People-centred cities and towns are the way to a more resilient, low-carbon future – not EVs

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A people-centred street-scape in Amsterdam. Pixabay

I was recently invited to write an editorial for City Changers, a European-based organisation helping to create better cities and towns for the future. This followed a LinkedIn post I wrote earlier this year critiquing the promotion of EVs as a solution to climate mitigation – the post went, as they say, viral.

In my City Changers article I expand on this original critique but focus more on the actual solution: cities, towns and rural communities built for people not heavy, energy-guzzling metal boxes.

Here is an excerpt:

To address the emissions and high energy and resource demands of our transport system we must change the system: move away from car-centric towns and cities by investing properly in public transport and make active transport (walking, wheelchair use, and cycling) safe and enjoyable. There will also be a role for on-demand and shared vehicle mobility, which yes, will likely be electric – but our goal should not (and cannot) be the replacement of the entire ICE fleet with EVs.

But most importantly, we must shift the conversation. Rather than focusing on how to get people and stuff from A to B, we should be talking about how we can build future cities and towns that will meet people’s needs for ‘a good life’ within a 15 minute or so walk, cycle, or quick and easy public transport ride of people’s homes.

Read the full article here.

Read the full article here.

Beyond Growth Aotearoa Conference 2023 – recordings now available!

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The session recordings for the recent Beyond Growth Aotearoa conference, held at Victoria University of Wellington are now available and can be viewed on Youtube.

My session focused on sufficiency as a pathway to a post-growth economy. In the talk I draw on the experience of France, which has instituted sufficiency at the core of its energy law. Whatever we call this new pathway, the reality is clear: the current economic system is not working for people or the planet. We need an economy that focuses on delivering what people need to support wellbeing while operating within safe operating boundaries (listen to my conversation about wellbeing economy with RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan here). In my conference session I suggest some possible areas of focus, including a food resilience strategy and an energy security strategy. Take a listen to find out more.

Reconsidering our economic system – a conversation with Jesse Mulligan

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Photo courtesy RNZ

This week I spoke to RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan about the conversation our political leaders aren’t having. The fact that we live on a finite planet, and we cannot sustain an economy that is dependent on exponential growth (whether we label it “green” or not).

Instead, we should be talking about the alternative, and only viable future pathway: an economy centred on wellbeing, which operates within safe ecological limits. Listen to our conversation here.

Election 2023: Big on marketing, short on vision

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Image courtesy the Kaka.

In this piece for the Kākā, I argue that this election is big on marketing strategy and slogans, but appreciably thin on vision. And it is a marketing campaign largely based on the assumption that the voter is Homo Economicus – that is, a person who makes decisions exclusively guided by self-interest. But my sense is that, despite what politicians think, New Zealanders do care about the world beyond their own economic status – and a growing number of us are acutely aware that the growth-based economy is not working for either people or the planet. But New Zealanders are not being given the chance to contemplate an alternative future because no one in any position of influence is talking about it. Our politicians are too pre-occupied with their desperate appeals to Homo Economicus.

Read the full article on the Kākā.

The economics of sufficiency

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We can’t consume our way out of the climate crisis. Photo courtesy The Kaka.

This week I chatted with journalists Bernard Hickey and Cathrine Dyer about the economics of sufficiency on The Kaka. We covered a lot of ground, including why recycling and buying an electric car won’t quite cut if we want to curb combat climate change, the limits of the renewable energy transition, and the idea of putting sufficiency ahead of GDP growth as the central policy goal for our economy.

Listen to and read more about the conversation here.

Sufficiency and the pathway to a post-growth economy – recording available

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In August I presented a seminar, hosted by Massey University, on what I believe to be the single most important issue we face today. That is, how to reconcile our growth-based economy and energy-intensive way of life with the polycrisis that means a liveable planet hangs in the balance.

In the talk, I argue that we simply cannot reconcile these two things – contrary to what we are led to believe by the proponents of green growth. Instead, we must let go of growth as the central goal of our economy and focus instead on what a society needs to deliver to achieve wellbeing for all, within the limits of a finite planet.

I argue that a key policy goal must be “sufficiency” – with the right vision, it is an idea that people from across the political spectrum are likely to coalesce around, unlocking the pathway to a better future.

For those who missed the seminar, here is a link to the recording (passcode: 0U3PW@sA).

Upcoming webinar: Pathway to a post-growth economy

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It is my pleasure and privilege to be presenting this upcoming seminar hosted by the School of People and Environment, Massey University. In the seminar I will be expanding on themes explored in my articles on Newsroom, which can be found at this link.

For those who missed the seminar, here is a link to the recording (passcode: 0U3PW@sA).

The time has come to use the ‘C’ word

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‘Collapse’ – the complete breakdown of society as we know it. Photo: Newsroom

Is there anything more terrifying than the prospect of global collapse in the near future? Yes, undoubtedly: the possibility that collapse is already happening but we just don’t realise it.

‘Collapse’ used as a simple unmodified noun refers to the complete breakdown of society as we know it. It may be precipitated by climate change, but it could also be triggered by any number of other crises, including another, even more brutal pandemic than Covid-19, a global financial crash or sudden energy disruption. Or a combination of some or all of these.

The cause is almost academic, because all of these things are related. They are all symptoms of a single problem, which is that humans (and especially high-income nations) are overshooting the planet’s ability to regenerate and self-regulate, fuelled by the one-off bonanza of fossil fuels, which have allowed us to produce and consume more (and pollute more) than any other time in history.

Continue reading on Newsroom.

The transition to an ‘economy of enough’

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A hundred years ago many New Zealanders were content with a bowl of porridge in the morning made from oats produced in Southland and Otago. Photo: Newsroom.

My latest article on Newsroom asks what if we made sufficiency a central guiding principal of our economy, as countries such as France are starting to do? It draws on earlier advocacy of the late Jeanette Fitzsimons, who argued for an ‘economy of enough’.

On one autumnal afternoon in 2013, the late Jeanette Fitzsimons addressed a hall full of people in the leafy town of Waikanae on the Kāpiti Coast. Unusually, for a former academic and seasoned politician, she began her address with a story about a certain slow-witted but very likeable bear – who had indulged in a bit too much honey while visiting his friend Rabbit and got stuck in Rabbit’s doorway on his way out.

In the story much discussion ensued on ways to resolve this predicament, including Rabbit moving to a bigger tree, or cutting a bigger doorway. But in the end it was Christopher Robin who sagely concluded, “Pooh, you will just have to stay there and not eat any more until you lose weight”.

Through this story, Fitzsimons was deftly providing an analogy for the current human predicament. She went on to describe the need to transition to an “economy of enough”. That is, rather than Rabbit upsizing to allow for more honey consumption, Pooh just needed to cut back a bit. He needed to understand how much honey was enough and be satisfied with that.

Ten years have passed, and the need to transition to an economy of enough has only become more urgent. The words “overshoot”, “polycrisis”, “metacrisis” and “collapse” are now scattered through everyday conversations in lecture halls, meeting rooms, cafes and living rooms around the country as our awareness of the situation deepens.

Continue reading the article on Newsroom.

The perpetual myth of perpetual growth

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Leaf blowers made from recycled materials or designed to last for 10 years are still products that no one actually needs, produced using scarce energy and resources, with the sole purpose of making a profit. Newsroom

In this piece on Newsroom, I argue that just as the architects of our current economic system designed the system around perpetual growth, we can redesign the economy around delivering wellbeing to all, within planetary limits

“Every civilisation has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilisations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it.”

The economist and writer David Fleming was speaking about our civilisation’s myth of perpetual economic growth. And the mathematics, along with the graphs, models and analyses supporting this myth have become increasingly elaborate – inscrutable to the average person, who dares not question their truth. But now, it is not just mathematics used to assert the validity of a growth-based economy, we have added words to our arsenal of myth-making.

Continue reading on Newsroom.