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Speaker: Brian Davey (Feasta – Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability)

Title “Win Win” – Impossible Futures – Part 1

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“Humankind cannot bear very much reality”

T S Eliot - Four Quartets

Questions to be addressed

Why don’t most people accept that the environmental crisis represents a life threatening global emergency for humanity?

How is it possible for a number of ultimately futile corporate agendas to capture the mass discourse about sustainability and turn it to their short run advantage? (e.g. how do vested interest coalitions persist that believe themselves to be pursuing meaningful plans but really wasting time and resources – so called 'Granfalloons'

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“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.” Edward Bernays, “Propoganda” (1928)

Bernays drew on Freud's ideas, and those of other psychologists interested in group dynamics and crowd psychology to establish the propoganda industry. It was later renamed “Public Relations” to disassociate it from the success that Dr Goebbels had had using the same techniques

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However, PR approaches can sometimes re-bound when they are too obvious......

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Ordinary Consciousness as “Consensus Trance”

“The idea of "normal consciousness" is the kind of convenient fiction illustrated by the famous folktale of "the emperor's new clothes." Together, human groups agree on which of their perceptions should be admitted to awareness (hence, consensus), then they train each other to see the world in that way and only in that way (hence trance).” (Howard Rheingold, describing the psychology of Charles Tart)

The fear of social ostracism is so great, we become alienated from ourselves to keep our sense of “belonging.”

Yet stress, depression, anxiety, worry, insomnia, or free-floating rage can tell us that something is wrong. However, in the case of climate change the process is slow and in the future – so we can easily not notice signs that things are wrong.

Why do we allow “consensus trance to happen?”

Uncertainty in information sources doesn’t help

Known unknowns – things/situations that you know you don’t know;

delusions and wishful thinking – errors in which you (and perhaps your group) have an em otional investm ent which are thus difficult to shift

denials – things which are too painful to know so you ignore inform ation that confirm s them

inform ational assym etry – unknowns for som e people that are known to others (vested interests blocking inform ation flow);

costly inform ation – situations where getting to know costs so m uch so that that partial or innaccurate knowing or even ignorance m ay be chosen instead

deception and secrecy – hiding knowns from others and/or fostering errors or delusions

technical inform ation – inform ation that is difficult for lay people without a specific com petence to interpret

Taboos – things/situations that a peer group/the law/ com pany business culture think you should not try to get to know

paranoias – hypotheses about the nature of unknowns that im pute m otives by others that are to be feared

(Som e things will be ‘unknown unknowns’ – but by definition we cannot articulate them until ‘after the event’ as this inform ation em erges during the course of activity)

Neo-classical econom ic textbooks sim plify by assum ing “perfect inform ation” or, at least, “rational expectations” by political-econom ic actors........ but th is is far from the truth

The preceding ideas suggest a large element of manipulation of mass opinion by vested interests – but mass opinion is also formed by the taken for granted way that the media and “experts” present discussions discussions in conceptual frames.

Academic discourse is a powerful force for affecting the way that issues are framed – and in the case of the environment and climate change the issues are typically framed using concepts adapted from mainstream economics.

A crucial element of framing is therefore that whatever is done must be compatible with the really important priority – economic growth.

Conceptual Framing

Foundational Concepts that frame current sustainability discourses Current policy presumptions are that

market based mechanisms are the appropriate approach to dealing with environmental problems – eg the threats of climate change, loss of particular habitats, biodiversity loss etc.

Business and other “economic actors” (eg consumers) must be incentivised to behaviours that protect the environment.

This is achieved by “giving nature (or its attributes like 'eco-system services') a price” and “hardwiring it into financial markets” (UNEP).

Means and Ends 'Incentivisations' by 'market based mechanisms' work

by structuring the ends-means relationship between the economy and environment.

i.e. businesses, whose ends are profit maximisation, achieve these ends by the means of appropriate environmental behaviour which they do because markets supposedly signal the worth of nature in a market price (for carbon permits, biodiversity or wetland credits/offsets etc)

Alternatively the state adjusts market prices with taxes and/or subsidies to reflect notional prices for nature and its attributes.

In summary With markets adjusted to “give nature a price” Good environmental business practices are a

means to the end of making money. Environmental benign behaviour is the means Money making is the end

Unfortunately with money making as the end the better means to make money are to game the policy making process

Gaming the European Unions Emissions Trading System

• Gaming the ETS meant that emitters in Europe over-estimated the amount of carbon that they used and asked for more permits than they actually needed..

• The policy administrators have consistently given them what they wanted and the result was that the cap has never functioned and the carbon price has always been too low to make much difference

Or simply to commit fraudE.g. The Kyoto Protocol's “Clean Development Mechanism” is supposed to be “additional” to what would happen anyway. However:

One estimate in 2007 was that more than one third of 654 hydro-electric projects that were recognised as CDM projects were already completed at the time of registration and almost all were already under construction.

(Barbara Haye “Failed Mechanism: How the CDM is subsidising hydro developers and harming the Kyoto Mechanism” International Rivers Report, 2007.)

Or to use climate policy as a “trojan horse” for strategic corporate agendasFor example the so called “bio-economy” agenda of chemical/pharmaceutical, GM, seed and bio-tech corporations like Monsanto, Proctor and Gamble, Chevron and BASF.

This involves taking over and using the “green economy” strategy to secure state sponsorship: public finance for R & D, support for intellectual property protection etc.

For the corporations this is less about saving the world from climate change – far more it is about gaining strategic control of entire value chains – in genetic and technical information, and production processes and resources in energy, biomass, water and land. Techo-innovation is to concentrate power in their hands as we reach and pass the limits to growth.

“Granfalloons” - vested interest coalitions formed around fruitless approaches

Ingredients for granfalloons :Culture that believes in silver bullet techno fixes

Desire of politicians to re-assure the public

Information uncertainties/unknowns and very complicated technical discourses

Path dependencies - difficulties of recognising, acknow ledging and w riting off investment in unsuccessful R and D strategies once started - “ these are just teething troubles”, “generation tw o technologies w ill solve these problems”

Source of subsidies for industries and academics

Bio-fuel as “granfalloon” exampleNo increase in energy security – energy in and out about the same

Drives up food prices

Drives up fuel prices

When land use changes are included increases GHG emissions

One third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water to feed the world – Maude Barlow “Water as a Commons”

In spite of the evidence bio-fuels are still supported

WHY?