CCBC24: Reflections through a Post-Growth Lens

The New Zealand Climate Change and Business Conference is targeted at business professionals working on climate issues. I was invited to present a post-growth economics and enterprise perspective in a panel on A Thriving Economy Within Planetary Boundaries. There was a flurry of social media posts during the conference, all positive, none challenging or critical. Since I promote a rethink of the economy as well as a rethink of business, hopefully my take on the conference will add something valuable to the stock of reflections.

Key Narratives

Thank you Daniel Street , Alec Tang , Joanna Silver , Simon Harvey , James Hughes , Nikki Wright and others for your helpful summary posts on the conference. Here’s a brief summary of key narratives.

• The business community perceives NZ as a trading nation challenged by distance but advantaged by resources.
• The ETS remains the chosen mechanism for a low-carbon transition. Businesses demand policy consistency and gold-standard offsets.
• Small-scale projects fail to attract institutional investors. NZ may need to develop large, multi-benefit projects.
• International markets, especially Europe, are imposing disclosure and due diligence burdens on NZ. Environmental science is key to unlocking market access. NZ trade agreements, based on sustainability, are a promise to deliver.
• Fast-tracking renewable energy would put NZ ahead in the global race to achieve a low carbon economy.
• Businesses must step up where policy is lacking. Government will only intervene where there is a market failure.

My Reflections

Scene setting: The opening plenary was a brilliant and terrifying look at the state of climate change from an Australian perspective. However, a broader, local picture was needed, with local scientists informing about the state of NZ climate change, biodiversity and wellbeing, and the policy landscape for addressing these, drawing out shortfalls. Another vital lens that sustainability folk are tremendously uncomfortable with is national defence. But we must consider it in the mix as we face geopolitical uncertainty.

Bridging impact and action: It is vital to present an ecological macroeconomic analysis linking environmental impacts with resource and energy use and production and consumption. Without this, the conference fails to examine the real sources of impacts and the real pace of change. It was stated in the very first presentation that NZ is decoupling GDP from emissions. That’s great and necessary, but no evidence was shown about the source, scale, pace and endurance of those decoupling measures. No other kinds of GDP decoupling were mentioned, such as water use or pollution. Without macroeconomic insights, necessary reflections on key economic assumptions are missed and the sector jumps straight into solution mode. This reinforces the status quo, obstructing change. James Shaw said: “We need to work out how to make more money improving the planet than destroying it. Until we do that we will keep destroying it.” This invokes Margaret Thatcher’s mantra that there is no alternative to capitalism, it’s just a choice between a green or a dirty version. Coming from a respected former climate minister and Green Party leader, these words herald eco-neoliberalism as sustainability heroism. I commented in the panel in which I participated that neoliberalism would not be a good fit in an eco-social economy, and this was elaborated upon my fellow panellist, Andrew Petersen. It is, admittedly, a really difficult challenge since capitalism is systemic and we are all capitalism dependent, especially for work. But we must figure out how to deprioritise profit, so that our economy rewards enterprises that are focused on enhancing wellbeing while meeting ecological limits. This requires management and systems thinking capabilities beyond the norm. In other words, we have an incoming pedagogical problem that solutionism isn’t seeing.

Ecological limits: Limits are entering business vocabulary. Dr?Jo?lle?Gergis introduced evidence that climate impacts must stop now if we are to avoid tipping points. In the built environment panel, Scott Smith and Joe Karten both said that sufficiency can be a characteristic of building design. In the new economics panel, my presentation introduced limits as an economic assumption and Kate Meyer presented a tool for measuring business data against granular planetary boundaries. The circular economy panel was geared towards avoidance of use as much as recycling, and Jewelz Petley’s presentation on the Māori view on circular economy, on the new economics panel, would have also been great within the circular economy panel.

Social foundation: Economic inclusivity is not an area in which business excels. Rod Carr highlighted that the transition to a low carbon economy must be made inclusive, so that parts of society do not become disaffected and block progress. Piper Pengelly suggested negative discount rates to favour projects delivering more value to future generations. Rod Carr and Dame Anne Salmond both called out the market-led approach as not always rational from a societal perspective, since markets don’t care about the distribution of outcomes. Joe Karten mentioned the importance of modern slavery due diligence in the global supply chain, an area where NZ legislation has fallen behind. We must look beyond the commercial solution. Community energy and housing projects need capital too and can potentially deliver far greater social benefits with more resource efficiency than large scale providers are able to do. Pooling community funding requirements could attract institutional investors, such as NZ pension funds, seeking high impact returns and willing to take lower financial returns over a long timeframe.

Consumerism: Malcolm Johns said that no one is willing to sacrifice their lifestyle. There are other interpretations of consumer intransigence. People have a semblance of choice (Air New Zealand or Jetstar) rather than an actual choice (air or train). The IPCC details the avoid/shift/improve changes that citizens need to make. The heart of business sustainability is not in making a limited choice less unsustainable, but providing goods, services and infrastructures that enable society to avoid, shift and improve lifestyles into sustainability.

Technologies: Dr Gergis said we have 50-80% of the technologies we need, but that plays into the notion that we are relying on speculative NETs and it excuses delay. Rod Carr argued that we have 100% of the technologies we need.

The shape of business: Business design is a critical input to business decision making. I didn't see any examination of business ownership as a factor inhibiting climate action.

Prosperity in the long term: Net zero by 2050 is an arduous challenge, but long term prosperity is our goal. Rod Carr spoke of the opportunity to be not less worse off, but better off. Malcolm Johns, reminding us of our responsibility to be good ancestors, suggested developing a strong economic platform off abundant renewable energy, but didn’t elaborate on when the economy could be weaned off fossil fuels, which would have been pertinent information from an energy chief. Lisa Davies painted a picture of Auckland city in 2080, built on te ao Māori values of care, unity and guardianship. Envisaging multiple desirable futures is important to developing a shared vision of a thriving NZ in the long term.

Wider view: Carbon tunnel vision has widened to nature, with nature-based solutions happening on the coast (blue carbon) and in cities (sponge cities). Some of the most innovative nature positive projects are Māori-led. The focus on nature is, however, mostly about NZ’s soil and water. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much attention being paid to environmental injustices, here or elsewhere.

Politicisation: It is irrational to weaponise decarbonisation in political rhetoric, said Rod Carr. Calls for depoliticisation make sense when it is clear that an administration is going against scientific evidence and public consensus, such as by locking-in high carbon transport pathways. National MP Stuart Smith said that “politics is the art of the possible”. What politicians mean by “possible” is their perception of what’s currently palatable to their voters. Politicisation is vital for shifting the Overton window of voter palatability. For instance, without politicising carbon, we wouldn’t have had the Zero Carbon Act. Any student of the history of sustainability knows that the 1987 Brundtland Report expertly depoliticised environmentalism for a whole generation by subsuming environmental outcomes into neoliberalism, inventing the concept of sustainable development. Let’s be circumspect about the topics to politicise or depoliticise.

Undue influence: Key sponsorship of any conference can amount to purchasing a platform. That seemed to happen at the CCBC given the frequent inclusion of a major sponsor, Westpac, on plenary and other panels discussing a range of topics. Offering unconditional funding would be a welcome future change from key sponsors.

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