Problematic practices An association in capitalism of more with - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Reflections on the meta-practice of capitalism and its capacity for sustaining a low energy transformation

Harold Wilhite and Arve Hansen University of Oslo, Centre for Development and the Environment Paper for MILEN conference: Advancing the research and policy agendas on sustainable energy and the environment 22 – 23 Nov 2012 Oslo

Problematic practices

• An association in capitalism of ‘more’ with

‘better’ in many types and levels of policies and practices relevant to energy use

• An overestimation of the power of markets to

foster rapid reductions in energy use and environmental degradation

• The efficiency delusion: A persistence in

counting on efficiency (alone) to reduce energy consumption

US EIA Outlook 2011

An association in capitalist models of ‘more’ with ‘better’ in many types and levels of policies and practices relevant to energy use

• The growth imperative: Without growth, any perceivable variety of

capitalism stagnates or recesses. The consequence is that companies lose profits, workers lose wages and/or jobs, and politicians lose elections.

• Eco-socialist Smith (2010: 29 and 33) writes that ‘growth is an iron law of

capitalist development, that capitalism cannot exist without constant revolutionizing of productive forces, without constantly expanding markets, without ever-growing consumption of resources …For more than 30 years, Herman Daly has chanted his mantra of ‘development without growth’ but he has yet to explain, in any concrete way, how an actual capitalist economy comprised of capitalists, investors, employees and consumers could carry on from day to day in ‘stasis’.

The embedding of growth in practices

Richard Robbins: ‘The culture of capitalism is devoted to encouraging the production and sale of

• commodities. For capitalists, the culture encourages

the accumulation of profit; for laborers, it encourages the accumulation of wages; for consumes it encourages the accumulation of goods. In other words, capitalism defines sets of people who, behaving according to a set

• f learned rules, act as they must act.’

An overestimation of the power of markets

• In ‘fundamentalist’, neo-liberal versions of capitalism,

market principles, including perfect competition, profit, maximization of self interest and expansion are ‘fundamental’ to capitalist development

• Anthropologist Karl Polanyi: The result of the

increasing control of the economic system by the market is that society is run as an adjunct to the market; “Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system”.

Is the greening of markets the solution?

• The idea behind green economy (Eckersley 1992 and

2011; Spargaaren and Mol 1992) is that it is possible to transform markets in such a way as to internalize the environmental costs of production, successfully commodify environmental products and thereby provide opportunities for green growth

• This brings us back to the paradox and problems of

the growth imperative

The efficiency delusion

Efficient technologies are silver bullets. But bullets rebound. In a capitalist growth economy, money saved as a result

• f reducing direct energy costs of energy-using

technologies and equipment will often be invested by the consumer in other energy using products or practices, the net result of which will likely be an increase in overall energy use. This is no longer a hypothetical contention but has been confirmed in numerous empirical studies

Confusing efficiency with reduction

Average per capita living space, Norway

Data source: SSB

20 40 60 80 100 120 140 1960 1970 1990 2000 M2 M2 per person

The need for a radical re-framing

• Critical thinking in all quarters of energy research
• n the capacity of growth, markets, profit and

shareholder ownership to foster a sustainable transformation.

• Research on the potential transformative power
• f things like: policy mechanisms oriented to

reduce volume (homes, appliances, cars); encourage collective ownership (services, capital, land, equipment); support for product durability and the reuse of materials; support for communities of sustainable practice.