post-growth economy

Why our economy is too important to leave to the experts

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Image courtesy Newsroom

In this latest piece on Newsroom, I argue that it is time we democratised economics and work towards designing an economy that works for people and the planet, not the other way around.

Imagine a day when you tune into the financial news and the announcer reports:

“Share markets have plummeted to historic lows overnight with more of the world’s mega-corporations losing investor confidence. Investors are flocking instead to promising social enterprises, citing pressure from grandchildren who would rather inherit a liveable planet than a private jet.

“In New Zealand, the Domestic Happiness Index (DHI) is continuing its strong upwards trajectory and our national contribution to the Planetary Overshoot Index (POI) is trending downwards. This mirrors global trends, and leading ecological economic commentators are bullish, predicting that we may still have a liveable planet in 2050.”

Just imagine.

This scenario may not be as far-fetched as we first think. But for it to happen, we must be part of redesigning an economy fit for the 21st Century.

Continue reading on Newsroom.

A post-growth future: the pathway away from environmental collapse

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Many of us are aware by now that we are facing multiple crises: climate change being just one – warming and acidifying oceans, depleted soils, global habitat and biodiversity loss are among the others in this ‘polycrisis’. The Auckland floods have made us acutely aware of how vulnerable our cities are to the ravages of extreme weather, events predicted to become more extreme and frequent as the effects of climate change bed in.

We know that this is not going to get better any time soon. There will be more floods, droughts and other weather events that will cause destruction, economic loss and human distress on a scale that we cannot yet imagine. Even the issues that affect us day to day, such as the cost of living, have at their root the unsustainability of our current economic system.

The realisation is dawning among many of us that we cannot solve this problem following the same path that led us here – that is, an extractive growth-oriented economy dislocated from the realities of a finite planet.

Read the article on Newsroom.

The bleak realisation of failure – parenthood in the face of a climate-disrupted future

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Me with Carter, aged 11 months

[Originally posted on http://www.catherineknight.nz on 18 November 2022]

I have made a bleak realisation. I am a failure. I have failed at the single most important role in my life – to safeguard the future for my children.

This has been an awful realisation to make, and it crystallised when my 14-year old son, after listening to some climate-related report on the radio said, ‘We are doomed, aren’t we, Mum?’. Unusually for him, there was not even a hint of facetiousness or irony – he was quite sincere.

At that moment, a bit of my heart shattered into pieces.

Carter and Caitlyn with Rosie the chicken. What will their future hold?

We now face the growing certainty that we will breach the 1.5 degree warming threshold that may have enabled us to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate change. We have been warned that accelerating climate breakdown will lead to more severe and frequent climate disasters, ecological collapse, economic and social breakdown and unimaginable human suffering, including starvation, illness, displacement and death.

Or as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres so starkly put is a few days ago, ‘we are on a highway to climate hell’ with the option to cooperate or, enter a collective suicide pact, and perish.

A girl carries a goat through floodwaters in Bangladesh. Climate Outreach.

Even if my children do not experience the worst of this ‘climate hell’ first-hand, they will see it unfold in parts of the world, including the ‘global south’, most vulnerable to climate disruption.

Carter playing his beloved uke, Pippa by his side, under the macadamia nut tree.

As parents, we have worked to equip our children with the skills and attributes they will need when their time comes to navigate the adult world, and hopefully help make it a better place: critical thinking skills, a basic understanding of democratic process, compassion and empathy, and self-belief, especially when they hold views different from others.

And as a parent, I can only hope that this will be enough to weather the climate storm ahead.