it's an honor for me to be here and thank you all for joining us and thank you for the invitations uh from the political parties um I want to use my time with you to speak directly and practically to the extraordinary impasse that we clearly face as a civilization we are at 1. 2 degrees of global warming and already the effects are clearly disastrous devastating planetary changes are playing out before us in real time it is critically important that we make every effort to limit global warming to as close to 1. 5 degrees as possible in line with the Paris agreement scientists warn that pushing Beyond this level towards two degrees is likely to trigger several major tipping points in the ecosystem and Beyond this level we will not be able to adapt yes over the past decade the EU has reduced its emissions some politicians have hailed this as evidence of green growth but remember when it comes to climate mitigation what matters is speed we must reduce emissions fast enough to stay within Fair shares of the carbon budget for 1.
5 degrees for high income countries this is extremely challenging because they have very high levels of energy use uh and high energy use makes sufficiently rapid decarbonization very difficult to achieve the EU is not on track to meet its Paris obligations not even close this thing rates of mitigation it will take several hundred years to cut emissions to zero even if the green deal brings everyone to the speed of the best performing countries Denmark and the Netherlands the EU will still blow its fair share of the carbon budget many times over there's nothing green about this it's a recipe for disaster much faster mitigation is needed [Music] and climate is not the only crisis that we Face we're also overshooting five other planetary boundaries including staggering rates of biodiversity loss driven mainly by excess material use in the world economy and here again it's the high income countries which have disproportionately high levels of material use which are overwhelmingly responsible for driving this crisis what's more the constant hunt for capitalist growth in the EU and other high income economies relies on a constant plunder of goods and resources and labor from the global South [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] output data shows that consumption in rich countries about half of all the material consumption in rich countries is not appropriated from the global South through unequal exchange this drains poorer countries of wealth that could be used for developments it colonizes their lands it produces global inequality and it means the social and ecological costs of growth are externalized to vulnerable communities [Music] this Arrangement is wildly destructive and wildly unjust the science is very clear rich countries must substantially reduce their use of energy and materials so that we can decarbonize fast enough to stay under 1. 5 degrees so that we can reverse other forms of ecological breakdown and to release the global south from the grip of neocolonial extraction but this brings us to a paradox Europe has extremely high levels of energy and material use vastly overshooting planetary boundaries and yet nonetheless still fails to meet many basic human needs 40 million people cannot access nutritious food and cannot eat their homes 95 million people face the risk of poverty tens of millions more cannot access decent housing why it's because our economic system is fundamentally undemocratic our productive capacities are controlled by capital and mobilized around what is profitable to Capital rather than what is necessary for human well-being and ecology [Applause] [Music] so we end up with perverse forms of production SUVs and fast fashion and fossil fuels and advertising instead of public transit nutritious food renewable energy affordable housing our economic system fails in both ecological and social terms so we Face a double challenge we need to transition to an economy that meets human needs and achieves social progress while also substantially reducing energy and material use thank you some of this can be achieved through efficiency improvements yes and we should embrace the power of technological change we also know that this is not enough in and of itself in a growth-oriented economy gains from efficiency are diminished by the scale effects of ever increasing production if we are to overcome this problem and Achieve our ecological goals we need to transition to a post-growth economy and reorganize production around well-being and ecology the first step is clear we must abandon GDP growth as an objective Simon kuznets the man who invented the GDP metric himself warned that it should never be used as a measure of economic and social progress it does not distinguish between what is good and what is harmful and it does not account for social and ecological costs we urgently need alternative indicators but not walk away from this conference believing that this is all that needs to be done if you are speeding toward a cliff it is not enough to Simply fiddle with a speedometer in your car you have to deal with the underlying problem think about it this way the dominant assumption in economics right now is that every industry must increase production every year regardless of how destructive it is and regardless of whether or not we actually need it this is an irrational way to run an economy at the best of times in the middle of an ecological emergency it is clearly Madness instead we need to determine democratically what kinds of production we need to be doing and what kinds of production are clearly destructive and should be scaled down this focuses the minds Empirical research shows that the single most powerful way to improve well-being and social outcomes is to expand and decommodify Universal public services and bye [Music] and by this I mean Healthcare and education yes but also housing public transit Energy Water internet nutritious food for all high quality Universal Services should be a core objective of EU policy let us mobilize our productive forces to ensure that everyone can access what is necessary to live a decent life in addition we must invest in ambitious Public Works programs to build renewable energy improve public transit insulate homes install efficient appliances restore ecosystems these are urgents socially necessary tasks and we cannot just wait around for Capital to decide they are worth doing we must mobilize to do them directly and fast harnessing the power of Public Finance and Industrial policy such a program can and should also include a job guarantee empowering people to train and participate in the most important Collective projects of Our Generation doing dignified meaningful socially valuable work with workplace democracy and living wages [Music] think about the power of this approach it allows us to achieve ecological objectives but it also abolishes unemployment something that growth never does it abolishes Economic Security which growth never does it ensures good lives for all regardless of fluctuations in aggregate output this liberates us from growth imperatives and stabilizes the economy now as we improve and secure the socially necessary sectors the social Foundation we also need to scale down socially less necessary forms of production fossil fuels are the obvious one here we need binding targets to wind this industry down oh but we also need to reduce production of private jets SUVs commercial airlines Mansions industrial beef fast fashion advertising Farms cruise ships there are huge chunks of our economy that are mostly organized around capital accumulation and are wasteful and destructive and totally irrelevant to human well-being we can also ban the practice of planned obsolescence and introduce policy to extend product lifespans if our products last twice as long we will need half as many finally we urgently need to cut the purchasing power of the rich using basic sensible policy tools such as wealth taxes and maximum income ratios Recent research [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Recent research shows that millionaires alone are on track to burn 72 percent of the remaining carbon budget for 1.
