Fifteen - Growth

Summary

We have long known we are living beyond our ecological means; but what a struggle it is to do something about it. Maybe through this pandemic we can glimpse a different future – one that suggests the struggle will be worth it.

In March 2020, the economy was revealed to be a subset of the health system. The pandemic did what the British Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees suggested it might and overwhelmed our health services with a mortality rate of a fraction of one percent. And then took a third of the economy with it.

Unimaginable? Not according to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, which for 17 years forked out a £1 million a year on pandemic insurance that just paid out £100 million. The pandemic, the hospital overload and the disruption were foretold. In January 2020, we facilitated a workshop at the Bank of England on non-linear climate risk. We had what at the time felt a daunting but safely distant conversation about the potential scale of impact of climate-induced catastrophe, pandemic and economic crisis. Little did we suspect that within a few months we would be experiencing all three simultaneously.

What no-one foresaw – and is yet to emerge – are the effects it will have on attitudes about society, community, work, wealth and futures. In this chapter, we focus on attitudes to growth. We stray a bit along the way, but our argument is this: we need to be clearer about what we want growth in and for. The things that grow are experienced in varied ways – some growth is clearly bad (such as more sickness and hunger); some is clearly good (love and care); but a lot is ambiguous. For example, under-employment is bad when it creates poverty and depression, but could be turned to good if it allows for creativity and connection. Higher living standards are good, but the associated carbon emissions are bad. Our conclusion will be that among all this ambiguity, many have perceived a more fundamental difference in the things we find good and want more of, and we think this is a difference between intrinsic and instrumental goods.