If we don’t change direction.

we will probably end up where we are heading

(unknown origin)

Chapter 1. Despair or brilliant chanceopportunity?

You can choose to start with the problem. Or with the opportunity.

Our problem is that we cannot continue to produce producing and consume consuming the way we do. It is not even good for us.

Our opportunity is also that we can produce so much so easily. We can could use this to realize a future, which is worth looking forward to.

Trebled consumption and still not happier – and the earth can take no more!

In the last fifty years, consumption has trebled in Sweden. The Western lifestyle permeates the whole world. This is no way to continue. We have only one planet and it is being utilizedexploited beyond its capacity. No technology can solve the problem of makingmake it our present lifestyle ecologically sustainable.

This development has also created enormous global gaps. We Swedes belong to the global upper class. We have access to cars and Internet, clean piped water, health care and much more to make life easy and secure. Not to mention an affluent supply of goods. But this is costly. Even by conservative estimates each of us consume ten times more of global resources than a poor citizen of the planet. It is not only unfair; it will may also lead to conflicts which threaten our existence. Globally, many people have been lifted out of poverty but the gap to the rich grows and the number of poor and undernourished has not dropped. Today the gaps do not always follow national borders. The number of big consumers of in the world grows, not least in the poor countries, and they are found everywhere which means growing environmental threats as well as increasing social tensions.

Today the global society as well as theSweden’s political machinery of Sweden have becomeare engaged in the issue of sustainable development. UN has staged large conferences as in Rio in 1992 and Johannesburg in 2002. The Swedish government has set up commissions and presented many reports on ”sustainable development”. A committee on sustainable consumption has suggested many measures; several of them well founded and important. But this is mostly based on a rhetoric of sustainability which anticipates an ”ecological modernisation” of society, a policy of reforms for higher efficiency and clean technologies to meet the environmental demands.

If the proposals were realized – and even this is unlikely – they would still fail to solve the resource problems. That would require a “Factor 10”: a tenfold reduction from today to make us live sustainably while sharing the resources globally in a fair way. To that end, higher efficiency will not suffice; it such reductions requires changes in social structure and lifestyles. Measures so far have only scratched the surface even if the political discourse pretends that the situation is under control.

A quixotic proposal?

It may appear futile to expect people to change their lifestyle and consume less to save the world. And no one imagines companies to cut down their production in order to adjust it to ecological limits. Or that politicians will take decisions, which that will lead to a reduced consumption if they believe that this will put them out of office.

Changed The idea of changing lifestyles and truly sustainable consumption is still too hot a hot potato to handle comfortably. To suggest reduced consumption will mark you as a killjoy. The only politically correct issue is to discuss economic growth. But growth means increased consumption. That is why rethinking is necessary.

The issue is all the more sensitive since we are all consumers and to question someone’s lifestyle is considered obtrusive. Neither will this issue fit conventional political dividing lines, like between left and right. There is no Other to single out as responsible. It is even hard to agree on what is a reasonable consumption:

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How much is too much?

Even defining ”overconsumption" is a challenge because who is entitled to say what is too much? I suggest three concrete dimensions

– efficiency: using more resources than required to attain a certain coal is wasteful

– distribution:; using an unfair share of the global resource to the detriment of others is sumptuous

– scale: using more resources than the planet can provide in the long run is unsustainable

The first dimension refers to the basic point task of economics, the allocation of resources. The second one falls under political economy and issues of fairness, while the third one, to consider the scale of the economy, is the core of ecological economics. Cars may illustrate:

– it is a waste to run inefficient cars which use more fuel than necessary

– is sumptuous to run flashy gas guzzlers

– it is unsustainable that so many people have cars and drive them so much.

Today we wrong in all dimensions. To deal with this requires different kinds of policies, which encroach on our lives in differentdiverse ways. The case for fighting waste may seem evident. To check the affluence of some people is more controversial because it inflicts upon the consumer’s freedom of choice but is unavoidable in order to attack unsustainable (over)consumption, which is the most urgent threat to the future and requires major changes in society.

The opposite of overconsumption, sustainable consumption, was defined by United Nations Committee for Sustainable Development (CSD) as ”using services and adherent products which correspond to basic needs while minimizing the use of natural resources and poisonous material and polluting emissions … without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” . This is a political political statement which leaves open what people’s needs are, today and in the future. And it offers onlyjust points in a direction, – that the resource use should be ”minimized”, ” – but defines nodoes not relate it to a ceiling founded in scientific evidence.

To propose a sustainable consumption may be called a quixotic task after the unwavering Don Quixote who went to fight for something he, alone, believed in. It would be imprudent to underestimate the difficulties. But this book is not written to deter anyone. On the contrary, I want to point at the opportunities.

The fFirst, and essential opportunity, to note is that the trebling threefold increase of in consumption apparently has not made us any happier or more satisfied with our lives. This is the consistent message of a growing body of research. We have economic growth but we see neither higher welfare, nor more well-being. We register progress while depression thrives. More and more people find more additional consumption meaningless while they feeland themselves caught in a squirrel’s wheel of work and activities. This should make it easier to rethink – to change tracks and seek a more rewarding lifestyle.

A more cheerful starting point: the production problem is solved!

Equally promising for the future is the fact that the consumption society – which causes the environmental problems – is a success story in so far as it has solved the ”production problem”. This term is borrowed taken from the famous economist Johan Maynard Keynes. He is best known for his theses about the role of the state in the economy: that governmental public redistribution should bridge over economic crises. In During the post-war years Keynesian policy was successfully applied in most of the industrial countries to dampen even out business trends and make production more efficient. As a result, consumption increased so that everyone – in our part of the world – now can live a comfortable life. The production capacity and the total resources are sufficient for everyone’s reasonable needs. Or would be if they were more evenly distributed.

The end of toil?

Keynes – who was prolific writer – also ventured into a more distant future in an essay called ”The economic possibilities of our grandchildren” from 19310. Here he notes the perpetual increase in production efficiency. In the future, he claims, we shall maynot have to work so much less to get what we need. Within hundred years, human toiling may be over. We will enter a new epoch in the history of mankind. He speculates that this may require a mental preparation. For some time still, “avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods”we have to remain greedy and egoistical. But later it will be more important to learn to “live well wisely and agreeably and well” and how to avoid being bored in the brave new world that is waiting for us.

In fact, pProduction actually has multiplied since 1930 and I start from Keynes’ idea that the production problem is solved so that we have enough for our important needs. But Keynes could not (or did not want to) predict that economic growth would remain the prime political goal in the society, superior to all others. Like many other classical economists, he expected that people to would find their needs satisfied and adjust themselves and their society to that. But we – who could have been Keynes’ the grandchildren of Keynes – have failed to make use of this possibility. Instead, we have chosen a path of ecologically unsustainable consumption which, on top of that, does not seem to give us what we want. This is the problem in a nutshell.

The environment

The book dissects describes this step by step. We have progressed from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance and the book opens with a description of how this came about, what it has meant to us and how we evaluate it. Two major problems for rich countries – both of them disregarded by Keynes – are crucial for the future: the environmental issue and the problem failure toof providing provide satisfactory welfare services – like health care and education – in spite of increasing material wealth. A sustainable development is also a global issue and the perspective has to be broadened. The global ecosystem is already utilized exploited over beyond its capacity. All the same, billions of people live in poverty. It is only fair that they should have decent standards of living but for all to live on a Swedish standard would require three planets.

Consumption

Environmental and resource issues are far from new; we have lived with them for decades. Now they tend to settle in consumption as a key issue and chapter 6 and 7 deal with this at depth. Both of them dwell on the question of ”human needs”. Keynes’ assumption that we should soon sense that we have enough has not come true. Consumerism and materialism flourish while needs remain unsatisfied. It is crucial to understand the strong forces behind this, among the consumers as well as in the social and economic system, to be able to act efficiently.

Sweden and the world

Issues of justice are also established political issues, nationally and now also globally. In this book, I juggle with three balls: global justice, ecological sustainability and Swedish welfare (this can be called a ”trilemma”). Our lifestyle in Sweden contributes to the problem but we can neither create global justice, nor global sustainability. Still nations remain the most important platforms for analysis and for political action. Thus the last part of the book deals with how production and work in Sweden can and must be adjusted to ecological limits. ”Think globally, act locally” means that proposals are tailored to what Sweden and the Swedes can do or fail to do. Facts and analyses are, however, taken from many rich countries since we resemble each other, and the proposals are valid in the whole western Western world.

Keynes suggested that we should gradually cut down on our labour. For the presently active generation – who and again: we could have been his grandchildren – he assumed that three hours daily work should be enough. But full-time still means an eight-hour working day. The national election campaign in 2006 was, as usual, dominated by the idea that more work is good because it leads to economic growth and ”higher welfare”. But it certainly fails to create a sustainable development. Neither will economic growth as such provide more welfare services. I discuss this ”service dilemma” (in economics often called “Baumol’s dilemma”) and describe alternatives which share work more equally. The final chapter outlines conditions for a democratic political system able to cope with changes that actually lead to a ”future to look forward to” and offers some proposals in this direction.

My focus is on the environment and justice. Today these issues may be overshadowed in media and politics by issues like gender equality or discrimination or by moral issues like abortions, same-sex marriages etc. This may be due to the media’s quest for new topics or it may be a diverting manoeuvre. I do not deny their importance but choose to stick to the classical issues where the development has, if anything, been negative.

I aim for a comprehensive picture which means painting with broad strokes at the expense of reservations and detailed data. But I make a point of the ambiguous character of some central concepts like work, needs, consumption or welfare. Some of these concepts also have a history which gives a perspective on their present use; sometimes they also have a persuasive function. This is important to note, as since they are our tools for handling the world, in this text as well as in the flow of news which we are exposed to.