It's always struck me as rather obvious that it should be possible to maintain a high standard living without it having to get better every year ...or putting it in common economic terms...to maintain the standard of living whilst the GDP remained constant. However, Tim Jackson sets out to claim (or prove) that the current western economic models have built into them a requirement for constant growth....otherwise they face collapse. I'm not sure that he has convinced me. I've spent a fair bit of time in Japan over the last 25 years and in that time the population has started to decline, housing prices have declined, wages have hardly grown at all yet the standard of living seems to me to be remarkably high and has remained at a high level over the last 25 years. Probably hasn't grown that much but still they are driving better cars than they were 25 years ago. The sushi is just as good....the Shinkansen system has continued to expand...albeit slowly. So I think Tim needs to look a bit further than the UK and the USA. Given these qualifications, what is Tim actually saying...Well here are some extracts where I have tried to capture the essence of what he is saying:
There is a huge literature critiquing the value of GDP as a well-being measure. Obvious limitations include its failure to account for non-market services (like household or voluntary labour) or negative utilities (externalities) like pollution. Critics point to the fact that the GDP counts both "defensive and 'positional' expenditures even though these don't contribute additionally to well-being." And, perhaps most critically, the GDP fails to account properly for changes in the asset base which affect our future consumption possibilities.

So we need some better indicators of well being than GDP. and one is though there is a paradox with life-satisfaction indices which is largely a malaise of the advanced economies. It is only after an income level of about $15,000 per capita, that the life-satisfaction score barely responds at all even to quite large increases in GDP. In fact the assumed relationship between income and life-satisfaction can be turned on its head here. Denmark, Sweden, Ireland and New Zealand all have higher levels of life-satisfaction than the USA, but significantly lower income levels. By contrast, at very low incomes there is a huge spread in terms of life satisfaction, but the general trend is a quite steeply rising curve. A small increase in GDP leads to a big rise in life satisfaction. These data underline one of the key messages of this book.......There is no case to abandon growth universally. But there is a strong case for the developed nations to make room for growth in poorer countries. It is in these poorer countries that growth really does make a difference.
It becomes clear that a happiness-based measure of utility and an expenditure-based measure of utility behave in very different ways. And since they both claim to measure utility we can conclude that there is a problem somewhere. One or other - perhaps both - of these measures appears not to be doing its job properly.
At the end of the day the answer to the question of whether growth is functional for stability is this: in a growth-based economy, growth is functional for stability. The capitalist model has no easy route to a steady state position. Its natural dynamics push it towards one of two states: expansion or collapse. Put in its simplest form the dilemma of growth' can now be stated in terms of two propositions:
1. Growth is unsustainable - at least in its current form.
 Burgeoning resource consumption and rising environmental costs are compounding profound disparities in social well-being.
2. "De-growth" is unstable - at least under present conditions.
 ......Declining consumer demand leads to rising unemployment, falling competitiveness and a spiral of recession.

If were really serious about fairness and want the world's 9 billion people all to enjoy an income comparable with EU citizens today, the economy would need to grow 6 times between now and 2050, with incomes growing at an average rate of 3.6 per cent a year. Achieving the IPCC's emission target in this world means pushing down the carbon intensity of output by 9 per cent every single year for the next 40 or so years." By 2050, the average carbon intensity would need to be 55 times lower than it is today at only 14gCO,/$
And this scenario still hasn't factored in income growth in the developed nations.

The phenomenon of 'rebound' is this." Money saved through energy efficiency, for example, gets spent on other goods and services. These goods themselves have energy costs that offset the savings made through efficiency, and sometimes wipe them out entirely (a situation described as "backfire). Spending the savings from energy efficient lighting (say) on a cheap short-haul flight is one sure-fire recipe for achieving this.
Social comparison - keeping up with the Joneses - rapidly expands the demand for successful products and facilitates mass production, making once luxury goods accessible to the many. And the sheer wealth and enormous variety of material goods has a democratizing element to it. It allows more and more people to go about inventing and reinventing their social identities in the search for a credible place in society.

In summary, the idea of a green stimulus has many strengths......Investment in the transition to a sustainable economy is vital. .......Targeting stimulus spending towards that investment makes perfect sense.......Stimulus measures which support the least well-off are particularly to be welcomed. The poorest will inevitably be hardest hit through the recession and are already struggling with rising costs for food and fuel. Income inequality is higher in the OCED nations than it was in the mid-1980s."

There's something distinctly odd about our persistent refusal to countenance the possibility of anything other than growth-based economics. After all, John Stuart Mill, one of the founding fathers of economics, recognized both the necessity and the desirability of moving eventually towards a 'stationary state of capital and wealth', suggesting that it implies no stationary state of human improvement.

Economics - and macro-economics in particular - is ecologically illiterate.....Daly's pioneering work provides a solid foundation from which to rectify this. But what we still miss is the ability to establish economic stability under these conditions. We have no model for how common macro-economic 'aggregates' (production, consump-tion, investment, trade, capital stock, public spending, labour, money supply and so on) behave when capital doesn't accumulate. We have no models to account systematically for our economic dependency on ecological variables such as resource use and ecological services.

Taking a step back for a moment, there are only two ways out of this dilemma. One is to make growth sustainable; the other is to make de-growth stable........ This idea is still essentially an appeal to decoupling. Growth continues, while resource intensity (and hopefully throughput) declines....... Its founding concept is the production and sale of de-materialized services', rather than material 'products'. It's vital to note that this cannot simply be the service-based economies' that have characterized development in certain advanced economies. For the most part that's been achieved, as we've seen, by reducing manufacturing, continuing to import consumption goods from abroad and expanding financial services to pay for them." (I think he is quite wrong here ...mainly because he's looking at things through the prism of the UK. There are many other services (apart from financial services) that have expanded massively in all the developed countries over the past 50 or so years.). But, to be fair to him he does mention leisure services. Leisure is one of the fastest growing sectors in modern economies and ought to be a prime candidate for de-materializa-tion in principle. In practice, the way we spend our leisure time can be responsible for as much as 25 per cent of our carbon 'foot-print'....... So what exactly constitutes productive economic activity in this economy? It isn't immediately clear. Selling 'energy services', certainly, rather than energy supplies." Selling mobility rather than cars. Recycling, re-using, leasing, maybe." Yoga lessons, perhaps, hairdressing, gardening: so long as these aren't carried out using buildings, don't involve the latest fashion and you don't need a car to get to them. The humble broom would need to be preferred to the diabolical 'leaf-blower', for instance........ But it sounds at the moment suspiciously like something the Independent on Sunday would instantly dismiss as a yurt-based economy - with increasingly expensive yurts. (Maybe he is too concerned about how the Independent would label things...though this does show he has some political sensitivity).

Between 1995 and 2005, labour productivity in the personal and social services sector declined by 3 per cent across the EU 15 nations; the only sector (Pers' in Figure 8.1) to show negative productivity growth..... In short, this sector - the one where our hopes might lie for a 'different engine of growth' - just doesn't perform well by conventional standards. On the contrary, it's already dragging Europe down' in the productivity stakes. If we start shifting wholesale to patterns of de-materialized services, we wouldn't immediately bring the economy to a standstill, but we'd certainly slow down growth considerably. (I'm not sure whether this decline has continued)..... This finding is instructive in various ways. In the first place, it shows up the fetish with macro-economic labour productivity for what it is: a recipe for undermining work, community and environment. ... And it already suggests more room for re-configuring the conventional macro-economic model than is usually assumed by economists. Simply shifting the focus of economic activities from one sector to another has the potential to maintain or even increase employment, even without growth in economic output........Specifically, there is likely to be a substantially enhanced role for public sector investment and asset ownership. The public sector is often best placed to identify and protect long-term social assets. Public sector rates of return are typically lower than commercial ones, allowing longer investment horizons and less punishing requirements in terms of productivity.

There is evidence that people are both happier and live more sustainably when they favour intrinsic goals that embed them in family and community. Flourishing within limits is a real possibility, according to this evidence. ......Left to our own individual devices, it seems, there is not much hope that people will spontaneously behave sustainably. As evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has concluded, sustainability just 'doesn't come naturally to us." Each society strikes the balance between altruism and selfishness (and also between novelty and tradition) in different places.!° And where this balance is struck depends crucially on social structure. When technologies, infrastructures, institutions and social norms reward self-enhancement and novelty, then selfish sensation-seeking behaviours prevail over more considered, altruistic ones. Where social structures favour altruism and tradition, self-transcending behaviours are rewarded and selfish behaviour may even be penalized."....... Increasingly, it seems, the institutions of consumer society are designed to favour a particularly materialistic individualism and to encourage the relentless pursuit of consumer novelty because this is exactly what's needed to keep the economy going.

Increasingly, it seems, the institutions of consumer society are designed to favour a particularly materialistic individualism and to encourage the relentless pursuit of consumer novelty because this is exactly what's needed to keep the economy going........ Overcoming this dilemma is absolutely vital because the lessons from this study make it clear that without strong leadership, change will be impossible. Individuals are too exposed to social signals and status competition....... The trouble is that the thrust of policy over the last half century - particularly in the liberal market economies - has been going in almost exactly the opposite direction. Governments have systematically promoted materialistic individualism and encouraged the pursuit of consumer novelty. This trend has been perpetuated, mostly deliberately, on the assumption that this form of consumerism serves economic growth, protects jobs and maintains stability......And as a result, the state has become caught up in a belief that growth should trump all other policy goals.

The economic crisis presents us with a unique opportunity to invest in change. To sweep away the short-term thinking that has plagued society for decades. To replace it with considered policy-making capable of addressing the enormous challenges of tackling climate change, delivering a lasting prosperity......Of course it's one thing to have such a vision, completely another to set about achieving it. But there are basically only two possibilities for change of this order. One is revolution. The other is to engage in the painstaking work of social transformation. I suspect that there may be other ways to change the order ....for example by taxation policies or a religious movement.
In the following paragraphs, some specific recommendations are made. They follow directly from the analysis in the preceding chap-ters. Broadly speaking, they fall under three main headings:
• Establishing the limits.
• Fixing the economic model.
• Changing the social logic.
A much closer attention to the ecological limits of economic activity is called for. Identifying clear resource and emission caps and establishing reduction targets under those caps is vital for a sustainable economy.
Suggestions to develop national well-being accounts also draw on this logic of "measuring what matters. A further step would be to integrate such accounts systematically into the existing national accounting framework (see Recommendation 7 above) and perhaps even adjust economic accounts for changes in the flourishing accounts." I note that in Australia last year the government introduced measures such as these though it will be some time before we have a semblance of a set of data.
A whole raft of policies is needed to build social capital and strengthen communities. These include: creating and protecting shared public spaces; encouraging community-based sustainability initiatives; reducing geographical labour mobility; providing training for green jobs; offering better access to lifelong learning and skills; placing more responsibility for planning in the hands of local communities, and protecting public service broadcasting, museum funding, public libraries, parks and green spaces.
The culture of consumerism is conveyed through institutions, the media, social norms and a host of subtle and not so subtle signals encouraging people to express themselves, seek identity and search for meaning through material goods.
Dismantling these complex incentive structures requires a systematic attention to the myriad ways in which they are constructed.....for example relating the media. (Though, I suspect, this would have unfortunate side effects in curtailing free speech)

Part of the aim of this book was to provide a coherent foundation for these policies and help strengthen the hand of government in taking them forward. At the moment, in spite of its best efforts, progress towards sustainability remains painfully slow. And it tends to stall endlessly on the overarching commitment to economic growth. A step change in political will is essential. But that too is possible - once the conflicts that haunt the state are resolved..... Above all, there is an urgent need to develop a resilient and sustainable macro-economy that is no longer predicated on relentless consumption growth. The clearest message from the financial crisis of 2008 is that our current model of economic success is fundamentally flawed. Affluence breeds - and indeed relies on - the continual production and reproduction of consumer novelty. But relentless novelty reinforces anxiety and weakens our ability to protect long-term social goals. In doing so it ends up undermining our own wellbeing and the well-being of those around us...... None of this is inevitable. We can't change ecological limits. We can't alter human nature. But we can and do create and recreate the social world. Its norms are our norms. Its visions are our visions. Its structures and institutions shape and are shaped by those norms and visions. This is where transformation is needed.

In short, an important component of prosperity is the ability to participate meaningfully in the life of society. These are primarily social and psychological tasks. The difficulty is that consumer society has appropriated a whole range of material goods and processes in their service. We're certainly not the first society to endow mere stuff with symbolic meaning. But we are the first to hand over so much of our social and psychological functioning to materialistic pursuits.

Chapter 8 identified a primitive blueprint for this kind of activity. Community-based 'ecological' enterprises engaged in delivering local services: food, health, public transport, community educa-tion, maintenance and repair, recreation; these activities contribute to flourishing, are embedded in community and have the potential to provide meaningful work with a low-carbon footprint...... Critically though, these sectors will look rather different from the way they do right now. Manufacturing will need to pay more attention to durability and repairability. Construction must prioritize refurbishment of existing buildings and the design of new sustainable and repairable infrastructures. Agriculture will have to pay more attention to the integrity of land and the welfare of live-stock. Financial intermediation will depend less on monetary expansion and more on prudent long-term stable investment. The point is not to reject novelty and embrace tradition. Rather it is to seek a proper balance between these vital dimensions of what it means to be human. A balance that has been lost in our lives, in our institutions and in our economy. The cultural drift that reinforces individualism at the expense of society, and supports innovation at the expense of tradition, is a distortion of what it means to be human. This drift serves and is served by the pursuit of growth. But those who hope that growth will lead to a materialistic Utopia are destined for disappointment. We simply don't have the ecological capacity to fulfil this dream...... So our only real choice is to work for change. To transform the structures and institutions that shape the social world. To articulate a more credible vision for a lasting prosperity.

I was left a bit disappointed. Not totally convinced that the capitalist model necessarily leads to economic collapse if GDP growth stalls. And not impressed with his so called solutions. I actually have some sympathy with "The Independent "if they were to refer to his suggestions as a Yurt based economy. His solutions seem really weak and unlikely to be picked up. Or unworkable. Or, like recommendations for a utopia but no real way to get there. Maybe he is right that the alternatives are revolution or painstaking hard work. Or perhaps it's element of both. Maybe we should be studying the Chinese model of government to see if there are lesson s there for the west. And, nowhere does he grasp the nettle of population growth. This is the big driver of climate change, or depletion of resources, of pollution. The world's population has more than doubled in my lifetime. If it was still the same then the whole economic situation would be very different. I'm really surprised that he doesn't mention it as an issue. Overall, Tim's weak recommendations seemed very much like a damp squib to me. And most unlikely to be picked up as a clarion call for change. though I think it's an important topic. I give it four stars. ( )

This book exposes a topic which should become increasingly prevalent in our everyday conversations. The way in which humankind should prosper is bound to change dramatically due to difficulties and natural boundaries which our forefathers did not take into account. However, an explosive increase in the human population, as well as increasing energy requirements are conforming a very uncomfortable overall picture of the environment we have come to deliver for ourselves and for the generations that will follow us.
The book is a fair exposition of the author's personal position in regard with this problematic, and he also shares several facts and figures concerning this issues.
In my view the book does not, however, strike the correct sensibilities required for it to become a classic in the subject. Well worth the reading. ( )

The REALLY sad thing about reading this book, is knowing how little has been done in the thirteen years since it was published.

On page 172, Tim Jackson says that there are "two possibilities for change of this order. One is revolution. The other is to engage in the painstaking work of social transformation."

I think that Mr Jackson was banking on the latter but, it is clear that it will need to be the former.

This represents such a wasted opportunity for civilisation. ( )

La base de este libro es un informe realizado para el gobierno británico a principios del 2009, sobre la economía sostenible. Su idea central es que, para que tal economía sea posible, hay que cambiar tres elementos básicos. En primer lugar, establecer nuevas formas de medición de la prosperidad que tengan en cuenta no solo el dinero (como el PIB) sino otros elementos. En segundo lugar, cambiar la idea socialmente muy afianzada de que más es mejor: por encima de un límite, mayores ingresos no garantizan mayor felicidad, sino más bien al contrario. En tercer lugar, tomarse en serio las limitaciones ecológicas de nuestro planeta. Esto se expone detalladamente, con profusión y variedad de citas que testimonian un trabajo arduo y muy fundamentado detrás de cada una de las afirmaciones del autor, que por lo demás es un reputado economista. Lo único que le falta, en mi opinión, es incorporar al pensamiento religioso (no solo católico) que apunta en esta misma dirección. Pero, en todo caso, es un estupendo libro que merece ser tomado en consideración. ( )

A fascinating book on how to turn the economy around for a welfaring, sustainable life, based on human social values in a non-growth based economy.
I can follow some of the premises and some not so good.
I do believe in a way of life that brings more prosperity with less consumption and with more time for reading, social participation, walking around in nature reserves and more attention for local markets, slow food and so on.
To the contrary, the half diabolic role given to inventions and new stuff, i'm not following. Agreed, new stuff just for the "new" of it, like clothes, can have perverted effects, not only ecologically but also socially.
But, in my humble opinion, it can also add dramatically to the quality of life. The author is very good in reminding us of our responsabilities in this "limited" planet but just in this lies for me the challenge. We can for instance create carbon neutral cars and fuels, i really believe in that. The author calls it "simplistic fairy tales".
So, i agree with Tim Jackson, a lot has to change. And fast! I have children and i care for their future. But i do believe technological evolution will help us a greater deal.
I'm not religious, otherwise i would say: let's pray i'm right, now i just say: let's keep up the debate on this.
Let's change! ( )