Climate change and the social sciences Policy responses I: Irrational optimism and green growth

1. Prof Max Koch, Lund University (max.koch@soch.lu.se)Climate Change, Sustainable Welfare and Eco-social Policies • Climate change and the social sciences • Policy responses I: Irrational optimism and green growth • Policy responses II: Degrowth and sustainable welfare • Eco-social policies

2. Climate change and the social sciences • Arrhenius (1895): Link between the burning of fossil fuels with far-reaching change in the climate • IPCC (2014): Carbon emissions have been constantly rising since the Industrial Revolution. Planet is on course for a temperature rise of 2-5 degrees Celsius by 2100 • Direct and indirect risks: Heat-waves, forest fires, rising sea levels, disruptions of energy and food supplies, mass migration, weakening of global governance; unprecedented levels of conflict (Stern, Giddens) • Social sciences can help understand climate change as a social issue by focusing on those social structures that prevent policy-makers from acting

3. Structural tensions between capitalist growth, environmental limits and the carbon cycle (Marx) Exchange value: Reduces concrete works as well as matter and energy to repositories of abstract labour; regards land, raw materials and fuels as ‘free gifts’ from nature and sources of rents; tends towards an infinite expansion of scale to produce more exchange value / capital Use value: Bound up with rearranging matter and energy; expansion of scale translates into increasing throughput of raw materials and auxiliaries; accompanied by degradation of environment and increase in greenhouse gas emissions Tensions are managed and regulated differently in different capitalist growth strategies (Koch 2012)

4. Ian Gough’s three scenarios for governments’ to cope with CC:Irrational optimism, green growth and degrowth • Irrational optimism (Republican circles): Faster GDP growth will equip future generations to deal with CC through mainly adaptation (deregulated drilling for oil, Carbon Capture and Storage) • Green growth (most EU countries):States set targets to reduce energy and material costs and the West’s reliance on the fragile geopolitics of energy supply. Decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions through greening of economy (carbon markets as main policy instrument)

5. Green growth and social policy: Welfare regimes and ecological sustainability • Gough and Meadowcroft see social-democratic welfare states as better placed to manage the intersection of social and environmental policies than liberal welfare regimes (ecological modernisation discourse, green growth) • Socio-economic and ecological values are seen as mutually reinforcing: ‘Synergy’ hypothesis • Theoretical alternative is to regard the green dimension of the state in competition and conflict with its welfare dimension

6. Operationalising welfare and ecology dimensions for 28 European countries (1995 and 2010) • Welfare: Decommodification: Overall expenditureforsocialprotectionas % of GDP; stratification: Income Inequality, GINI Index • Ecology: Performance: Electricity generated from renewable sources as % of gross electricity consumption; CO2 emissions per capita, National EcologicalFootprintsRegulation: Environmental taxes as % of GDP, publicexpendituresfor environmental protectionas % of GDP • Sources: EUROSTAT, OECD, Worldbank, Global Footprint Network

7. Koch, M & Fritz, M 2014, Building the Eco-Social State: Do Welfare Regimes Matter?Journal of Social Policy 43 (4) Correspondence analysis: Positional Changes of Countries in the Eco-social Field

8. Results • No quasi-automatic development of the green state on top of already existing welfare institutions: Representatives of social-democratic welfare regimes are spread across established, emerging, failing and deadlocked eco-states • Social welfare and sustainability has nowhere been sufficiently, that is absolutely, decoupled from GDP growth • Dialectics of welfare state: Same mechanisms that defuse inequality enable the leading of ecologically harmful lifestyles

9. Sustainability, Inclusion and Quality of Life relative to GDP/capita: A Global perspective (Fritz and Koch, Global Environmental Change 38, 2016)

10. Degrowth (D’Alisa et al. 2014) • Bringing the global matter and energythroughput in linewith the capacityof the Earth’secosystems • Redistributingwealth and incomegloballytoeradicate absolute poverty • Emphasis on quality of life (free time, conviviality) rather than quantity of consumption • Encouragement of self-reflection, balance, creativity, flexibility, diversity, good citizenship, generosity, and non-materialism • Equity, participatory democracy, respect of human rights, respect for cultural differences

11. Downscaling towards a Stable State Economy (Daly) Aims at the lowest feasible matter and energy throughput in production and consumption and a relatively stable population While carrying capacities of the earth are not eroded, there is space for culture and knowledge to develop To achieve a global SSE, throughput would need to ‘degrow’ in the global North, thereby opening up space for GDP growth in the South, which would contribute by a decrease in population growth (Martínez-Alier)

12. Sustainable welfare (Koch and Mont 2016) • Welfare: normally conceptualised in socio-economic terms of equity highlighting distributive issues within growing capitalist economies • Sustainable welfare: Making welfare theories, systems and policies compatible with principles of environmental sustainability • Climate change as transnational and transgenerational phenomenon requires the extension of the distributive principles underlying existing welfare systems to include those in other countries (universalisability) and future generations (intertemporality)

13. Prioritising needs: Objective wellbeing measure, compatible with sustainability goals • Basic needs such as physical and mental health and autonomy are non-negotiable: Failure to satisfy these produces ‘serious harm’ (Gough) • Universal: Do not vary over time and across cultures but according to the ways societies satisfy these • ‘Critical thresholds’ for the provision of human needs (and wants) are to be constantly (re-)defined in light of the advances of scientific and practical knowledge • Degree to which more than human needs can be provided on a limited planet and in intergenerational perspective is an empirical question

14. Human needs (Doyal and Gough 1991)

15. Needs-oriented degrowth research: The example of nutritional food (Koch et al. 2017, Ecological Economics 138) • Whatare the environmental impacts of different kinds of food production (conventional versus organic farming methods)? • How do the different forms compare in terms of scale and land-use (need for agricultural land) to feed everybody? • Do such scenarios suggest particular diets (e.g. vegetarian) over others (e.g. omnivorous ones)?

16. GHGs of organic vs. conventional agriculture

17. Can we feed the world with 100% organic food?

18. Greater scale of organic food production suggests a less omnivorous diet: 1. GHG emissions would fall (Tilman & Clarke 2014)

19. 2. A 25% decrease of meat consumption would lead to a 15% minor need for agricultural land by 2030 (Wirsenius et al 2010) • Some evidence for relative decoupling (ecological intensity per unit of economic output) but not for absolute decoupling (absolute decline in resource impacts) • With 0.7% population growth and 1.4% income growth the average carbon content of economic output would need to improve 21-fold by 2050, relative to 2007 • If 9 billion people are to have an income of EU citizens today, the world economy would need to grow 6 times by 2050. Achieving the IPCC targets by 2050 would mean pushing down the global carbon intensity of economic output by 9% every year

20. Temporary conclusion and social policy challenges • Human need for food: A gradual transition to a vegetarian diet would not only be more sustainable than omnivorous ones, it would also feed a larger population (given constant land-use) • Social policies are necessary to bring about a ‘radically different environmental/welfare policy regime’ and a ‘redistribution of carbon, work/time and income/wealth’ (Gough) at international (where a new global deal not unlikely the Bretton Woods agreements would be necessary), national and local levels

21. The ‘double injustice’ (Walker, Büchs) More or less ambitous climate targets have distributive consequences and implications for social justice: Different social groups have different responsibilities for CC and suffer different impacts that may work in opposite ways How do burdens of climate policies relate to household incomes? Are such burdens proportional to the impact on the environment of different lifestyles? How can CC and social policies be designed such that unjust distributional effects are avoided?

22. Developing eco-social policies (at local, national and European levels) Climate policies Distributional dilemmas Countervailing social policies ECO-SOCIAL POLICIES (As yet) fragmented countervailing social policies in discussion: • identification of minimum and maximum income limits / taxation; • working time policies; • housing; • transport and mobility; • carbon rationing including personal allowances and trading schemes

23. Conclusion • Climate change and related ecological threats are serious socio-ecological issues that are unlikely to go away in the near future • Weak evidence for absolute decoupling of material resource use, carbon emissions and GDP/capita, and for the Green Growth policy response, suggests more theoretical and empirical efforts into how economies and societies may develop without growth • Huge potential for social policy scholars to contribute, especially through the development of eco-social policies

24. Many thanks! Some related publications: • Koch M 2012 Capitalism and Climate Change: Theoretical Analysis, Historical Development and Policy Responses, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan • Koch M 2013 Welfare after growth: Theoretical discussion and policy implications International Journal of Social Quality 3 (1) • Koch M 2014 Climate change, carbon trading and societal self-defence, Real-world Economics Review 67 • Koch M and Fritz M 2014 Building the eco-social state: Do welfare regimes matter? Journal of Social Policy 43 (4) • Fritz M and Koch M 2014 Potentials for prosperity without growth: Ecological sustainability, social Inclusion and the quality of life in 38 Countries Ecological Economics 108 • Koch M 2015 Capitalism, climatechange and Degrowthstrategiestowards a global steadystateeconomy, International CriticalThought 5 (4) • Koch M and Mont O 2016 (eds) Sustainability and the PoliticalEconomyof Welfare, London: Routledge. • Fritz M and Koch M 2016 Economicdevelopment and prosperitypattersaround the world: Structuralchallenges for a global steadystateeconomyGlobal Environmental Change 38 • Koch M, Gullberg AT, Schoyen M and Hvinden B 2016 Sustainablewelfare in the EU: Promotingsynergiesbetweenclimate and social policiesCritical Social Policy 36 (4) • Koch M, Buch-Hansen H and Fritz M 2017 Shiftingpriorities in Degrowth research: An argument for the centralityof human needsEcologicalEconomics138 • Büchs M and Koch M 2017 PostgrowthandWellbeing, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (in press)