Degrowth, food and agriculture—Part 6 — Bill Mitchell

This is Part 6 of a series on Deep Adaptation, Degrowth and MMT that I am steadily writing. I have previously written in this series that there will need to be a major change in the composition of output and the patterns of consumption if we are to progress towards a sustainable future. It will take more than cutting material production and consumption. We have to make some fundamental shifts in the way we think about materiality. The topic today is about consumption but a specific form – our food and diets. Some readers might know that there has been a long-standing debate across the globe on whether a vegetarian/vegan diet is a more sustainable path to follow than the traditional meat-eating diet. Any notion that the ‘meat’ industry is environmentally damaging is vehemently resisted by the big food corporations. Like anything that challenges the profit-seeking corporations there is a massive smokescreen of misinformation created to prevent any fundamental change. New research, however, makes it clear that we can achieve substantial reductions in carbon emissions by abandoning meat products in our diets and the gains are disproportionately biased towards the richest nations. I have long argued that I find a fundamental contradiction in those who espouse green credentials and advocate dramatic behavioural shifts to deal with climate change while a the same time eating meat products. The recent research supports that argument. So Greenies, give up the steaks and the chickens and get on your bikes and head to the greengrocer and start cooking plants....

It looks to me like any serious attempt to address climate change through lifestyle changes and especially anything that is perceived as reducing the standard of living is DOA unless government mandates it. This would be extremely unpopular and probably politically suicidal so it is unlikely to happen and if it happens it is unlikely to stick across elections when the new measure begin to bite. 

In addition, business is opposed to anything that reduces profits. 

Furthermore, without international cooperation, the level of change required is beyond reach and at present international cooperation is off the table as countries compete for resources to maintain lifestyle and developing countries to increase the living standard as well.

One way to address issues like climate change, pollution that are all externalities is to impose true cost accounting so that market prices reflect true cost inclusive of externalities. This would act like a tax in dampening demand but it would be selective based on market prices. There are also challenges in the way of such an approach and the same forces would work to render it ineffective.

What would it take to surmount such obstacles. Probably disaster threatening civilization as a wake-up call. Predictions of looming disaster is not doing it yet.
 
William Mitchell - Modern Monetary Theory
Degrowth, food and agriculture – Part 6
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia