Changing Societies Without Changing Lifestyles?

1. Changing Societies Without Changing Lifestyles? Fritz Reusswig Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) Our Common Present 2012 23 March 2012 Charles University Prague

2. Challenging Climate Change • CC is underway and will become more severe. • There is a serious risk that the 2 degree goal (avoiding ‚dangerous climate change‘) is not met. • Damage cost estimates range from 1-20% of global GDP. • However, risks of unmitigated CC are complex, uncertain, and potentially disastrous. • Standard economic cost-benefit analyses show deficits and should be replaced by a different approach: climate policy as an insurance against high future risks of inaction (Ackerman, de Canio, van den Bergh, Weitzman). • Effective climate policy will have to reduce global GHG emssions by 80-90% until 2050, with a starting point as early as possible (best before 2020). • We are thus not talking about a minor, but about a major social change. The Global Carbon Project 2010 Claudia Kemfert 2009

3. Possible Strategies • Higher efficiency of machines, buildings, and infrastructures ( perspective: zero emission, energy-plus). • Eco-consistency of (energy) production and consumption processes ( renewable energy systems, cradle-to-cradle, green economy). • More sufficient lifestyles ( perspective: limiting the level of consumption, sustainable limits to growth).

4. Some problems with these strategies • More efficiency is • undifferentiated with respect to technologies and structurally conservative • prone to the rebound effect • More eco-consistency is • subject to quality constraints ( biofuels, life-cycle costs) • subject to quantity constraints ( space & public acceptance for renewable energy projects) • More sufficient lifestyles might • reduce growth • lack public support in a democratic consumer society • be impossible to implement in a free market economy

5. What Strategy? • Economists and politicians don‘t like strategy 3 (sufficiency of lifestyles), they build completely on the combination of strategy 1 and 2. • One prominent way of framing this combination is ‚green growth‘. • But only a combination of all three strategies will lead us ahead, not a single one alone, or even only two combined. • This implies that is is an open question whether or not more green will lead to more growth. • If strategies 1 and 2 are accepted, why thus is no. 3 necessary, and how is it possible?

6. Some arguments in favor of lifestyle changes • It is not true that existing (Western) lifestyles are an unbiased social good without any costs and downsides • Growing consumption options with physically limited consumption time (≤ 24 h) constantly reduces the attention we can dedicate to any single option. • Living in a modern, urban environment often goes along with all kinds of restrictions (e.g., not to live in a noise and pollution free environment). • Living and working in a market-centered consumer society can lead to trade-offs between work and life. • Growing commercialization has led to perverse incentives to gain social recognition via consumption, not via social interaction. • Growing globalization is leading middle classes in emerging economies to enter a consumer culture that is both environmentally detrimental and socially problematic. • Western lifestyles are part of an economic model that favors economic growth at the expense of investment in natural capital, and that has since several years undermined social equity and cohesion.

7. continued • Green lifestyles are necessary because they • provide a feasible market size and rapid distribution of green technologies • use more efficient technologies in a really efficient way • counteract the rebound effect • keep low carbon energy options within the limits of sustainability • reduce the social and systems costs of these energy options • push the corporate sector and governments to the right direction

8. Are green lifestyles possible? • „We cannot influence individual preferences!“ Wrong: • Only such preferences that have passed the filters of law (simple) and morality (difficult) can enter the market • If particular consumer choices turn out to (no longer) be ethically neutral, they are subject to a legitimate socio-ethical discourse which can lead to new rules. • Plenty examples in different countries (weapons, prostitution, child labor, drugs, alcohol, tobacco…) • „There is no lifestyle politics!“ Wrong: • We subsidize non-sustainable ways of life in many ways (fuels, housing, ‚least cost‘ travel…) • Our tax system is still environmentally blind, supporting non-sustainable choices & lifestyles • Taxation and regulation of financial markets under neo-liberal auspices have led people to a) invest less in the real economy instead of financial markets with high profits, and b) to spend more for luxury consumption, weakening investment and fuelling conspicuous consumption.

9. eher positiv neutral/gespalten eher negativ 20 t 15 t 18 t 13 t 12 t 10 t 8 t 9 t 5 t 7 t Ways ahead • Social change has never come about by an immediate shift of majorities. It always started by small changes, critical masses and strategic alliances. • We need an eco-reform of taxes, subsidies and regulations in order to support green lifestyles & business models, and to re-direct capital flows away from capital markets into green investment. • We need a social discourse on green lifestyles within a vivid civil society—both in order to stimulate green lifestyles and green politics. • We should think about personal carbon trading in order to reduce carbon footprints and conspicuous consumption.

10. And elsewhere? India for example… • Big and growing country (8-9% GDP p.a.). • Very vulnerable to climate change. • The Indian CC discourse has been dominated by the pattern „The West has caused the problem that we suffer from, and thus has to solve it – e.g. by giving money to us.“ • More recently things have begun to change: Indian total emissions grow (and harm India), and per capita emissions too (though on a still low level). • Still many poor people, but growing share of middle-classes with more consumption and higher carbon footprints. • Lifestyle changes in India? How ethically and socially feasible are they? Botzen, Gowdy, van den Bergh 2008 Meyer-Ohlendorf 2011

11. India (contd.) • „India is too poor for greening“. Well, this depends: • India spends a lot on its military and the nuclear option. • India‘s science and educational potential is substantial and can be re-directed towards a green economy without any additional costs. • Wealthy Indians are allowed to invest heavily in luxury consumption and financial markets (as almost everywhere). • Most Indian cities invest billions into a carbon locked-in public infrastructure, e.g. roads and flyovers. • Indian citizens invest millions into safeguarding against blackouts of an inefficient coal-based energy system – mostly based on diesel generators. • Resource control is often done in perverse ways (e.g. free electricity for water pumping combined with rationing instead of cost effective pricing). • There is a sustainable pathway for India to reduce GHG emissions without hampering growth. • Sunita Narain (1991: poverty/luxury emissions) 2010: personal carbon trading in India Shukla et al. 2008