Debating ‘DeGrowth’ Green Economics - Michael Mezz

The climate crisis, if it doesn't get solved, a communitarian leftist way of like trying to write historical wrongs and you know, liberate societies that have been under the thumb of the global capitalist class, it will lead to what people are calling ecoascism. Which is this idea that, okay, once ecological collapse is top of people's minds, it's like, okay, how do I protect me and my family? How do we protect the nation-state? Raise the drawbridge, no more immigrants, like, and a militaristic approach to the outsider. Right. And I think that what we're seeing in the reform narrative is like the beginning of, of [music] that, the otherization of the rest of the world. And I think that will only get supercharged by a [music] scarier and scarier environmental situation.

What's left back again in the stew with the man himself, Mr. Michael Mez, a climate advocate working at the intersection of environmentalism and economics. Michael, thank you so much for pulling up in our London studios all the way over from Cali, from California. [laughter]

>> How is it being here?

>> It's great. It's great. It's a beautiful day in London.

>> I don't know why, uh, this city gets any hate on a day like this. It's like incredible. And I, and I honestly, uh, think it's a, it's a gorgeous city. I took the train over here. Took a bike in LA. This is a foreign concept, the idea that we could get somewhere without a car. So happy to be here. Thank you guys for having me on the show.

>> What's been your favorite bit of London so far?

>> I mean, I don't want to sound basic, but

>> I do think

>> we won't rinse you. [laughter]

>> I, I, I just love the freaking big red buses.

>> Really?

>> Yeah. Like, it makes me happy. [laughter]

>> Yeah. King Charles, move out the way, bro. The big red buses. You know what they say about London. [laughter] Buses? They all come at once. Uh, the, the thing about, um, what I was going to say was that like you were saying that people give London a bad name, but like, I, this is like a whole [ __ ] coordinated MAGA scop, right?

>> Okay. So two people give London a bad name. The, the right-wing, which I think is all [ __ ]. It's so safe here. It's so much safer than every city in the States. So I think we need to push back on that narrative because it's not true. Right. And it's, it is a big kind of conspiracy that's being woven by the right, the right wing. But also Londoners give London hate. Like, I feel like I always, I tell people, friends here, I'm like, "Oh my god, I love your city." And they're like, "Really? Like, why? Like," and then

>> that's just British, isn't it? I think it's just a British thing. You haven't been to places like Cuden and [laughter]

>> Big Cen. Big upso. Big upsc. [laughter]

>> But it might just be a British thing of like a little bit of self-deprecation. People are like, "Oh yeah, London's all right." Like, "Yeah, I just live here." And I'm like, you know, you're living in one of the best cities in the world.

>> Yeah. It is beautiful. It is gorgeous. Do you think growing up in California? Oh, well, being from, you're from LA originally, right? Yeah. Like growing up there, you get access to some of the most incredible bits of nature, and that played a shaping part in turning you into the man you are today.

>> Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I'm out of LA, I am still thinking about the land. Like, it's just such a beautiful, dreamy place.

>> Do you want to describe the landscape for us?

>> Oh my gosh. Sure. I mean, you're on the beach, right? Everyone thinks of the beach, right? Like in, like Malibu and which is amazing. Like, the, the hills hitting the ocean facing west, incredible sunsets every single day. But what most people don't know is like, you're also very close to the mountains with, that have forests on them, and you can go camping in a forest like with just 30 minutes outside of the city. And then my favorite part is the desert. You're, you're just an hour and a half from Joshua Tree and, uh, Mojave Desert, like infinite landscapes with, with mountains in the distance. Oh, it's just amazing. And then every, every single day it feels like the sunset is like a movie. Like, it's just gorgeous. I try to get outside every evening and just like watch it happen because it makes me so happy. So

>> yeah, try being an environmentalist in Cuden, bro. [laughter] Concrete jungle. We're trying to create some dreams there, but it's, they're in the process.

>> Yeah.

>> So, look, Michael, I'm, one of the things I am super interested. I think you're the first environmentalist we've had on the show.

>> Oh, wow.

>> Is how, environmentalism today almost feels like it's coming second to economic politics. And what I mean by that is, think about the Green Party in this country. Zack Palansky, who is this insurgent candidate on the left.

>> Yeah, he's great.

>> Um, he's been making waves in the polls. His politics is really focused on what I would describe as like maybe an evolution of Corbinism in a way, right? It's a politics about, uh, taxing the ultra-wealthy, about, you know, challenging the ultra-rich. It's about redistribution. It seems to be about populist economics in my book, rather than, yeah, you know, out and out environmentalism. Do you think that environmentalism is now coming second to an economic politics?

>> I think it is in this political landscape. Yeah. I think that climate first kind of had its moment, um, when there was a little bit less of this right-wing surge that's happening. And I think that climate advocates are realizing that pushing just climate, um, you could say it, it backfired a bit in terms of the way that that narrative got spun by the right-wing into this whole conspiracy about globalists who are trying to control your life and keep you in [snorts] you know, under surveillance. And I, it frustrates me because I think that climate is such an important issue, but at the same time, I don't think it's super important to the majority of people in the way that pocketbook issues like how to afford groceries are, how to, you know, afford healthcare. Um, and I think that these economic issues have come to the fore and actually have become, you know, higher priority. Um, and that's okay. I think what the Greens are doing is a really smart adaptation to that new world, which is lead with economics and then using that narrative, explain how actually environmentalism is good for the economy. It's, it's good for affordability. It's good for long-term health and safety of your children. Like, some of these more kind of, you know,

>> do you not think that does a bit of a disservice to the environmentalist movement, at least as we've come to understand it? Because it's taking away the priorities of environmentalists and inserting one that is presupposed around class or social justice a little bit.

>> I mean, I don't feel though that environmentalism has to be the headline, right? And, and I don't think that climate activists or advocates who who believe that are really doing are being strategic. Um, if, if climate is not the number one issue for most people, and the goal is to get climate-friendly politicians into office that they can actually do things to protect the environment, then we have to have a message that resonates and that wins elections. And I think that that has been a struggle for the climate movement, especially because it's this big abstract thing, right? Like the, the, the global system of carbon emissions and global heating and, you know, like the jet streams and all of this like

>> it's not something that most people have time to sit and think about, frankly.

>> Um,

>> I think they probably ought to because of the amount that is going to affect their lives or some of these systems start to break down, which they already are. But at the same time, it's a big ask to say, "Hey, there's this big global problem that's happening, and we need you to drop what you're doing, running back and forth from your job and your school and taking care of kids and all of that to like worry about this, this big global problem." And so, I think it's just, we're, we're changing the narrative in a way that is catching up to where people are at that can actually build a political movement.

>> And it's also in the future, right? Like, it's, it's not right now. Even though some really concerning stuff is happening right now. Like, if you think about,

>> extreme heat, for instance. We are seeing deaths of elderly people on the European continent, for instance, as a consequence of hotter weather conditions, right? Like, probably more people died from, from severe weather conditions than in terrorism, for instance, in the UK. Not to equivocate over like how awful and evil that sort of stuff is, but yeah, I mean, I'll say it's, it's in the future. It's, it's kind of, it's a slowly developing problem, right? That's the thing. Every year it gets a little bit warmer. Every year the likelihood of an extreme weather event like the wildfires that happened in my hometown of LA recently,

>> gets higher. The probability of that gets higher. But it's not going to even happen every year. And so it's kind of this thing that's in the background that's slowly getting worse.

>> And so it's hard to, it's hard to make it a huge priority until these disasters are very front and center. Right? So I think within the movement, we need to think about it's unfortunate because it's kind of like, you know, using disasters for a political means. I wouldn't say it's like a good idea to take advantage of people suffering, but at the same time, when these things become top of mind, is the time to push climate as a main issue. Hey, do you know why this happened, these LA wildfires? Like, it's because, you know, the temperatures are getting warmer and drier, and so this is going to happen more often, right? But at the same time, it is such a background issue that it's hard to make that front and center, the, the one thing. And I think we've, we've learned with the success or lack of success of these climate-first political movements that it's, um, that it's, you know, not, not necessarily the way to prioritize things. I'll also say in terms of the, the presence of the issue, it has been a very present issue for a lot of other countries, especially in the global South, where climate disasters and the, the consequences of ecological collapse have actually been around for, for decades now. It's just, you know, it's, it's kind of an unfortunate reality of the way geography works and the way the earth system works that a lot of these disasters are focused and, and the, and the, the warming is focused more towards the equator and the global North, despite having created so much of the emissions that are causing this problem, are more insulated than the global South from climate disasters. And so it's this, it's this very unjust,

>> geographical reality. How do you embed a sense of maybe solidarity or understanding with communities in the global South over, over here, so that maybe we could vote in an interest that doesn't just serve us in this country, but all around the world?

>> That's, that's a huge challenge, right? Because we're talking about national politics mapping to a global issue. And so I don't think it would be a successful approach for Palansky or another UK politician to come say, let's solve the fact that heat waves are killing hundreds of people every year in Pakistan. Right? It's like,

>> unfortunately, as much as that would resonate with me, someone who thinks myself as like, kind of a, a global citizen who actually like feels an obligation, especially as someone who,

>> lives in the Imperial Corps, to the, like, that has helped create these problems. I just think that that's a, a step too far for a lot of people who are more like, I kind of want to just make sure my life is better and okay in my community. Um, but to your point, there's a lot of people from all different parts of the world in a city like London. So if you can weave that narrative into a local political story, um, about, you know, helping our families back home, I think that's, that's interesting. But it's also like, it's probably less interesting to most people than just, let's make life more affordable.

>> But do you think it can stray sometimes into like sectarian and block voting? I'm just thinking in particular of someone like Zara Sultana, right? She,

>> backed a bill for the expansion of an airport in Mirpur in Pakistan, but she didn't want to see another runway in Heathrow.

>> And so the impression voters get is that you're, you don't care about the country or the place where you've been elected. You care about somewhere further apart because there's a significant block of voters in her constituency who are from that region.

>> M.

>> I mean, when right-wingers point to stuff like that, don't you think it kind of looks a bit insincere on the part of some left-wing politicians?

>> Yeah, I think it can. I think it can. It's, it's, it's difficult, right? I think, um, yeah, I don't know how else to answer that. Yeah, it's just, I think, cuz,

>> for me, it's like glo, international politics, internationalist politics feels like a comfortable place for the left to be in.

>> But we're at a time where,

>> nationalist politics are insurgent. And I think that the answer to that is because all of our economies are struggling from the same set of financial contradictions, economic contradictions that are making essentially working-class natives, people who are tracing ethnic heritage to to the places where they're from,

>> poorer. They think that they, because they live in regions, for instance, not in cities, they have less economic opportunities as a consequence. And so the challenge, I think, is about how we re-enter internationalist politics in a framework which says to the people who are indigenous, native, you know, they, they use all of these ethnic terms now to talk about their identity, that works in their interest as well. And I'm wondering how we bridge that out, you know, more broadly.

>> And part of that is not just a kind of political angle, but as Freddy said, there is a crisis of the political economy that's existing within such a model. How do you build what is at least to me, what you're saying, an internationalist environmentalist political economy essentially that caters to working-class people at home, but also those people around the world who are suffering from X, Y, and Z related to the climate?

>> I think those two audiences, the, the, the people of the world and also the working class domestically, have the same common enemy, which is capital, right? Which is the, the thing that's actually, in my opinion, driving the climate crisis is this endless machine that prioritizes growth and extracts profit over everything else and doesn't really care about the well-being of citizens at home or abroad. And so ultimately, I think what, uh, a synthesized and, you know, what an effective left political movement looks like in today's age is one that names the enemy boldly and also is able to present people a pathway forward that doesn't feel, uh, so extreme or scary that they're actually willing to get behind it. Which is, I think, a problem that sometimes some of the leftist conversation can have is like, it can get into, uh, language that feels like, oh, you're trying to change everything, you're trying to burn the system down, like, uh, I don't know, it sounds a little risky for me to vote for that. Whereas it ultimately, if, and I think about this a lot, because it's like, how, how do you marry these movements? If in the global North countries like the UK, we can find a way to get political movements into power that are going to focus on working-class issues and going to actually stand up to the power structures that are driving the economy, which are, you know, corporations and the ultra-rich, then, and who also have a, a lens towards like anti-imperialism and, and, uh, climate justice, which I think, like, the, the Green Party does a good job of kind of bringing some of those, those, um, what's the word, uh, kind of integrating some of those topics, then it paves the way for political movements in the global South who are actually truly liberatory and actually standing up to the big problems like international debt traps, where their their governments are, uh, beholden to these big IMF loans, which mean that they have to spend more money servicing their debt than they do actually building out, like healthcare and education systems in their country. That, that when those political movements in the South are actually like able to rise up and say, we're pushing back against this global order that has been driven by capital that hasn't served us, that there are political parties in the global North who will actually negotiate with them to unwind some of these lock-ins that capitalism has created. Mhm.

>> Um, so in many ways, it's actually like orchestrating how do these movements kind of work together? But I, I just don't, the, the conservative and establishment political movements in the global North have been the ones that are keeping us locked into the system that is creating climate collapse slowly year-over-year. And so I think the solutions aren't going to come from the North because we actually, I think, need to step back and let the global South kind of have more say and more of a, of a perspective on like what the future looks like.

>> M.

>> But [clears throat] we do need to find a political system in the global North that that kind of allows that transition to happen and doesn't actively stop it, or like the US go in and drop bombs when that starts to happen, right? Which is what happens when any kind of socialist movement pops up in a global South country that has a lot of oil, is like, okay, we'll just go to war now. And so there [laughter] there's a lot I just threw at you because this is sort of like a global theory of change and, and I don't know if I articulated it fully well. Maybe the place to do is to go back in time a little bit. And obviously, your background is as an economist. You studied economics at Stanford,

>> which is a [ __ ] good uni for anyone who wants to know. But you, you know a lot about about the economy. But I wanted to kind of build into this idea of green growth, right? Which has been basically what's been put forward by essentially people who are okay with capitalism as a way of being able to answer the challenges that are put forward by the climate crisis. Can you explain what the concept of green growth is and perhaps why you have some criticisms of it as well?

>> Yeah, sure. Great. Um, so green growth is the idea that capitalism can solve climate change effectively. Um, a lot of the discourse around the climate crisis and how it started is tied to the idea of economic growth because as the economy grows, which is actually an imperative under our current capitalist system, the economy needs to grow, otherwise things start to fall apart. Uh, recessions happen. We're kind of locked into this need for growth. Well, I mean, if you just take a very simple materialist lens and look at the economy, growth will always create more, more economic activity will always mean more pollution and more emissions of carbon because economic activity means more transportation, more, more goods and services changing hands. And that's what means more plastic has to get produced and more clothing has to get produced. So the economy has a material footprint, and if it keeps growing, the material footprint grows, therefore ecological collapse continues. Now, green growth is the idea that growth is fine, but we just need to decouple it from the material footprint. So the economy can continue to grow without carbon emissions going up,

>> without carbon emissions going up. Which means that despite the historical precedent that the two have always been extremely linked, and the R factor, the correlation between the two is almost one, which means material footprint and GDP are like,

>> lock in lockstep. Exactly.

>> People start, people are arguing that we can decouple those things, and you can continue growing green sectors of the economy. Um, for example, if you just let the economy keep growing, but power it with solar energy instead of fossil fuels, um, it will, we can just have this endless growth machine that is capitalism, but that we can avoid the climate crisis getting worse. Sounds nice, right? Because then everyone gets to have their cake and eat it too. No major changes are needed. System as usual is going to be fine. That's like the comfortable story people tell about green growth. Um, the issue is that that decoupling isn't really happening. There's a few countries, the UK being actually probably the highest performer on this list, that are decoupling GDP growth from emissions. In the UK, for example, GDP continues to go up and emissions are actually going down. So, you can look at specific countries and say, "Hey, this green growth story is working." The issue is that if you look at the global economy and the global material footprint, which is really the only one that matters because climate change is a global issue, it's there the decoupling has not occurred.

>> So, it's a matter of, and, and there's, you know, I don't want to go too into the weeds, but people have analyzed that and seen that what's actually happening is that emissions are getting exported. So, like,

>> they're being outsourced.

>> Exactly. Um, so in the, in the UK, if you just kind of draw a line around the UK, it looks really good. But if you look at the, the, sort of the, what's the word,

>> the supply chain,

>> the supply chain and the full scope of everything that gets consumed in the UK and the emissions that happen downstream, then the decoupling hasn't actually happened.

>> But it's no, uh, it's no lie to suggest and, well, to basically say that living standards in this country has declined over the last 20 years. So as much as we're more successful in decoupling ourselves from, um, fossil fuels, or at least potentially we're also exporting it elsewhere, the living standards of people in this country hasn't grown as a consequence.

>> We're not seeing enough growth, basically, essentially in that,

>> decoupling. So how, how does the argument around materiality and supposedly decoupling actually hold short when,

>> you kind of herald the UK as an example, but there is increasing poverty?

>> That's a good question. We got, we got to think about that, right? Because the question really is,

>> who's the growth serving?

>> Right? The UK keeps growing, but, but the working person is feeling more stretched, their life is harder, quality of life is going down.

>> Life expectancies going,

>> life expectancy is going down. Same thing's happening in the US. So if the economy is growing and living standards are going down, what's the [ __ ] point of growing the economy? The whole point of of economic growth, according to this narrative, is prosperity, more prosperity, the rising tide that lifts all boats, more wealth for everyone. But not only is the growth causing,

>> ecological collapse very slowly, but, but surely,

>> two, like the growth is just all benefiting a very small fraction of people who sit at the top who are extracting the wealth upward. And so it, you know, I think it, it'd be a different conversation if it was, if growth was actually causing prosperity. I would be like, "Okay, let's, let's work on this engineering problem and find a way to make sure that growth is green." But like, but we've got no growth, basically. I mean, also just to add, sorry, sorry, Javan, but just to add,

>> um, in the US under Biden, right, the inflation reduction act was essentially a big,

>> green injection into the economy, right, in red states. And those did secure growth of a kind that we've not seen in the UK in a really long time. And what did it buy him? [ __ ] all. Sweet [ __ ] all when it came to votes, right? [snorts] And presumably that's because, as you say, where is that growth going? It's not going back into the pockets of normal, normal working-class people. And it's that line of, you know, that's your growth, not my growth, you know.

>> Exactly. Kind of wanted to go back on what you said a bit earlier on about organizing disparate movements to a point, environmentalist movements, uh, labor unions, and everything else. Don't they all have competing interests? Because those labor unions, they're not there to defy or, um, overturn capitalism. They're there to serve the interests of their members who are often times working class who need that growth then to sustain their own conditions. How do you marry that when there isn't any ideological coherency? They can be approximated to anti-imperialist ideas or left-wing ideas.

>> But doesn't there almost have to be a decoupling within the movements before you can turn that into a political project?

>> Yeah. I mean, that's the challenge of building movements, right? Is like, there, there are, there are a lot of, there's a broad coalition that needs to be pulled into this, and it's, it'll be a big challenge. But I think this is why I like to talk about economic growth, because I think that this narrative that growth is always good actually hasn't been true for a long time. And again, I would be very happy to talk about growing parts of the economy that we actually want, right? Like the, like the inflation reduction act you mentioned, the, the growth of the renewable energy industry. Fantastic.

>> And I often talk about degrowth too, which often gets bucketed as this like decelerationist, like, oh my gosh, this, this guy just wants everyone to be poorer. Like, no, there are parts of the economy that absolutely should be growing. The, the, the labor movement needs to be growing, the solidarity economy, the care economy, like the share of wealth going to workers, the, the productivity gains and the wealth generated from productivity gains actually going to workers, which has not been happening.

>> Um, public transportation, I could go on about all the things I want to see grow, but there are parts of the economy that are creating a lot of ecological harm and no social benefits. People often point to like fast fashion, for example. Like, it's just, it creates a lot of pollution. It ought to be regulated. It's making a few people very, very rich, and it's causing pileups of plastic clothing in like towns in the global South that are getting flooded with waste. It's just like, generally an awful thing for the world. And so, yeah, we should degrow the fast fashion industry, and we should degrow parts of the economy that are more harmful than good. And of course, there's the, there's the argument that comes back, like, who gets to decide what's more harmful than good? Well, we actually have a lot of modeling about what are the ecological impacts of these different industries, and we can, I think, from a leftist materialist perspective of, of a, like a, you know, class-conscious perspective, articulate, are these industries actually benefiting working people? Are they benefiting the working class at all? Are they leading to any sort of growth in the public sector or, you know, the health care, healthcare, like services? Like, if not, then we probably should. This, this gets into a conversation about power, too, right?

>> Well, this is what I was going to say. What you're talking about is democratizing capitalism, possibly?

>> Yeah, it's a, I don't know if it's still capitalism at that point, but yes, you could say that. Yeah.

>> So, what, so let's go into the degrowth agenda, cuz I, I think it's fascinating. So,

>> you've had someone like Jason Hickle on your podcast, who is basically kind of

>> one of the leading thinkers on on this school of thought.

>> Yeah, I called him Degrowth Daddy during the [clears throat and laughter] go.

>> He got a kick out of that.

>> He is the father of, of that, of that, um, intellectual.

>> I will say that he's, he's not, he's, uh, probably the most well-known figure in the degrowth movement. He works very closely with a man named Gyorgos Kales in Barcelona, who probably also wouldn't say he was the original, but he, he has been working on degrowth for even longer than Jason. So I need to give him his flowers because he's sort of like the, within the, the Barcelona school of degrowth, he's sort of like the, the founder and someone who, um, you know, uh, is is really like responsible for building this program that eventually was able to pull Jason Hickle in, and now it's, it's actually incredible what they're doing down in Barcelona.

>> Yeah.

>> So, so, so explain to us what, like, the core tenets are of degrowth then.

>> Yeah. Uh, so it's, it's basically the, the idea that, um, capitalism is incapable of solving climate change because capital will always, will, will never scale down things that are profitable, and climate change is super profitable until it's not, until the whole global system starts to collapse, and that will have major economic harms that we can get into. But ultimately, it's saying like, growth of harmful industries is driving the ecological crisis. We need to have a plan for scaling down those industries, which means a platform that focuses on, um, really a new set of goals that is not growth over everything, which is sort of how I was taught economics at Stanford, is like GDP goes up, it's a good economic policy, and that's actually still how economists plan the economy, is like, what, what,

>> kind of very linear?

>> It's very, it's very linear, and it's always more, and it's, there's no discussion of like, is this a good type of growth? Or, you know, is there anything else that we ought to prioritize? Like, for example, the well-being of humans in our society, or even other species, if we're really out there. So degrowth is an attempt to center those values over economic growth. And the, it's really a, it's a very broad political movement with a lot of different ideas. But what I like, the way I like to think about it is that it synthesizes a lot of social movements into one economic platform. And so it pulls a lot on feminist economics, liberatory political theory. Um,

>> wealth taxes?

>> Well, yeah, absolutely. Wealth tax, um, ecological sort of solutions that, but it, it tends to be, uh, an anti-capitalist ideology that that really centers capitalist extractive growth as the primary cause of, uh, both inequality and climate change and attempts to synthesize a political platform and an e- and an economic plan to rid the world of those issues.

>> Is degrowth a method, or is it an outcome?

>> I'd say it's a method. Lowering consumption, basically lowering the creation of [snorts]

>> lowering consumption of of the harmful parts. Like, this is again, this is the challenge with the word, right? Because it sounds like

>> anti-growth. Exactly. It's like one of those, it's like one of those words that like,

>> Exactly.

>> is is like in most people's conscience, I think, when they think about what,

>> Yeah. And I, and I think it's important to note that like, you know, when I, uh, asked someone like Jason Hickle about this, he was like, "Yeah, degrowth is like one of the things in my platform, but it's not the main thing." Because I think he, he realizes too that like, if, if the, the headline, it's just going to turn a lot of people off because we, we live in a society that that growth is just assumed. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's if your whole headline is like, hey, this good thing everyone loves, not that [laughter]

>> it just sort of like, you know, people turn away from it. But ultimately, I think what people need to realize who are maybe hearing about degrowth for the first time is that it's degrowing certain things that that are not serving us and growing things that are that are actually socially beneficial. And really, it's not so much about growth as as just decentering, just like decentering growth. What if growth wasn't the only goal?

>> What would an economy look like where things like well-being and ecological, uh, safety were prioritized? And what would those policies then be? But the, the main challenge I see to to this concept is as you framed it so far, right? You're saying that some growth is necessary and good. So we don't see complete collapse in material conditions, for instance.

>> Exactly. Yeah.

>> But you're talking about the main kind of driver of ecological change, energy consumption being [clears throat] drastically reduced. Right. And if you think of something like, is it called the Jeon paradox?

>> Jeans paradox.

>> Jeans, Jevons paradox. Right? So this is the idea that when a new form of efficient energy creation comes online,

>> i.e., let's say going from whale oil to coal, for instance,

>> then you would presume that because this is a more efficient way of producing energy, that the actual amount of energy that we make through, you know, mining or whatever, would go down because it's more efficient. But in fact, it all goes up because,

>> you have access to cheaper energy. All of these other, all of this other economic activity builds on top of it. So people might be surprised to know that we burn more wood today than we did during the industrial revolution, despite the fact that we've come up with all of these incredible, you know, um, energy sources in the last 150 years. So you're basically saying that we would want to reduce energy consumption, this very central plank of, you know, all of the kind of economic consumable creation throughput in our system, and yet be able to find growth elsewhere. It feels like that's probably not possible in my, in my mind.

>> Yeah, it's not so much about reducing energy consumption on the aggregate as it is trying to find ways to reduce energy consumption more quickly when that energy consumption is not creating any social benefit.

>> Okay.

>> So, I think that the ultimate result of implementing degrowth would be that energy consumption continues to grow. It would just grow more slowly because we're not like plowing it into data centers to create AI products that do nothing for society except for cause more unemployment and the accumulation of more wealth to a handful of people. So, if we didn't build those 10 data centers that are being planned in, you know, some, uh, marginalized community in Kentucky right now, like the con, the energy output would still grow because that we're on that track. It's just like, we're, we're trying to find, we would be trying to find ways to stop the growth that isn't causing any social benefit.

>> So, in a democracy, how do you create a selective economy? Because surely in any free society, you have,

>> the capacity to exchange in any goods or services. And to me, it sounds like you're turning around and telling a population of people that they can't have access because this no longer fits within our moral objective to degrow the economy.

>> Yeah. Well, no, I think it's quite the opposite. I think this is what democracy looks like. Like, what I'm, what I'm advocating for is actually economic democracy, which does not exist in any capitalist economy.

>> Like, we think that we live in a democracy because we get to vote every four years. But that is a, the, the smallest possible version of democracy that we could possibly have. What really drives the quality of life that we have and the world that we live in and the, the reality that we exist in is the economy, and what gets produced, and, and who owns it. That should be democratized. We should be voting on, on like, how the economy is run, which would, I think, if you asked most people, do you want a data center near you? We're seeing, we're seeing a massive resistance movement pop up because of all the pollution that it creates, the electricity bills that go up, and ultimately, who does it serve? It serves like the, the, either the shareholders who own that company that's that's building it, or like the guy who founded it, like goes to that, goes, increases the net worth of someone like Elon Musk. That's not a democracy. We, we don't live in a democracy if, if decisions like this are getting made all, all around us and we're not getting any say or any vote. And so what I'm saying is that if we actually democratize decisions like, do you want a data center or do you want more renewable energy near you? Do you want, like, do you want the government to be investing in public transportation, or do you want that money to be going into fossil fuel subsidies? Like, I think actually the, the policies I'm describing are incredibly popular.

>> It's just people don't actually get to vote on them.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. But there's a challenge, isn't there, in terms of how you would want this to be enacted, right? Like, you, what you would need for,

>> let's, I mean, we need to not use the word degrowth when we're talking about this because I think it almost prejudices people's postgrowth, or I also talk about ecosocialism.

>> Okay. What's ecosocialism? You would need ecosocialism to be pursued essentially universally, right? Because if one state were to do this as their agenda before other states, and there was an adverse market reaction because we still do live in a broadly capitalist society, you would see the cost of borrowing go through the roof, for instance, that could perhaps bankrupt a nation. They might need an IMF loan. You know, they might get in, in debt, debt in trapped, or whatever. So what you would need would be universal application of this, surely?

>> Not every country has the same access to natural resources that they're depending on.

>> Yes.

>> And so you would need some form of universalism, because otherwise you're just in a market competition, truly.

>> Well, okay, let's, let's pressure test this theory because you're right. That's what we hear in like neoliberal narratives about the economy, that if, oh, like, maybe people want socialism, but if you do it, it's going to be really bad for your economy, then you're going to get left behind. And I want to push back on that a little bit. Let's just look at Spain, for example. Spain has invested a lot of money in the last few decades into renewable energy.

>> Solar, specifically, right?

>> Solar, specifically. Their, their, their energy grid is largely powered on solar. They not only have greened their electricity production in a major way that's caused emissions to go way down, but they're also one of the fastest growing countries in Europe in terms of GDP. I forget the exact number, but I think they're seeing like five or six percent annual GDP growth.

>> Five or six in one year?

>> Light years ahead of us, but also, I believe a lot of that is being driven by massive increase in the population as well, in inward migration.

>> Oh, well, that's a case for migration, I suppose, as well.

>> Yeah, I think, I think it is. When you have, I mean, this is a separate conversation as a sidebar, but like,

>> a lot of that immigration is being driven from Latin America, and so I think that there is a lot of cultural synergy because of the history of being a post-imperial state there. Everyone speaks the same language, for instance, some resonance in Catholicism, common culture, etc., which makes integration, I think, a lot easier compared to some of the more diverse immigration that you've seen in the UK since leaving Brexit, which has been fractured, I think, a lot of, um, people's sense of social identity. But,

>> yeah, sure. And I will, I will say, I'm not, I'm no expert on on the, you know, cultural aspects of immigration to Spain, so I don't want to speak on that. But I will say the, the greening of the Spanish economy has happened during a period of rapid economic growth that outpaces many European countries that have not taken such an aggressive approach towards renewable energy.

>> Um, so is that, is Spain getting left behind? I think quite the opposite. The, the ability of Spain to power their economy without oil and gas has put them at an incredible advantage during this US Iran war, if we can call it that, or imperial war of aggression, um, by the US, which has obviously caused the Strait of Hormuz to close and it's caused a massive choke point in the global, you know, oil market, um, which has created some suffering in the economies that are more based on oil and gas, but Spain has been able to say, screw you, US, we're actually closing our airspace to your military because we aren't as reliant on your, you know, uh, umbrella of power and and military, quote unquote, protection, because we are actually energy independent now. And they're not fully energy independent, but they're more energy independent than they were before. And so I think that these, in these smart investments into renewable energy, not only have been proven, I mean, we can talk about China too, which is, which has been an incredible success story, has lifted so many people out of poverty and has invested trillions, literally, of dollars into renewable energy and is now the leader in, in the world at renewable energy technology. Now, of course, that's a whole quagmire of issues, too, that we could get, maybe we don't want to get into now, but I'm not saying everything about China's model is perfect. But the idea that like, invest, taking investment away from fossil capitalism and putting it into a new ecosist model is not incompatible with growth.

>> M.

>> But that is still, you could still say that is degrowth, because you're, you're degrowing parts of the economy that have just been creating social harms and not, not actually benefiting people's lives. It also gives you geopolitical leverage over countries like the US, who have been using the petro dollar and the global oil trade and their military dominance to basically keep countries like the UK locked into saying yes to whatever daddy US does, right? So, it's like, I think that there's, there's actually, uh, some geopolitical leverage that can be gained by adopting some of these policies. And this narrative that like, oh, you're going to get left behind. I think it's just, is just a myth that we just need to like, look at the evidence and say, "Oh, that's not true."

>> I think I probably have a different view on it on China in particular, when the way you framed it, because,

>> when I look at what China's pursuing in terms of creation of the electro dollar, right? So like, this is just for, for listeners, um, if you want to listen and understand more about this idea, Adam Toss is a good person to kind of explore. Um, he has this idea that the US underpins its economy through what's called a petro dollar supply chain. So people need energy, they use oil. The US, in the fracking revolution, now has loads of liquefied natural gas. The UK, for instance, is very dependent on liquefied natural gas, partly because of, um, you know, what's happened with Russia and Ukraine and that cutting off of that specific market, but also now because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, where the UK was getting a lot of its gas supply from Qatar, and this, one of the, um, uh, uh, gas refineries was targeted by Iran when it was attacking energy infrastructure during the first days of that war. And so the UK basically now has to be more dependent on the US for its LNG supply, which becomes very challenging when you consider the fact that the UK is also looking to strategically decouple, for instance, from the US when it comes to matters of strategic autonomy, i.e., defense. So what I'm seeing here is stuff about kind of what I would describe as just the politics of international global competition that gets played out in, in a military-industrial way. Unfortunately, I'm not happy about this, but this is what is happening. And when I look to China creating an electro dollar, i.e., a system that is dependent and contingent on China's access to cheap renewable energy and being able, potentially even in sometime in the future, to be using that as a mode of exchange, right? Access to cheaper, to cheaper energy that is, um, produced through, through solar capacity, for instance. What I see there is China creating a monopoly on all of the technology, the green technology that is needed to build out massive solar farms in Spain. We can't really do that in the UK, even though the weather is looking pretty nice today.

>> Today, we could wind in the UK.

>> Wind in the UK, right?

>> But there's issues around storage capacity and intermittency, etc., currently, as of, as of talking today. So when I look at China and I think about, is it really diversified its energy sources, right? Despite doing this massive buildout on solar, it's also got, it's brought a bunch of new coal smelters online.

In Mongolia. Um, simultaneously, China, they say they reached peak emissions. Was it in '23, '24, that year? It was peak carbon emissions. But I mean, it's, it's basically leveled out. It's not gone down. So, I guess you could call that degrowth, but it's still a level of consumption over and above the total of Europe combined, right? I just see China as securing the supply chain of the future, which is an economically smart policy to do if you care about just growth proper.

Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that. Um, I think though that their model seems to require a lot less bombs falling on other countries than the US's. And so it seems to be maybe a little better for the world than the petro dollar. Like, and it's also a choice other countries could make to invest more in their own capacity to build out renewable energy. Um, it's not, it's not the same, you know, in the oil market, you have countries with oil and countries without. In, in to your point, in the renewable market, you have countries with solar sun and wind and countries without, but it feels a little bit, uh, more fair to me than like, you know, obviously China has the economic and financial might to be able to corner the market in this way.

Industrial as well. Any industrial might. So, yeah, I'm not saying like, okay, everything China is doing is necessarily good for the world, but I don't necessarily, I don't see them starting wars to protect the electro-dollar and their financial interests. So to me, it's like, oh, maybe that's a model that I can be a little bit more excited about if my priority is the, the, the health of the world and the people on it and the other species on it. I'm like, okay, well, fewer wars, more energy from the sun. Uh, you know, yes, do we depend on China? Sure. But, but is that like necessarily a bad thing? I don't, I don't think so.

But I, I think the point about starting wars is really important. And I think for anyone who is inclined to progressive politics, which is most of our listeners, you know, they want to see less conflict in the world. But we can also say of China, right, that they've not had any qualms about putting loads of pollution into their waters, about smogs in their cities, about forcibly moving, uh, much of its rural population into cities, right? Hundreds of millions of people have essentially been told, you need to move to the cities now because this is how we're going to do economic growth. So ecologically, it's not like they're that minded about what they're doing to their own land. So I, I almost wonder whether that is a precursor to what could happen globally, let's say in the future. We're talking a long way away from now. Maybe we'll never see this future, but [snorts] a world in which we are, every country is fully contingent and fully dependent on Chinese supply chains. Um, and that makes me think that the world of geopolitical competition, which is going to be, which will be the story of our lifetimes, right? Which we're going to live through between the US and China, a very hard place for countries to decide what their energy policy is going to be. Because if you look at, like, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, we're not feeling it yet. But you look at, like, I was looking at kerosene, which is jet fuel markets, um, today, they've basically doubled, almost tripled. The straits are closed as of recording right now, but maybe they'll open. They're saying it could be an eight-month lag. We're going to see the economic consequences for the UK in particular, right? As being a place which is not energy sovereign yet at all and is dependent on other, on other countries.

So I'm, I, what I'm saying here, I think, is I agree with your idealism. You know, I, I know what you're aiming at and I feel a sense of purpose that we do need to get to a place where we are reducing some of these kind of crazy pursuits of just [ __ ] up the planet. But we also have to make our bed with the economic situation that we do find ourselves in right now. And I am concerned about declining living standards. I agree with you that declining living standards are the thing to focus on. I don't necessarily think that just having economic dependency on China is like the solution for the future. But I have been impressed with the lack of military imperialism that is required to sustain their model. And to me, that makes me more optimistic about that as an operating system for the global economy than the petro dollar and and NATO and like the, this sort of industrial military complex that seems to be maintaining what is an oil-based capitalist model. And so ultimately, um, is just, you know, going the China route and having fully renewables all dependent on Chinese technology the right path forward? No, it's probably a diversified approach. But ultimately, um, the, the geopolitical competition between empires, which you could argue US and China are both relatively imperial in their ambitions. Um, I think like we need to think about how do we improve living standards for the, the working people in our own countries and prioritize those and how do we also avoid the need to, uh, for war to be like required to sustain the whole thing. And I just feel like a renewable energy-powered economy that is more, that may be more dependent on China, just feels like a safer future to me than the world we're living in now. And, uh, look, most working-class British people, I imagine, don't like, they probably have an opinion on like the US versus China and how that like struggle should go, but ultimately, I feel what's really incumbent upon the political leaders of, of the UK and of the US is to like enact policies that actually improve people's lives. And so I just really believe that people's lives will be better if we are relying less on fossil energy. And that doesn't mean eradicate it completely because if you go too fast, energy prices spike. And that's what's happened in Germany. And so there are ways to, there are ways to do this that are actually kind of like shooting yourself in the foot.

But, um, it's a bit of a minefield. It's a bit of a minefield. But ultimately, if the goal is safety of future generations, that can be sort of a north star to enact, like choosing your your mix of policies to get there.

I just find as though at least here in the UK, we're in this quagmire where our natural resources have been privatized and they're sold on the international market. So that's the oil that comes out of the North Sea. And then the fact that we are now a post-industrial society where we don't have the same productive capacity of our working classes as we did 50, 60 years ago. I'm so curious as to how this actually plays out because a bit like Freddy, I'm, I'm in admiration of the idea, but within the context of Britain where we will have to be consuming more expensive energy and the condition of working-class people, it isn't that they are able to consume that much because of already a kind of stagnation in our growth or stagflation, I suppose, to a point. Right? How would this agenda suit the ordinary working person who is minded by the environment and wants to get something done? Essentially, the kind of Palansky coalition of voters who are minded by these issues and yet, to a point, some of their consumer habits and material uplift is entirely dependent on this system.

Yeah. So, I'm not saying like, uh, blow up Britain's links to the global [laughter] the global economy and like just, you know, sort of like [ __ ] [ __ ] the UK off. Yeah. Yeah. No, [laughter] not at all. I, I mean, I, I said this earlier, like the UK is actually doing a quite good job at reducing emissions. Yeah. So, like I think that's another reason why we, where this conversation started was around maybe the climate issue has been decentered a bit from UK politics. I'm like, maybe it's because you guys are actually doing a pretty good job. And like maybe that doesn't need to be the number one priority, which is, which I think actually should be like the, the massive amounts of inequality and wealth disparity that are getting generated from the growth that is happening in the UK or is maybe isn't happening quite enough. But ultimately, I think like a bigger question for UK voters needs to be how do we make sure that the development of our economy actually does serve the interest of, serve the interest of everyone, right? And so, I think this conversation, you know, it is the priorities, the priorities are going to be different depending on what country you're talking about, but in the UK, the reason I think that Zach Pansky's messaging of class and inequality is the new story for the Greens is that that's actually what is more important right now to solve than like, you know, more renewable energy and and and more wind farms and things like that. I mean, I was just in, um, Norfolk, uh, and I was like out on the coast and I saw, I think I could see like three wind farms from the beach I was standing on. And they were far off and it was like, actually, offshore wind. Offshore wind. Yeah. Like, y'all are doing pretty good. [laughter] Like, this, my, my like US mind is kind of breaking in terms of like, oh, wait, there, like, this is happening, like the world is getting better, like the, the renewable energy is really like a big part of the, the mix here. And I'm like, okay, great, right? Um, in, like, keep going, don't stop, but also maybe saying and building more wind farms is the number one issue of the Green Party now. People are going to roll their eyes and say, [ __ ] off. Like, yeah, I mean, Labour's gone really hard on on this. I mean, for me, like, as I said, I've got very complex feelings about all of this just because, um, I'm worried that maybe I think, kind of naively, that some form of shift to the current political economy could, whether you can get more where there's more winners than currently than the current situation that we have, which I think is, is basically a revival of what capitalism was meant to be about. I'm a democratic capitalist. I think I'm, I'm still in flux and the point of this podcast is to, stress test my ideas, right? Because I'm not an ideological person. I would like to see a world in which there was genuine competition and fairness of opportunity. That, that's like those are my, like bottom line base two things in which case I think you have to break up monopolies. You know, part of me is hopeful that we can find some growth. Do you know what I mean? That we can, that that we can fix that. And if we don't do that, then I think the person who profits is the far-right nationalist, really, because they have a clear identitarian argument about how to make people feel angry about their current situation and an obvious scapegoat as well. It's the strangers, it's the foreigners, you know, and and so, you know, I'm, I'm just, I'm just kind of speaking out loud here. And I think we're, we're not on opposite sides of this debate.

No, I agree. I, I want what's best for the British people and and I think what, what that means is thinking about who does growth benefit and how do we also invest smartly in industries that we need for the future, right? And so, um, I think, but I think that first part, who does growth benefit, is a huge piece that to me, I mean, we were talking about this before we sat down, like there's the, there's an interesting history of of, uh, elitism and aristocracy in the, in in the UK that like I am always a little bit shocked by when I come here of like, oh, there's just like families who are wealthy because they've been wealthy and like this is like [clears throat] hereditary peers, mate. Yeah. And it's like this is, yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting and I'm like, that's a place to start. I'm not saying seize their assets and like, you know, take, take all of their wealth from them, but I am saying like tax it, right? Like let's free up some of those finances for investing in programs that will actually benefit working people and also create economic incentives to grow industries that the UK needs because there's the right mix of skills. And you know, we're, we're pushing up against the limits of my, like ability to really recommend an economic agenda for your country, right? Like I'm, I'm here, uh, as, as a tourist basically. I [laughter] don't want to, I don't want, you need to fix our country by before you go home. I don't, I don't want to position myself as like, I came to the UK and I told you guys what to do. [laughter] Um, no, I just think I, I have a perspective on on what the, what a, a better future for the, the globe looks like. Yeah. And the UK, I think has a very important role in that. It's a very influential country. It has an incredible, you know, it's an incredible history with a lot of complications and you guys did invent capitalism, which I think, you know, was, uh, uh, you know, hold that against you a little bit [laughter] but at the same time, you know, and of course, like the whole idea of the, the global empire sort of also originated here. So you have a little bit of, you are in the Imperial Metropole, as you said. Yes. But that's, I just, to wrap on that, I'll say like, yeah, like there, there are clearly, um, you know, there's clearly some, some lessons to be maybe taken in terms of the overall strategy from like, maybe this, this global approach to solving the climate crisis and, like class inequality. But, um, and I think what the Green Party is doing really cool is really cool, which is why I'm, I'm excited to be here at this moment to see this surge. Um, but also, you know, I don't want your audience to think that I'm, I know the answers for your country.

No, no, no. That's completely fair. We're not, we're not putting that pressure on you either, mate. Um, you've just outlined loosely the kind of history of the UK in terms of its [laughter] class makeup and whatnot. Yeah. But do you not think it boils down to more of a, outside of the economic arguments we've made and the political ones, it's a philosophic one in that this is the spiritual home of capitalism of imperialism and that doesn't just disappear as over 40, 50 years colonies have got their independence and people's minds have changed towards social democracy. It's something that is instinctive surely within the character at least probably of the UK. How do you challenge that? Because arguably that's more important and probably more difficult to do than just advocating for an alternative political economy.

This is a really important, like, and I think difficult question for folks in the climate movement, right? Because I think a lot of us think of it in terms of climate justice, which is this idea that the global north, driven by originally the UK, but ultimately in the end mostly the US, have been the source of the vast majority of emissions that are causing global warming and biodiversity collapse and a lot of the ecological issues that have popped up. So a lot of the solutions and a lot of the financial, like the financial changes that we need to make ultimately are about reallocating capital towards the global south where they're actually having to deal with the consequences of climate change more because they're more sensitive to them based on the geography. Now, this is like a, a nice way of looking at the world in terms of fairness and history and like, kind of the reparation of harm, but to a working-class person in these imperial core countries, like, it's not an easy case to make that like, oh yeah, your taxes should go to funding climate resilience programs in a completely different continent, right? So that is where I think the, the kind of climate justice movement runs up against some, some narrative challenges in domestic politics. Yeah. And it's hard. It's, I don't, I don't know that the answer to it. Um, I think that ultimately, uh, what we need is not to elect politicians that are just going to like, I think politicians have to be focused on their country and their constituents. Um, but also I think they need to be willing to consider things like, okay, if like we talked, I briefly touched on at the beginning of the interview, like, if there's institutions like the IMF that are keeping developing countries locked into servicing debt, like the, like having political solutions to those type of long-term structural lock-ins is really something that I think like the administration of in a national seat of power in the US or the UK should be willing to engage on and help write those historical wrongs. Um, but ultimately, uh, like, and this also gets into like theories of modern monetary theory and like where does money actually come from and and can we, do we need to balance budgets? Like I think that a lot of global finance can simply be, uh, created to solve some of these these problems as opposed to necessarily saying we need to tax British people and fund climate resiliency in other parts of the world. Like that's, I don't think that's actually how it has to work.

But that, you see why MMT becomes a natural bedfellow for like part of the degrowth agenda, right? I can see the, I, I mean, I don't personally think it's viable. Um, MMT, I just think that like, you're talking about a complete upending of the entire way that money and debt has been used right to generate creation, right? To to make things happen. Well, yeah. Isn't it? Isn't it inflationary and couldn't, could cause some global financial crisis if you just inflate economies with cash that isn't really attached to any immediate value or asset? Well, so, so MMT would, would, is within the, the thinking, it's like inflation is the actually the only constraint. So it's, it's not inflationary because it's the one thing that that that MMT theorists are primarily concerned about is inflation. I think the idea is that the, the budget doesn't necessarily need to be balanced in the way that you would balance like a household budget and that ultimately if, if capital is being used in a productive way and going towards capacities that are either like standing ready to be built or labor that's ready to be deployed or materials that are ready to be deployed, like it won't, it won't create inflation if it's being used for those types of of projects. And so I think that at a global level, it can be very, in a very interesting framework for thinking about debt finance and restructuring and also climate resilience projects in countries that are being heavily affected now. Um, but ultimately, you do need to worry about inflation. So that is like the, the main constraint. Again, though, you come back to that question of enforcement, right? Like if you wanted to do MMT, it would require some level of international global enforcement. And then you kind of make the, the argument of like the, was it the, the right-wing or far-right nationalist, populist, global government, globalist. I got Alex Jones like raiding on in my head right now. That that's what we want is that we want to see an end to all forms of, uh, national sovereignty, for instance. What would you say to that, to that sort of argument?

Well, I think first of all, like some of these international problems do require international solutions, which is the whole, which is the reason climate change is such a sticky issue in a world of nation states that are all like looking at each other saying, I was going to, who's going to like be dumb and invest more into this international issue and they'll lose their competitive advantage. All of this like kind of game theory of the current geopolitical system makes it very hard to solve the climate crisis. But I do believe that international financial institutions should be helping stop the climate crisis. And what we have now is ones that are basically controlled by Washington-based interests. For the most part, the UN doesn't really have much ability to actually solve these problems. It's more in like a, um, uh, what's the word? Um, almost symbolic way. Yeah, it's more in a symbolic role. Uh, so, but yeah, I mean, look, do I think that like we need a global government? No, not necessarily. But we do need like global cooperation on this issue.

Well, is it, it's less about global governance or global government? To me, it's more a bit like the Bretton Woods system. You had an economic philosophy that became the heart of our global economic institutions. And maybe it's a case of, in the same way that economic orders collapse over periods of time, this is just agitating towards a new economic model that global institutions can advocate and encourage other nation states to embrace.

You said it far better than I did. That's, that's [clears throat] that's exactly it. It's a rethinking of of economic values, and placing ecological health somewhere in that value system, in addition to human well-being. Yeah. And actually developing a, a theory of economic governance that delivers those objectives, that is not purely based on the, the neoliberal notion of growth at all costs. That will solve the problem. That will create more taxes and that'll fund the social safety net. Like, that simply hasn't worked. And so the, the thing that I'm trying to do and is really advocate for that, that shift in economic values that are like the operating system of countries and and global finance. Um, because it doesn't seem like, uh, just business as usual and reforms on the, on the, on the edges are going to really, like solve the fact that ecological collapse is continuing and inequality continues to get worse and poverty hasn't really moved in the last few decades. Like, it feels like the, the benefits of the neoliberal economic model, which did occur for a while, have just actually been, going in the reverse for the last few decades and we haven't been able to shift our operating system and it's just sort of like, let's, what if we just had a new set of values at the center of the economy.

Yeah. We're running a 1980s operating system. Exactly. Yeah. And you just created, uh, subservience to American interests essentially, hollowing out any of your, uh, energy sovereignty, your political sovereignty, any of those things have just been subservient to neoliberal American interests, right?

But one of the weird kind of ruptures that's happening now is almost a de-dollarization of the economy, right? So like the dollar is, was, is the global mode of transfer. Um, but we're seeing now, at least within Hormuz, again, let's take that case study, right? There were Chinese tankers were able to go through through a whole different form of monetary system, right? Through the Renminbi system. So there is, you're seeing potentially two different, you know, um, orders of economic, um, orthodoxy emerging simultaneously. It really is a multipolar world. Um, and that, I think also takes us back to the internationalism of what we're talking about here. Um, I know I've been giving a lot of nationalist stress tests to what we're talking about. It's not because I'm a [ __ ] proto-ethnat [laughter] tries to call me out. But it's because I actually do think international institutions are the only way to make sense of the problems that we have. Like you're talking, let's take, um, taxation, for instance, right? Like wealth taxes. The argument that is often put forward against a wealth tax is about capital flight, um, existence of tax havens, in particular. I don't see why we should have tax havens beyond the argument that a lot of pension funds have now been financialized in a way that they store their, they offshore their funds there for for a more favorable regime. Right. But that just prolongs the problem. That doesn't fix the problem. Right. So if you wanted to have a genuine wealth tax, I think you would have to be something that was instituted internationally.

Absolutely. In which case the US would actually have to be, the ones to kind of go and, you know, lead and you could see like, I'm not saying that, China is perfect, but they clearly do have an interest in raising up the living standards of the poorest in their society. Of course, there would likely be some seepage of some people who were able to kind of bounce around through some levels of corruption. Uh, an internationally enforced wealth tax. But that, to me, is the only way you're ever going to be able to institute a policy of that kind because otherwise it's a zero-sum game, right? Otherwise, if you're the country that does it on its own, you're the place where it's bad to park your money and people won't invest there and you won't have access to borrowing, whatever.

Absolutely. And this is, this is what you pointed out earlier, which is the challenge of some of these international problems is that like, you kind of have to do it at a coordinate, in a coordinated way across a variety of countries with with very different political situations to get something like a global wealth tax passed. But I'd say, you know, this is part of why I think just generally a progressive political movement that is not beholden to capital is so necessary because if you, you need to have politicians in power in some of these traditionally dominant global north countries to get something like a global wealth tax across, across the finish line. And so, they can't be bought, basically. They can't be bought. Yeah. But like, if, if a few countries try to take advantage of that, then the whole thing becomes a lot more challenging. So it's, it's, uh, it's tough. It's like, again, global problems being solved in a, in a geopolitical context of competing nation states is like the main thing that keeps me up at night [laughter] because it's like, I, it's, it's very hard to see a clear path forward to to a solution.

This has been advocated for and it just has never worked. I mean, Gordon Brown wanted something similar after the global financial crash, which was a minimum tax rate around the world. Joe Biden tried to do the same thing in his time in office, and it never really took off. So, if some of the most powerful countries can't get something like this enforced, what hope is there to suggest that this could ever happen in the future, especially now when there are more vested interests against such a system taking place? I think that's the challenge. Surely.

It is. Yeah. And you know, I think gosh, I don't know how to answer that one. Well, I would say, you know, somebody like Gary Stevenson becoming very popular, at least within political world or people who are interested in politics, is an example of a growing literacy around these sorts of issues. Yes. I think, okay, that's that's a good point. Like, cuz the thing that gives me hope is that this is what most people want and what would benefit most people. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why it becomes a question of of like power and understanding how do, how does power work in these political systems. That's why I think educating people about class consciousness and power is so important because ultimately the, the things standing in the way of progress are the same. They need to apply the, the framework differently to the context in which you're in. But ultimately, it's a question of how do we get policies that the vast majority of people want enacted, right? And when people like Gary Stevenson come along and and like they say some relatively basic things about how inequality works and how wealth is unfairly distributed and how powerful rich people are basically like have the economy by the balls. He's like, blows up. And I love his work and it's, it's just like, I think he's, he's tapped into something that resonates with the vast majority of people, but ultimately, unless you push back against the narrative that like taxation is is bad and that like, you know, I think that the, the right-wing has done such a good job of instilling this narrative of like hard work being the source of their wealth and all of these kind of layers, meritocracy, all of these layers of the neoliberal myth, like you, you won't actually be able to get a population to vote, you know, a new political movement that actually challenges that status quo into office. And so I'm very inspired by his work. And I think that ultimately what he's tapping into is a way to emotionally communicate these ideas to people that doesn't feel too detached or posh or like kind of bureaucratic, but it's just like, no, this is just about getting your wealth back. You, the people of Britain, getting your wealth back from these people who have stolen it from you, right? And I, that ultimately is like the, the situation of most countries in the global north. And it's, uh, willingness to confront that power structure through politics that I think is ultimately required to not only deliver wealth and progress back to the working people in the global north, but also to put governments in place that can actually like take the climate issue seriously and make progress on it in a, in a way that actually like solves the, the global nature of the problem. I like the idea that, you know, this is what people want and it also is what works. You know, there's, we have to believe ultimately that the truth will out.

Yeah. Exactly. Like if this, if this really is what will work, i.e. if you're saying asset ownership is now the way in which you grow your wealth and if you don't have an asset, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to become an asset owner. Then you will just see that inequality worsen. And that's basically, that's the basic premise of of Stevenson's argument, right? And I think that that makes sense. Um, you know, we've been looking into the wealth tax from the perspective of like, how much money would it actually raise? And that's where for me, I, I find it, it can be, I have a bit of a difficulty with the framing because it's sometimes we're saying that we're promising it's going to raise a lot of money and then you look at the Spain example and it didn't raise anywhere near the levels that people are talking about. But that doesn't make it wrong to do. You know, that makes it, what Spain is basically saying there is that we are on a pathway to a wealth tax. We are, we have an aspiration to have a wealth tax, but what we need is also all of that infrastructure, what we were talking about, the international institutions, etcetera, to become robust for it to then actually be enforced. And that to me is a more cogent way of making the political argument. But sometimes what we say is that like, well, you're going to tax billionaires and suddenly society will be fair. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, like this is a really long process that we're talking about, but we need to get, suddenly move, we need to start moving in the right direction, basically.

Alongside the fact, drawing to your point around the politics, it's demonstrating that a government is picking a side and on whose side is it on. Absolutely. As much as there may be holes within a wealth tax or something of that sort, you have to pursue it in order to demonstrate that you are on the side of people who are not the multi-billionaires and millionaires and actually the people who go to work deserve to have some economic representation somewhere. And I think that's almost more important than the money that it raises, at least for now. Yes. Cuz it demonstrates I am on your side.

Exactly. Showing, showing that politicians actually have skin in the game and that they're going to fight for you. And I think that's what's so beautiful about what Mum Donnie is doing in New York City, is like, as as mayor of New York City recently, is that he is, you know, you, you come in with a very progressive platform, like he did, and then you immediately face the realities of how do you actually enforce some of these things. The, he really wanted to, you know, find ways to tax wealthy people, to freeze rents, to make public transportation free. A lot of that stuff is going to be very hard for him to deliver. But probably one of the most effective things he's done is like go out into the street every day and like fix potholes and like fix up apartments that were like behind code and thousands of apartments that he's already gone in and inspected and and and changed, improving like the elevators in public transportation, uh, stations, right? Like this, this constant stream of examples of him getting out into the street and helping people is like almost emotionally as important as whether or not he gets some sort of wealth tax passed in the city.

And it's that building towards the policy through like community building and grassroots like political advocacy that is really what builds the trust that's necessary to get people on board with the policy. But man, New York City has gone so far in the other direction that I'm not surprised that he's struggling to get some sort of like wealth tax implemented and on the city level, it kind of maps to the national level you were talking about. It's like, oh, well, people can move to a different city. I think New York is actually a really cool example though, because there are so many rich people that they don't want to leave because New York is like the, the center of global finance and it's like somewhere that they want to be and so this idea of taxing people's second homes, the pair tax that he's actually very close to getting, uh, getting done, is I think pretty brilliant in terms of like, okay, let's find a little thing that anyone who looks at it from the outside is like, yeah, obviously, like people who have a $40 million mansion as their second home and they don't use it, probably have enough money to pay tax on it, right? Like these sorts of things are, you're, you're making baby steps towards what ultimately should ladder up to like a transformation of the global economic system, but you have to start with what you've got. And it demonstrates these things are workable.

Yes. Exactly. Yeah. I think also just the beneficiary of being a mayoral, right, as well, is that if you can't do it, there is someone that you can pass on sort of the, do you know what I mean? Populism isn't necessarily just a boo. We talk about populism as if it's sometimes, you know, de facto negative. Sorry to interrupt, but it's something interesting about, uh, the conversation here in Britain and in Europe, which is different from the states. Populism is like a bad word here. And it's, because we see ourselves as sensible. Yeah. But it's, but it's not like we're [ __ ] winning right now, is it? Yeah. But I, I think that it, to hear it means like, uh, you know, you're, you're going with like whatever people want to hear and you're just like, kind of, you don't have like a core set of values or something. Is that how you would define? Yeah. Basically, there's no losers. Yeah. Well, in, in the, in the states, I feel like people are, do not have that negative connotation towards populism. We don't like socialism over there. We, I mean, I like it, but the vast majority of people think socialism is a scary word in the US. Whereas I feel like it's over here, it's completely fine to say I'm a socialist and people will be like, ah, right on mate. And then over in the US, people are like, "This guy's crazy. Like, what's he talking about?" But you say you're a populist, and people are like, "Oh, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, that means you have like, people's best interest at heart." So, I think there's a little bit of a translation, gap between the word populism, which again, in the states, people are saying, "We need more economic populism." And I don't think people would say that here in a political campaign.

Well, they wouldn't in Labour. I think Zach Palansky says, "I am an eco-populist," you know. Well, I think, okay, so he's changing that a little bit. Yeah. But the word doesn't really infer that there's an in-between, and I think that's the challenge is because I would argue the British electorate thinks of itself as quite a sophisticated electorate, and it is, and it likes to consider things in between of just who you're advocating for, that such a blanket term like populist, I don't think really people find any attachment in it because there is a, I do believe the electorate here is more nuanced. And so it doesn't carry the same weight. Would you say, pretty?

Well, yeah, I mean, undecided voters at the moment aren't like in the middle track between, you know, left and right, for instance. They have very nuanced views. Um, like people who are considering between voting Green or Labour, or considering Labour or Conservative, or Conservative or Reform. Those, those voters often have, can be bunched together actually, and you can see that they have very diverse kind of nuanced perspectives and stuff, in which case it becomes quite difficult to say, well, what are you appealing towards. I think the, the best way to break it down really is that if you want to win an election in the UK, you have to capture this idea of an aspirational, socially mobile voter. And what's become more difficult for for parties and why you see such fragmentation is because so many people who thought that they were going to get a better life have not been afforded it because of the stagflation that we've been speaking about. In which case, it becomes really difficult to to to shape your message in with their interests in mind because if you're saying like, right, they're just broadly material interest, then you go to a politics like Labour did, which was like, we're just going to grow the economy, and then when you don't do that, then everyone's pissed off with you, right? And we're still Labour people, right? We still believe that there is some kind of middle way to to to sort these problems. In the UK, what's strange, I think, is that your aspirations to a point can be realized, but they don't correlate to any material uplift that they once traditionally associated themselves. So you could be a very well-educated university person, and socially mobile. Exactly. Yeah. And and that's the hypocrisy and challenge that political parties are trying to to address. And I think populists, to a point, provide a very simple answer to all of that, and that's where it doesn't do the same service, I think, it does in the US.

Yeah. And also, just to add, I think no one's really, and this is just true of all voters ever, that honest about what their privileges are. So if you think about like the core Green vote now being people like our age who are university grads who are in insecure housing, yeah, living in the urban centers, um, they're not talking about the fact that like transport and healthcare actually here is really good. Like you can get about easily. If you need to see a doctor, you can. Whereas if you're in the regions and let's say you work a trade, you didn't go to uni, you're not encumbered with loads of student debt. Um, you're actually making decent amount of money, but still you're not feeling fully comfortable and you definitely find it hard to get an ambulance to come by when you need one. And so those two voter groups are never really saying, well, like I've got it good. Both of them have it bad, but in opposite ways. And so the politics then caters to those people. And unfortunately for the left in this country, as with, you know, the case in most countries, the regions are more traditional, they're more conservative, and also they have an outsized influence in the electoral, you know, what we don't have an electoral college, but you know, in the way in which, um, votes are distributed, um, in district representation. And so the left is fighting an uphill battle on this stuff. Which is why I find stuff like China so interesting because they've basically said that economic growth comes from urbanization, right? Yeah. They're saying you got to move out of those places now and participate in this global economy. Um, which is what Britain did in the 18th and 19th centuries with the industrial revolution, right? But what are we doing now in the AI tech revolution of today where people are losing their jobs because of the efficiency gains that are coming from all these systems coming online? There is no center to go to.

For me, the big takeaway of this conversation is that the left-wing project has to be internationalist in its scope. It has to be because we're talking about fighting native isolationist populist ideas, which by the way, are still [ __ ] globalized, right? Like Nvidia was exempt from some of the tariff regime because there is Chinese and US interdependency when it comes to the markets on this stuff. So they are okay with some level of international cooperation. Do you know what I mean? They're happy to do it in service of the market. Why not in service of people?

Yeah, absolutely. I think to the extent that these ideas are helpful for the current context of the politics in Britain, I'm very happy that to to add to that conversation. But I do think that globally, if we don't solve some of these problems in an international way, then I think ultimately, one thing we, we didn't touch on is that like the, the, the operating system we're on is going to just run out of steam and I think there will be like major economic collapse, war, war driven by ecological, uh, you know, degradation and the raising of drawbridges and ultimately the climate crisis, if it doesn't get solved from a communitarian leftist, in a, a communitarian leftist way of like trying to write historical wrongs and, you know, liberate societies that have been under the thumb of the global capitalist class. It will lead to what people are calling eco-fascism, which is this idea that, okay, once ecological collapse is top of people's minds, it's like, okay, how do I protect me and my family? How do we protect the nation state? Raise the drawbridge, no more immigrants, like, and a militaristic approach to the outsider, right? And I think that what we're seeing in the Reform narrative is like the beginning of of that, is the, uh, otherization of the rest of the world. And I think that will only get supercharged by a scarier and scarier environmental situation where it feels like not only are people bringing different cultures, but they're actually taking from our very limited set of resources that we need for the people of the country of Britain, right? So, um, I think that like, I see that writing on the wall in terms of where we're headed and I really, really want to not go there to a, to a, like a fractalized, no more international order, just nations at war with each other over limited resources. And to to avoid that, we need to protect what we have. And we need to actually sustain the earth systems that are, that we've been benefiting from for the entire course of human history. And so, yeah, I, I mean, of course, international solutions are, are very challenging in this, um, day and age. And that's why I say it keeps me up at night because, uh, this, this train is headed towards, what feels like a, a cliff, right? Like, and yeah, we can, we can try to stimulate growth more quickly, but ultimately, it's about how do we prevent, how do we, how do we turn the whole, the whole ship in a different direction before any sort of collapse of the global financial system triggered by ecological collapse that becomes more and more frequent until people can't ignore it anymore. So I know that's not an optimistic note to end on [laughter] at all. Um, but that said, maybe I'll close with this, right? The future that we can build if we turn this ship is actually incredibly beautiful. Like the, the growth of industries that act and, and the, the restructuring of the economy and ownership models towards more worker ownership, more cooperative ownership, building out the solidarity economy. That basically means a better standard of life, a better cleaner living environment, rising standards of living because we're actually valuing the things that deliver well-being to people and not just discarding them because they don't factor into the calculation of how we sum, sum up GDP, which is the way we do things now. Like that future could not only be like better standard of living for everyone, but also it'll be beautiful. Like it will, it will be, I think a much better world than one, the one we have now where we all just feel like we're getting crushed by this machine of constantly rising productivity, falling wages, higher cost of living. Like, it's not like things are going great. And I guess the reason I think that some of these more quote unquote extreme ideas of how do we actually change the whole system are necessary because I don't think we can tweak our way out of this. I think that ultimately tweaks along the margins are going to be, you know, there will be some winners here, there will be some losers there, but it's not going to solve the bigger problem, which is that this whole ship we're on is is destroying the living systems that we depend on for for like sustained life and future generations. And so some would say, "Let's get off this planet and go colonize Mars." We didn't get into that. I don't like that idea at all. But like that, but the reason people are saying that is cuz that's one of the only ways to imagine our way out of this problem. You either have to change the whole system or you have to get off this planet. And I don't think most people are making it off the planet. So I'd say let's focus on Earth and making this world better. And that's going to require what feels like a major political revolution. I think we have a lot of answers from historical leftist movements as to how to do it. But what we need is to build on top of that with something completely new, which again, the ideas are out there, but we just need to somehow muster the political will and and educate people on on what that, what that future looks like. But again, it, it's not like, let's avoid this doomsday. It's actually, I think, what is this beautiful future we're trying to build together and how do we recognize the things that are in the way?