Dr. Jason:<\/strong> … I think that COVID opens some windows of sort of intellectual opportunity, but also didn’t yield very much, right? Like the overwhelming response in the wake of the COVID crisis was basically, \u2018we need to step on the accelerator on growth in order to recover and so on\u2019, right? The recovery narrative has been focused entirely around GDP growth, not around ‘what can we do to make sure that everyone’s basic needs are met?’ Or even basic healthcare needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis to me has reaffirmed the extent to which our economies are so overwhelmingly dependent on and focused around growthism. And the consequences are going to be disastrous when the data comes out on the extent to which this has caused emissions to rise or not fall fast enough, etc. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, I think that the COVID crisis did make people aware of the facts that \u2018look, there’s basically an emergency brake\u2019, right? Like we’ve been told forever that there’s no such thing as an emergency brake. There’s no way that we could shift to a post-growth society. It turns out that when push comes to shove, you actually can pull the emergency brake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem is that, of course, during the COVID crisis, the emergency brake they pulled, was basically to shut down industries or sectors that we actually really need. So, they shut down schools, cafes, gyms, recreational facilities, theaters – things that actually are really beneficial to human wellbeing. And what kept going was things like SUV production and private jets and yacht production, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I think that we can take that insight and imagine a different kind of use for it. What if we started to use policy to purposely slow down industries that we don’t actually need? \u2026 There are huge chunks of our economy that are actually totally irrelevant to human wellbeing and are organized almost exclusively around elite consumption and capital accumulation. And so, we could slow those down and that would go a long way toward bringing resource use back to sustainable levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2026In terms of your question about what gives me hope, \u2026 I don’t see too much hope in like conventional discourse on the response to climate breakdown. I think that where the hope lies is in two places<\/strong>. …<\/p>\n\n\n\nFirst, to unite the environmentalist movements with working class movements and formations<\/strong>. This is absolutely essential. And the reason is because environmentalists alone do not have the political power that is necessary to radically change our economy. Working class movements do. Right now, the unions are basically focused on growthism because they see growth as the only way to ensure good livelihoods and wages for their members.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd I understand that, but that effectively means lining up with capital to service the needs of capital and hope that some trickles down to workers. We need a much more direct and political approach to say let’s meet worker’s needs directly with a public job guarantee to ensure full employments; strong living wage laws; a shorter working week and a social guarantee that ensures that everyone has access to affordable housing and robust high quality universal public services. Once you take the question of livelihoods and employment off the table, then we can have an open discussion about shifting to a post growth economy and scaling down industries that we don’t actually need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the second thing \u2026, is that it’s essential that environmentalist movements in the global north create alliances with anti-imperialist struggles in the global south that have been focused on these issues for decades.<\/strong> We have the People’s Agreement of Cochabamba. Almost nobody in the global north environment movement engages with that text or engages with the organizations that are behind it. …<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe only successful movements for a serious, significant economic change in world history have been the anti-colonial movements and that is effectively the force that we need to rebuild and mobilize around real transformation in the world economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[00:24:54] Nadia:<\/strong> That’s fascinating and an excellent way to end … We’ve covered a lot in here. I actually feel like we need some follow-up conversations with you to dig into some of them. I have a thousand more questions, but I want to thank you so much for being with us today, Jason.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n[00:25:12] Dr. Jason:<\/strong> Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n[00:25:15] Max:<\/strong> Yeah, it was great. I mean, it is such a huge set of topics, but I think the way you knit together these issues of capitalism and colonialism, and really made me think about this issue of growth and hopefully listeners too. So, thank you. Thank you very much for joining us today.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nElizabeth Njambi is the Producer of the EQUALS Podcast<\/a>. She also manages the EQUALS Blog<\/a>. Elizabeth is a Kenyan Advocate passionate about access to justice. She is the Founder and CEO of Wakili.sha Initiative<\/a> and Co-host of the Wakili.sha Podcast<\/a>.<\/sub><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Elizabeth Njambi How fighting inequality and beating climate change means we must end our addiction to economic growth and fast. We\u2019re asking: How are inequality, climate breakdown and growth linked? Why is green growth an impossibility? If rich nations must stop growing, what does…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[214,347,179,161,24,156,346,313,195],"tags":[349,221,310,348,149,350,351],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1753,"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions\/1753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalshope.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}