MISSING the BEAR

I was horrified at Lib Dem shadow Chancellor Vince Cable’s attitude and behaviour at the Base Show Wednesday.

Vince Cable has a pretty good understanding of the imperative to address climate change but he’s shockingly still missing the bear on the interaction between the environment and climate change, and the economic crisis.

On Wednesday at the Base Show, Cable took a cheap shot at Tim Jackson and the decroissance or “degrowth” movement, showing he hasn’t got a clue!



Talking about the dual problems economic recession and climate change, he said:



“Now how do these two problems… interact? In the short term it’s been rather bad news for the environment. If you look at British opinion polls environment certainly climate change has dropped right off most people’s radar screens. They’ve got other things to worry about, they are more preoccupied with how they manage their jobs, about managing their household balance sheets, and a lot of anxiety about the economy dominates. Environmental issues, at least in the short term, have fallen down people’s list of priorities.

" And I think probably also, environmentalists who advocated zero growth , well, we’ve got zero growth in fact, we’ve got minus growth and it isn’t very nice. And I think people somehow wised up to this idea that all this puritanical non-consumption of resources we were being told was a good thing is actually really rather painful if you’re one of the people who was losing your job in the process. So recession has played very badly in terms of its environmental impact.

"Secondly, on the global scene there’s this lethal, what’s called this 10, 10 problem. 10% unemployment in the United States, 10% growth in China. So far the Chinese and the Americans have coordinated their activities relatively well in this recession but anybody who talks to anybody in American politics will tell you there is enormous tension building up in the system, resentments. The Obama administration has so far managed it well, clamor for action for protectionism, many ways return to atavistic prejudices of the 1930’s as this big new power growing up building a power station every week or every day I think. How do we cope with this?

"There’s a very strong resistance to people telling the Americans that they’ve got to calm down and deal with the climate….

[talks about science]

"The question now is how we bring together the concerns we have about the economy with the imperative dealing with the issues of climate change. I think they are compatible if the case is properly made… so how do we find a way out of this box.”


He then goes onto mention (ironically) restructuring British economy away from finance and dependence on London, and the need to concentrate on physical infrastructure projects for transport, new energy systems, a digital infrastructure, renewables infrastructure, etc, and the necessity to create growth.


“At the moment there is no mechanism for financing this because PFI has largely broken down, stock markets are unlikely to generate long term time horizons, private equity 5 year time horizons normally most companies will not embark on all this stuff because of political risk. There needs to be some mechanism that can bring in the enormous value of savings that we know is locked up in pension funds and insurance companies looking for a safe return with these very important needs for long term infrastructure much of which centers on low carbon future and long run environmental much more friendly economy. A lot of political will and a lot of imagination will be required to bring those things together. But I think the conclusion I have is that in both the short term and the long term there is a way in which economic recovery can be very firmly tied into an environmental agenda.”


During the Q&A I got lucky and was called on, I asked if the lack of financing for infrastructure and green projects couldn’t be resolved very simply by implementing what the Stiglitz Sarkozy report suggests (I didn’t even mention the New Economics Foundation because of his swipe at Jackson) and revaluing the economy, he replied:

“Well I obviously buy into that, to give the government credit they did produce a set of green accounts. They have done this technically but they haven’t made much use of it. It’s just sort of sitting there on our shelves. The technical side of the work has actually been done. It’s not easy-- there’s a lot of things you can’t quantify easily but the idea of getting parallel green accounts with the economy and what it tells you, which is not surprising, is that very often when we think we’re getting better off, we’re actually getting worse off if you factor in the environmental costs.”

(His equally uninformed answer to my second query, relating to personal carbon budgeting aside,)

Yes, Mr. Cable, it would show we are getting worse off. Then we would have something to change and work at wouldn’t we and wouldn’t that change make low-carbon, infrastructure projects more valuable?

If he buys into it, why isn’t he getting it?!

He has apparently never ever bothered to actually read anything about decroissance or flip through Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth (Jackson who contributed to a study commissioned by parliament) because if he had he would see that the problems he’s talking about can be resolved by changing incentives in the economy in a way that will encourage long term investment and conservation.

The potential in a huge rallying campaign behind changing society’s outlook and getting everyone on board to improve not only our long run well-being and ensuring growth of our society (not in terms of GDP growth, but as a people) wouldn’t make people turn against a government. Come one dude! You could solve long-run infrastructure investment, encourage savings, and shift the view of economic markets away from short-run returns in one move (well, likely a series of coordinated moves, but still). Long-run investment is low-carbon economy is “degrowth.”

With all the public support Cable has, I’m frightened.

And this is the man people want to be the next Chancellor under a hung parliament? CRINGE. I take back everything I ever said about the British public being generally better educated than the American public.


Though I won’t fault Cable entirely, the folks at NEF need to realize that the general public is (sadly) swayed by pretty language. Simply joking that ‘yeah, we should’ve thought about the “degrowth” title a little more carefully’ isn’t going to cut it. They’re spending too much time locked up in their tank rethinking the economy, they’ve forgotten that the use of language is as important as using language to begin with. I don't mean to be too hard on NEF, but I'd like to see a little more of the "do" bit in their motto.

Update 1: Read Andy Wimbush's (blogmaster at NEF) much more eloquent response to Cable.

The HuffPo has reported today that Whole Foods has released a new film about food awareness. This seems odd to me, when Whole Foods doesn’t seem to understand in business practice the concepts it purportedly represents. And it’s more than just the healthcare row: it’s health and communities. I know, I used to work there.



I’m not disputing the nutritional facts in the film-- yes, I believe that artificial sweeteners are carcinogens and likely cause obesity by changing the way the hypothalamus functions. Yes, I know all about the importance of combining certain foods: like dairy with legumes and greens for optimal nutrient uptake. But for a company that claims to be a bastion of employer provided healthcare and raise awareness of healthy eating in poorer communities, Mr. Mackey has missed the bear.

In the “Here We Grow” film it sounds like Whole Foods is saying “eat organic” or it’s not healthy. Unless Whole Foods is prepared to lower the price of it’s organic produce (not likely) below market then poorer communities won’t be able to afford it.

Instead of talking about organic, let’s talk local. A lot of farmers where I call “home” (central Wisc) aren’t organically certified because they can’t meet the input costs but they use sustainable practices and no chemicals and would otherwise be called organic. Michael Pollan supports Whole Foods, saying that it’s often right about food-- but for every local farmer and regional product that they carry they import just as much, whether it’s Guavas from Brazil in some Boston stores, or gourmet cheese from France.

The way the green-economic revolution is being marketed (and Whole Foods is as much to blame as anyone else) buying local prices may end up exceeding “conventional” prices. How is it healthier to price consumers out of the market? Whole Foods markets over-consumption because it’s a luxury retailer, it has therefore done very little to re-value the economy. Even less when local businesses are considered: Whole Foods dominates it’s niche market. Driving local business out of business and therefore fundamentally changing local economic circuits is not promoting a green-economy.

And just because something is organic (or fair trade for that matter) doesn’t mean it’s healthy. I used to love to eat in the Whole Foods deli, but I made sure that I checked the nutrition labels because a lot of their deli and bakery products have absurd amounts of fat (13-20 in some muffins, 10+ in some soups) and sugar! Just because it’s organic raw cane sugar doesn’t mean that it’s made with twice as much sugar as there needs to be. The same goes for brown rice syrup (an ingredient in some product lines that Whole Foods carries). Whole Foods a bastion of healthy eating? Nope, don’t think so. I mean, props for cooking with actual fresh ingredients, but let’s leave out the excessive cream, huh?

And now to health care: yes, Whole Foods should be considered at the top of employer provided healthcare for full-time employees. And definitely brownie points for rolling over health care allowances annually and letting employees choose how to spend it. But, Whole Foods is one of those companies that doesn’t provide any benefits for part-time employees. The labour market in recent years has trended to employ fewer full-time workers so that businesses can weasel out of providing health care. The decline in unions, overall, has lead to a decline in employer provided benefits-- this is one of the things that has lead to the healthcare mess we’re in now. Whole Foods bans union participation amongst it’s employees. If Mackey really believed in employer provided health care he support union membership, allowing unions to regain lost ground on labour rights.

In his WSJ piece* he writes that government should no longer legislate what insurance companies must cover-- do I really need to explain why that’s a bad idea. If you let insurance companies decide what to cover, they won’t cover expensive diseases. Moreover, they may decide to link cancer to obesity, and if a patient weighs more than a certain threshold deemed “healthy” then their cancer might not be covered. Since Whole Foods foods aren’t always “healthy,” that seems a little bass-ackward, no?

Rob Smart at the HuffPo asks if Whole Foods is "losing it's sustainable lustre?" Losing, how about long gone.
Missing the Bear? I think so.

*I agree with some of the other things (i.e. transparency) that he says in the op-ed, but others (taxes and torts) I have no opinion because I don't know enough about them.

According to Stewart Brand by 2050 80 percent of the world’s population will dwell in urban areas. By 2015 the developing world will have eight of ten of the biggest cities per capita. These cities will develop three times faster than cities in developed countries and on average will be nine times bigger. Urban areas consume massive amounts of resources. What’s missing from the climate change discourse is this: we cannot continue to consume the way that we have, in the West or as a species. And the trouble is the West is the paradigm. The Western model is what people in the developing world still aspire to. G8 leaders have declared that the answer to global recession is to hope that Chinese and Indian consumers pick up the slack in global demand by consuming more. Is this sound economic policy?


Consider: global economic growth is measured in terms of consumption (consumer demand and retail sales, especially for the model: Western economies) and moves in lock step with carbon emissions. Climate change experts from scientists, to economists, to politicians say that Western countries cannot continue to consume at the level that they have, that developing countries will have to pursue a different path to development that not only involves cleaner emissions but a different, ultimately lower consumption pattern. But global economic recovery is still talked about in terms of new car sales, retail earnings, new homes built. New, new, new, buy, buy, buy. Is your brain doing that thing where it feels fuzzy in the middle? Mine is.

This week there are several stories that tap into the miss-match in green economic recovery logic: First, a new study finds that warmer years see less economic progress in developing countries. Second, there is the revelation that credit markets are anti-green. Sustainable consumer behavior (say paying a cobbler to fix your favorite pair of shoes rather than buying a new one or a whole bunch of charges at a thrift store) is seen as a “warning sign” to credit card companies of declining card holder revenue. Third, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become sustainabawashed (yes, I’ve just made up this word). For the most part, according to CSR expert Andrew Newton, the concept “has become shorthand way of saying a company’s ethical behavior is only useful if it preserves or enhances the company’s bottom line (paraphrase).” He is quoted in an article on the Corporate Eye explaining that the true spirit of CSR doesn’t go beyond charitable donations and that most companies could do more if they were willing to take a cut in profit.

Taking a cut in profit—like taking a cut in growth? China regularly sees annual GDP growth of around 10% (conservatively) give or take. That’s a lot of growth. There is also tacit understanding that these numbers are doctored. And thus the essence of the problem: developed countries for the last decade or so average around 1-2% annual economic growth, so China’s doctored average of 10% looks really huge and they want it to. The UN estimates that for African economies need to grow by an average annualize rate of 6% per year in order to maximize aid effectiveness. But how much of that growth is sufficient but not necessary? We are used to huge percentages 6-13% of GDP growth, and China isn’t even “developed” yet. How much growth is enough? Could we get used to smaller numbers if economic growth was valued properly like Andrew Simms, Aubrey Meyer, Ann Pettifor, Colin Challen, et al. suggest?

This economic revaluation should be part of the green recovery discourse. But so far most of what I’ve seen is green(washed) marketing, call it marketing and materializing climate change. For profit. The governments don’t get it, nobody involved in pre-Copenhagen negotiations is talking about it (at least not openly), and the economists are still talking about economic recovery in terms of retail sales and consumer demand. The mainstream press isn’t making any noise, having once again Missed the Bear. As the second world moves into the first, developing countries develop, they must do so on a better paradigm than the Western one. And Westerners will have to learn to consume differently.