Fred Steward Professor of Innovation & Sustainability, Policy Studies Institute

1. Does the ‘alternative economic strategy’ of the 1970s crisis have any relevance for the 2010s transition to a low carbon society? Fred Steward Professor of Innovation & Sustainability, Policy Studies Institute

2. A political conjuncture • The 1960s rebellion against technocratic modernism • The 1970s/80s emergence of a new ecological paradigm • The 1970s labour movement response to capitalist crisis and exhaustion of statist economic policy

3. The new politics of technology • Action and knowledge in the 1960s/70s: • The critique of technocratic modernism1. Authority of expertise2. Materialistic consumerism • A more democratic mode for using knowledge in decisions • An interest in alternative technological choices

4. Critiques of technocratic modernism

5. The new politics of technology

9. Global ecological sensibilities

10. Including from the left

11. 1975 • The environmentalcrisis is ’political’ • Not just preserving a pretty bit of countryside orsavingsome rare animalor plant from extinction • But • Threatens the health and safety of workers and theircommunities • Cooley - Integratedroad/rail hybrid vehicle, airships (constantloading, wind power (laaaaargescale– technological solutions

12. Political realignment? • Need a new alliance of movements active on the politics of technology and the labour movement • AES - lack of attention to politics of technological innovation a major weakness

13. Socially useful production • Few would seriously propose socialism in one company • Combines practical demands with a general political perspective

14. Alternative production, democratic planning, anti-nuclear and military, no mention of global environmental issues

15. The economic crisis and the left

16. Socially useful work, alternative production, a radical anti-capitalist AES ,democratically planned economy, global context

17. Trade union control, enterprise board, producing for need, commonsense economy, in the long run cannot preserve the old industries as they are, technology in different ways, not one path

18. GLC industrial and technology strategy

19. The fusion of imaginative vision with a non-utopian strategy • A knock out of Keynesian Kinnock by Marxist Murray

20. Failure to connect the left with emerging environmentalism • Industrial decline, planning, national path • No real engagement with global environmentalism • Marginal attention to energy – renewable resources, environmental needs, effective conservation

21. Still little realignment • Strong affinity between the new analysis of the left and the practice of the greens • Need to combine greening and modernisation • Collectivism, universalism, social purpose, global identity

22. Summary • The 1970s – Gramscian organic crisis ‘the old is dying and the new is not yet born’ • Positive development was linking politics of innovation with municipal policy • Missed opportunity for serious political realignment of left with environmentalism • Continued rise and influence of the green agenda outside the left in making climate change a core feature of public policy with some oddly traditional characteristics

23. The UK strategy 2009