Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Good planet. It's a hard to find out. S and tropics climbs not through currency and thriving seas. The blowing to breathing trees strong on save. So good planets are hard to find, Gal.
Speaker 2 00:00:34 Hello, Case squid listeners. It's every other Sunday again, and you're listening to sustainability now a biweekly case, Good radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. And I'm your host, Ronnie Lipitz. Tonight we're going to broadcast a rerun of a show that Christine Barrington did a couple of weeks ago, and I'm going to let her explain what's going on.
Speaker 3 00:01:06 On November 2nd, Sustainable Systems Research Foundation is hosting an important event called Funding for the Future, New Ways to Value Life on our Planet. And it features two guests with boldly innovative ideas that may just provide the policies and tools to guide us out of our civilizational morass and towards a livable future. I pulled them into my virtual studio to give our listeners a taste of their visionary ideas and a preview of this upcoming event, which will happen at the resource Center for nonviolence. Dr. Dalton Chen is a civil engineer and geo hydrologist who founded the Global Carbon reward, a policy proposal that envisions using global monetary policy backed by the world's central banks to create a parallel economy based on globally administered rewards. All players from governments to individuals could potentially receive the reward for certified actions that effectively reduce or sequester carbon. Dr. Chen's game changing idea was featured in Kim Stanley Robinson's best selling novel, The Ministry for the Future.
Speaker 3 00:02:14 Robinson depicted Dr. Chen's carbon currency as the central policy intervention that helps shift the planet towards a thriving future. And many have pricked up their ears. Dr. Chen is on a bicoastal tour to engage awareness and discussion around the global carbon reward and will be presenting along with Kim Stanley Robinson at the Verge 22 Climate Tech Summit in San Jose at the end of October. My second guest, Della Duncan, identifies as a renegade economist and works alongside others to shift the mindset around economics in order to tackle the 21st century's grand challenge of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the planet. D dynamically pursues this vision through teaching, organizing, and mentoring. She is the co-founder of the California Donut Economics Coalition and a senior fellow at the London School of Economics International Inequalities Institute. Since 2016, she has produced and hosted the upstream podcast, which invites listeners to unlearn everything they thought they knew about economics and imagine what a better world could look like. D Dalton, thank you for joining me on the show tonight.
Speaker 4 00:03:25 Thank you, Christine.
Speaker 3 00:03:26 Thank you. The two of you are an interesting pairing because Dalton, your global carbon reward is a clearly defined economic policy proposal that has backed by deep philosophy and D, you teach and advocate for an economic philosophy that is intended to lead to radically new economic policies. It's a beautiful inverse square kind of proposition since this event focuses on funding the future through new ways to value life on the planet. I would like to start with this question of value, both in the sense of what something is worth, but also in the sense of the values that guide our culture. The two are inextricably linked. So Michael Greenstone, a well known economist from the University of Chicago, has called the social cost of carbon. The most important number you have never heard of. And Mr. Greenstone is right. Most of us are economic amateurs. So let's start with a basic definition. The social cost of carbon is an estimate of the marginal economic damage that one ton of carbon dioxide emissions or its equivalent emitted today will have on future generations through, say, crop failures, natural disasters, and human mortality. So Dalton, your global carbon reward, interestingly, is also tied to evaluation of one ton of carbon being removed from the atmosphere. So why is the social cost of carbon a vitally important number and how does it relate to the global carbon reward?
Speaker 4 00:05:00 Christine? Yes, The social cost of carbon is a vitally important number for the reasons that economists have articulated. I think it's a very clever model that's usually attributed to Arthur Peru. The social cost of carbon is a measure of the economic damages caused by greenhouse gas emissions that result in global warming. I think that's clear and everybody is in agreement with that. However, I think I feel that we are missing another cost that the conventional theory, the standard theory hasn't identified because it's a different concept. So we need to keep in mind that Arthur Bagu theory is a hundred years old and our climate crisis is a global problem, which is pretty unique. So the other cost that I've identified, and this is my hypothesis, you don't have to agree with it, but my hypothesis is that the other cost is to unlock the societal barriers to mitigation for a safe climate.
Speaker 4 00:06:07 And that's quite specific. So what I'm saying is the hidden cost is the need to circumvent the societal lock in created by the economy itself. So I think the economy as a system is actually the A problem, and there's a cost in correcting that problem structurally. And to explain it really quickly, I've proposed a parallel currency called a carbon currency that I think can circumvent that carbon locking effect that's caused by the monetary system, the legal system, political system, education system, and all the other systems that have grown together in a big network. So it's an, it's a lock in effect, and that's the hidden cost.
Speaker 3 00:06:50 Okay, thank you Dalton. And so D, you were a student of Kate Ray Worth the visionary Renegade Oxford Economist who created the donut economics model. Could you give our listeners a brief introduction to this new economic paradigm and position how donut economics might approach this idea of the social cost of carbon?
Speaker 5 00:07:12 Yes, of course. So one thing that comes to mind, one of my mentors, Dr. Jto, who's the former program director of the Gross National Happiness Center, he once said to me, We are attentive to what we measure. We are attentive to what we measure. So just to bring in that, I think the donut economics is one of many of a movement of folks saying, What is it that we'd like to measure? You know, we are attentive to what we measure, so what is important to us, and the donut as well as the others in this movement are saying, You know, I don't think we have me, me indicators or measurement tools that are really appropriate for what we really care about. And so currently, the number that everyone cares about in mainstream economics is gdp, gross domestic product and the growth of that number. And there is a simplicity to that and a certain ease in that number.
Speaker 5 00:08:08 And yet it does not incorporate and carry all that we find important to us, especially right now. So when communities ask themselves what is important to us, they actually instead come to things like wellbeing and health and social cohesion and vitality in our human systems, as well as vitality and health and wellbeing of our ecological systems. So the donut is a measurement tool, and it can be an alternative goal of our economic systems at all sorts of scales, both locally in terms of cities, also in terms of states, countries, as well as planetary wise. And the donut shape, which again comes from Kate Ray Worth and her team at the Donut Economics Action Lab, they say that the center of the donut, the donut hole, so to speak, if you're imagining a donut in your mind's eye, is the meeting of human needs. And they draw from the United Nations sustainable development goals.
Speaker 5 00:09:09 So they ask themselves, how are we doing in terms of the meeting of human needs? Things like access to clean drinking water, access to adequate housing, appropriate education, political voice, social equity, gender equality, income, et cetera. So how are we doing on those indicators? That's the inner part of the donut. And then the outer part of the donut is the consideration of the needs of the planet or the needs of our ecological systems or of nature, or of the more than human world. So these planetary boundaries come from Johann Rrom and the Stockholm Resilience Center, and they are earth scientists who say that the planet has certain tipping points that can sustain some change or fluctuation in these areas. However, the planet will tip into alternate states should these boundaries be surpassed. And of course, they are connected. So they include things like biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, aerosol loading, phosphorus loading, carbon emissions.
Speaker 5 00:10:13 And so to answer your question around the social cost of carbon, the donut, what it does is it says, Let's look holistically at human health and also planetary health. Let's try to get us within the donut part, which is the safe and just space for humanity. And carbon is one of those elements, but the planetary boundaries folks and the donut folks would say they are all connected, so we must consider them holistically. And then just one more thing, by way of introduction, I think that how we get into the donut, how we meet human needs while staying within planetary or ecological boundaries or ecological needs, is through regenerative and distributive economic systems. And I think that's a great introduction to why we're here today, speaking with Dalton Chen as one model of a regenerative and distributive economic parallel system.
Speaker 3 00:11:06 In case you have just tuned in, this is K S Q D, Santa Cruz on 90.7 fm. I'm Christine Barrington, and my guests are Dr. Dalton Chen, founder of the Global Carbon Reward and Renegade economist Della Duncan. We are exploring funding for the future, new ways to value life on our planet, which is also the title of an event. They will headline on November 2nd here in Santa Cruz at the Resource Center for Non-Violence. Dr. Chen's idea for a global carbon currency was made famous in Kim Stanley Robinson's sci-fi novel, the Ministry for the Future. And it just might be the idea for our livable future. Let's get back to the show.
Speaker 3 00:11:50 Hmm. I love this. We're attentive to what we measure. My background is in psychology. I've worked with people extensively to improve their lives, and it's so true. The things that we aren't aware of run us. And then when we can become aware of whatever it is that's important to us or whatever's going on, then we have a chance to change it. So thank you so much for that introduction. I, I have another, uh, question about the dangerous limitations of our present economic system, which, which both of you have touched on already. So Kate Ray worth, again states that our present economic system is based on a 19th century view that is outdated and dangerous because it is limited in the sense that it's fulcrum of meaning centers fundamentally on the principle of supply and demand by itself, just that one idea, and then puts consumption right at the center of its value system.
Speaker 3 00:12:46 She brilliantly observes that we have economies that are built to grow, even if they don't make us thrive. And she asks this question, What if we insisted that a healthy economy should be designed to help us thrive but not grow? So d I'm gonna start with you this time. You teach at numerous institutions and you are a research fellow at the London School of Economics. What are you observing in the field of economics related to these statements? Meaning how could those of us who are spell bound by this constant mantra of growth understand this alternative vision of an economy that helps us thrive but not grow? What might it look like in real terms?
Speaker 5 00:13:32 Yes. And as you're speaking, I'm reminded of how Kate often starts her lectures or talks with, what's the first thing you think of when you think of mainstream economics? And many folks say the supply and demand curve. And I think one of her goals would be to instead have folks think of the donut <laugh> as an alternative. So just reminded of that. And I'm also reminded of the, the root of the discipline of economics. Adam Smith, in my understanding, was a moral philosopher. And economics was really seen as being part of the realm of moral philosophy. And Kate and others talk about how economics has become increasingly mathematized or more and more scientific. And that's not to say there's not beauty and art in math and numbers, but just to say what happens when we reduce economics to the realm of, uh, you know, having physics envy or being so much mathemat sizeable.
Speaker 5 00:14:27 And I think we make assumptions about who we are as humans and our relationship with the more than human world. So I love that our whole conversation today is really returning economics to the realm of moral philosophy. And I love how you started with what is important, What, what do we value in asking that question, that that is about returning economics to this realm of moral philosophy in terms of growth and mainstream economics, assumption that growth is good assumption that growth is possible, um, on our planet and not really challenging of that. Um, in very, in very important ways. I'm thinking of a meeting I had with Rob Hopkins, who was the founder of the transition town movement from Taughtness England, a group of towns all over the world, transitioning their economic systems away from fossil fuels to more regenerative and just systems. He once told me, he said, Look, I want my son to grow to a certain height, and then I want him to stop growing and then I kind of want him to grow in other ways, like his interests and his qualities of character and maybe his friends and his connections, right?
Speaker 5 00:15:33 And so I think Kate would say she's growth agnostic or that the donut is growth agnostic because it doesn't say growth is bad, it just says, let's not have growth be the end goal in itself. Let growth serve the thriving of people and the planet. So to be growth agnostic puts growth not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. So that's some of the invitation here related to Donna economics in ways to rethink growth in our relationship to it.
Speaker 3 00:16:04 Hmm. Beautifully said. Dalton, in your working paper for the global carbon reward, you have this great quote from David Attenborough that says something like, We have a finite environment, the planet, and anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist <laugh>. I love that. So I was thinking about that Della while you were talking, and, uh, so del no, I do wanna pivot to you on this idea about growth in discussing the global carbon reward. You often refer to the phrase of optimal growth. What do you mean by that? And how might the global carbon reward fit into this new vision of creating a world, an economy that helps us thrive rather than feeding mindless growth?
Speaker 4 00:16:53 Uh, thank you for the question, and this is such a huge question, so deeply philosophical and theoretical. It relates directly to what Della was saying about the donut. And I just want to comment, start with the donut, because I see the donut as a graph that tells us we need to move in a multidimensional space to, uh, provide enough wellbeing for people, but avoid planetary boundaries. So I think we can all agree on that, that's logical. However, I have a slight philosophical difference with the idea that we are treating economics too much, uh, like mathematics or physics in particular, the comment about physics, because my understanding of physics is that it's not deterministic. So physics really is about probabilities and uncertainties are not knowing as much as it as it is about the other. So you would've heard of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and entropy and so on.
Speaker 4 00:17:58 So I argue we, we are not embracing physics enough. It's the o opposite. And physics tells us some important things that if you want to, if we want to optimize our economy to be in the donut, this the ideal area, you need control. And the question is, how do you gain control and how do you move around the donut to go where you want to be? And my argument is that we, we need to put on our physics hat and our philosophical, philosophical hat to figure that one out. So, um, the question is what's optimal growth? Well, my, my approach is to try and provide really specific and explicit policy solutions to this big complex cryptic problem. And my proposal is we need two kinds of growth in effect. So we have the first kind, which we're familiar with, that's native to our existing economy, and we just call it GDP growth, if you like.
Speaker 4 00:18:59 Um, it's about consumption. I think that's pretty much well defined cuz it is, if you measure it that way. The, the new kind of growth, uh, that I propose to complement it is really, uh, about something quite different. It's about managing the anthropogenic carbon balance. It's managing our carbon, uh, to create a safe carbon balance. And so by safe, what I mean is in quantity, we need to take a certain amount of carbon out of the atmosphere and we need to prevent it going into the atmosphere using an instrument. And the other aspect is we need to arrange the carbon in ways that is safe and regenerative. So for example, an efficient reforestation project can be very bad for biodiversity. Uh, and so rewilding, um, for example, offers an alternative. It's less efficient, but the benefits of ecological safety and a biodiversity and so on.
Speaker 4 00:20:01 So this notion of safety, why it's so important is that pricing for safety, achieving safety creates a trade off where you lose some economic growth and efficiency. And this is the trade off we need. Uh, there's no such thing as a free lunch. So you can't have high safety and high efficiency simultaneously. They're kind of in, in, to be really specific in technical terms, they're part of a two objective space that's called a Pareto frontier in EC economics. And that sounds very, um, you know, technical, but there are lots of examples in life that we could think about. And one example, simply when you go shopping to buy something, let's say you love strawberries, you go to the supermarket, you want the best quality strawberries and the most you can buy with your money, but there is a trade off, higher quality is more expensive, and so you're trading off quantity with quality.
Speaker 4 00:21:05 That's a natural trade off and it's two dimensional. And this is what our claim is. What we're missing about the climate problem and sustainability is we, we need to trade off something explicit and price it. So we have the price from stand economics for, um, the social cost of carbon, which is for efficiency and managing costs. And I argue we need another price for safety, uh, which is the reward, the global carbon reward. And, uh, we can use it in really innovative ways. For example, funding rewilding projects, reforestation, um, also cleaner energy, of course pain to keep fossil fuels in the ground. So developing countries can skip the industrial revolution, goes straight to, um, renewables and also, um, very importantly funding the removal of carbon from the atmosphere. And we could talk about that, but maybe that's getting a little bit too technical at this point.
Speaker 4 00:22:06 However, the beauty of a reward is that unlike attacks, generally, if you can fund a reward, people will accept it because it doesn't directly harm anyone or cost anyone as long as you can fund it, um, by an independent means, and it can go global. So we, we have examples, simple examples would be, you know, um, the, the Elon Musk prize for carbon removal or something that can, as long as you've got the money, you can offer it internationally. So with the reward, we need central banks to underwrite it with a public finance guarantee. If we have central banks supporting our global carbon reward, then we can create a price for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and create secondary price signals for the kinds of benefits that I think Dell is alluding to, such as societal wellbeing, uh, ecological health, and also the reliability of energy supplies.
Speaker 3 00:23:09 I'm sure that many, many people listening right now who maybe have never heard of the global carbon reward are wondering where do you get the money and how do you fund it? And that's a whole monetary conversation that we're gonna dig into in another one of our interviews. But tonight we're really focusing on the conversation between you and D because the two of you are going to be together on stage on November 2nd at the resource center for nonviolence. So we're gonna keep going, but we promise you that question won't be answered if you stay tuned to the series on K S Q D. So now I want to pivot to, um, the subject of the risk of green capitalism. D your podcast upstream recently ran a potent and very unsettling episode entitled The Problem with Green Capitalism, and it brought up essential questions about the real dangers of the green transition, which is already underway. Could you briefly encapsulate what this problem with green capitalism could be?
Speaker 5 00:24:11 Yes, happy to. The inspiration for the documentary came from a zoom call that I was in with a lot of inequality activists from around the world where one of them from the global south said to me, Don't you know that a green transition in the global north means an open casket for the global south? And it was something I hadn't heard of before and I wanted to know more. So it set off this exploration in this form of this documentary, which just looked at this idea that if we green the economic systems of the global north, it will rely on a lot of extractivism and exploitation of the global south, particularly in the form of mining, particularly things like lithium, copper, cobalt. So the documentary brought us to the OTA comma desert in South America and the Lithium Triangle and just many of the indigenous communities that are being impacted by this huge force of new, uh, demand for, for mining as well as the ecological impact of that new mining.
Speaker 5 00:25:21 So it just led us to explore that and then to explore, okay, well what would adjust green transition look like? So what would it look like if this move was decolonized? What would it look like if it was de-growth? Because part of it, uh, we interviewed Jason Hickle for it. He gave this great analogy. He said, trying to decarbonize a growing economy is like trying to fill a hole that keeps getting bigger and bigger. So this idea that, you know, the just transition would need to be de-growth decolonized and would need to center indigenous voices, feminist voices, and racial justice advocates. So that, that's what we learned through that process. And then the next documentary, which comes out soon, we got to explore things like the Cochabamba Peoples Agreement also in Latin America, The Red Deal from the Red Nation Group in the United States, as well as d dm, D I E m 20 fives, a Green New Deal for Europe, just as examples of folks that are coming together to look at really just and transformative Green New Deal or green Transition proposals.
Speaker 3 00:26:34 Hmm, very compelling. I can't wait to listen to that episode. So pivoting to you, Dalton, can you speak to this concern? How would the global carbon reward policy deal with this problem of green capitalism?
Speaker 4 00:26:46 Yes, green capitalism as you put it, it's to me very similar to the notion of green growth that maybe they're synonymous. Um, is green growth realistic? Is there a future in it? I think we should be skeptical because in and upon itself, it, it doesn't really answer the question about planetary boundaries because if we get it wrong, looks like we will, um, we, we could easily blow through carbon budgets and as we try to transition to electrification and electric vehicles, um, all the minerals and so on, the extractivism, the colonialism in the global south is going to hurt people and the environment, no doubt about it. So I'm concerned about that too. Um, my response is that, uh, we have this paradox between two ideas de-growth and green growth. To me, when you boil it down to a simple question, it's this, should we bet on green growth or do we need to adopt de-growth?
Speaker 4 00:27:51 Because that's the, the two polar opposites. Now, I I might sound a bit harsh in my response to this, um, paradox or question because I feel it's a false dichotomy. And the reason is that, um, there is a third option where instead of trying to just de grow the economy as we understand it, we can create a second parallel economy that works and it's kind of symbiosis with the first economy. So the first economy, even though we might be, uh, disgusted by it, the mainstream economy, it does provide us our goods and services. And if you push people at some point people will sacrifice something with the environment to survive. It's we're here and we've gotta survive. Um, that, that's kind of an instinct. So there's always a trade off with the environment. It's unavoidable. Now the question is, uh, do we need to de-growth the economy if, if we, um, transfer purchasing power from this economy, the consumptive economy to the proposed parallel economy for mitigation, in effect, it is a form of de-growth, but it's not purely just shrinking the pie.
Speaker 4 00:29:06 What it's doing is changing the way we use resources. So let's, um, consider if we did transfer purchasing power into a mitigation economy, we're effectively handing over, um, resources like energy, labor, and capital to do what? Well, it's to reduce our missions, take carbon out the atmosphere and provide co-benefits. So the more you, you transfer the purchasing power across with the currency exchange rate, you, you, you're regulating, um, the magnitude of the consumptive economy, you, you're kind of sacrificing it a bit, except you wouldn't call it de growth, it's just something different. It's more like a trade off or a symbiosis. And I'll, I might point out what I mean by symbiosis because that comes from the biological sciences. When I look at ecosystems, um, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about the way that they, uh, regulate carbon and energy. I couldn't help but notice that ecosystems are based on two systems at a fundamental level.
Speaker 4 00:30:17 It's in the hostile textbooks, you have one system dealing photosynthesis and the other respiration. So for me, that's a good example of symbiosis that we could adopt, uh, for same reasons because ecosystems actually do achieve net zero carbon. They do that on a regular basis under certain conditions. And since we need to do that too, why don't we consider, uh, replicating that approach where we create two systems, one analogous to photosynthesis, which is a parallel new economy and the other analogous to respiration, which is in effect our combustion of fossil fuels and biofuels to produce goods and services. So that's the model and um, I can only put it out there. I that's optimal growth in, in my way of thinking. But one more point for I hand it back de-growth, do we need it? I think there are probably lots of examples of de-growth in civilization, um, either force by the environment or perhaps politically driven. And I'm really curious to find out if the politically driven examples of de-growth were peaceful or were they violent? And that might give us some clues as to where the de-growth in that form is, is a good choice.
Speaker 3 00:31:39 Well, the two of you went directly into where I, I wanted to go because I really did wanna dig into this theme of de-growth because there are quite a few of the environmentally conscious actors here in Santa Cruz who when I've put out the idea of the global carbon reward, would wave the flag of de-growth because from their perspective, any kind of market based solution is suspect because all it would do is invite more spending and more spending means more carbon. And it is a very, uh, complicated issue. But since the two of you went into it, I, I want to pivot back to D and say, is there anything else that you would like to add or what you would like to respond to and what Dalton shared on this idea of green growth? Because I think people are tru still trying to figure out what, what does it mean and what would it look like in real terms?
Speaker 5 00:32:31 I appreciate how Delta is saying, you know, maybe we don't need to have this divide or this yeah, seeming battle between green growth and de-growth. And I think that donut economics is also another middle way or third way, um, in the frame of being growth agnostic. Because again, what Kate says is, let us change the goal of the economic system from growth on its own or blind growth to happiness or health or wellbeing of people in the planet. And then certain economies, certain places, certain industries may grow and others may not. And so de-growth may be a natural part of, or green growth may be a natural part of the new move to a donut economy, which again, is a regenerative and distributive economic system. So I think donut economics is also a middle way. So I'll just uplift that. And then the de-growth folks, I think one thing to uplift in places where if we were to follow this donut economics model and, and say that okay, there may be some de-growth needed to get us within the planetary boundaries of particular places.
Speaker 5 00:33:39 Uh, there are a lot of folks who are saying de-growth does not necessarily mean that our lives will be full of suffering or, you know, a sense of, um, you know, not enoughness and again, uplifting Jason Hick's work less is more de-growth will save the world in it. He offers, uh, a concrete ideas of what de-growth could actually look and feel like. And I found them helpful cuz as I was reading them, I was checking in with myself. Would wor would a world where these things were brought in, would it feel more equitable and just and sustainable? So some of the things he offers are things like ending planned obsolescence or mandatory extended warranties on certain appliances or goods or in enacting right to repair laws so that folks could repair their own laptops or refrigerators or other products. Switching to a leasing model for large appliances, imagine if you leased your refrigerator instead of purchased it, so then you returned it when you were done with it.
Speaker 5 00:34:42 And another one is just moving from ownership to usership. So things like share shops where you have a library of things, you know, I'm sure folks have seen those free libraries also that pop up on, on uh, corners, uh, moving more towards public transportation, negative interest lending. And one other one is the four day work week. Another example of a de-growth model that I think would absolutely have both positive, uh, benefits in terms of this de-growth piece, but also in terms of our health and wellbeing, we'd have more time to spend with friends and family. And you know, Delta you brought up like what are some examples where de-growth has happened? And just a very concrete story of this piece around the four day work week. I remember hearing a story of a local government in California that had to cut their spending and they decided how to do that was to furlough their workers.
Speaker 5 00:35:34 So instead of laying off or firing anyone, they said everyone has to go down to four days a week of work. And at first folks were disgruntled cuz it also meant a paid cut of one day a week of work. Um, and at first they were upset and grumpy about it, but then as they got used to it, what I've understood from the study is that again, they had more time with their family, more time on things that they loved on service, on their hobbies. And sure maybe they found ways to cut their expenses in their life, but eventually when that local government could reinstate a five day work week, no one was in favor, no one wanted to go back to work for five days a week. So just to share one example, it was not democratically decided, although I think it was helpful that they did the furlough instead of laying folks off. But just to give an example of, I, I think that de-growth can be a win-win win wherever it is needed and and can actually live to a fuller life. If we're looking at metrics differently, as I described,
Speaker 4 00:36:32 Uh, what Della was saying made a lot of sense. I like the idea of the four day working week if I was employed too, but I think we need to be just a little bit discerning on the difference between say, a carbon as a material and just general, um, wellbeing and also the circular economy. So I think a lot of what, uh, d was talking about reminds me of the circular economy, which I think is absolutely essential. We, we, we have to recycle more and consume less. It's just logical. However, um, we, I think if you get down to the, the technical details, once again, carbon I think stands out as quite different to, uh, most of the materials in that it mediates life itself. And it has these entropic properties, which we just described and discussed about, you know, living systems. They, um, they appear in different modalities, metabolic, biological modalities.
Speaker 4 00:37:34 And that's saying something special about carbon. So to answer, uh, the broader question of the big GDP growth problem, I, I'll just posit an idea for everyone to, to think about. Uh, and that is the approach of the carbon reward is not to try and introduce a new metric, um, to replace GDP or something like that. It's basically saying we need a new context for value. And the way you can do that is by introducing a new currency. And this is a point which is both practical and philosophical because if we introduce a currency call account currency, it has a different context for value because its value is defined contextually by the unit of account, which is a ton of carbon mitigated from the atmosphere. And so if that's the context of the value of the money, then the more profitable people become in earning it, the more safer we have in terms of a climate and carbon budget.
Speaker 4 00:38:37 And really that's, that's the the trick if you like. Another interesting thing, I'll just one more point and then I'm finished, is that if people do earn the currency, it's not a medium of exchange. So you can't go shopping with them. And this might seem really bit weird, why would you have a currency you can't use to buy things? Isn't money supposed to be for buying stuff? And the answer is, this currency is not for buying stuff because it's a price signal. Coming back to the question of supply demand, it's to influence supply demand, uh, in a way that, uh, we we are missing. So it it's does set in new context and it what it's going to do, it's going to change the quality and the quantity of GDP through shifting priorities across civilization. And so this is how it works and this is an, I think an important topic for, for people in the future to talk to discuss philosophically and in relation to sustainability and how we get over this, um, growth addiction based on maximizing gdp.
Speaker 3 00:39:45 Thank you. And I'm sure people listening delton are being sparked with a lot of curiosity. And I, I want to re take a moment to reflect that. You have pointed out to me that there's the actual monetary policy, which you have worked out in tremendous detail. And then there's the philosophical underpinnings, which you have also worked out in detail. And I want to emphasize that for this interview and in conversation with D we're veering more in the direction of the philosophy, but the monetary, uh, details do need to be addressed and they are coming and it's a very, very interesting story. But I wanna move on now to the question of systems change. I was sitting in the studio with some of the programmers talking about the global carbon reward because that's what I'm thinking about these days. This is what I'm aware of, <laugh>, and they were pointing out to me or they were asserting that this requires a complete systems change.
Speaker 3 00:40:42 Our economic model is almost a religion, this can't happen, it won't happen. So I want to dip into the question of systems change because almost every day I'm hearing someone talking about the need for this. And I agree, but it's such a huge topic and given its inherent complexity, I cannot claim to even adequately address what it means or how we get there. But I do know that you both have educated perspectives on this topic. So Dalton, I want to pivot to you, as you have asserted the global carbon reward incentivizes increasing the wealth and health of our biosphere and disincentivizes, the wanton extraction of its resources, you know, really taking the long view, how is it gonna help us move towards systems change?
Speaker 4 00:41:32 Yes, we listen to people who are very well known in the UN and other institutions and environmentalists. I think on many occasions in the mainstream press people have said, uh, we need a systems change. Um, and whilst that might be true, intuitively, I don't really see any or many proposals for systems change, even de growth, although that's, it's a radical new concept. Um, how do you implement it at a systemic level cuz you know, is it gonna be a policy or is it just going to be a grassroots movement, which is a different animal to deal with, isn't it? So, um, when I think of systems change, putting on my philosophical hat, uh, I would argue you need to look at our civilization as a system. And um, this comes back to what we're discussing a bit earlier about physics. Uh, sh should we look at ma ec economics as if it's physics?
Speaker 4 00:42:34 And, and I'm thinking yes, but once again, physics as I said, is not deterministic. It's about, um, thermodynamics and, uh, probabilities and we only have a probability to deal with. So staying under one and a half, two degrees of the per skull, you know, it's not a a yes or no answer. It's only a probability we, there's a probability we will and a probability we won't. Currently, the probability of staying under, under one and a half degrees is extremely low. Okay? So, uh, two degrees, I'm, I'm couldn't tell you what the probability is, but it's probably quite low, although the world is moving towards that goal with more, um, commitments and policies. So we only have a window of opportunity to turn the ship. And, uh, what does assistance change? Well, it's turning the ship, you know, we're on a trajectory. The trajectory I think is well represented by the emissions curve.
Speaker 4 00:43:37 And if you look at it globally, it's been rising, it's starting to plateau a bit now, um, you know, it's 50 giga tons or something like that, 60 giga tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. And that trajectory has a shape, you know, it's quite a smooth curve and it's sort of saying it's going out higher and higher, leveling off. It's not saying it's gonna suddenly turn around and drop. If you want it to pivot, you really need a structural change. And, uh, what's it gonna be? Well, um, I'm biased because I'm proposing a global carbon reward. And the reason I think it's a qualifies as a systems change is because we are literally introducing a second system economic system. And if you try to change the existing economy, I think that's much more difficult. And likely you, we will only see incremental changes like we're currently being, we're seeing if we want to turn the ship.
Speaker 4 00:44:34 Another way is to not try to fix the economy cuz maybe it's not broken. What we need is apparel economy that's specialized for climate mitigation and regeneration. Once you introduce the currency, the missing, missing link, um, that Christine was mentioning is the monetary policy. It does sound onerous and almost impossible because central banks are conservative institutions. However, from a purely practical standpoint, it's not difficult for them to implement because they only need to trade currencies, which they do all the time. And what is it in effect? It's just somebody sitting at a computer typing some numbers in a computer to buy so much carbon currency for so much, uh, euros or whatever. And there you have it, you have your financial, uh, model or mechanism. So it's not that difficult. The challenge I think is for enough people to agree on assistance change. It's communicating the policy option.
Speaker 4 00:45:38 If the global Carbon War policy is cogent and offers some good answers, maybe more people would support it and maybe it'll be tabled at the un. My prediction is that governments will be in a dire emergency frame of mind to do something. The pressure on them will be enormous. And if there's a policy option, I think enough countries might look at it seriously and then you have a movement and that can pull the rest of the world along. So I think a bit of optimism is needed, but realism as well. So pessimism is a human trait. I understand pessimism, but it's pessimism is a, is a lose lose option. So I think human beings are inherently optimistic. It helps us to go the extra mile and maybe going extra mile means a difference between long term prosperity and survival versus something much, much worse. And that's systems check.
Speaker 3 00:46:38 I'm going to take a moment to reintroduce our show here at KS Q D Santa Cruz. I'm Christine Barrington and my guests are Dr. Dalton Chant, founder of the Global Carbon Reward and Renegade Economist d Duncan. We are exploring funding for the future, new ways to value life on our planet, which is also the title of an event. They will headline on November 2nd, right here in Santa Cruz at the Resource Center for Non-Violence. Now let's get back to the show. So d I would like to pivot to you now and get your perspective on systems change. I know that you work with Fit Off Copper and support his systems view of live copper course. So I'd like to know what you see as the key acupuncture points that could move us towards systems change. Yes,
Speaker 5 00:47:29 I'm reminded of that phrase systems change, not climate change, <laugh> just feeling like uplifting that in our conversation. And yes, I think Fritch off Capra is a brilliant voice in this world of uplifting systems thinking. And another person I'd love to call in at least who I've learned a lot about systems change from is Danella Meadows, the late systems thinker. And her essay leverage points, Places to intervene in a system. It's not the truth with a capital tea, but it's an offering of acupuncture points for systems change. And in it she ranks in order of effectiveness, places to intervene in a system. And she says things like fiddling with the numbers, meaning like 400 affordable housing units to 500 that will make a difference to some, but it doesn't fundamentally change the system. So that would be lower in its effectiveness. And then higher and higher.
Speaker 5 00:48:24 The top three, the third highest from the top she says is changing the goal of the system. So again, bringing in the donut economics, I think is one example of changing the goal of an economic system from growth to happiness or health of wellbeing or wellbeing of people in the planet. And then the second highest leverage point place to intervene in a system Danella Meadows offers is changing the paradigm, the worldview or the paradigm. And I think about the book by Robert Persig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He brings in this quote at the very beginning. He says, If we destroy a factory but we don't destroy the quality of thinking that created it. A new one will simply pop up in its place if we take down a dictatorship. But don't destroy the quality of thinking that created it. A new one will simply pop up in its place.
Speaker 5 00:49:16 And this also connects with that Einstein quote about we can't solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. So I think throughout our conversation today, and certainly donut and also Dalton's work, we are changing paradigms. We are rethinking what is value and what is money and what is the point of markets and what is it moving towards and yeah, what ought to be our collective effort and our work and our economic markets moving towards. So I think there's that realm. And then the highest leverage point that she says is to transcend paradigms, which I just find so helpful cuz it, it helps me to remember to hold these things lightly that yes, right now I'm super enthusiastic about donut economics and the global carbon reward, and yet there may be other new paradigms or old paradigms, ancient paradigms, ways of thinking that we may draw from in times of need that we hadn't even considered or thought of or knew demands may have emerged or risen.
Speaker 5 00:50:15 And just to connect too with what you shared Christine about folks in your office being, you know, feeling like it'll never change and what's the use, I just also wanna offer from the perspective of systems change, that there's, there's kind of a view that things don't happen mechanically or linearly, so to speak. It's more about embracing as Dalton brought in uncertainty and complexity and emergence. So this idea from Joanna Macy who says, any act with good intention sends out ripple effects into the web of life in ways that we cannot measure or even see. So I think even if folks listening may be thinking global, global carbon reward, you know, getting the central bakes on board that seems hard or getting, uh, local or state governments or national governments to embrace the donut as the alternative goal. That seems hard. And yet we, we have no idea what the ripple effects of this conversation or of the papers that Dalton writes or of the podcast that we create will have throughout the web of life. So just to encourage us to hold that desire for knowing the results of our actions a little lighter and being a little bit open, more open to uncertainty and kind of the magic of the way systems change.
Speaker 3 00:51:32 Hmm. I love this welcoming uncertainty and not feeling like we know how things are gonna end up. I do think sometimes cynicism is a safety valve for people that can be very deep feeling. And from their rational point of view, what they see looks really frightening and they want to shut down that uncomfortable feeling, so they call the end result. And the truth is, is we do not know we live in a probabilistic universe. My point of view is I've gone through cycles of grief, really profound, debilitating grief about everything and came out on the other side saying, probabilities look grim, but I'm going forward with my heart wide open. I'm gonna give everything I've got. I won't walk away from this beautiful, beautiful planet or from humanity. A man that I uh, saw at Schumacher College, which is your alma mater, d stephen herd Buhner, said that all environmentalists go through a hating on humanity stage of development.
Speaker 3 00:52:37 And then they come through the other side. And I just feel deeply touched by this phrase that he said, he said, Gaia does not make mistakes. We are not a mistake, and we do not know where this is going to end up. And as Paul Hawkin also said, maybe climate change isn't happening to us, it's happening for us. We are ripe for a transformation and this is a grand opportunity. You know, in, in crisis there is opportunity and I see that we are winding down, um, for the time that we have together. And you've brought this to this beautiful hopeful end note. It's a perfect way to close. And I I just wanna also reflect that at MIT's social transformation lab, they often talk about how systems change. It comes from the fringes, not from the center. So we shouldn't expect that our politicians and the people that hold the stage right now to be the ones that are proposing the solutions that are gonna work. And so I'm, I'm gonna set you up with a very upbeat question. Are the two of you, are you fringe dwellers? And if so, how do you experience yourself?
Speaker 4 00:53:50 I'll go first. I am definitely a fringe dweller because doing this research and analyzing these problems and the way I do, it's definitely not mainstream. And, uh, there are very few people to talk to about this. You know, people in academia even, uh, because everybody's so, uh, on their conditioned pathway to accepting the status quo. It's not unique though, in my opinion, changing a conceptual model is the way major progress has always happened through humanity. And, uh, it's true in physics. It's probably true in economics and biology. And so, um, yes, changing paradigms. You, you, you are inherently, what did you call it, an outsider, a French dweller? Definitely. Uh, I dunno about d I won't speak for her. What about you Della? How do you feel?
Speaker 5 00:54:43 Well, I, yeah, I do feel a lot of, uh, kindred nature with you both and definitely can see myself as a fringe dweller, particularly in the way that Kate Ray worth is called a renegade economist. And so I adopted that phrase for my own livelihood path. So I called myself a renegade economist because of this fringe dwelling aspect of just challenging mainstream economic thinking and, and asking these questions of moral philosophy. And I think that's what this conversation really was. And the conversation that we're gonna have in person in Santa Cruz is just, how can we unlearn and you know, what we know. And then, you know, remember, like reconnect with what's important, what we value as you started the, this time Christine with and then moving forward together, uh, collaboratively for that more just in regenerative future.
Speaker 3 00:55:41 Hmm. Well thank you so much for this very generative, uplifting and inspiring conversation, and I look forward to learning more about the global carbon reward and donut economics with the two of you on November 2nd. What a gift. Thank you.
Speaker 4 00:55:58 Thank you Christine. Thank to you Della. Yeah,
Speaker 5 00:56:00 Thank you both.
