Can Oxford and Cambridge lead the way to humility at COP26?
The scientific community are well aware that humanity is exceeding the biocapacity of Earth, this is known as global Ecological Overshoot.
Since the 1970's environmental scientists have known about three key drivers that increase the environmental damage that is caused by humans. These key drivers are population (P), affluence (A) and technology (T) and this relationship is known as the I = PAT equation. Furthermore, economists have observed that a paradox arises when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, because increased efficiencies always result in increased demand. This is called the Jevons Paradox. As yet there is no public recognition that these factors are contributing to the accelerating global ecological collapse which is now further exacerbated by climate breakdown.
It was suggested to Oxford University in an email dated 29/09/2021 addressed to Professors Myles Allen and Sam Fankhauser and Dr Friedericke Otto, that Oxford University might consider being instrumental in initiating a paradigm shift away from our modern techno-industrial coercive consumer culture. They could trigger the awareness that is required to initiate rapid, voluntary and ethical Degrowth globally with regard to all the IPAT drivers. We could minimise global suffering and promote enjoyment and fun in the process of redesigning our culture to be ecologically sustainable with a much more equitable global distribution of resources.
The transition from IPAT Growth to IPAT Degrowth principles challenges the very core of our coercive consumer culture. Oxford and Cambridge could take up the challenge to apologise for the delay in recognising the escalating problem of ecological overshoot, this might inspire worthy leadership from the UK government at COP26, and result in similar humility being shown by all the affluent countries. Is pride too big a price to pay? This five-step strategy could pull humanity out of its ecological nosedive:
1) Oxford & Cambridge Universities declare a ‘Climate and Ecological Emergency’. Their declaration to be accompanied by an apology for not having raised awareness sooner about the dangers of pursuing IPAT growth in the face of escalating ecological overshoot, and to also be accompanied by the suggestion that in future the UK need to include ecological overshoot within their basic skills curriculum.
2) Oxford & Cambridge Universities to promote and support the idea of a UN United Aspiration to formerly recognise and address the issue of ecological overshoot. Also to mount a challenge with regard to those UN Sustainable Development Goals which fail to recognise the ecological limits of our planet.
3) Both Universities to put in place emergency measures to reassess the value of all University subjects in the face of rapidly escalating Climate and Ecological collapse, involving all their staff and students in a process of envisioning how a voluntary IPAT Degrowth culture might look.
4) Recommend that the UK create an emergency cross-party government to focus on the implementation of IPAT Degrowth objectives, rapidly and comprehensively. Growth is still desirable, but only with regard to our ecological capital, i.e. soil-health, fish-stocks, diverse and appropriate reforestation and biodiversity to enable our eco-systems to recover.
5) Issue a recommendation that the UK pardon all Climate protestors awaiting or facing judicial punishment. To also suggest that a public apology is appropriate for pursuing IPAT growth in the face of escalating ecological overshoot for many decades, thereby severely jeopardising the collective prospects for humanity to be able to thrive in the future.
Any voluntary IPAT Degrowth will be impossible without the buy-in of the public. We currently need very significant and rapid Degrowth on all three aspects of the IPAT drivers. Therefore we first need public awareness to be raised to a sufficiently high level in order that people will be willing to see massive changes to their lifestyles in order to give us all a slither of a chance for reasonable longevity. UK government could initiate this with a public apology for not informing school-children about ecological overshoot as part of the basic skills curriculum.
We all need to face the reality that right now is not a good time to have children, we have destabilised our environment so severely that our future is extremely insecure. All the while that we continue to pursue IPAT growth economics we are further exacerbating ecological collapse. Everyone needs to realise that we are in this deep-deep trouble because of ignoring the science regarding ecological overshoot. People will rise to the challenge willingly, because most are now experiencing serious climate anxiety. That anxiety will soon dissipate once we start to really address the root problem which is the IPAT growth economics upon which our coercive consumer culture is based.
The UK government could ask both schools and Universities to halt the usual curriculum, and instead get the staff at all levels to work with the children and students on envisioning a new society, and working together to identify what is appropriate to retain within our current ways and values, given the level of emergency that we now face. The government needs to reassure the public that finance will be made available for essentials, i.e. food and fuel for everyone.
The government will need to ask the more affluent organisations and individuals to be generous and buy into government bonds in order to facilitate the provision of essentials for everyone, explaining that there is no point sitting on capital since money is liable to be rendered worthless if we don’t turn this oil-tanker around very soon. There are several recent research papers which are referenced in the Wikipedia article for Ecological overshoot which are predicting imminent collapse both financial and of our population. The research by Professor Bystroff is likely to be a more reliable prediction than the simple extrapolation of birth and death rates which is the usual approach by demographers. The simplistic extrapolation approach does not take account of the reality that we are currently seeing the Sixth Mass Extinction play out, and we are not exempt from that story. The top-line of the predications from the Bystroff model shows what we could achieve if we urgently embrace IPAT Degrowth, the bottom line warns of the global suffering if we continue with IPAT growth economics.
We urgently need to reconsider all our priorities, and to start the process of identifying and winding down every non-essential activity and commodity which is currently going on. Jobs that become redundant in this process need to be immediately replaced by involving people in the process of envisioning a new localised society that does not require all the travelling that we mistakenly assume is unavoidable. Anyone with IT, counselling, teaching, marketing or entertainment skills will be very useful in this process. We all need to learn how to enjoy ourselves whilst minimising our consumption, there will be many who will enjoy this transition process far more than the job that they are doing at the moment.
Our highly pressured, fast-paced coercive consumer culture can be a very demanding lifestyle; just by slowing down we can improve our chances. The job of envisioning and developing our new society needs to involve as many different people as possible, it needs to be an organic process, not dictated or prescriptive, and it needs to include plenty of social fun activities to relieve the anxiety of realising how injured our planet has become and how insecure our future looks at the moment. It needs to be motivated by the desire to regenerate our eco-systems, and restore soil-health, and recover from the mental damage inflicted by decades of coercive consumerism. It is a bit like the ‘re-education’ for German prisoners of war to make them understand how badly they went wrong with the way that they treated the Jews. For this is how we have regarded the least developed countries for decades, for decades we have felt entitled to pursue policies that are over-exploiting the natural resources of our world and are resulting in shorter life-expectancies for billions of people in the least developed parts of the world. All those countries that are pursuing IPAT growth economics are causing the pressure on eco-systems to be increased and the green-house gas emissions to continue to rise. We have been conditioned for decades to believe that our modern techno-industrial lifestyles are superior to the few remaining indigenous subsistence lifestyles which are still found in some parts of the world. Harmful cognitive dissonance of this type can result from group obedience, as researched by Stanley Milgram.
In the UK we could use spare hotel capacity and ocean liners to accommodate those who need housing until, by voluntary means and raised awareness, we succeed in shrinking our population numbers into the existing housing. All new building and expansion programmes and projects like HS2 and airport expansions are not appropriate for a country that is serious about IPAT Degrowth objectives.
It would be advisable to rethink and reassess our public services, there are many possibilities, a more helpful attitude to death and illness is possible. Death is a natural process, essential to make way for new life, and natural death can be embraced as part of the solution to our current predicament, several ideas are available in my book Saving Us From Ourselves — Can we repair 50 years of ecological overshoot?
It requires a thorough socio-political paradigm shift to be achieved. The public would be willing given adequate information and leadership. A cross-party government is key, to ensure that all political parties are supporting the change in direction, for no party represents IPAT Degrowth at the moment. If the UK government really wish to show worthy leadership at COP26 this is the way to go.
The author Barbara Williams has been an environmental activist since 2019 and has recently gained some recognition from GirlPlanet.Earth for her work. Her work concentrates on resolving the awareness and the ethical issues that are currently preventing us from addressing both overconsumption and overpopulation adequately to save ourselves from man-made ecological collapse. Barbara has friends in Malawi and Kenya who are very successful at providing Degrowth education, using a PowerPoint available here. After a one day event which was covered on TV there is now significant momentum in Malawi, where the work is now teaming up with Banja la Mtsogolo | Management Sciences for Health (msh.org). If an impoverished country like Malawi can embrace Degrowth, it will surely be shameful if the UK cannot emulate their lead.
