I'm going to start in a slightly quieter place last night I was invited to a salon at Full Circle just a few minutes down the road from here to speak on the theme imagining a post-growth economy the room was full conversation was Lively the debate was invigorating and then right at the end a young woman asked me what does a post-growth economy have to offer to a generation fearful for their future a high school teacher emphasized the same point you'd lost sight he said to me of what to say to his kids when faced with
the same question and it struck me not for the first time there is no easy answer to this question it's easy to see that anxiety is in part a reflection of the deeply dysfunctional nature of our economic system it's in part a result of a kind of dream we have tried to sell our kids sell ourselves a fantasy that it's always possible for everyone always to have more and more that there are no limits to our aspirations for material progress that technology can solve all our problems that the economy can expand forever this is the
myth of our time the myth of growth the Mantra that guides our political thinking our economic science our sense of progress that more and more is always possible and now and you don't need me to tell you this either that myth has become dangerously unraveled it's because the climate in crisis an unprecedented loss of nature it's triggered Financial instability it's legitimized austerity it has contributed to war it has been possible for the few only at the expense of impoverishing many our Pursuits our obsessive pursuit of economic growth has even blinded us to what mainstream economists
now recognize as a new normal a gradual decline in the growth rate not just because of Ukraine not just because of covid not just a hangover from the financial crisis or the misplaced austerity that attempted to fix it but a secular stagnation across the oecd Nations that has been creeping up on us for decades this new world is one we are totally unprepared for a place where conventional economics has no real answers a place where fairy tales of Eternal economic growth is Greta tunberg call them are leading us not towards Paradise but towards disaster of
the dream that was our culture to paraphrase to paraphrase something Kami Claudel the sculptor once said this is the nightmare no wonder our kids are terrified but their question remains how can imagining a post-growth world help us here I believe it can help in three distinct ways can turn the concept of limits on its head it can focus our minds on core characteristics of a post-growth economy and it can bring into focus more clearly than ever before the nature of the struggle we now face let me say a little about each of these things in
the time I have today when the club of Rome published its limits to growth report back in 1972 economists and politicians lined up to condemn it there's a famous quote from Ronald Reagan there are no great limits to growth he said because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence imagination and wonder shortly before the pandemic in January 2020 another remarkably insightful U.S president gave a speech in Davos condemning climate activists young people with exactly the same anxieties raised in the salon yesterday to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow he said we must reject
the perennial prophets of Doom and their predictions of Apocalypse they are The Heirs of yesterday's foolish fortune tellers our hero gazed across the Savannah of upturned faces towards the horizon of endless possibility Paradise is a land forged by a frontier mentality burn it down dig it up build it over progress is a construction site it may look messy for now but tomorrow's Condominiums and shopping malls will be a glorious sight let those who doubt this Vision perish the school kids the climate activists the extinction Rebels they can all go to hell this rejection of limits
is a massive cultural blind spot the Relentless pursuit of more blinds us to Human Nature it prioritizes it institutionalizes voracious greed but it neglects our deepest needs for belonging for connection for Community for a sense of purpose and meaning it precipitates a casual swipe right consumerism that promises the world but leaves us ultimately endlessly unsatisfied characterizing Prosperity as the Relentless accumulation of wealth is nothing more than a denial of our Humanity a denial of the interdependent Web of Life on planet Earth a denial of death it appears to offer us consolation but it cannot extinguish
the anguish in our souls the longing for something deeper now we're on difficult ground here if we teach our kids there are no limits at all they will become disillusioned dysfunctional adults but if we suggest that the world is a dark and foreboding prison full of limits they will never achieve their full potential but retrenchment and denial are not the only response to the reality of limits adaptation offers a far more creative alternative human and Earthly limits properly understood the conservationist Wendell Berry are not confinements but rather inducements to fullness of relationship and meaning beyond
our material limits Beyond growth he was suggesting lies another world a place worth visiting an investment worth making beyond the limits to affluence lies an affluence that only limits can reveal to us limits of the gateway to the Limitless I believe this Insight is part of an answer to the anxiety expressed yesterday so eloquently a way of looking at the world and being in the world that allows for realism but encourages aspiration but to make progress on that Insight we need not only to challenge the rejection of limits but to revisit the definition of prosperity
to ask again and again what can Prosperity possibly mean on a finite Planet if we are to replace the narrow definition of prosperity as wealth with something meaningful I'd like to suggest there's a blindingly obvious starting point the foundation for all our prosperity the foundation for all our wealth is health health is one of the things people identify when you ask them about their priorities in life our own health our families Health our communities Health our planet's health and this idea of prosperity is Health guides us away from growth because health is not about having
more and more health is about balance it involves what Aristotle called a virtuous balance between deficiency and excess it positions itself directly counter to the myth of growth and something quite surprising follows from this to deliver Prosperity as health we need an economy whose guiding principle is care amongst the many excellent side events at this extraordinary conference was one that focused on the challenges of the Care economy I spoke on the panel there and I promised to bring some of those ideas back into this plenary today in fact my own argument was that it should
have been a plenary event in the first place the care and attention of one human being to another and to the conditions of living lies at what Nancy fulbray called The Invisible heart of the economy while Adam Smith's invisible hand is busy insisting that we're all selfish consumers falbray pointed out that without care we are nothing our children would lead stunted lives [Applause] our children would lead stunted lives the sick would find no respite the dying no Solace our societies are nothing our progress means nothing without care there is no economy not even at the
most basic level the covid pandemic brought that home to us forcefully but its lessons are already slipping from our minds they must not be allowed to the care economy is not just a sideshow in the search for a post-growth world it is the blueprint for it feminist economists have been making this argument for decades The Lion's Share of care work paid and unpaid is done by women and quite possibly because of this care work has been denigrated in modern society not accidentally not inadvertently but systematically capitalism externalizes the burden of care in much the same
way that it externalizes nature by counting the wrong things by valuing the wrong things by focusing on narrow death definitions of productivity that privilege profits over wages and working conditions by rigging the rules of the game and by refusing to change and this brings me to my third and final point there is no doubt we are confronted with a profound dilemma perhaps the most profound dilemma of our times growth is unsustainable but the world Beyond growth is frightening we have built an economy that's dependent on growth we must learn a new how Society works when
the economy is not growing how welfare systems work how Financial systems work how government works and we need to confront the impossibility theorems presented to us by those who resist change if you think you are looking at a dysfunctional system that benefits no one then you are probably not looking hard enough the fine words and supportive gestures of those who cling to power hide vested interests intent on sabotaging progress and this is where our allegiance to care must be tempered with realism our compassion for each other toughened with an iron resolve our infinite creativity grounded
in a sense of struggle to wake up each day to a sense of security and comfort is a beguiling vision for our lives to wake up to a sense of struggle can take our breath away and yet that struggle provides another kind of answer to the challenging question posed to me last night by that young woman how can a post-growth economy help a generation to face a future filled with anxiety and doubt not through a rose-tinted sense of blind hope not through a false promise of more and more not by vague assurances that everything will
be okay but through a commitment to struggle the antidote to despair lies not in Hope but in action in agency in engaging with all our Creative Energy in the task ahead a path through the limits towards the Limitless a Prosperity based not on wealth but on health a struggle to unravel the systematic Distortion of values that lies at the core of a broken capitalism and to construct in its place an economy of care and craft and creativity fit for purpose on a finite planet and that is why I close as I began with my profound
thanks to Philippe for his engagement in that struggle over so many years now and in particular of course for bringing us all here today thank you Philippe thank you [Applause] thank you [Applause] thank you Tim
