> 14:07.180 What's happening now in Libya and Greece 14:07.180 --> 14:10.180 and several other places with devastating flooding 14:10.180 --> 14:12.180 is enough to remind us. 14:12.180 --> 14:15.180 Degrowth is no longer an option. 14:15.180 --> 14:18.180 So, let me start instead with a different observation, 14:18.180 --> 14:21.180 one that's equally important. 14:21.180 --> 14:23.180 People have a tendency to refer to this crisis 14:23.180 --> 14:25.180 using the language of the Anthropocene, right? 14:25.180 --> 14:28.180 The term is useful, of course, to highlight the fact that, 14:28.180 --> 14:30.180 for the first time in geological history, 14:30.180 --> 14:34.180 human activity is dramatically reshaping our planet and our climate. 14:34.180 --> 14:36.180 But the term is also incorrect. 14:36.180 --> 14:39.180 It's not humans as such that are causing this crisis. 14:39.180 --> 14:42.180 Rather, it's being driven by our system of production, 14:42.180 --> 14:45.180 namely capitalism, and it's caused almost entirely 14:45.180 --> 14:48.180 by a small number of rich countries in the global north, 14:48.180 --> 14:52.180 primarily to the benefit of their elites and corporations. 14:52.180 --> 14:54.180 Now, right off the bat, I want to be very clear 14:54.180 --> 14:56.180 what I mean by capitalism here. 14:56.180 --> 14:58.180 When people think about capitalism, 14:58.180 --> 15:01.180 they often think of things like markets and trade and businesses, right? 15:01.180 --> 15:04.180 But these things existed for thousands of years before capitalism, 15:04.180 --> 15:06.180 and they're innocent enough on their own. 15:06.180 --> 15:08.180 What distinguishes capitalism for our purposes here 15:08.180 --> 15:13.180 is that it's organized around and dependent on constant expansion, 15:13.180 --> 15:16.180 perpetually increasing levels of industrial production, 15:16.180 --> 15:19.180 which we measure in terms of market prices or GDP. 15:19.180 --> 15:22.180 If the economy doesn't grow, and this is strange, right? 15:22.180 --> 15:25.180 If the economy doesn't grow, it crashes into crisis, 15:25.180 --> 15:29.180 which we experience every few years with devastating consequences 15:29.180 --> 15:31.180 for ordinary working-class people. 15:31.180 --> 15:34.180 It's a deeply unstable system. 15:34.180 --> 15:36.180 And crucially, under capitalism, 15:36.180 --> 15:39.180 the purpose of increasing production like this 15:39.180 --> 15:42.180 is not in fact primarily to improve human well-being 15:42.180 --> 15:47.180 or to achieve social progress or any specific ecological goals. 15:47.180 --> 15:49.180 Rather, it's to extract and accumulate 15:49.180 --> 15:51.180 an ever-increasing quantity of profit. 15:51.180 --> 15:53.180 That's the overriding objective. 15:53.180 --> 15:57.180 And this process, crucially, has no identifiable endpoints. 15:57.180 --> 15:59.180 Indeed, the dominant assumption in economics 15:59.180 --> 16:02.180 is that this should carry on indefinitely, 16:02.180 --> 16:06.180 that every industry, every sector, every national economy 16:06.180 --> 16:09.180 should continue to increase production year after year, 16:09.180 --> 16:11.180 regardless of whether or not we actually need it. 16:11.180 --> 16:15.180 Such a system, I'm sure you'll agree, is irrational at the best of times, 16:15.180 --> 16:20.180 and in the middle of an ecological emergency, is clearly madness. 16:20.180 --> 16:23.180 The problem is that, of course, production doesn't come out of thin air. 16:23.180 --> 16:27.180 It entails the use of energy and materials. 16:27.180 --> 16:30.180 Now, it's important to grasp that the world economy 16:30.180 --> 16:35.180 is characterized by extraordinary inequalities in energy and material use. 16:35.180 --> 16:37.180 Let's have a look at energy first. 16:37.180 --> 16:39.180 High-income countries, on the right of this graph, 16:39.180 --> 16:42.180 use vastly more energy than the rest of the world, 16:42.180 --> 16:46.180 far more than what we know empirically is compatible 16:46.180 --> 16:50.180 with feasibly decarbonizing fast enough to meet the Paris Agreement goals, 16:50.180 --> 16:54.180 which is also more than what we know would be required 16:54.180 --> 16:57.180 to meet everyone's needs at a good standard, if that was our objective. 16:57.180 --> 17:00.180 Now, this brings us to a paradox, which I want to highlight. 17:00.180 --> 17:04.180 Why is it that rich economies have such high levels of production and energy use, 17:04.180 --> 17:08.180 while at the same time, large numbers of their own citizens 17:08.180 --> 17:11.180 basically cannot make ends meet? 17:11.180 --> 17:15.180 In the USA, for example, 40% of people cannot afford health care. 17:15.180 --> 17:17.180 And by the way, we just learned that child poverty 17:17.180 --> 17:19.180 is increasing in the USA over the past year. 17:19.180 --> 17:22.180 In the UK, 4.3 million children live in poverty. 17:22.180 --> 17:26.180 In the EU, 90 million people struggle to access basic goods 17:26.180 --> 17:28.180 and services. 17:28.180 --> 17:32.180 The reason is because capitalism is highly undemocratic. 17:32.180 --> 17:36.180 Decisions about what to produce and how to use resources 17:36.180 --> 17:40.180 and who benefits from the surplus that we all collectively generate, 17:40.180 --> 17:44.180 all of this is controlled by the 1% who own the majority of corporate shares 17:44.180 --> 17:46.180 and who elect the directors of firms. 17:46.180 --> 17:51.180 And what they choose to do is to produce things that maximize their profits, 17:51.180 --> 17:55.180 things like fossil fuels and advertising and SUVs, 17:55.180 --> 17:58.180 rather than things like public health care, public transit, 17:58.180 --> 18:01.180 affordable housing, renewable energy, etc. 18:01.180 --> 18:06.180 The result is that we have a system that simultaneously overuses resources 18:06.180 --> 18:11.180 and at the same time fails to meet many people's basic needs. 18:11.180 --> 18:13.180 So we face a double crisis, in fact, 18:13.180 --> 18:17.180 an ecological crisis that is also a social crisis at the same time, 18:17.180 --> 18:21.180 driven by the same underlying causes. 18:21.180 --> 18:24.180 Now, the consequence of excess energy use in the core economies 18:24.180 --> 18:27.180 is that these countries are also overwhelmingly responsible 18:27.180 --> 18:32.180 for the vast majority of excess emissions that are causing climate breakdown. 18:32.180 --> 18:36.180 This graph shows cumulative global carbon emissions since 1850. 18:36.180 --> 18:38.180 You can see how the safe planetary boundary, 18:38.180 --> 18:42.180 which is the green line in this graph, was violated in the late 1980s, 18:42.180 --> 18:45.180 tipping us into what we might describe today as climate breakdown. 18:45.180 --> 18:47.180 With business as usual, as you can see, 18:47.180 --> 18:52.180 both the 1.5 and 2 degree limits will be breached within the next two decades, 18:52.180 --> 18:54.180 which is devastating. 18:54.180 --> 18:56.180 Now, let's break this down a little bit. 18:56.180 --> 18:58.180 Here's the global south. 18:58.180 --> 19:02.180 As you can see, the south as a group is still within its fair share 19:02.180 --> 19:04.180 of the safe planetary boundary, 19:04.180 --> 19:07.180 and has therefore not contributed to climate breakdown at all. 19:07.180 --> 19:09.180 Of course, some countries within the global south 19:09.180 --> 19:11.180 have in fact violated their national fair shares, 19:11.180 --> 19:13.180 as we're going to see shortly. 19:13.180 --> 19:15.180 But here's the global north, 19:15.180 --> 19:19.180 by which I mean the wealthy core economies of Europe, the USA, 19:19.180 --> 19:22.180 Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and Japan. 19:22.180 --> 19:26.180 The north exceeded the planetary boundary in the early 1900s, 19:26.180 --> 19:31.180 and has now already violated its fair share of the 1.5 and 2 degree 19:31.180 --> 19:34.180 carbon budgets twice over, counting from 1850. 19:37.180 --> 19:40.180 By the way, here we can see Norway and China, 19:40.180 --> 19:45.180 with Norway on the left here, compared to China on the right. 19:46.180 --> 19:49.180 I think this is actually important for us to understand, 19:49.180 --> 19:53.180 given the predominance of misinformation that's out there in our media. 19:53.180 --> 19:57.180 China has only just recently exceeded its fair share of the planetary boundary. 19:57.180 --> 20:00.180 That's a problem, and China must decarbonize very quickly. 20:00.180 --> 20:04.180 But note that Norway has burned its fair share several times over, right? 20:04.180 --> 20:09.180 So obviously a much bigger contributor to the crisis in this respect. 20:10.180 --> 20:13.180 Now, the result is that the countries of the global north, 20:13.180 --> 20:15.180 which are represented in red in this graph, 20:15.180 --> 20:19.180 are responsible for 87% of all emissions globally 20:19.180 --> 20:21.180 in excess of the planetary boundary. 20:21.180 --> 20:25.180 In other words, 87% of all the damages caused by climate breakdown 20:25.180 --> 20:27.180 everywhere it happens in the world. 20:27.180 --> 20:31.180 Now, I argue that we need to understand this reality 20:31.180 --> 20:34.180 as a process of atmospheric colonization. 20:34.180 --> 20:40.180 The atmosphere is a shared commons on which all of us depend for our existence. 20:41.180 --> 20:43.180 And the rich countries of the earth have appropriated it 20:43.180 --> 20:45.180 for their own enrichments with devastating consequences 20:45.180 --> 20:47.180 for all of life on earth, right? 20:47.180 --> 20:50.180 The global south countries are responsible for 13% in total. 20:51.180 --> 20:54.180 Now, meanwhile, the global south, 20:54.180 --> 20:56.180 which has done very little to cause this problem, as you can see, 20:56.180 --> 21:00.180 suffers up to 92% of the economic costs and damages 21:00.180 --> 21:02.180 inflicted by climate breakdown, 21:02.180 --> 21:05.180 and up to 99% of all climate-related deaths. 21:05.180 --> 21:08.180 In other words, virtually all climate-related mortality 21:08.180 --> 21:12.180 is sustained in the territories of the global south. 21:12.180 --> 21:17.180 The injustice of this is staggering, and none of us should accept it. 21:17.180 --> 21:21.180 But climate is not the only crisis that we face. 21:21.180 --> 21:23.180 We also need to pay attention to material use, 21:23.180 --> 21:27.180 which is the main driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem damage. 21:27.180 --> 21:30.180 This graph shows us global material use over the past half century, 21:30.180 --> 21:34.180 including biomass, metals, minerals, and construction materials. 21:34.180 --> 21:36.180 The red line is what industrial ecologists indicate 21:36.180 --> 21:38.180 is the maximum sustainable boundary, 21:38.180 --> 21:40.180 at least the one that's most commonly used, 21:40.180 --> 21:42.180 50 billion tons per year. 21:42.180 --> 21:46.180 And as you can see, we shot past that limit in the late 1990s. 21:46.180 --> 21:49.180 And as of today, the global economy is consuming or using 21:49.180 --> 21:51.180 100 billion tons per year, 21:51.180 --> 21:54.180 which is overshooting the boundary by a factor of two. 21:54.180 --> 21:57.180 And this is, again, a major driver of ecological pressure. 21:57.180 --> 21:59.180 But here again, it's the rich countries 21:59.180 --> 22:02.180 that are overwhelmingly responsible for this problem. 22:02.180 --> 22:04.180 This graph shows us the same data. 22:04.180 --> 22:07.180 This is per capita material use by country income group. 22:07.180 --> 22:09.180 Again, the red line is the sustainable level. 22:09.180 --> 22:12.180 We see that rich countries, over on the far right again, 22:12.180 --> 22:15.180 use on average 28 tons of materials per capita, 22:15.180 --> 22:17.180 which is four times over the boundary. 22:17.180 --> 22:20.180 And also, again, far more than we know is required 22:20.180 --> 22:24.180 to ensure good lives for everybody if that was the objective, 22:24.180 --> 22:27.180 like if our production system was organized in that way. 22:29.180 --> 22:32.180 By the way, let's have a look at Norway, 22:33.180 --> 22:36.180 which has one of the highest rates of material use in the world. 22:37.180 --> 22:40.180 Now, crucially, not all residents of rich countries 22:40.180 --> 22:42.180 are responsible for this. 22:42.180 --> 22:45.180 Richer individuals consume much more than working-class people, 22:45.180 --> 22:47.180 and we have to be very clear about that. 22:47.180 --> 22:49.180 But also, these high levels of resource use 22:49.180 --> 22:53.180 are also the effects of materially intensive provisioning systems, 22:53.180 --> 22:56.180 like transport systems that rely on private cars, 22:56.180 --> 23:00.180 for which individuals themselves are obviously not responsible. 23:00.180 --> 23:03.180 If you know the option of using a public transit system, 23:03.180 --> 23:07.180 you have no choice but to rely on a materially intensive transport alternative. 23:08.180 --> 23:10.180 Meanwhile, note that lower-income countries 23:10.180 --> 23:12.180 obviously consume a small fraction of this, 23:12.180 --> 23:14.180 and they remain under sustainable levels. 23:14.180 --> 23:16.180 In most cases, crucially, 23:16.180 --> 23:19.180 they actually need to increase their use of materials and energy 23:19.180 --> 23:23.180 in order to build the infrastructure required for human development. 23:23.180 --> 23:29.180 Now, here, too, excess resource use represents processes of colonization. 23:29.180 --> 23:31.180 Let me explain briefly how this works, 23:31.180 --> 23:33.180 because I think this is important to understand 23:33.180 --> 23:35.180 and gets too often left out of our discussion. 23:36.180 --> 23:38.180 So here's the key facts. 23:38.180 --> 23:42.180 Growth in the global north relies on a massive net appropriation 23:42.180 --> 23:44.180 of resources from the global south. 23:44.180 --> 23:47.180 In other words, the world economy is characterized by a net flow 23:47.180 --> 23:49.180 from south to north, 23:49.180 --> 23:51.180 from the periphery to the core of the world system. 23:51.180 --> 23:53.180 In a recent paper, we measured this 23:53.180 --> 23:57.180 using environmentally extended input-output models 23:57.180 --> 24:00.180 to define the full extent of appropriation in empirical terms. 24:00.180 --> 24:02.180 And the results are quite striking. 24:03.180 --> 24:07.180 We found that a net total of 12 billion tons of embodied raw materials 24:07.180 --> 24:10.180 is appropriated from the global south every year. 24:10.180 --> 24:12.180 And by embodied here, I mean materials that are embodied, 24:12.180 --> 24:15.180 involved in the production of traded goods, right? 24:15.180 --> 24:17.180 Now, that's double the total mass of resources 24:17.180 --> 24:21.180 that is normally extracted from the entire continent of Africa every year, 24:21.180 --> 24:25.180 consumed entirely in the global north, net of trade. 24:26.180 --> 24:28.180 21 exajoules of embodied energy. 24:29.180 --> 24:32.180 That amount of energy would be enough to develop the infrastructure 24:32.180 --> 24:35.180 required to provide healthcare, education, housing, heating, 24:35.180 --> 24:38.180 cooling, refrigerators, electricity, public transit, 24:38.180 --> 24:41.180 computers, and other key necessities 24:41.180 --> 24:43.180 to the entire population of the global south, 24:43.180 --> 24:45.180 ensuring good lives for everyone. 24:45.180 --> 24:50.180 But instead, it is used to fuel corporate growth in the global north. 24:50.180 --> 24:53.180 820 million hectares of embodied land. 24:53.180 --> 24:55.180 That's twice the size of India. 24:55.180 --> 24:57.180 This amount of land could be used to provide nutritious food 24:57.180 --> 24:59.180 for 4 to 6 billion people. 24:59.180 --> 25:02.180 But instead, it's used to produce things like sugar for Coca-Cola, 25:02.180 --> 25:05.180 and beef for McDonald's, and cotton for H&M, 25:05.180 --> 25:07.180 consumed in the global north. 25:07.180 --> 25:12.180 And then 188 million person years of embodied labor. 25:12.180 --> 25:15.180 That's similar to Latin America's entire workforce. 25:15.180 --> 25:18.180 That labor could be used to staff hospitals and schools, 25:18.180 --> 25:22.180 to produce food and goods for local needs, to build houses. 25:22.180 --> 25:25.180 But instead, they work full-time, year after year, 25:25.180 --> 25:29.180 churning out tech gadgets in fast fashion for northern companies. 25:29.180 --> 25:31.180 This is not a small thing. 25:31.180 --> 25:33.180 This data shows that growth in the global north 25:33.180 --> 25:35.180 depends utterly on this appropriation. 25:35.180 --> 25:38.180 It depends on sucking the life out of the ecosystems 25:38.180 --> 25:41.180 and human communities of the global south. 25:42.180 --> 25:46.180 Now, what this means is that the social and ecological impacts 25:46.180 --> 25:48.180 of continued perpetual northern growth 25:48.180 --> 25:51.180 are offshored or externalized to the global south. 25:51.180 --> 25:53.180 That's where the damage happens. 25:53.180 --> 25:55.180 You don't see it in Norway or in England. 25:55.180 --> 25:59.180 You see it in places like Brazil, Indonesia, and the Congo. 25:59.180 --> 26:03.180 This is the cause not only of environmental breakdown or degradation, 26:03.180 --> 26:07.180 but also of mass poverty and deprivation in the global south. 26:07.180 --> 26:09.180 The value appropriated from the south each year 26:09.180 --> 26:11.180 is worth trillions of dollars, 26:11.180 --> 26:14.180 and would be enough to end extreme poverty dozens of times over. 26:14.180 --> 26:18.180 But instead, the south is maintained in conditions of misery 26:18.180 --> 26:23.180 in order to shore up the possibility of continued capitalist growth in the core. 26:23.180 --> 26:29.180 In other words, the dual crisis of ecological breakdown and mass poverty 26:29.180 --> 26:32.180 is an effect of these dynamics in the world economy. 26:34.180 --> 26:36.180 Now, what I want to get across here 26:36.180 --> 26:40.180 is that imperialist appropriation along these lines is not incidental. 26:40.180 --> 26:43.180 It's not a side gig or an accident. 26:43.180 --> 26:46.180 As the Indian economist Utsav Patnaik puts it, 26:46.180 --> 26:51.180 imperialism is a structurally necessary feature of capitalist growth. 26:52.180 --> 26:55.180 In order to sustain perpetual expansion and accumulation, 26:55.180 --> 26:59.180 capital requires an ever-rising quantity of inputs, 26:59.180 --> 27:02.180 resources and labor, the key inputs to production, 27:02.180 --> 27:04.180 at the lowest possible price. 27:04.180 --> 27:09.180 To achieve this, capital has to find ways of cheapening labor and resources. 27:09.180 --> 27:13.180 Now, one option is to exploit your national working class 27:13.180 --> 27:15.180 and your domestic ecology. 27:15.180 --> 27:17.180 But of course, this harms people, 27:17.180 --> 27:20.180 and sooner or later, you're likely to face a revolution. 27:20.180 --> 27:23.180 If you want to avoid this, and indeed, if you are under pressure 27:23.180 --> 27:27.180 to improve the conditions of your national working class, 27:27.180 --> 27:30.180 your only other option is to cheapen some third party 27:30.180 --> 27:33.180 who is not in a position to fight back. 27:33.180 --> 27:37.180 You need some kind of outside where you can exploit resources and labor 27:37.180 --> 27:41.180 with impunity and externalize social and ecological damages. 27:41.180 --> 27:44.180 This is where the colonies come in. 27:44.180 --> 27:48.180 For 500 years, capitalism has relied on forms of colonization 27:48.180 --> 27:51.180 and the exploitation of the people in the global south 27:51.180 --> 27:54.180 to ensure a steady flow of cheap inputs. 27:55.180 --> 28:00.180 Now, this arrangement came under threat in the middle of the 20th century 28:00.180 --> 28:02.180 with the rise of the anti-colonial movements 28:02.180 --> 28:05.180 across Asia, Africa and Latin America. 28:05.180 --> 28:09.180 Newly independent governments refused to be plundered by northern capital. 28:09.180 --> 28:12.180 They pursued strategies of economic sovereignty, 28:12.180 --> 28:15.180 and they sought to reclaim their productive capacities 28:15.180 --> 28:17.180 to focus on local human needs. 28:17.180 --> 28:21.180 They used tariffs and capital controls to protect their markets. 28:21.180 --> 28:25.180 They used subsidies and planning to develop necessary industries 28:25.180 --> 28:27.180 that foreign capital was not investing in, 28:27.180 --> 28:29.180 and they used land reform to reclaim territory 28:29.180 --> 28:32.180 that had been appropriated by colonial firms. 28:32.180 --> 28:35.180 This approach succeeded marvelously at raising incomes 28:35.180 --> 28:39.180 and improving welfare across the newly independent global south. 28:39.180 --> 28:42.180 It launched a development miracle. 28:42.180 --> 28:45.180 But northern powers were not pleased, 28:45.180 --> 28:48.180 as these progressive policies were cutting off their access 28:48.180 --> 28:50.180 to cheap labor and resources, 28:50.180 --> 28:53.180 which they'd enjoyed for the past 450 years. 28:53.180 --> 28:56.180 It undermined the colonial arrangements on which capitalism had depended, 28:56.180 --> 29:00.180 and this triggered a massive crisis for capital in the 1970s, 29:00.180 --> 29:04.180 especially given that at the same time wages were also rising in the core, 29:04.180 --> 29:08.180 thanks to the power of organized labor and the welfare state, 29:08.180 --> 29:11.180 which gives workers significantly more bargaining power. 29:11.180 --> 29:15.180 So the governments of the core faced a fork in the road. 29:15.180 --> 29:20.180 They could either accept economic sovereignty in the global south 29:20.180 --> 29:24.180 and decent wages at home and abandon capital accumulation, 29:24.180 --> 29:28.180 thus shifting to a post-capitalist economy focused on well-being, 29:28.180 --> 29:30.180 or they could try to maintain capital accumulation 29:30.180 --> 29:35.180 by somehow restoring the basic structure of the imperial arrangements, 29:35.180 --> 29:38.180 and they opted hard for the latter. 29:38.180 --> 29:42.180 First, they intervened militarily to depose anti-colonial leaders. 29:42.180 --> 29:46.180 The list here is long and includes several figures that all of us should know. 29:46.180 --> 29:48.180 Mohamed Mossadakh in Iran, 29:48.180 --> 29:51.180 Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, 29:51.180 --> 29:54.180 Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, 29:54.180 --> 29:56.180 Sukarno in Indonesia, 29:56.180 --> 29:59.180 Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, 29:59.180 --> 30:03.180 Salvador Allende in Chile, exactly 50 years ago, 30:03.180 --> 30:07.180 Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, and many others, 30:07.180 --> 30:09.180 all deposed in western-backed coups 30:09.180 --> 30:13.180 and replaced with right-wing dictatorships or military juntas 30:13.180 --> 30:15.180 backed by western governments 30:15.180 --> 30:18.180 that were more amenable to western economic interests 30:18.180 --> 30:21.180 and which rolled back the reforms of the progressive era. 30:22.180 --> 30:26.180 But northern states also intervened by using the World Bank and the IMF 30:26.180 --> 30:29.180 to impose neoliberal structural adjustment programs 30:29.180 --> 30:32.180 across the global south in the 1980s and 1990s. 30:32.180 --> 30:37.180 Structural adjustments forced governments to privatize national resources, 30:37.180 --> 30:39.180 to cut support for national industries, 30:39.180 --> 30:42.180 to cut protections on labor and on the environment, 30:42.180 --> 30:44.180 and to cut public services. 30:44.180 --> 30:47.180 This destroyed the south's economic sovereignty 30:47.180 --> 30:51.180 and pushed the prices of labor and resources back down, 30:51.180 --> 30:54.180 thus restoring the basic tenet of the imperial arrangement 30:54.180 --> 30:57.180 and rescuing capital accumulation in the global north. 30:57.180 --> 30:59.180 It restored the rate of corporate profits, 30:59.180 --> 31:02.180 it restored the flagging rate of growth in the north, 31:02.180 --> 31:04.180 and it allowed European governments 31:04.180 --> 31:08.180 to ensure a reasonable standard of living for their working classes 31:08.180 --> 31:10.180 while still maintaining capital accumulation, 31:10.180 --> 31:13.180 which is the basic arrangement of social democracy, 31:13.180 --> 31:16.180 such as in the Scandinavian countries. 31:16.180 --> 31:20.180 And this arrangement, by definition, cannot be universalized. 31:20.180 --> 31:24.180 Now, this is not to say that you cannot have a welfare state without imperialism. 31:24.180 --> 31:26.180 You can. 31:26.180 --> 31:31.180 But you cannot have a welfare state and capital accumulation without imperialism. 31:31.180 --> 31:33.180 You have to choose. 31:33.180 --> 31:35.180 So, for the south, this was devastating. 31:35.180 --> 31:38.180 Structural adjustment put them back into the position 31:38.180 --> 31:41.180 of being dependent on exports to and imports from the global north. 31:41.180 --> 31:46.180 But because structural adjustments also depressed prices in the global south, 31:46.180 --> 31:51.180 this means that for every unit of embodied labor and material they import, 31:51.180 --> 31:54.180 they have to export many more units to pay for it. 31:54.180 --> 31:59.180 So this is what the Egyptian economist Samir Amin referred to as unequal exchange. 31:59.180 --> 32:02.180 And this is what generates the large net flows of resources 32:02.180 --> 32:05.180 from south to north that I described earlier. 32:05.180 --> 32:08.180 This is the form that imperialism takes in the 21st century. 32:08.180 --> 32:11.180 It is an arrangement that enables appropriation 32:11.180 --> 32:15.180 without the need, in most cases, for military occupation. 32:15.180 --> 32:19.180 And I hope that you can see how critically important this dynamic is 32:19.180 --> 32:21.180 to the entire question of ecology, 32:21.180 --> 32:24.180 because what is at stake here is ecology. 32:24.180 --> 32:28.180 Whose resources are available and to who? 32:28.180 --> 32:31.180 So what do we do? 32:31.180 --> 32:35.180 With all of these problems in mind, what needs to happen? 32:44.180 --> 32:46.180 Let's start with materials. 32:46.180 --> 32:49.180 We know that rich countries need to reduce material use 32:49.180 --> 32:51.180 by more than half from existing levels. 32:51.180 --> 32:53.180 Of course, it depends on the country. 32:53.180 --> 32:55.180 There's widespread agreement on this, actually. 32:55.180 --> 32:58.180 Indeed, the objective of reducing material use to sustainable levels 32:58.180 --> 33:01.180 has been ratified by the European Parliament. 33:01.180 --> 33:05.180 Now, some of this can be achieved through efficiency improvements, yes. 33:05.180 --> 33:07.180 And we should pursue this vigorously. 33:07.180 --> 33:10.180 We should embrace and accelerate technological change. 33:10.180 --> 33:14.180 I am not anti-technology. I want to make that abundantly clear. 33:14.180 --> 33:16.180 I'm an accelerationist when it comes to this. 33:16.180 --> 33:18.180 Maybe we can talk about that later. 33:20.180 --> 33:21.180 Okay. 33:21.180 --> 33:25.180 But we also know that efficiency improvements alone are not enough. 33:25.180 --> 33:27.180 In a growth-focused capitalist economy, 33:27.180 --> 33:31.180 savings from efficiency improvements tend to be reinvested 33:31.180 --> 33:34.180 to expand the process of production and consumption. 33:34.180 --> 33:37.180 That basically makes absolute reductions very difficult to achieve. 33:37.180 --> 33:39.180 So you can make some headway, 33:39.180 --> 33:42.180 but really substantial headway is quite tough. 33:42.180 --> 33:44.180 Now, what about climate? 33:44.180 --> 33:45.180 Yes. 33:45.180 --> 33:48.180 Now, remember to stay under the 1.5 degrees carbon budget, 33:48.180 --> 33:51.180 to stay within that, we need to cut emissions to zero by 2050. 33:51.180 --> 33:55.180 For high-income nations, which have very high per capita emissions, 33:55.180 --> 33:58.180 this requires very rapid emissions reductions, 33:58.180 --> 34:00.180 much faster, by the way, than lower-income nations. 34:00.180 --> 34:03.180 And this is a critically important point to understand. 34:03.180 --> 34:06.180 Now, because the area under these graphs has to be the same 34:06.180 --> 34:10.180 for a fair distribution of the carbon budget. 34:10.180 --> 34:14.180 Now, we know that it's possible to absolutely decouple GDP from emissions, 34:14.180 --> 34:18.180 simply by transitioning to lower carbon energy sources. 34:18.180 --> 34:22.180 Indeed, several high-income countries have already achieved this, 34:22.180 --> 34:25.180 even when measuring emissions in consumption-based terms. 34:25.180 --> 34:26.180 This is not news. 34:26.180 --> 34:28.180 We've known about this since the 1990s, 34:28.180 --> 34:31.180 and it should not be surprising to anyone. 34:31.180 --> 34:34.180 As we're going to see, what matters here is the question of speed. 34:34.180 --> 34:38.180 But still, nonetheless, this fact of absolute decoupling, 34:38.180 --> 34:41.180 which again, to scientists, is not surprising, 34:41.180 --> 34:45.180 is routinely recruited to argue that not only is green growth possible, 34:45.180 --> 34:47.180 it is already here. 34:47.180 --> 34:49.180 And this is from the Financial Times. 34:49.180 --> 34:53.180 But what this discourse obscures is the fact that none of these countries 34:53.180 --> 34:55.180 that have done this, that have achieved this, 34:55.180 --> 34:59.180 are reducing emissions in line with what is required to stay under 1.5 degrees, 34:59.180 --> 35:02.180 or even well under 2 degrees, as the Paris Agreement demands. 35:02.180 --> 35:07.180 Existing trajectories are highly inadequate. 35:07.180 --> 35:10.180 Now, in a recent study published in The Lancet, 35:10.180 --> 35:12.180 we found that at current rates, 35:12.180 --> 35:16.180 the high-income countries that have achieved absolute decoupling 35:16.180 --> 35:21.180 will take on average 220 years to reduce emissions by 95%, 35:21.180 --> 35:26.180 blowing their carbon budget fair shares 27 times over in the process. 35:26.180 --> 35:29.180 There's nothing green about this. 35:29.180 --> 35:31.180 This is a recipe for disaster. 35:31.180 --> 35:32.180 It's extremely dangerous. 35:32.180 --> 35:37.180 Much faster emissions reductions are required. 35:37.180 --> 35:41.180 By the way, let's just talk very briefly about Norway. 35:41.180 --> 35:45.180 So this is Norway's consumption-based emissions, 35:45.180 --> 35:52.180 are here in the dotted red line. 35:52.180 --> 35:58.180 They've increased over the past decade, which is bad news. 35:58.180 --> 36:00.180 That means that at existing rates, obviously, 36:00.180 --> 36:03.180 Norway would continue increasing its consumption-based emissions. 36:03.180 --> 36:04.180 That's unlikely to occur, 36:04.180 --> 36:07.180 but that gives you a sense for what's happening currently. 36:07.180 --> 36:09.180 And compare that with the green dotted line, 36:09.180 --> 36:13.180 which is what would be required if Norway was to stay within its fair share 36:13.180 --> 36:15.180 of the carbon budget for 1.5 degrees. 36:15.180 --> 36:18.180 The budget for 1.7 degrees is obviously a little bit easier, 36:18.180 --> 36:21.180 but still obviously out of reach in this respect. 36:21.180 --> 36:24.180 In terms of territorial emissions, 36:24.180 --> 36:27.180 at current rates, Norway will take over 400 years 36:27.180 --> 36:29.180 to reduce emissions by 95%. 36:29.180 --> 36:31.180 And that's territorial. 36:31.180 --> 36:33.180 So the question becomes, 36:33.180 --> 36:35.180 is it possible for high-income countries 36:35.180 --> 36:38.180 to achieve sufficiently rapid decarbonization? 36:38.180 --> 36:42.180 And the answer to this is yes, and that's the good news. 36:42.180 --> 36:45.180 But in a growth-oriented economy, 36:45.180 --> 36:49.180 it's extremely difficult to achieve, and probably unfeasible. 36:49.180 --> 36:52.180 The high-income countries that have achieved decoupling 36:52.180 --> 36:55.180 would need to accelerate their existing rates 36:55.180 --> 36:58.180 by a factor of 10 by 2025. 36:58.180 --> 37:00.180 And remember that every year of delay 37:00.180 --> 37:03.180 makes this calculus even more aggressive. 37:03.180 --> 37:06.180 Now, the reason this is so difficult 37:06.180 --> 37:09.180 is because in a growth-oriented scenario, 37:09.180 --> 37:12.180 our options are limited to roughly two things. 37:12.180 --> 37:15.180 One, renewable energy rollout, 37:15.180 --> 37:17.180 so expanding solar and wind and batteries 37:17.180 --> 37:20.180 to catch up to energy use and to growth. 37:20.180 --> 37:22.180 And two, technological change, 37:22.180 --> 37:25.180 like shifting the entire vehicle fleet to EVs. 37:25.180 --> 37:28.180 This requires mobilizing labor and factories 37:28.180 --> 37:31.180 and infrastructure and materials and finance, of course. 37:31.180 --> 37:34.180 And it cannot just be accelerated just willy-nilly, 37:34.180 --> 37:36.180 especially given that our capacities, 37:36.180 --> 37:38.180 in a growth-oriented scenario, 37:38.180 --> 37:40.180 are already maxed out by other forms of production. 37:40.180 --> 37:43.180 Our factories and labor are already producing other things. 37:43.180 --> 37:47.180 So this is like an extra burden on top, as it were. 37:47.180 --> 37:50.180 But as the latest IPCC report notes, 37:50.180 --> 37:53.180 rapid decarbonization is much easier to achieve 37:53.180 --> 37:55.180 in a post-growth scenario. 37:55.180 --> 37:58.180 Now, let me emphasize again that post-growth research 37:58.180 --> 38:00.180 is pro-technology. 38:00.180 --> 38:02.180 It embraces efficiency improvements 38:02.180 --> 38:04.180 and embraces technological change, 38:04.180 --> 38:07.180 but again recognizes that this alone is not enough, 38:07.180 --> 38:09.180 and therefore also calls for high-income countries 38:09.180 --> 38:12.180 to abandon GDP growth as an objective 38:12.180 --> 38:14.180 and focus the economy instead 38:14.180 --> 38:18.180 on what is required for well-being and social progress. 38:19.180 --> 38:22.180 Now, remember, GDP is an aggregate metric. 38:22.180 --> 38:25.180 It does not distinguish between $1,000 worth of bombs 38:25.180 --> 38:27.180 and $1,000 worth of health care. 38:27.180 --> 38:31.180 Even Simon Kuznets, the man who invented GDP himself, 38:31.180 --> 38:33.180 warns that we should never use it as a measure 38:33.180 --> 38:35.180 for economic and social well-being, 38:35.180 --> 38:37.180 because when it comes to well-being, 38:37.180 --> 38:41.180 as you can imagine, it's not aggregate production that matters, 38:41.180 --> 38:43.180 but rather what we are producing 38:43.180 --> 38:45.180 and whether people have access to the necessary goods 38:45.180 --> 38:47.180 they require to live a decent life. 38:47.180 --> 38:50.180 So instead of blindly chasing aggregate growth 38:50.180 --> 38:53.180 and hoping this will magically solve our problems, 38:53.180 --> 38:56.180 let us be clear about what we actually want to achieve 38:56.180 --> 38:58.180 and target those things directly. 38:58.180 --> 39:00.180 This focuses the mind. 39:00.180 --> 39:03.180 How do we achieve social and ecological goals? 39:06.180 --> 39:08.180 The first step is we need to expand and decommodify 39:08.180 --> 39:10.180 universal public services, 39:10.180 --> 39:13.180 and by this I mean health care and education, obviously, yes, 39:13.180 --> 39:15.180 but also good affordable housing, 39:15.180 --> 39:18.180 public transit, clean energy, water, Internet, 39:18.180 --> 39:22.180 nutritious food, recreational facilities, child care. 39:22.180 --> 39:25.180 Let us mobilize our productive forces 39:25.180 --> 39:27.180 to ensure that everyone has access 39:27.180 --> 39:29.180 to what is necessary for a decent life, 39:29.180 --> 39:32.180 regardless of fluctuations in aggregate output. 39:32.180 --> 39:34.180 This reduces the cost of living, 39:34.180 --> 39:37.180 and this is important for Norway right now, okay? 39:37.180 --> 39:41.180 It controls inflation and stabilizes the economy. 39:41.180 --> 39:44.180 It's an essential step to de-linking well-being from growth. 39:45.180 --> 39:49.180 Second, we must invest in ambitious public works programs 39:49.180 --> 39:52.180 to build renewable energy, improve public transit, 39:52.180 --> 39:55.180 insulate homes, install efficient appliances, 39:55.180 --> 39:57.180 restore ecosystems. 39:57.180 --> 40:00.180 These are urgent, socially necessary tasks, 40:00.180 --> 40:02.180 and we cannot wait around for capital 40:02.180 --> 40:04.180 to decide that they are worth doing. 40:04.180 --> 40:08.180 We must mobilize to do them directly and fast, 40:08.180 --> 40:11.180 harnessing the power of public finance and industrial policy. 40:12.180 --> 40:16.180 Such a program can and should also include a public job guarantee, 40:16.180 --> 40:19.180 empowering people to train and participate 40:19.180 --> 40:22.180 in the most important collective projects of our generation, 40:22.180 --> 40:25.180 doing dignified, meaningful work 40:25.180 --> 40:28.180 with workplace democracy and living wages. 40:28.180 --> 40:30.180 I want you to think about the power of this approach. 40:30.180 --> 40:33.180 It allows us to achieve ecological objectives fast, 40:33.180 --> 40:36.180 but it also abolishes unemployment. 40:36.180 --> 40:38.180 It abolishes economic insecurity. 40:38.180 --> 40:42.180 It breaks the political logjam around climate action. 40:42.180 --> 40:44.180 And again, important for Norway. 40:44.180 --> 40:46.180 Right now, we cannot pursue radical climate action 40:46.180 --> 40:49.180 because it might harm employment and livelihoods. 40:49.180 --> 40:51.180 By securing employment and livelihoods, 40:51.180 --> 40:53.180 we can pursue radical action 40:53.180 --> 40:55.180 without anyone worrying about getting hurt, 40:55.180 --> 40:58.180 and this is the bread and butter of a just transition. 40:58.180 --> 41:03.180 Now, as we improve and secure the socially necessary sectors, 41:03.180 --> 41:07.180 we also need to scale down, or de-grow, if you like, 41:07.180 --> 41:10.180 socially less necessary forms of production. 41:10.180 --> 41:12.180 Fossil fuels are obvious here. 41:12.180 --> 41:15.180 We need binding targets to wind this industry down, 41:15.180 --> 41:18.180 and I urge the Norwegian government to join other governments 41:18.180 --> 41:22.180 in signing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. 41:22.180 --> 41:26.180 But we also need to reduce production of private jets, 41:26.180 --> 41:30.180 SUVs, mansions, industrial beef, fast fashion, 41:30.180 --> 41:33.180 the automobile industry, advertising, weapons, 41:33.180 --> 41:36.180 the military-industrial complex, yachts, cruise ships. 41:36.180 --> 41:38.180 There are huge chunks of our economy 41:38.180 --> 41:42.180 that are wasteful and destructive and totally unnecessary. 41:42.180 --> 41:45.180 We can also end the practice of planned obsolescence 41:45.180 --> 41:48.180 and introduce policy to extend product lifespans. 41:48.180 --> 41:50.180 This is powerful, by the way. Think about it. 41:50.180 --> 41:54.180 If our products last twice as long, we need half as many of them, 41:54.180 --> 41:57.180 cutting our energy and material use by 50%. 41:57.180 --> 41:59.180 This should be done democratically, 41:59.180 --> 42:03.180 and workers in sunset industries should have the guaranteed option 42:03.180 --> 42:07.180 of transitioning to socially and ecologically necessary forms of production 42:07.180 --> 42:10.180 that they choose, with full support under the job guarantee 42:10.180 --> 42:12.180 and no loss of livelihood. 42:12.180 --> 42:16.180 That must be an ironclad commitment. 42:16.180 --> 42:20.180 Finally, we need to curtail the purchasing power of the very rich 42:20.180 --> 42:24.180 using sensible policy measures like wealth taxes and maximum income ratios. 42:24.180 --> 42:27.180 Now, this may sound radical, but think about it. 42:27.180 --> 42:31.180 Right now, millionaires alone are on track 42:32.180 --> 42:37.180 to burn 72% of the remaining carbon budget for 1.5 degrees. 42:37.180 --> 42:41.180 This is an egregious assault on humanity and on the rest of the living world, 42:41.180 --> 42:44.180 and none of us should accept it. 42:44.180 --> 42:48.180 It is irrational and self-defeating for us to continue to devote energy and materials 42:48.180 --> 42:53.180 to supporting an over-consuming elite in the middle of an ecological emergency. 42:53.180 --> 42:56.180 We know that measures like these, 42:56.180 --> 42:59.180 scaling down less necessary forms of production 42:59.180 --> 43:01.180 and reforming provisioning systems, 43:01.180 --> 43:05.180 can reduce energy use in high-income countries by more than 50%, 43:05.180 --> 43:08.180 while at the same time improving social outcomes. 43:08.180 --> 43:12.180 And as our society requires less aggregate production to meet our needs, 43:12.180 --> 43:16.180 we can shorten the working week, give people more free time, 43:16.180 --> 43:18.180 and share necessary labor more evenly, 43:18.180 --> 43:23.180 therefore permanently precluding involuntary unemployment. 43:23.180 --> 43:27.180 This is extremely powerful in terms of climate mitigation. 43:27.180 --> 43:31.180 Less energy demand means we can decarbonize the economy much faster. 43:31.180 --> 43:35.180 It also means we require less renewable energy infrastructure to do that. 43:35.180 --> 43:37.180 And this is crucial for Norway. 43:37.180 --> 43:41.180 It means less appropriation of land and territory and forests 43:41.180 --> 43:44.180 for wind turbines and solar panels. 43:44.180 --> 43:49.180 Another benefit for Norway is that reduced need for imports of cars, 43:49.180 --> 43:51.180 for example, a major import here, 43:51.180 --> 43:56.180 would mean less need to extract and export oil to finance those imports. 43:56.180 --> 43:59.180 This approach also reduces material use, 43:59.180 --> 44:02.180 thus stopping and even reversing biodiversity loss 44:02.180 --> 44:05.180 and other forms of ecosystem breakdown. 44:05.180 --> 44:08.180 This is incredibly hopeful news. 44:08.180 --> 44:12.180 It's a powerful antidote to the doomerism and despair 44:12.180 --> 44:16.180 that has gripped our culture and our politics. 44:16.180 --> 44:19.180 Now, is such a program affordable? 44:19.180 --> 44:22.180 Yes, by definition, yes. 44:22.180 --> 44:24.180 As Keynes famously pointed out, 44:24.180 --> 44:27.180 anything we can actually do in terms of real productive capacity, 44:27.180 --> 44:29.180 we can pay for. 44:29.180 --> 44:31.180 And when it comes to productive capacity, 44:31.180 --> 44:34.180 clearly, as I've just argued, we have far more than enough. 44:34.180 --> 44:37.180 Deploying public finance and industrial policy 44:37.180 --> 44:39.180 simply shifts the use of this capacity 44:39.180 --> 44:42.180 away from wasteful production and elite accumulation 44:42.180 --> 44:47.180 to advance social and ecological objectives. 44:47.180 --> 44:50.180 Now, some will say this sounds utopian, 44:50.180 --> 44:53.180 but these policies happen to be extremely popular. 44:53.180 --> 44:56.180 Universal public services, green public works, 44:56.180 --> 44:59.180 a public job guarantee, more equality, 44:59.180 --> 45:03.180 an economy focused on well-being and ecology rather than growth. 45:03.180 --> 45:07.180 Polls and surveys show strong majority support for these ideas, 45:07.180 --> 45:10.180 and official citizens' assemblies, democratic processes, 45:10.180 --> 45:12.180 in several European countries 45:12.180 --> 45:16.180 have called for precisely this kind of transition. 45:16.180 --> 45:19.180 A post-growth deal along these lines, 45:19.180 --> 45:22.180 a just and ecological post-growth deal, 45:22.180 --> 45:27.180 has the potential to become a popular and feasible political agenda. 45:27.180 --> 45:31.180 Now, I want to emphasize that this is not just about ecology. 45:31.180 --> 45:34.180 It's also crucial to releasing the global south 45:34.180 --> 45:37.180 from the grip of extractivism and impoverishment. 45:37.180 --> 45:39.180 Excess energy and material use in the core 45:39.180 --> 45:43.180 needs to decline to achieve ecological objectives, 45:43.180 --> 45:46.180 while in the periphery, productive capacities 45:46.180 --> 45:51.180 need to be reclaimed, reorganized, and increased where necessary 45:51.180 --> 45:53.180 in order to meet human needs, 45:53.180 --> 45:55.180 with throughput converging globally 45:55.180 --> 45:58.180 to levels that are sufficient for universal human welfare 45:58.180 --> 46:01.180 and compatible with ecological stability. 46:01.180 --> 46:03.180 For the global south, 46:03.180 --> 46:05.180 this requires ending structural adjustment programs, 46:05.180 --> 46:07.180 canceling external debts, 46:07.180 --> 46:12.180 and enabling governments to use progressive industrial and fiscal policy 46:12.180 --> 46:14.180 to improve economic sovereignty, 46:14.180 --> 46:17.180 including tariffs and subsidies and capital controls 46:17.180 --> 46:19.180 and nationalization and public production. 46:19.180 --> 46:23.180 In the absence of effective multilateral action to allow for this, 46:23.180 --> 46:27.180 southern governments can and should take collective steps in this direction, 46:27.180 --> 46:31.180 and it is critical that progressive movements everywhere 46:31.180 --> 46:35.180 support and defend them toward this end. 46:35.180 --> 46:38.180 But none of this is going to happen on its own. 46:38.180 --> 46:41.180 It will require a political struggle 46:41.180 --> 46:46.180 against those who benefit so prodigiously from the status quo. 46:46.180 --> 46:49.180 To get there, it's necessary to build movements 46:49.180 --> 46:52.180 that are powerful enough to unseat existing incumbents 46:52.180 --> 46:55.180 or otherwise force them to change course. 46:55.180 --> 46:57.180 It should be clear to all of us by now 46:57.180 --> 47:01.180 that the environmentalist movement cannot do this on its own. 47:01.180 --> 47:03.180 It urgently needs to create alliances 47:03.180 --> 47:06.180 with unions and working class political formations 47:06.180 --> 47:08.180 to build a broad-based political movement 47:08.180 --> 47:10.180 that has real political leverage. 47:10.180 --> 47:13.180 And to achieve this, it is critical to foreground 47:13.180 --> 47:16.180 the social policy demands that I've highlighted here. 47:16.180 --> 47:18.180 But the unions also need to move, 47:18.180 --> 47:21.180 and I say this not as a critic from the outside, 47:21.180 --> 47:23.180 but as a lifelong union member. 47:23.180 --> 47:27.180 How did we ever let the political horizons of the labor movement 47:27.180 --> 47:30.180 shrink down to sector-specific battles over wages and conditions 47:30.180 --> 47:34.180 without any concern for the well-being of workers in other sectors 47:34.180 --> 47:37.180 or non-workers or the unemployed? 47:37.180 --> 47:39.180 We must revive our ambitions, 47:39.180 --> 47:42.180 universal public services and a job guarantee, 47:42.180 --> 47:45.180 our basic demands that any self-respecting labor movement 47:45.180 --> 47:48.180 must advance and implement as a top priority, 47:48.180 --> 47:51.180 which is also critical to creating the conditions 47:51.180 --> 47:55.180 that will make it possible for a just and ecological transition. 47:56.180 --> 47:59.180 So let me close by summarizing like this. 47:59.180 --> 48:03.180 The vision of a just and ecological future is possible to achieve. 48:03.180 --> 48:07.180 We know empirically that it is physically possible to achieve. 48:07.180 --> 48:10.180 But it requires a process of substantial transformation 48:10.180 --> 48:13.180 if we want to bring this vision into reality. 48:13.180 --> 48:16.180 This is not a time for timid responses, 48:16.180 --> 48:20.180 tweaking around the edges of a failing, degenerating system. 48:20.180 --> 48:22.180 It's time for openness to new ideas. 48:22.180 --> 48:24.180 It's time for bold movements. 48:24.180 --> 48:26.180 It's time for courage. 48:26.180 --> 48:28.180 Thank you. 48:28.180 --> 48:57.180 Applause