Daily Archives: November 3, 2021

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Economic research regularly touches almost every facet of life. Economists arent just about dollars and cents and supply and demand they study income inequality and homelessness, lead exposure and public health, financing for higher education institutions and how the effects of historical racism ripple through time, to name a few intersectional topics.

If you cover business or even thats not your regular beat you know that you might be covering sales tax holidays one minute and Main Street revitalization programs the next. If theres an economics topic youre rusty on, youre going to want to check out what the research says at The Journalists Resource and also see what academic researchers themselves have to say via our friends at Econofact.

Econofact is a nonpartisan online publication out of The Fletcher School at Tufts University. Their bread-and-butter content consists of memos written by academic economic researchers, usually about their own work. The memos begin with a straightforward introduction of an issue, like inflation, a few quick research-based facts about the topic, followed by the authors interpretation of their findings.

A small team led by Michael Klein, an international economics professor at Tufts, and managing editor Miriam Wasserman strive to make the memos accessible to readers who dont have a doctoral or even undergraduate background in economics.

Econofact also produces a podcast Econofact Chats thats landed some big names, including Nobel laureates Paul Krugman, a professor at the City University of New York and New York Times columnist, and Michael Kremer, a professor at the University of Chicago.

I recently spoke with Klein, who founded Econofact in 2017, to learn why he started the project, how journalists can use Econofact, and how economics and business reporters can improve their coverage.

What were trying to do at Econofact is introduce journalists to a wide range of nationally recognized experts who they might not be aware of, but who have done very important work and who oftentimes have been involved in policy and have a lot to contribute to the public debate, Klein says.

Keep reading for more. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and style.

Clark Merrefield: What made you want to start Econofact? Im also curious about your editorial process, how you choose the writers and topics for the site.

Michael Klein: In the fall of 2016, in the run-up to that [presidential] election, I was disappointed by the level of conversation about a lot of issues, but especially economic ones. After the election, I decided to try to get economists voices into the mix to a greater degree, and to bridge the academic-public divide. So, I used a format that I first developed at the U.S. Treasury, when I was the chief economist in international affairs, of writing short memos that were accessible to non-PhD economists and, in this case, non-economists completely. I reached out to a network of friends. We launched in January of 2017 with about 20 people in the network and six memos. By now we have almost 300 memos and more than 120 people in the network.

We try to find topics that are timely but also a little bit timeless. Topics that are in the news but topics that are going to be of continuing interest. We reach out to people in our network, or people who have been suggested to us, and ask them if theyd like to contribute. People who go into economics often do so because they want to see an improvement in the world. This is a way for their ideas and expertise to get beyond the normal academic audience to whom they usually speak.

All the memos have the same format. We start out with the issue, and then we have a series of bullet points with the facts, and then the authors are allowed to discuss their view of things. But we establish the facts and the issue first. We spend a lot of time editing the memos, to make sure that theyre accessible to a very broad audience. And also, very importantly for us, that theyre non-partisan. We check all the references, and youll notice that in the memos there are a lot of hyperlinks because we want to back up everything. The fact part of Econofact is a very important part of our name.

Also, beginning in the summer of 2020 I started a weekly podcast series. Ive been fortunate to have some really prominent economists, including two Nobel laureates, Paul Krugman and Michael Kremer; the last three chief economists of the International Monetary Fund, Ken Rogoff, Maurice Obstfeld and Olivier Blanchard; and many other economists who are not only experts in their area but who have held very high public positions.

CM: And youve had journalists on the podcast too Ben Casselman at the New York Times and several others.

MK: Yeah, thats been really fun. So weve had Ben Casselman, weve had [New York Times economics reporter] Eduardo Porter. And weve had three podcasts in which weve had a panel of journalists with Heather Long from the Washington Post, Greg Ip from the Wall Street Journal, Scott Horsley from NPR and Binyamin Appelbaum from the New York Times. Every six months or so we get together and have a somewhat longer podcast. In early December were going to do the fourth of those, with that same panel, talking about the first year of the Biden administration.

CM: You mentioned that Econofact is nonpartisan. Is there a specific economic school of thought that you personally come from or that the site veers toward?

MK: There is a lot more consensus in economics than one would be led to believe by reading news articles or watching television shows or listening to the radio. Typically, what Ive seen happen is that [journalists] will try to get both sides of a story, even if on one side of the story theres a very small minority of people that believe that way. For example, with climate change for a long time, even though scientists were almost universally agreeing that there was in fact evidence of climate change, youd often see a climate denier representing a deep minority opinion. But, if you didnt know, you would kind of think it was evenly divided. In many ways theres not that much controversy, certainly not as much controversy as you might be led to believe, but we do try to get people from across the political spectrum. Weve been ranked as pretty middle-of-the-road by independent places that have looked at our site.

CM: On the topic of journalistic improvement, in economic news coverage is there a routine error or something that you consistently see happening that you would want to see done differently?

MK: What were trying to do at Econofact is introduce journalists to a wide range of nationally recognized experts who they might not be aware of, but who have done very important work and who oftentimes have been involved in policy and have a lot to contribute to the public debate. If you read articles, especially in newspapers, what youll find is a small cadre of people that journalists are always turning to. And many of them are very, very good. But there are lots of other very good people who can offer fresh perspectives as well. I can understand why that is. Journalists are operating under very severe deadlines, they have the people that they know. Its easiest, and especially when youre under a time deadline, most efficacious to turn to those people. But if they are able to look around a little bit more, they would see that there are other people as well.

Another issue that I have is that theres often a human interest angle to the stories. Which is important, because it engages people. But its also important not to have those anecdotes be a substitute for data. And not to have an unusual or extreme case give the impression that thats typical. Id like to see more balance between these human interest aspects, but also a broader perspective of whats actually going on, and noting whether these individual stories are really typical, or if they might not be a typical case.

CM: One of the most interesting pieces on your site, to me, which came out in May of this year, was about the timing of unemployment insurance benefits and how they dont always line up with the financial help that people really need. You also wrote a piece in 2018 that explained Treasury bond yields, which have come up again and again in the last few years. So theres a lot of really useful stuff on your site for journalists on deadline to quickly get up to speed on whatever topic they might be covering. How do you suggest journalists interact with the site to get the most out of it?

MK: I appreciate that typically economic journalists have to cover a really wide range of topics, and its hard to become an expert in any one of them, much less to be conversant in all the ones a journalist will have to cover. One of the goals of our site is to allow people, in a way, to become an instant expert on an area by reading the views of one of the top people in the country who has been spending his or her professional lifetime looking at that issue. A lot of our memos are evergreen. Theyre on topics like you mentioned Treasury bond yields that will always be coming up. They give a primer on how to understand these issues. Some other topics, like on unemployment insurance, are also evergreen but they have a very timely aspect given the illumination of the extraordinary support of workers that we saw at the end of the summer.

I would suggest journalists could use our site to come quickly up to speed on topics, but also to see who wrote the memo, and to use those people as resources as well. We have a lot of memos on a wide range of topics. If you wanted to look at the issue of trade or immigration we have lots of memos on those topics so you could get a pretty wide-ranging view of some of the important related issues.

We also have some really good podcasts. For example, my interview with Paul Krugman on trade, or with Kadee Russ of [the University of California, Davis] on trade. I think those give a really nice overview, in Krugmans case on globalization and trade and in Kadees case on the link between trade and jobs. Theres a real opportunity in using our site to come quickly up to speed on these important and timely topics, and also to familiarize yourself with a range of experts who you might otherwise not know of who could really be an asset to your reporting.

CM: A lot of times for journalists and Im not talking about journalists from national outlets, more reporters at local or regional outlets sometimes getting access or getting big names to talk can be a challenge. Would you say the folks who write for your site are accessible and willing to talk to journalists from a range of outlets?

MK: Our experience is thats very much the case. These people arent getting inundated with calls from reporters every day and theyre very interested in having their ideas and their expertise used in the public sphere. The people who are writing for us and are on our podcast are people who, by virtue of them writing for us and being on our podcast, want public engagement. And then, theyre willing to go the next step and speak directly to people from the media.

CM: I did a Q&A a few months back with a sociologist and a journalist who collaborated on an investigative project that spanned several years, and theyre probably unique in the closeness that they worked together. But I wonder if you think there are ways that journalists and economists could collaborate directly, whether on a major project or just on the level of getting to better understand what each profession does?

MK: I think there are definite opportunities for synergy. One opportunity would be if a journalist wants to go deeper into a topic, an economist who is an expert in that topic could give the journalist a very powerful framework. Economists are trained to think in very precise, careful ways. I think people who want to delve deeper, to write a popular piece, would benefit from that. And, they can provide ways to parse out, for example, whats the cause and whats the effect? Can you really understand whats going on by looking at some simple correlations, or could those be misleading?

Economists, too, could benefit from speaking more with journalists, especially if they are interested in reaching a wider audience than just what they find in academic journals. Journalists know how to appeal to a wider audience, how to make an argument that resonates with people. At Econofact, thats what we try to do, although were still kind of wonky compared to the typical journalistic article. But were a lot more accessible than what you would read in scholarly journals. Even though the material in scholarly journals can have a very important public impact, we offer a way in which the public can have access to that and understand it.

CM: What are some general challenges in communicating economic topics to the public? Im not sure theres a huge amount of understanding of how complex the economy is, and how much control a single person, like the president, actually has.

MK: In [the U.S.] theres a view that government can both do more than it can do and that government cant do as much as it can. And what I mean by that is, for example, the president is typically blamed or lauded for the performance of the economy. In fact, the president doesnt have that many levers to pull to affect the economy.

On the other hand, theres a view that the government cant do things in this country when, in fact, there is opportunity to, for example, help children in poverty. Or help people learn new ways to work as the economy evolves.

Theres a bit of a paradox that in some ways the government is seen as more powerful than it is in terms of macroeconomic outcomes and in other ways the government is seen as more impotent than it really is in terms of social welfare issues. Its hard to convey those things. You can talk about how the structure of the economy doesnt give the president free reign to change the way the macro economy is going. Or, you can compare whats going on in this country to other advanced countries in terms of support provided to poor children or poor families, or those who might not otherwise have access to higher education. Perhaps those kinds of examples would be useful. Sort of contradicting myself a little bit by saying these anecdotes are important, but I understand thats how a lot of people look at the world, through stories. It would be great to have those stories that were actually characteristic of broader trends and ideas and help people understand, in a more realistic way, what the role of government could be or should be and when we should be satisfied with outcomes and when we should think that we can do much better.

CM: Im also thinking about the news stories, opinion pieces and social media where the word socialism is mentioned in relation to proposed government spending. Im not sure people understand what socialism means, or maybe it means different things to different people. And that government spending and tax policy have been used to benefit families living in poverty, as you said, and also benefit the wealthy.

MK: Theres a lack of context. Its probably apocryphal, but people talk about the bumper sticker, Keep the governments hands off my social security check. Journalism could go a long way toward educating the public. As you mentioned, what is socialism? What is capitalism? Nobody really gets rich on their own. Theres a huge infrastructure, both physical and institutional, that enables people to rise within the economy, and there should be an appreciation of that. People benefit from government spending, but you have to tax people in order to pay for spending. Theres a tendency, I think, to isolate things and take them out of context. Then they become these talking points that really dont make sense and arent well understood. Theres a lot that journalists could do to better educate the public in the wider context of whats going on. Not only in this country, but as this country compares to other advanced economies.

Check out Econofacts memos and podcasts, along with recent economic coverage from The Journalists Resource on state sales tax holidays, the debt ceiling and the link between race, tax delinquency and life expectancy.

Originally posted here:

Econofact: Another great source for getting up to speed on newsy economic policy topics - Journalist's Resource

Since the nineteenth century, human society has experienced extraordinary but uneven economic growth thanks to the energy unleashed from fossil fuels. That growth, and the greenhouse gasses released from fossil-fuel use, has also created the current climate crisis. The conventional solution put forward to this crisis, a putative compromise between economic and environmental imperatives, has been to maintain economic growth but on the basis of sustainable energy sources.

Not all ecologists or economists are enthusiastic about this green growth alternative. According to these critical views, which have now begun to move into the mainstream, the planet simply cant sustain the current pace of growth and even renewable energy sources like solar hit up against significant resource limits. The only effective way to control carbon emissions, as well as related problems of pollution and biodiversity loss, is to address overshoot, the unconstrained use of energy and material resources well beyond planetary limits, particularly in the richer parts of the world. These arguments pick up from some of the earliest computer modeling of resource limits highlighted in the Club of Romes Limits to Growth report in 1972, but now with a climate crisis twist.

With the fiftieth anniversary of the Club of Rome report approaching, a number of scientists and economists gathered in early October to assess the current state of play of the zero-growth argument, its traction in the mainstream, and how best to call attention to the data supporting these positions. They looked at this question from various anglesphysics, geology, biology, economy, ecologyand discussed the major obstacles to greater acceptance of more critical approaches to economic growth as well as ways of overcoming these obstacles.

The main challenge remains how deeply wedded politicians, economists, and even the average person are to economic growth. Its often said that its easier for most people to imagine the end of civilization than the end of capitalism, and to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of growth, quips Joshua Farley, ecological economist at the University of Vermont.

The growth narrative has indeed created certain blind spots, geologist Simon Micheaux of the Geological Survey of Finland points out. Certain things just havent occurred to us to look at, let alone do the math. One is, understanding what energy does for us. The other is understanding where the raw materials come from. Much work over the years, including modeling around economic, environmental, and resource limits, has been designed in part to eliminate these blind spots.

Still, blind spots persist. They can be found, for instance, in the discourse around the Green New Deal. Most Green New Deal material Ive seen is just another formula for growth, York University economist Peter Victor notes. With sustainable development, we used to say that we have the adjective but they have the noun. I feel the same with green growth.

The modelers themselves are not immune from the growth imperative.

We need projects to survive as a research group, explains economist Jaime Nieto Vega of the University of Valladolid, adding that those projects require bigger and better modeling. Im increasingly convinced that we should keep the modeling simple, but the internal dynamics of academe are against that. Universidad del Rosario ecological economist Katharine Farrell similarly highlights the need to take into account the modelling implications of industrialization of scientific knowledge production with its fetishization of innovation that reproduces within academia the same growth dynamic in society as a whole.

In recent years, critiques of growth have been emerging from a number of different disciplines. Such an intellectual convergence is producing what might well become a paradigm shift. Its almost as if human consciousness is ready to see certain ideas, Simon Micheaux concludes hopefully. Our ideas might be received a little bit differently over the next couple of years.

Economics

Economics, on paper, is a discipline devoted to scarcity and trade-offs: budget constraints, resource limitations, the iron law of wages. As economists like to say, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything, in the end, must be paid for.

Economic growth at first glance seems to promise a shortcut out of this dismal world of scarcity by offering the promise of just such a free lunch, if not for everyone then at least for some. As economies grow, more goods and services become available, and the bounty seems to be conjured as if from thin air.

Economic growth, however, is not a conjuring trick. It has been powered by planetary resources, mostly fossil fuels. As University of British Columbia bio-ecologist William Rees points out, for most of human existence economic growth was barely detectable until the early nineteenth century when we got into the fossil fuel era. Fossil fuel for the first time gave humans access to other resources needed to grow the rest of infrastructure and human and manufactured capital that we find ourselves blessed with. In order to maintain that capital, we need to have a continuous supply of cheap energy.

The bill for a free lunch produced by fossil fuels is now coming due in the form of global warming, biodiversity decline, and various forms of pollution.

The strange thing is that economic growth, though it exerts such a powerful influence across societies of very different political economies, is often illusory. For much of the past 50 years, most Americans have experienced no economic growth, noincrease in consumption or level of wealth, Joshua Farley points out, because the benefits of economic growth have all flowed to the elite.

Yet most people dont want to give up on even this illusory sense of growth. Farley cites the 2006 review of the economics of climate change by the British economist Nicholas Stern, who noted at the time that it would require an outlay of one percent of global GDP to stabilize emissions at a level of 550 parts per million, which would substantially reduce the risk of climate catastrophe. At a time when GDP was growing 3 percent a year, such an expenditure would mean accepting a living standard of a mere five months in the past. But Stern believed that even such a modest cut would be a tough pill for the public to swallow, and he acknowledged that more ambitious efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophe, by for instance spending 2 percent of global GDP and accepting the living standards of the previous year, would meet with even greater public resistance.

Growth is not simply embedded in national discourses. It lies at the heart of the process known as globalization, namely the elimination of barriers to the transnational flow of trade and capital and the intensification of global supply chains. But globalization, as Peter Victor notes, is not inevitable: Globalization is built around capital mobility as the owners of capital seek better returns on their capital. It is allowed by policy, but there is also an opportunity to reduce capital mobility just as it was increased.

Such pushback against the assumptions of globalizationthat deregulation is essential, that growth is inevitablehas grown among economists.

This pushback, for Peter Victor, began with the idea that the economy is fully embedded in the biosphere and is fully dependent on it for all materials and energy and for all waste disposal. From this insight, he developed models for exploring the impact in Canada of a no-growth economy and a reduction of energy and material throughput. If GDP is stable, and youre getting efficiency gains, then youre reducing material and energy use, he explains. When he published his first modeling in 2007, you could put out scenarios that showed that the cessation of growth in Canada would meet many other important social and economic objectives: less work time, more leisure time, a reduction of income inequality and environmental impacts.

A second model, developed with ecological economist Tim Jackson, also incorporated the financial system. We could still get scenarios where growth would end and material and energy throughput would decline, but it was harder, Victor adds. I dont think thats a surprise. The window is definitely closing in terms of any reasonably smooth adjustment to the circumstances were facing.

Another hallmark of the current age of economic globalization is increased income inequality, both within countries and between countries. This polarization has been driven by the greater role played by finance in the global economy. The rate of return for financial capital is often greater than the economy as a whole, which effectively transfers even more wealth to those who possess capital in the first place. People are making money from money rather than from the production of goods. Some individuals and some countries are better positioned to prosper under such a system, which reinforces inequality.

I see the fundamental conflict of our age as the rich versus everyone else, Simon Micheaux argues. People with lots of money dont have empathy. The same ways of logic and problem-solving and appealing to a sense of right and wrong doesnt work with them.

Katharine Farrell calls attention to the social psychology work of biologist Mary E. Clark that the sociopathology of the profit-driven private corporation is well documented in psychological research. A corporation has to survive by showing profit and growing, Micheaux agrees. If a corporation cant grow, it loses investment, takes on debt, and goes down. They call this a free market like its a good thing. What do psychopaths do when they are fighting for their own survival? Do we expect them to play nice?

Economic Transition

The global economy is under a number of pressures: stagnation, the costs of climate change and other environmental impacts, the volatility that has accompanied income inequality. Crises have a way of bringing about unanticipated or unwanted changes, Peter Victor notes. But they happen. Think of the crisis European feudalism faced with the rise of the merchant class and later the industrial class. Feudalism gave way to capitalism not because Adam Smith wrote a great book but because the pressures were too great for feudalism to survive. There was a shift in the power balance. Now we have to recognize that capitalism is under stress.

One of those stresses is the availability of raw materials. Modern capitalism is based on relatively inexpensive fossil fuels and mineral wealth. That entire system is now under threat. This is an historic moment, Katharine Farrell points out. We are looking at the collapse of the physiological structures of the planet, such as weve been able to document them, during the small amount of time that weve been around to do so.

Another energy-related challenge for any transition away from fossil fuels is the relationship between energy efficiency and the reduction of energy demand thats imperative if humanity is to meet national and international carbon emission goals. We are finding that energy efficiency is not able to grow at the same scope as energy reduction when economic growth is a given, reports Jaime Nieto Vega, alluding to Jevons paradox according to which increased efficiency in resource use goes hand in hand with increased consumption of that resource. This is one of the main challenges of the energy transition plans in the EU and concretely in Spain.

There is more willingness among politicians to acknowledge the ongoing collapse of the existing system. Simon Micheaux describes a meeting he had with civil servants in Brussels. They were in an echo chamber, he remembers. It had not occurred to them to ask certain questions. I put together some information to demonstrate that our dependency on fossil fuels is a problem, fossil fuels are about to become unreliable, and the transition plan to move away from fossil fuel has not been thought out in a practical context. At a basic level, the planned rollout of electric cars and hydrogen fuel cell powered by solar and wind and hydro wont work. Weve run out of time, and we dont have the minerals in the ground. Even if we did find those minerals somehow by mining the sea floor, those systems are not strong enough to replace fossil fuels. I was met with shock. No one able to refute my work.

Such a meeting stood in contrast to his involvement in a civil society consultation at the G20 meeting in Melbourne in 2014. The finance ministers told us up front that if we couldnt help them achieve 2 percent growth annum indefinitely, we shouldnt bother coming, he recalls. When it became clear that we couldnt do that, that we would be tabling some very difficult challenges, they cut out the civil society documentation to go to the G20.

Joshua Farley agrees that the world is on the verge of transition. The heyday of neoliberalism is fading fast, he notes. My students are more open to alternatives to capitalism. Were reaching a point where the next stage is inevitable. People all around the world are coming up with the same ideas at the same time, just like Newton and Leibniz with calculus and Darwin and Wallace with evolution.

He continues, We are moving from a world in which individual choice and competition made sense to one in which collective choice and cooperation are necessary, not because ideologies have changed but because both the problems we face and the nature of the resources required to solve them have changed. When the costs of economic activity are collective, capitalism (i.e. private property rights and individual choice) is suicidal; when the benefits are collective (e.g. new vaccines for COVID, new forms of alternative energy), capitalism is inefficient.

William Rees remains cautious about this transitional period. If you believe the results of our eco-footprint and overshoot work, its not possible to support the present population indefinitely at average material standards, he points out. There are already resource shortages. To maintain the current structure requires the depletion of natural assets in the biosphere. According to our material flow analysis, half of the countries on earth are incapable of becoming even remotely self-reliant. Even China, which boasts of its huge pork production, relies on fodder grown in the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere. So, Chinas eco-footprint is all over planet. Theyre aware of it, at least implicitly. The Belt-and-Road Initiative is a strategy to ensure that China has access to resources all over earth. China has instructed its industrial sector and military to look for every drop of fossil fuel so that they can get in there first to maintain hegemony. Sustainability beyond mid-century will require a massive contraction of economic throughput by as much as 50 percent globally, which means 80 percent in rich countries on a per capita basis. Although modest by some estimation, are those figures realistic geopolitically?

Is capitalism, and the countries dedicated to it so firmly, going to fade away quietly? he asks. A dying dinosaur has a very dangerous tail that thrashes around. He points out that the world is not controlled by us thinking about ideas. Its controlled by big money and the politics that goes with it. The military-industrial complex is alive and thriving.

Part of any transition, then, is to minimize the influence of the beneficiaries of the dying system. None of us know what the new economy will look like or how to implement it, Joshua Farley says. But I advocate removing important parts, like essential resources, from the capitalist economy. That might be perceived as less of a threat to the global market. I still want to go into a store and choose the apple I want. Markets work okay for tastes but not for needs.

One such segment of the economy might be research. Ideas, information, knowledge, none of this should be rationed, yet capitalism tries to push knowledge production into a market framework, Peter Victor points out. If I can get free information from the Internet, I will do so. I dont consider it stealing. Its not like bread from the baker since if I take it, theres no less for anyone else.

Biology

Mainstream economists view humans as rational actors who maximize their gains according to self-interest. Billions of such rational actors have over the years made decisions to increase the overall pie as well as their portion of it. The biological counterpart of this economistic view is the selfish gene, by which humans will do everything within their power to maximize their advantages in order to improve their chances of reproducing themselves. Growing the economy and growing the species have thus been cast as going hand in hand.

Not everyone agrees. Since Richard Dawkins introduced his selfish gene argument, others have marshaled evidence for the biological basis of altruism. Love, compassion: these are characteristics of primates, Katharine Farrell notes, adding with a dash of understatement that even some humans have been seen to exhibit these characteristics.

Biology is not destiny, William Rees argues, but it certainly strongly influences human actions. The human species responds just as other species do when it finds itself in a resource trove, he explains. We go through rapid exponential growth until we either pollute ourselves into slowing down or deplete the assets that produced that growth. We are in the plague phase of a one-off population outbreak that will result in either slow implosion or rapid crash. Thats the choice ahead of us.

Biological limitations also shape the efficacy of human responses to the current crisis. We have a brain that evolved in simple circumstances: a small habitat and few people, Rees continues. We are not capable of dealing with complexity. We are natural reductionists. Echo chambers, disciplinary silosthat reflects our capacity to focus on one thing at a time and not much else. With every biological phenomenon there is diversity, but in the main, were not capable of understanding the complexity of the situation that we have created.

The heart of the problem, he adds, is not climate change per se. With the explosion of human numbers, weve put ourselves in a situation where simply maintaining the current population and infrastructure requires the depletion of natural capital assetssoils, forests, fisheries, he says. We are literally consuming the biophysical basis of our own existence. Climate change is a symptom of overshoot. Its a waste management issue, caused by carbon dioxide, the largest single waste product by weight of industrial economies. Biodiversity loss is a symptom of overshoot because human expansion necessarily displaces other species and their habitats. Gross pollution is the entropic result of growing the human enterprise.

Ordinarily, such species growth hits a wall. Species are usually held in check by negative feedback from the ecosystem in the form of disease or competition, he notes. Fossil fuel relieved us from that feedback, and we could express our full biological potential to expand. The cultural meme set of neoliberal economics has reinforced the biological disposition to expand.

Katharine Farrell, while largely in agreement with Rees, resists the notion that human nature is predetermined, by a selfish gene way or otherwise. She argues that its very difficult to get out of ones own orientation and disagrees with treating the culture of capitalism as an inherent feature of being human: industrialized capitalism, which has certainly achieved a memetic imposition on the culture of the planet, is not the natural or only option for the human being. We have to get out of the trap of the gendered state of evolution reflected in the Euro-descendent, post-medieval culture of capital accumulation that presently dominates globalized economic activity. Its not the only option we have.

Increasingly, humans have been behaving much like parasites, which Joshua Farley points out, constitute the overwhelming share of species on the planet. William Rees picks up on the theme. Humans have broken free of any ethical obligation to non-human species or even the future, he says. We have become effectively parasites on the planet. The growth of the human enterprisethe production of all our toys and goodies acquired at the expense of depleting the planet of other species, soil, waterhas had the entropic consequence of the parasitic destruction of our host species, which is the ecosystem.

It all comes down, Katharine Farrell agrees, to entropy, to the inevitable marriage between the production of order and disorder. We dont have an energy supply problem so much as an obsessive focus on finding energy sources. We have an overproduction of entropy, of waste heat and residuals that are inevitably produced whenever we do useful work, and this entropy production problem is reflected in biodiversity loss, habitat appropriation, and an explosion of invasive species, including agriculture.

Organization

What distinguishes humans from other creatures, Katharine Farrell points out, is not so much social interaction or organization, for ants and bees are highly organized creatures, but the creation of institutions. Ants are differentiated by their shapes: the queen versus the workers. Humans look more or less the same even as they take on different roles in social institutions.

These institutions, Peter Victor points out, mitigate to a certain degree the biological deficiencies inherent in any average individual.

We tend to be short-sighted, he admits. We are good at the local, not at the global. But part of the solution to that are the institutions we construct. When they work well, they can give us a longer time horizon, because they outlast the life of an individual. Unfortunately, a lot of the organizations that get set up with that spirit in mind can get overwhelmed and become short-term and concerned with the local. But if we re looking not only at how bad things are but how to get out of it, we have to look at changes at the organizational level to complement any discussion of our biological limitations.

Social segmentation and differentiation, mediated by these organizations, also counteract the individualism of the selfish gene and the rational self-interest of homo economicus. None of us has the ability to fully produce from scratch any item were in contact with right now, Joshua Farley points out. We are inherently a collective species. The individual cant survive away from the collective any more than a cell can survive apart from the body. Even the most trained survivalist, without a knowledge of local ecosystems developed through culture, is helpless.

One useful organizational innovation, Katharine Farrell notes, has been federalism, a method of handling complex hierarchical structures. The principle of subsidiarity is especially useful where differentiated systems dont try to do everything at one level but authority is taken at the most immediate or local possible level. Peter Victor also acknowledges the virtues of federalism: In Canada, where we have 10 provinces and three territories, we can learn from each other and be closer to politicians than in highly centralized Britain.

Human organization nevertheless has its downsides, depending on the nature of the organization. I wouldnt have forced someone to produce my shirt in an exploitative manner, Joshua Farley points out, but buying it through the capitalist system, I dont think twice about it. Organizations, through their complexity, thus offer individuals a kind of plausible deniability when it comes to unjust or unsustainable practices.

The structures of globalization, William Rees adds, have had a destructive effect on more sustainable forms of organization. Globalization has destroyed the capacity for community-level self-reliance or self-sufficiency. Now with global supply lines, everyone is utterly dependent on everyone else to survive let alone thrive. Unfortunately, that whole organizational structure presupposes abundant cheap energy to enable the global transport of goods around planet. If that system is coming to an end, we are going to be in a situation of forced reorganization, which wont be pleasant because it will result in increasing strife over the remaining pockets of assets around the world. Globalization has been the means by which the relatively well-to-do can access these remaining pockets. This huge organizational pump has sucked the planet dry and, in the process, impoverished much of the world.

But self-sufficiency can return, even under adverse conditions. Peter Victor enumerates a number of the survival tactics of countries under U.S. sanctions that have been forced, by their relative isolation from the global economy, to strengthen their food self-sufficiency or develop their own vaccines. Another example of this resistance is south-south cooperation where the Global South is trying to learn from itself and wean itself to some degree of dependence on the North, he points out. What can we learn from these examples?

Is versus Ought

Science attempts to describe the world as it is not as it should be.

Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are important, Peter Victor argues. A lot can be learned from number-crunching and from people playing with your models. But its not enough. It convinces those who are already convinced, and it raises questions with those who have open minds. Quantitative analysis gives us some insight into the choices we can make. But it doesnt tell us which one to take.

I believe in genetic evolution where the mechanism is genes as well as cultural evolution where the mechanism is our moral values, adds Joshua Farley. We need these values to live together as a group. These values are the units of inheritance upon which natural selection acts and they are every bit as scientific as genes. Were still obsessed in science with providing better numbers. No, we need to develop better ethical values that are compatible with society and its current scale. When I ask my students to distinguish between a good person and an evil person, they usually reply that an evil person puts the individual ahead of the group and a good person puts the group ahead of the individual. If we want to be a good species, we have to put the overall planet ahead of humans.

Katharine Farrell describes a meeting she attended where an indigenous woman from Canada and an indigenous man from Brazil discussed their perspectives on capitalism. The man talked mainly about brutality and violence and a lack of regard for the other, the lack of reciprocity in terms of economic framing. The woman talked more about cultural complexity, that sense of responsibility, how do we raise and teach our children. I was left with a metaphor: capitalism is an adolescent male who didnt spend enough time with his mother. Its a vulgar oversimplification of the problem, but theres a lot in it. We need a more neurocognitively complex approach to knowledge production that includes and exploits both the masculine and feminine aspects of the human brain.

Im not suggesting that the memetic theme were now embedded in is the only one, William Rees counters. But the one we have happens to reinforce the biological theme. The whole of civilization is a set of rules and regulations established to override what would naturally happen. We are in the game of recreating the paradigmatic framework with which we move forward and much of that will have to counteract our natural predispositions.

Impact

Given the centrality of economic growth in the mainstream, degrowth has largely hovered on the margins of debate. That seems to be changing.

I noticed a shift in mood two or three years ago, reports Simon Micheaux. Instead of hitting my head against the wall, all of a sudden I started to get results. Im not sure how this happened, but now Im getting my work in front of senior policy decisionmakers. Im presenting to ministers and parliaments in multiple countries.

But, he cautions, that hasnt yet translated into altered policies, either at a political level or even in terms of technological research. The best and brightest are working on things that, I wont say they wont work, they do work, but they are not the ultimate solution. We are forced to work on lithium-ion battery chemistry when there are other chemistries. Ive shown that there are not enough minerals in the ground to make those batteries. Ive used their data. They have no choice but to see it.

When a financial crisis happens or a sympathetic political party takes power, the terms of reception can change dramatically. Peter Victor remembers when a social democratic government took over in Ontario after a surprise election result in 1991. I was given a job there, and just being able to work with a government that was interested in social change was incredible, he says. You couldnt give them enough ideas! They didnt accept them all, but they listened.

Fifteen years later it was a crisis that gave his ideas more prominence. My book Managing Without Growth came out in 2008 at the time of the financial crisis, he recalls. What otherwise would have been a marginal document published by an academic publisher and sold at a high price became more well-known. The media was looking for an economist who could say something positive about no-growth. I was invited all over the world. I got a sense that I was being listened to. But 99 percent of the time, the audience already agreed with me.

Victor adds, It takes a chorus. If lots of us do these things, it will make an impact.

Degrowth is often associated with doom-and-gloom scenarios. No one wants to hear that everything is going to go poorly, Simon Micheaux notes. They want a solution. If you cant promote a solution, they are not prepared to hear the problem. As the economist Herman Daly used to say, If youre falling out an airplane, its not an altimeter you need but a parachute.

Finland, Micheaux continues, sits on a lot of minerals integral to battery production such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, and graphite. If Im right, in a few years time, the global production of minerals will not be sufficient to meet demand. The captains of industry will then turn to the geological surveys in Europe and say, why didnt you tell us? The Geological Survey of Finland (GDK) manages a battery portfolio and they will be first in the firing line. I can have a frank discussion with their executive board members about hyperinflation, peak oil, currency default. They are enlightened, but they dont understand the implications. Still, GDK is giving him the opportunity to develop his ideas about the circular economy and cooperate with other Finnish research groups in the industrial sectors.

Its pretty clear that we dont have enough resources to go around, Micheaux concludes. If we do the conventional, each nation for itself, it will give war a chance until the population reduces. If we actually have a transparency of information and we all agree to share those resources, well have a form of socialism to distribute those resources and a form of capitalism to exploit those resources.

To help generate and test new ideas, Joshua Farley recommends creating a knowledge commons. Any university can unilaterally declare that all the knowledge we create to address social ecological problems is freely available to all on the condition that any improvements to it are also freely available to all, he suggests. Even geopolitical rivals like the United States, Iran, and North Korea could be part of this commons. Small-scale knowledge commons, like this working group, can provide help in developing certain ideas and marshalling the defense of such ideas in the public sphere.

This effort could include the creation of a social platform to rival Facebook based not on pushing people to buy more thingsand offering polarizing content to keep people tuned inbut on algorithms that reduce political polarization and focus people on common problems, Farley adds.

Another idea Farley suggests is secure sufficiency. Meeting peoples basic needs is the ultimate form of freedom. If they are not worried about becoming unemployed or suffering a health emergency that they cant afford to cover, they might not strive so hard to accumulate wealth or be quite so wedded to a growth economy.

The working group agreed to pool its experience of what works in terms of injecting no-growth arguments and modeling into the mainstream. And the group is considering efforts to work with organizations devoted to qualitatively expressed no-growth visions like well-being and buen vivir, and to challenge competing modeling based on overly optimistic assumptions about technological advances.

Read the rest here:

Climate Change and the Limits of Economic Growth - FPIF - Foreign Policy In Focus

The New Zealand government is currently developing plans to address two crises climate change and waste and to embrace a circular economy. But it has no clear path for how to do this. The resulting muddle is watering down the potential of a circular economy to bring lasting change.

Public consultation is underway to develop an emissions reduction plan, following the Climate Change Commissions advice on carbon budgets towards New Zealands 2050 net-zero target.

Another consultation document proposes to overhaul the countrys waste strategy and legislation.

Both documents intend to move Aotearoa towards a circular economy one that limits waste and pollution, keeps products in use, and regenerates natural systems to protect, not pillage, natural resources.

But the governments plans for circularity are fragmented, contradictory and uncoordinated. They fail to confront the business-as-usual drivers of the linear economy or to enhance collaboration.

New Zealand needs a dedicated Crown agency to champion a low-waste, low-emissions circular economy.

Read more: What a sustainable circular economy would look like

New Zealand is one of the most wasteful countries in the OECD. Waste is not only a pollutant but the dead end of a linear supply chain that emits greenhouse gases at every step along the way.

Roughly half of global emissions come from producing and consuming stuff. Every bit of waste represents embodied emissions lost to the economy.

Circular practices preserve this embodied energy by keeping products and materials in use. This slows down global extraction of natural resources, from mining to tree-felling. The less is extracted, the more waste and emissions are reduced.

Currently, just 8.6% of the global economy is circular. This figure must double by 2032 to keep us on track to limit global warming to 1.5.

Doubling the circularity of New Zealands economy would mean transforming production and consumption systems. Today, much of what we make and buy is inherently linear.

In a circular economy, products are built to last and designed for repair. Organics are composted to replenish soils. Business models favour sharing over individual ownership, and reuse over single use.

This seismic shift in economic direction demands coordination across sectors, strong leadership and a shared understanding of the circular model. The government must collaborate with those already practising circularity and reconfigure the rules to wind down linear practices.

The consultation documents do not tell a shared circular economy story. The waste strategy focuses on end-of-product-life processes such as waste management, litter and recycling; the proposed emissions reduction plan discusses business models and innovation.

The waste proposal suggests the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) will eventually bind everything together in a separate and broader circular economy strategy, but this risks creating a bigger tangle.

The confusion is not surprising. The governments work on circularity has been splintered between the Ministry for the Environment and MBIE. The agencies organisational cultures and priorities differ and they have not connected their thinking for a whole-of-system approach.

Critical elements of the circular economy are falling through the cracks in the silos, particularly the part about economic transformation. Increasing corporate responsibility for waste is the hottest potato no one wants to touch.

Read more: How businesses could cut plastic waste with a track and trace system

The consultation documents propose few upstream policy interventions to trigger product redesign or new business models that reduce waste and emissions. Instead, they focus on using or disposing of waste after its been produced, which presumes, rather than challenges, linear inefficiencies.

Despite responsibility being the central theme of the waste proposal, it makes nobody responsible for waste creation because it never analyses where waste comes from. Instead, it emphasises improved waste management and anti-littering laws. This lumps responsibility at the end of the pipe, on individuals and councils who cannot influence waste baked into the system further upstream.

Furthermore, product stewardship is ring-fenced to end-of-life activity, neutralising its potential to redistribute responsibility further up product supply chains.

The emissions reduction plan does not fill this gap, apart from some promising initiatives for the construction sector. The connection it draws between circularity and climate abatement mostly relates to organic waste rather than overall production and consumption. Despite considering the potential for new business models to address climate change, product stewardship is barely mentioned.

Instead, it views circular innovation through the lens of the bioeconomy, where waste-derived biomass is converted into bioenergy and new products. But a bioeconomy depends on continued waste generation, which is arguably non-circular. It also contradicts the waste proposals suggestion to discourage waste-to-energy downcycling through levies.

Read more: Why municipal waste-to-energy incineration is not the answer to NZ's plastic waste crisis

The government cannot achieve circularity alone, but has no cogent plan for collaboration.

Supporting community groups and local enterprises does not appear a government priority. Both documents describe circularity and innovation as future states, yet many organisations already implement circular and zero-waste practices and are potential partners.

A Te Tiriti-based partnership is fundamental for economic transformation. The Climate Change Commission described the circular economy as aligned with a Mori worldview. Organisations like Para Kore show Mori leadership in advancing zero waste and circularity.

While the emissions reduction plan promises meaningful partnership with Mori, the waste proposal does not. This is a missed opportunity. New waste legislation could protect Mori decision-making rights and rangatiratanga over natural resources.

Rather than charting a clear path to a circular economy, the government is proliferating documents that perpetuate a business-as-usual approach where communities, councils and government run around in the wrong kinds of circles, cleaning up after industry.

The problem isnt a lack of good ideas. But these ideas arent properly filtered or organised, important elements and key partners are missing and nobodys in the drivers seat.

Moving Aotearoa away from silos and towards a circular economy requires a dedicated Crown agency with a Te Tiriti-compliant governing structure. This agency could champion circularity, resource efficiency and conservation across the system, from resource extraction to product disposal.

Read the rest here:

NZ's government plans to switch to a circular economy to cut waste and emissions, but it's going around in the wrong circles - The Conversation AU

Those closest to the problem are best placed to design effective remedies. In the case of climate change, frontline communities in the United States are already showing us the way.

Jacqueline Patterson, founder of The Chisholm Legacy Project: Resource Hub for Black frontline Climate Justice Leadership and former director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, notes that the "free market" has never worked to protect minorities or protect the planet from plunder and greed.

Key quote: "As civil rights activist Audre Lorde said: 'The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.' It is the market-based economy that got us into this mess in the first place. To use the same mechanism that caused the problem to try to solve the problem is illogical at best."

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Message for COP26 Negotiators: Capitalism has never really worked out for the Earth or for BIPOC Communities - Environmental Health News

Daniel Merino, The Conversation and Gemma Ware, The Conversation

Some economists have long argued that to really save the planet and ourselves from the climate crisis, we need a fundamental overhaul of the way our economies work. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly, we explore the ideas of the degrowth movement and their calls for a contraction in the worlds consumption of energy and resources. We also compare degrowth to other post-growth proposals for governments to reduce their fixation with economic growth.

As world leaders and their negotiators prepare to meet in Glasgow for the COP26 UN climate summit, the focus is on emissions targets, net zero pledges and about money to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Many of the proposed solutions to limit global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels centre around technology and renewables. In many countries, the focus is on green growth continuing to grow the economy by using renewables instead of fossil fuels and introducing more efficient and sustainable ways to produce goods.

But some economists believe its impossible to decouple economic growth from its negative impact on the environment. Prominent among them are those in the degrowth movement.

The term degrowth was first coined in the 1970s by a group of thinkers in France who believed the world needed to move away from a preoccupation with economic growth. Since then, these ideas have continued to gain traction, as have other post-growth ideas focused on shifting away from the use of gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of economic progress.

In January, the European Environment Agency questioned whether full decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures was possible. It said societies need to rethink what is meant by growth and progress and that post-growth and degrowth alternatives offered valuable insights. A few months earlier, Michael Higgins, the president of Ireland, had argued that failure to secure sufficient decoupling implies that degrowth remains the only sustainable strategy for planetary survival.

In this episode, Sam Alexander, a degrowth advocate and research fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne in Australia, explains that degrowth means: A new societal or economic model based on planned contraction of the energy and resource demands of our economies, in a way that enhances ecological conditions and ensures that everyone has enough to live well.

But Alexander says this doesnt mean we are going to be living in caves with candles. Rather, for people in the worlds richest countries, it might involve driving less, rethinking diets, travelling less and living in smaller houses. We can live well on less, but it does require a rethinking of high impact cultures of consumption.

Lorenzo Fioramonti, professor of political economy at the University of Pretoria and also a serving independent MP in Italy, is a prominent critique of governments obsession with economic growth and GDP. While sympathetic to the degrowth argument, Fiormanti says the word degrowth doesnt travel well in politics. Those countries that have never seen growth, will never embrace degrowth, Fioramonti says. I take you to Malawi and theyre going to tell you, Oh, weve had degrowth for the past 50 years and we dont live well, you know? Instead, he argues for the focus to shift on wellbeing and measures that try to capture progress towards it.

For Beth Sratford, PhD candidate at the School of Environment at the University of Leeds in England, the debates between the green growth and degrowth camp is in danger of becoming an own goal. Stratford, who calls herself a post-growth economist, says the debate can sometimes get bogged down in technical concepts that can be alienating for some people. She says it might better to focus on arguments that are easier to win, for example, constraints on resource use, protecting habitats or regulating supply chains to make sure they arent exploitative or causing harmful ecological consequences.

To end the episode, Veronika Meduna, science, health and environment editor at The Conversation in Wellington, gives us some recommended reading about the coronavirus situation in New Zealand.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via email. You can also sign up to The Conversations free daily email here.

Daniel Merino, Assistant Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation and Gemma Ware, Editor and Co-Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Degrowth: Do we need to abandon economic growth to save the planet? - Qrius

Saturday morning at a rec centre parking lot in south Calgary. Flapjacks. Mediocre coffee. Disposable plates. Boots. Belt buckles. Cowboy hats of black, white and straw. Smiling kids. Glad-handing politicians. In some ways, it seemed like any traditional Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast, pleasing for a premier whod declared a week earlier that Alberta was open for summer.

Traces of pandemic life still stood out that July day. Some people wore face masks, most of them food handlers. A clutch of protesters hollered against vaccines and public health rules, although the former were optional and the latter nearly nonexistent at the time. Security guards around the VIPs were plentiful, particularly for Jason Kenney and Tyler Shandro, Albertas health minister, on account of a demonstrator howling war criminal at them.

Then, a benign-seeming fellow got close enough for a one-on-one chat with Kenney. The premier, seeing the mans phone out, offered to join him for a selfie, but the visitor demurred; hed brought along his phone to surreptitiously get video footage of Kenney, which hed later post to anti-vaccination social media.

RELATED:Will Jason Kenneysink the UCP experiment?: 338 Canada

The anonymous interviewer mentioned his anxiety about lockdowns, and began asking about the open-for-summer promise. Its open for good. Open for good, Kenney insisted before the question was fully asked. Was he sure there was no going back? I swear to God, the premier said, making a cross symbol over his blue western shirt. No. With the vaccines, we dont have to.

The man tried gently poking holes in the pledgepressing Kenney about the risks posed by the unvaccinated, about the efficacy of the shots, about Australias return to lockdowns. The premier swatted the worries away with reassurances that COVID hospitalizations would remain flat like Britains, that Albertas population would soon be 80 per cent immunized, that unprotected young people posed no problem. Dont worry about it, he kept saying.

In that two-minute exchange, nearly everything Albertas premier said was false, or would later be proven wrong. He misstated Australias vaccination coverage (32 per cent at the time, not 15); and he wrongly asserted that U.K. hospitalizations had stayed flat despite soaring cases (theyd tripled in one month) and that COVID had killed only two Albertans under 30 (the number was 11). He was wrong about bigger things, too. In July, Alberta was still two months away from having 80 per cent of eligible people with a single vaccine dose, and miles from that mark for coverage of the whole population. Spiking infection rates would send hundreds to hospitals, and his pledge that the province was open for good didnt even survive the summer. In mid-September, Kenney reluctantlyand belatedlyreintroduced COVID restrictions and vaccine requirements.

RELATED:This is not what Jason Kenney came back for

The stunning wrongness of his pandemic approach worsened a brutal fourth wave and triggered a health-care catastrophe, while uncorking political anger that had been building since before the pandemic. By disappointing people on both sides of this polarizing issue, Kenney has infuriated not only those who never voted for him, but also the deeply conservative Albertans who voted for the idea of a supercharged right-wing leader.

Its crippled Kenneys leadership of the United Conservative Party, where quiet internal grumbles about the premiers high-handedness have devolved into open hostility and demandsnot least from his own MLAsfor his resignation. Barring a miraculous turnaround, his days as premier appear numbered. Even his loyalists say so. And his political demise, later this year or early next, would mark a stunning reversal of fortune. Only two years ago, voters had embraced Kenney as a political colossus whod make Alberta muscular again. Hed swooped westward from Ottawa, where he had dazzled with his smarts, steadfastness, tactical cunning and communications savvy. Those talents have now either abandoned him or proven to be overblown, while his calamitous mistakes have taken a tollon his reputation, his party and his province. Its a downfall story whose operatic scale is eclipsed only by the gravity of its real-world consequences, measured in human suffering and lives lost. How did one of Canadas most successful politiciansa conservative star whose entire career seemed to lead him to a top jobfail so badly, just when Alberta needed him most?

Watching him up close, Corey Hogan came to question the idea of Jason Kenney as a master strategist, a reputation developed through years in federal politics as Stephen Harpers cabinet minister and political rainmaker. Former NDP premier Rachel Notley had hired Hogan, a veteran politico, to lead the Alberta governments communications office, and he stayed on for a year under Kenney. Hogan now reckons that Kenney is a great in-the-moment tactician, someone who can win the day but might set himself up for rough days ahead. Hes clever, but sometimes you wonder: can he see the whole board, and where the next couple of moves are? Hogan tells Macleans.

MORE:Trudeau sends a signal to Alberta. Cue the squirming.

Kenney cut his political teeth as an MP for the Canadian Alliance and then the Conservatives, thriving in the parties election war rooms, where rapid response and quick point-scoring were the orders of the day. He was a savvy message deliveryman, and still enjoys slapping down critics, real and imagined. In late July, when asked about warnings that the Delta variant threatened Alberta, he snapped: I think its time for media to stop promoting fear when it comes to COVID-19, and to start actually looking at where were at with huge vaccine protection. (His aides promptly made a Facebook meme of it.)

When he first rode into Alberta in his blue pickup truck, Kenney seemed a canny long-term thinker, perfectly executing a complex plan to take the reins of the province. Within three years, he won leadership of the once-invincible Alberta Progressive Conservatives, merged them with the right-wing Wildrose Party, became leader of the United Conservatives and easily ousted the NDP in the April 2019 election. He did it all with a mix of cheery populism and screw-our-enemies combativeness, but governing has proven far trickier. Among other things, the man who won by promising to fight unapologetically for Albertans has had to issue three apologies to them in 2021, all for COVID-related debacles.

The first came in January, when several of his MLAs, a cabinet minister and his chief of staff were caught during the second wave travelling abroad amid near-lockdown conditions. He claimed he was unaware of their travel plans, but apologized for what he called bad decisions. Then, in June, during another wave and another round of restrictions, photos circulated of Kenney enjoying wine and Irish whisky with ministers and aides on the patio of a penthouse government office nicknamed the Sky Palace. It is clear that some of us were not distanced the whole night, and I have to take responsibility for that, he said.

RELATED:What Jason Kenneys mission accomplished moment has reaped for Alberta

Finally, in September, with the fourth wave raging, the premier confessed hed been overly optimistic in thinking Alberta was moving on from the pandemic.

Before each mea culpa, Kenney spent daysor weekseither justifying his actions or avoiding comment. Frustrations would simmer, not just among critics and partisan opponents, but among UCPers who sneer at waffling and excuse-making. Finally, when the pressure became overwhelming, the rage kettle sounding its deafening whistle, he would stop digging in.

The first two incidents were flashes of dreadful optics, but didnt have the grave real-world consequences of the judgment lapse for which Kenney answered on Sept. 15. His government had proudly promoted its maskless, distancing-free open summer, encouraging mass gatherings like a full Calgary Stampede. It even sold Best summer ever ballcaps to raise funds for the UCP. The messaging carried all the bravado and certitude of the Mission Accomplished banner George W. Bush posed before in 2003, after the U.S. military deposed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, only to see warfare drag on for another eight years.

(Illustration by Ben Shmulevitch)

The reopening led to a resurgence of the virus in late July, and Kenneys government allowed hospitalizations to rise rapidly throughout August before reintroducing an indoor mask mandate. By the afternoon of his apologythe same day the province announced a vaccine passport systemAlberta ICUs contained 10 times as many COVID patients as they had in early August. Hospitals double-bunked patients and expanded into overflow rooms. The military and the Red Cross brought in staff reinforcements. To keep the critical-care units from completely overloading, hospitals cancelled thousands of surgeries, including those for children and cancer patients. Daily COVID fatalities reached heights not seen since last winter, when unvaccinated residents of seniors homes fell victim to the virus.

READ:Jason Kenneys days may be numbered. Erin OTooles too.

Surprisingly, none of this fell within the scope of Kenneys narrow apology. He voiced regret for his government announcing plans to abandon mass coronavirus testing and rules requiring the infected to isolatean audacious leap beyond the open for summer mask-burning bacchanalia, and one the government was forced to rescind. But he pointedly refused to apologize for relaxing health restrictions, arguing the move was supported by data on dropping case rates and vaccinations, and by the experiences of other countries.

These assumptions, as Kenney hinted to his lecturee at the pancake breakfast, leaned heavily on the de-coupling of hospitalizations from rising case rates in Britain. This, reflects one source close to Kenney, was the wishful thinking of a government that was desperate to return to normal. The growth of the U.K.s severe COVID cases did slow somewhat, thanks to vaccination, but it was a major folly to overlook the distinctions between the jurisdictions, says Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease specialist and University of Alberta professor of medicine.

Among them: vaccine coverage was spread relatively evenly throughout the U.K., whereas when Alberta hit the 70 per cent mark for first doses among eligible residents, coverage outside Calgary and Edmonton lagged badly, in some communities well below 50 per cent. In a pattern similar to the nightmarish experience in parts of the United States, smaller regional hospitals were overwhelmed first, then those in big cities. It was cherry-picking data from one experience that matched the fantasy of what they had hoped to achieve, Schwartz says. Kenneys protective measures, he adds, came far too late to prevent catastrophe in the ICUs.

MORE:Jason Kenney in conversation with Paul Wells: Macleans live replay

Even Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the provincial governments top public health doctor, who rarely contradicts Kenney, would later concede the fourth wave trajectory was set when we removed all the public health restrictions at the beginning of July. Provinces that exercised greater caution avoided significant impact, she noted during a video meeting of Alberta physicians.

Albertas COVID death count has now surpassed 3,000with more families losing people to the virus in the 30-day span ending Oct. 20 than in Ontario, Quebec and hard-hit Saskatchewan combined, while its case rate7,186 per 100,000 residentsis the worst in the country. But caution hasnt been Kenneys primary impulse. Not in the second wave, or the third, or the fourth.

All of this has made Kenney a politician scorned on both sides of the coalition hed forged between his red-meat conservative base and Albertas increasingly moderate Tory centre. His long periods of pushback against public-health measuresand, more recently, against vaccine passportshave defied the wishes of a majority of Albertans, whove repeatedly told pollsters they prefer stronger pandemic restrictions. In a September Lger survey, 77 per cent said they supported proof-of-vaccination rules; only 23 per cent opposed them.

But an outsized share of the anti segment appears to reside within the rural grassroots and caucus of Kenneys party. In April, amid the throes of the third wave, an open letter from 16 rural and small-town UCP MLAs decried the premiers reluctant move to close indoor dining and gyms. The backbenchers said theyd rather defend livelihoods and freedoms. Sources say Kenney struggled in September to persuade his MLAs to reintroduce mandatory mask usage, and one publicly acknowledged that the caucus softened Hinshaws vaccine passport proposal. The final version allowed individuals to forgo the jab in favour of testing, while businesses could accept new capacity limits instead of checking for vaccination proof.

READ:Jyoti Gondek and Amarjeet Sohi: A joint interview with Albertas new progressive mayors

At the same time, though, anxious Albertans who demanded action grew exasperated with Kenneys pattern of stalling, shrugging and taking steps when the damage was already done. In Hogans mind, the premier has been trying to ride both horses with one ass, and hes got the bruises to show for it. Now, he says, Kenney has a situation where there are long memories on the right, and long memories on the left and centre-right.

(Illustration by Ben Shmulevitch)

Samantha Steinke, an early Kenney supporter who was initially impressed with her leaders tough talk and anti-Ottawa posturing, has had it with his policy yo-yoing. If we could have said, This is what were doing, this is the lane were staying in, I think people could have respected that a little bit more, she says. Steinke is a northern Alberta UCP constituency association president living in Valleyview, where nearly 40 per cent of eligible residents were still unvaccinated in October. The MLA for her riding, Todd Loewen, got turfed from caucus in May for calling for Kenneys resignation. Steinke has since been working to persuade fellow UCP constituency boards to support a prompt leadership review.

Those efforts gained steam this fall. Joel Mullan, the partys vice-president of policy, publicly demanded that Kenney quit, saying he felt betrayed by the vaccine passport that Kenney had sworn he wouldnt impose. If he says something now, the question is: is this going to apply in a couple of months? Mullan says in an interview. (In the end, Mullans fellow UCP executives voted to purge him, instead.)

READ:A low-carbon worldis coming, Alberta

Urban moderates in caucus, meanwhile, seem just as willing to denounce Kenney. Calgary-area MLA Leela Aheer was bounced from cabinet after publicly criticizing the premiers penthouse patio gathering that defied restrictions hed imposed. In September, she told the Calgary Herald: We need to heal our province right now, and that requires people who have failed in their leadership to step down and admit their mistakes. Richard Gotfried, who represents a suburban Calgary seat next to Kenneys, stated on Facebook that the governments lack of responsiveness will cost us lives. His riding association also wants a fast-tracked leadership review.

The two wings of his party and caucus agree on little, then, except that Kenney has mismanaged things and become a liability to UCP political fortunes. The premiers unpopularity is widely believed to have eroded the Conservative vote in Alberta during the recent federal election, where three seats flipped to the Liberals or NDP. One day after the vote, Kenney replaced Shandro (sources tell Macleans the health minister had threatened a few times to quit). The day after that, a rural UCP backbencher went into caucus with a motion of non-confidence in Kenneys leadership that the premiers critics assumed had dozens of supporters.

That effort fizzled, but behind closed doors Kenney agreed to face a leadership review in the spring of 2022 rather than next fall as scheduled. Crucially, though, his backers secured an open vote instead of a secret ballot, which will make it dicey for ministers to publicly knife him, lest he survive and punish them.

MORE:The lonely life of a wildfire lookout in northern Alberta

So the tactician won the day, buying himself time. Still, its hard to see Kenneys plan from hereto discern whether its a survival strategy or an exit ramp. The source close to the premier figures the party is more likely to tolerate him for the rest of the year if members dont think hell be leading them in the next election, in 2023.

Its an astonishing collapse for a politician whose party netted 55 per cent of votes just 2 years ago, the biggest share since Ralph Kleins election in 2001. But Conservative politics in Alberta has seen a high churn rate in the last two decades: Klein stepped down early after winning in 2004; Ed Stelmach after 2008; Alison Redford, amid scandal, after 2012.

Polls suggest the New Democrats are on track to win their second-ever mandate in 2023, while fundraising records show they grossed twice as much as the UCP in the first half of 2021, obliterating Kenneys past advantage. A ThinkHQ poll published in October pegged the premiers approval rating at just 22 per cent, suggesting hes deeply unpopular in both urban and rural Albertaeven among UCP voters.

The pandemic has been the primary source of Kenneys political unravelling, but theres more behind his fall. With a workaholics determination to enact every last promise in his exhaustive 375-pledge election platformpandemic be damnedKenney has pressed forward on files that have expanded opposition beyond NDPers. Theres a radical, memorization-heavy overhaul of the education curriculum that almost all school boards have refused to test; a nasty protracted pay dispute with doctors that aggravated rural physician shortages; and a bid to open Albertas southern foothills to more coal mining, which upset everyone from farmers to small-town mayors to country music stars.

RELATED:The splintering of the right in Alberta: 338Canada

He was always very critical of Harper for being an incrementalist, that we werent moving quickly enough, says a former Conservative official who respects Kenney. This is why [we werent]. If Harper tried to move this fast, and burned that much political capital, the official says, hed have been a one-term prime minister.

Now, to say the least, managing the loosely stitched alliance of former PCs and Wildrosers in his caucus promises to be a struggle. Kenney had long idealized a more British model of tolerating heterogeneous views in caucus. But thats not the model that worked for Harper, nor one that works in any Canadian jurisdiction. Angela Pitt is a UCP MLA and critic of public health restrictions who has publicly declared her loss of confidence in Kenneys leadership. Of the governments period of inaction in August while the premier vacationed in Europe, she tells Macleans: Everyone had this sense we were this rudderless operation.

Pitt, whos been in Kenneys caucus since 2017, continues: To be honest, I dont know the guy. I just know the public looks at him and says, We dont trust you. She complains that the leader who once said he was attuned to the partys grassroots now barely listens to his caucus. Those who sit around the white tablecloth are the ones that are running the government, she says, in an acid reference to the penthouse patio gathering. Her words speak to a greater problem Kenney faces: rural conservatives worry he only pays attention to Calgary; Calgarians worry hes in thrall to the rural base; and some believe he only listens to his own instincts.

READ:Trudeaus new cabinet: Serious people in charge of serious files

To be sure, not everybody in the UCP has written him off. Evan Menzies, a former party communications director, acknowledges there are angry members in every corner of the tent, but says there is a silent Jason Kenney loyalist faction of the party. To mobilize and expand that support, says Menzies, hes got to start scoring some wins in the next few months.

Any plan that saw Kenney past an April leadership reviewor sooner, if detractors have their waywould rely on several ifs. If he can steer through the fourth wave without deeper human tragedy. If he can notch policy victories for his base that dont alienate the broader public. If he can unify his rancorous caucus. If Albertas long-struggling resource-based economy can take off again, leveraging higher oil prices that have yet to translate into jobs.

For now, Kenney is down to trying to woo back his base in Facebook Live townhallsrecurring Premier-Explains-the-World events where he responds to audience questions as expansively and wonkishly as he sees fit. In mid-October, as the province finally passed its peak of new COVID cases and hospitalizations, he sat alone in an armchair in an office one level below that penthouse patioa gas fireplace and blue curtain behind him, a framed photo of Albertas legislature dome at his left shoulder.

With a camera trained on him, temples gently glowing under the lights, he fielded a query about when mandatory masks and other public health impositions would end. Perhaps having learned a lesson about risk, he began by counselling caution: We dont have specific metrics, to be blunt. Our immediate focus is simply getting this fourth wave under control. But his response then went on for six minutes, replete with myriad stats, a New York Times article citation, a prediction the vaccine passport system that some colleagues deplore will continue well into 2022 and an expression of hope (please God) that the pandemic will finally be behind us six months from now.

As he spoke, torrents of Facebook comments streamed alongside his window: scorn from those who believe Kenney jeoparized Albertans health, fury from those who believe he stole their freedom. Sure, that was on social media, where everyone hates everything. But time was, a good many fervent partisans and believers in Jason Kenney wouldve weighed in, too, cheering on the premier who landed in Alberta as their hero. Not anymore.

This article appears in print in the December 2021 issue of Macleans magazine with the headline, The incredible sinking man. Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

See the article here:

Jason Kenney is sinking. How it all went wrong for him. - Macleans.ca

NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Sims Limited, a global leader in metal recycling and data center IT circularity, and an emerging leader in municipal recycling and renewable energy, has been awarded the Terra Carta Seal.

The inaugural 2021 Terra Carta Seal recognizes global companies that are driving innovation and demonstrating their commitment to, and momentum toward, the creation of genuinely sustainable markets. It is being awarded to companies whose ambitions are aligned with those of the Terra Carta, a recovery plan for nature, people and planet, which was launched in January 2021.

Formore than 100 years, Sims Limited has been at thecenterof the circular economy because its portfolio of businesses Sims Lifecycle Services, Sims Metal, Sims Municipal Recyclingand Sims Resource Renewal divert millions of tons of secondary materials from landfill and keep resources in use for as long as possible.

The work of the business not only helps Sims Limitedfulfillits own sustainability goals, but also allows the company to generate maximum value and minimize waste.

"The Terra Carta Seal recognizes those organizations which have made a serious commitment to a future that is much more sustainable, and puts nature, people and the planet at the heart of the economy, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales said. "We all need to make changes if we are to preserve the planet for our children and grandchildren and these businesses have pledged to make it easier for us all to do so."

The Terra Carta Seal acknowledges that each industry faces unique challenges in its transition to a sustainable future and they are all at different stages of their journey. Here, all industries and all companies must be supported as they take steps in a more positive direction. At the same time, an accelerated pace is required if we are to achieve a 1.5-degree target, restore biodiversity and benefit the lives and livelihoods of current and future generations.

The Terra Carta Seal has been awarded to companies who hold a leadership position within their industry and who have credible transition roadmaps underpinned by globally recognized, scientific metrics for achieving net zero by 2050 or earlier.

"We are extremely honored to be awarded the Terra Carta Seal, because our purpose create a world without waste to preserve our planet like that of the Terra Carta to reunite nature, people, and the planet is steeped in sustainability," said Alistair Field, chief executive officer and managing director of Sims Limited. "Given our role in the circular economy, the businesses of Sims Limited are in a great position to continue innovating and offering new solutions for consumers, businesses, governments and communities around the world."

Working closely with HRH The Prince of Wales, Sir Jony Ive and his creative team at LoveFrom have created a physical and animated seal engineered with paper that is both simple and beautifully crafted. The design combines a host of natural references including oak leaves, fern, magnolia and honey bees and intricate patterns both in nature and in the arts, creating a visual celebration which reflects the power of and reverence for nature that is at the heart of the Terra Carta.

"With respect for both the historic resonance of the Terra Carta and for the environment, we have used modest, natural materials and celebrated craftsmanship with a delicate, illustrated design," said Sir Jony Ive. "This feels a sensitive and sincere commemoration for those who have committed to the aims of the Terra Carta, and we are so very grateful to be able to contribute to such an important and impactful initiative."

Sims Limited is constantly reviewing its sustainability goals partner for change, operate responsibly, and close the loop and those of the companies they do business with to ensure that they are living their purpose. These actions afford the company with the opportunity to mitigate its own risks, amplify its global impact, and support a sustainable future for all.

About the Terra Carta Seal The 2021 inaugural Terra Carta Seal recognizes global corporations that are demonstrating their commitment to, and momentum towards, the creation of genuinely sustainable markets. It is being awarded to firms who have aligned themselves with the Terra Carta, who are driving innovation and leadership within their industry and who have credible transition roadmaps underpinned by globally recognized, scientific metrics for achieving net zero by 2050 or sooner.

The SMI has partnered with Corporate Knights for this initiative. Corporate Knights' Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations Companies were invited to apply for the inaugural Terra Carta Seal together with active Task Force members of the SMI as of January 1, 2021.

The Terra Carta Seal will be awarded annually to companies who are demonstrating their commitment to, and momentum towards, the creation of genuinely sustainable markets and care for Nature, People and Planet.

About the Sustainable Markets Initiative His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, launched the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) at Davos in January 2020. The SMI is a network of global CEOs and private sector corporations working together to build prosperous and sustainable economies that generate long-term value through the balanced integration of natural, social, human and financial capital. The SMI facilitates the development of responsible transition pathways at industry and business levels to decarbonize and achieve net-zero, create a Nature-positive future and support a trust transition towards a sustainable future.

HRH is appealing to public, private and philanthropic leaders around the world to join this endeavor as part of the 'Coalition of the Willing'. Read more: http://www.sustainable-markets.org.

About the Terra Carta Launched by His Royal Highness at the One Planet Summit in January 2021, the Terra Carta provides a practical roadmap for acceleration towards an ambitious and sustainable future; one that will harness the power of Nature combined with the transformative power, innovation and resources of the private sector. The Terra Carta serves as the mandate for the Sustainable Markets Initiative. Currently there are over 400 named supporters of the Terra Carta listed on the SMI website.

About LoveFrom and Sir Jony Ive: LoveFrom is a creative collective of designers, architects, musicians, filmmakers, writers, engineers and artists with studios in London and San Francisco, California. Sir Jony Ive KBE is a designer. Formerly the Chief Design Officer at Apple, he holds more than 12,500 patents worldwide, uniquely spanning user interface and hardware design. He is the Chancellor of the Royal College of Art.

For the Terra Carta Seal, LoveFrom worked with celebrated illustrator Peter Horridge, master printers and paper engineers Imprimerie du Marais and handmade paper specialists The Paper Foundation, founded by James Cropper. Los Angeles-based Method Studios created an animated version of the Terra Carta Seal.

About Sims LimitedFounded in 1917, Sims Limited is a global leader in metal recycling and electronics recovery, and an emerging leader in the municipal recycling and the renewable energy industries. Our 3,880 employees operate from more than 260 facilities across 15 countries. The Company's ordinary shares are listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: SGM) and its American Depositary Shares are quoted on the Over-the-Counter market in the United States (USOTC: SMSMY). Our purpose, create a world without waste to preserve our planet, is what drives us to constantly innovate and offer new solutions in the circular economy for consumers, businesses, governments and communities around the world. For more information,visitwww.simsltd.com.

SOURCE Sims Limited

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Sims Limited Receives HRH The Prince of Wales' Terra Carta Seal in Recognition of Commitment to Creating a Sustainable Future - PRNewswire