The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation

In this radical new book Prof. Mark Diesendorf and Rod Taylor, who are based in Australia, say that major changes have to be made in order the move to a sustainable future. They claim that we have allowed large corporations, the military and other vested interests to capture governments and influence public opinion and markets excessively. The result will be social, economic and environmental disaster. They argue that the way forward is to build social movements to apply overwhelming pressure on government and big business, weaken the power of vested interests and strengthen democratic decision-making. This, they say, must be done simultaneously with action on the specific issues of climate, energy, natural resources & social justice, so as to transition to a truly sustainable civilisation. 

That may sound Utopian, but the book takes us through the practical technology options and explores how the transition to their use might come about globally. However it goes well  beyond just offering technical and social fixes, challenging the idea that technological changes alone will be sufficient to transition to ecological sustainability. It says that a sustainable civilisation needs ‘an economic system that fosters ecological sustainability and social justice’, whereas ‘the current dominant system, neoclassical economic theory together neoliberalism practice, is based on numerous myths. Its practitioners claim it’s a science although it does not stand up to scientific scrutiny’. 

Its list of myths include the assertion that ‘humans could live in a world without bio- diversity; that variable sources of renewable energy cannot power an industrial society; that endless economic growth on a finite planet is possible and desirable; that wealth trickles down from the rich to the poor; and that superpowers need weapons of mass destruction with the capacity to destroy human civilisation and most of the biosphere many times over.’

By contrast it claims that ‘the interdisciplinary field of ecological economics offers a better alternative conceptual framework. It recognises that endless growth on a finite planet can only lead to disaster and therefore its priorities are to limit the scale of human activity to a magnitude that’s ecologically sustainable and to ensure the distribution of resources is socially just’. While ‘simply cutting consumption & doing nothing else leads to unemployment and poverty,’ it says ‘an ecologically sustainable society that is more socially just can be reached by implementing a mix of different government policies to simultaneously reduce consumption & greatly improve social justice, thus reducing the perceived need for high incomes & hence high consumption’.                               

In terms of reducing consumption it says that, ‘policies could include caps on global resource use; taxation of pollution, wealth & inheritance; environmental audits and labelling of goods and services; legislation to encourage design of products for reuse, recycling & remanufacturing; and regulations & standards for energy efficiency and materials efficiency’. In parallel ‘social justice can be strengthened while reducing consumption by assisting workers who are disadvantaged by the transition, creating a job guarantee, reducing the working week, stabilising population size, & implementing universal basic services’. 

So it offers a radical series of policies for a transition, which it says ‘can be funded by discarding myth-based neoclassical macroeconomics and replacing it with the insightful Modern Monetary Theory. This allows monetary sovereign governments to create money instead of borrowing it, subject to remaining within the productive capacity of the economy. Part of the created money can be used for investments in infrastructure and people that expand the productive capacity of the economy.’ And it says change is urgent ‘It is already too late to keep global heating below 1.5 °C and will take a huge struggle to keep it below 2OC. Planetary boundaries have been exceeded in climate change and losses of biodiversity, freshwater, bio-geo-chemical flows and land use; ocean acidification has almost exceeded the safe boundary. Being human, we must not and cannot surrender, but now that there may be so little time left before the planet crosses a tipping point, we cannot restrict ourselves to relying on the market’. 

All in all, a challenging book offering a radical perspective on the way ahead, via a strategy ‘for planned degrowth to a steady-state economy’ which its says ‘is compatible with a market economy that is more strongly constrained by national governments & international agreements than the present system’. But in concludes ‘the most difficult part is overcoming the myths& pseudo-science supporting the existing economic system’.

No nuclear

Needless to say, nuclear plays no part in this future, as Mark Diesendorf has also argued in earlier books and articles, and there are many who share that view around the world, in the EU especially. However, the nuclear option is still being pushed hard by some (notably France and the UK) and is being looked at again in some countries in the EU who used to be anti-nuclear, with, controversially, nuclear having been labelled ‘green’ in the EU energy taxonomy. Given that there are over 100 nuclear lobbyists in Brussels from nuclear utilities, nuclear engineering companies and the nuclear supply chain, that’s maybe not so surprising, with a big push being made recently at the EC level and also in some individual countries. 

A new study from WISE/Boell looks at what happened in the Netherlands, where pro-nuclear ‘ecomodernist’ groups and campaigns seem to have been effective. In line with Diesendorf’s depiction of current reactionary beliefs, amongst other things, they have focussed on doubts about the viability of green energy as a response to climate change, and pioneered themes that right-wing parties and groups have also run with. With nuclear now in the green EU energy taxonomy, they may be having more than just local success- although attempts to widen state support for nuclear are meeting resistance.  So the battle for a sustainable future goes on, with the WISE/Boell report seeing the nuclear push as a ‘diversion from urgent climate action’ which will undermine the EU’s energy future. 

Thankfully, although Belgium has wobbled on its nuclear phase out, and Finland seems keen on expansion, some EU countries have maintained their long-held anti-nuclear stances. For example, while there’s been a pro-nuclear campaign in the Danish media, the Danish Energy & climate minister has said that it’s a ‘no go’ idea, and in Italy, which voted to give up nuclear 35 years ago, a National Research Council director said ‘any path towards a relaunch of nuclear in Italy could be hardly pursued and the country should aim at boosting renewables – particularly solar power generation.’ Austria, Portugal and Ireland have stayed anti-nuclear, while Spain seems to be sticking to its slow nuclear phase out.   

However,  Sweden seem to have  abandoned its ‘100% renewable’ energy target in favour of a technology-neutral Net Zero policy, so as to create the conditions for nuclear renewal. ‘We need a stable energy system’, said the finance minister in its right-wing government.  Meantime though, undeterred and having succeeded in exiting nuclear while also cutting all imports of Russian gas, Germany is pushing ahead with its renewables expansion programme, aiming to get to 80% by 2030. Though there may be some way to go still to the sort of future envisaged by Diesendorf and Taylor…