 Webster is a long time member of Ali and always here and a man of great interest. He describes his 80 plus years as he divides it himself into three segments and I liked what he wrote so I'm going to read you directly from his own words. He talks about growing up and being further for his first 22 years of growing up in Burlington. Though he went out of state to attend Oberlin and Fisk as an undergraduate and Michigan State and Hawaii as a post graduate student. Then he embarked on about 40 years of teaching, 30 years in Michigan and 10 years teaching mostly English overseas in Turkey, England, Japan and the US Army and the third portion of his life has been the last 22 years of active retirement and I don't know here as well but just from knowing of him and seeing him around town a very active retirement here in Montpelier including the volunteer tasks and short teaching stints in India and Cambodia. He's currently a widower after 53 years of marriage, father of four and grandfather of six. So I give you Harris Webster. I'm very much working for you. Central Vermont, all of you participants. I've attended very early to understand the presentations during my retirement years. It's not surprising that I have felt more comfortable sitting out there listening to mostly experts or specialists in the past than I am now feeling standing up in front of you as at best a semi-expert specialist. Actually my life I have enjoyed doing quite a few new things. I've been excited as well as nervous to be standing up here doing something new again. I feel confident you believe global warming and climate change are real. In the future world, yes even the current world faces a crisis. Thanks be for the vast majority of scientists who are not only studying that issue but also are clearly articulating that conclusion. I am not here to re-prove their conclusion. On the other hand, I'm not sure you believe limiting material growth on a systemic basis should be or can be one of the most fundamental means to slow down and stop increasing atmospheric emissions because of global warming and climate change. I now have become convinced that slowly but surely limiting economic growth is both the best means and the most neglected approach to lower carbon pollution in our atmosphere. In today's presentation I'm going to try to build a case for that approach. Meadows. The presentation and conclusions today will largely be based on three books and they're up here too. Written by the five following authors who are definitely expert specialists. One book is Limits to Growth. Written by Donella Meadows, Jordan Randers, and Dennis Meadows. The same authors who produced the original landmark Limits to Growth in 1972. That original book and work commissioned by the Club of Rome was the result of a two-year study carried out by an MIT team of 16 international scholars. The original Limits to Growth may be as familiar to many of you because it was translated into 30 languages and read or looked at by an estimated 12 million readers. Donella Meadows was a professor of environmental sciences at Dartmouth. She was also a specialist in system dynamics. She and her husband, a co-author, have lived in Hartland, Vermont. Anybody familiar with them? Actually, Jordan Randers, a Norwegian, was a professor of climate strategy at the B1 Norwegian Business School and spent his life not only in academia but also in business and NGO leadership roles. Dennis Meadows was an American scientist, emeritus professor of systems management at the University of New Hampshire, as well as a professor at MIT where he led the MIT project team of research scholars. Tim Jackson wrote the first and second edition of Prosperity Without Growth, published in 2010 at the University of Surrey in the UK. He was the economics commissioner for the UK Sustainable Development Commission. Kate Rodworth is author of Donut Economics, seven ways to think like a 21st century economist. Did anyone hear her recently on VPR? She has several BAs and an MSc in economics development from Oxford University and is a teacher at Oxford's Environmental Changes too. She has co-written research reports for the United Nations Development Program. Donella, Jordan, and Dennis are primary scientists. Tim and Kate are economists, both of whom have worked with governments. I think it's neat that these authors are from three different generations. I dedicate this presentation to all my authors, especially Donella, who died early in the 21st century, acknowledged by all the other authors as the most dedicated to converting us to the concept limits to growth. Today I will start out by presenting quotes from each of our three resource books concerning their author's general conclusions. Before I do, I will briefly follow another track. I never until about four months ago expected to present or even asked to present an OLE program. What caused this about FACE? I have come to believe that climate change is a serious problem. I worked somewhat seriously on the investment of fossil fuels in my church, city, and state and reducing my ecological footprint. I read about other approaches, including Tim Jackson's first edition, Prosperity Without Growth. I found that idea intellectually interesting, but personally I followed some other track in dealing with this challenge. I was looking for a variety of books to read on my travels last July and tossed in Tim's book. Not even sure I would read it again, but I did. This second reading got me more interested. To short, my story had developed a passion for limiting material growth. I bought the second new edition of Tim's book and the two other books I am reporting on today. As I was reading them over the following months, I got more and more excited and passionate about limiting growth as an important approach to fighting global warming. A truly conversion experience. So when Bob announced that the program would be developing this year's offerings, I didn't hesitate and submitted a proposal and was a little bit surprised that they accepted. Perhaps the passion came through, perhaps the concept came through, but I do offer the passion as a positive trait for being an Ollie speaker. I smile at myself, a former secondary school teacher who retired back to Vermont and is now trying to undermine the orthodox unquestioned assumption of most economists and politicians that there must be growth to solve our world's problems. Somehow my memory flashed back to a story I heard of some so-called fool in the Middle Ages trying to destroy the idea of heaven. I smile thinking of this fool trying to kill the idea of exponential growth on earth. You'll never know what passion will make you do. Back again to my plan of quoting directly from all three books with only very minor editing to illustrate my central theme. It quotes from the first chapter of Limits to Growth, the 30-year update entitled Overshoot. Quote one. To overshoot means to go too far, to go beyond limits accidentally. The three causes of overshoot are always the same. First there's growth, acceleration, and rapid change. Second, sometimes some sort of limit or barrier beyond which the growing system may not safely go. And third, there is a delay or mistake in perception and responses to strive to keep the system within limits. Most overshoots cause little harm. Occasionally there arises the potential for catastrophic overshoot. Growth in the world's population and material economy confronts humanity with this possibility. It is the focus of this book. Quote two. Absolute growth rates are greater now than ever before in the history of our species. Growth has been the dominant behavior in the world's socioeconomic system for only about 200 years. Individuals support growth-oriented policies because they believe growth will give them ever-increasing welfare. Government's growth has a remedy for just about every problem. In the rich world, growth is believed to be necessary for employment, upward mobility, and technology. In the poor world, growth seems to be the only way out of poverty. Many believe growth is required to provide the resources necessary for protecting and improving the environment. Government and corporate leaders do all they can to produce more and more growth. Growth can solve some problems, but it causes others because there's limits to the earth's resources, minerals, and energy to produce goods, and to the ability of the earth's sinks to absorb the pollution and the waste of goods. Quote three. Quote by Donel Almetos, actually. A quote which makes me both smile and think. Growth is one of the stupidest purposes ever invented. We should always ask, growth for what? Why? For whom? Who pays the cost? How long can it last? And what is its cost to the planet? And how much growth is enough? Let's sink in. I agree, Donel, all growth is not equal. Okay, now quotes from the second edition of Prosperity Without Growth's first chapter entitled The Limits of Growth. Quote one. What can prosperity possibly look like in a finite world with limited resources and a population expected to see 10 billion people within a few decades? Do we have any vision about prosperity in such a world? The prevailing vision is to cast prosperity in economic terms and to call for continuing rising incomes. Simple logic suggests industrial activity must at some point be bounded. Global economic output is now almost 10 times bigger than it was in 1950, and most of you can remember 1950. If it continues to expand at the same average rate, which almost all economists and politicians so for, the world economy at 2100 would be 20 times bigger than today. And due to the math, it is a staggering 200 fold increase in economic scale since 1950. Quote two. From the Stockholm Planet Boundaries Report, for the first time in history, an experienced group of physical scientists from around the world carry on an audit of nine critical biophysical boundaries. In their second report in 2015, they concluded that for four of these boundaries, current levels of economic activity already lie beyond safe operating space. One of them atmospheric boundaries. I add if global warming doesn't get us, there are other boundaries out there. Quote three. Another smile quote. Tim Quote's Kenneth Boldings statement. Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. Okay, quotes from the last chapter in casebook entitled Be Agnostic About Growth. Quote number one. No country has ever ended human deprivation without a growing economy. And no country has ever ended ecological degradation with one. Contemplating this question takes us to a new level of thinking, rethinking growth. The 20th century bequeathed to us economists who intend we need to grow whether or not that policy makes us thrive. And we are now living in a social and ecological fallout of that inheritance. 21st century economists, especially those in high income countries, now face a challenge that their predecessors did not have to contemplate. To create economies that make us thrive whether or not they grow. This calls for transforming the financial, political and social structures which have caused most of us to expect demand and depend on growth. Quote two. Here's a fun game. Ask an economist to draw a picture of the long term path of economic growth. It may sound extraordinary, but having adopted GDP growth as the de facto goal of economic policy, textbooks never actually depict how it's expected to evolve over the long term. Most economists would start and end with an upward curve. There are two options for the long term beyond the end. It goes up forever or comes to a stop. It might come to a stop in several ways. Crash or along the line of limits or kind of fall and have kind of a muddling through. For the mainstream economists, the first option is awkward. The second option is unconscionable. Unchecked exponential growth shoots up to infinity far quicker than we imagined. Nuclear physicist Al Bartlett warned, the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential factor. Quote three. Currently, most developed nations, ecological footprints, already far exceed the Earth's capacity. We take four planets to have everyone live like we do in the US. Does this suggest that high income countries should give up on the pursuit of GDP growth and accept it might not be possible? This is not a comfortable question to answer. Once final quote is the casebook comes from Upton Sinclair, who famously noted, it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding. I will now read some quotes from critics of the limits to real thesis. You can judge them for yourselves, but they may be frown, not smile. Critic John Simon, economic professor and Kato Institute member, said, material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people in most countries for most of the time indefinitely. I like this one better. Ten referred to a statement by Martin Wolf, respected chief economics reporter for the Financial Times of London. If there are truly limits for carbon emissions, there may be a limit to growth. But if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings in our world fall apart. Intense distributional violence between and within nations must then reemerge. Indeed, they are already emerging within and among countries. Martin's view of GDP growth is that growth is still necessary, but no longer possible. Martin admits he finds that position hard to hold. Here's a critical casebook from a conservative think tank whose name I've lost. The role of economic growth in power of pot property rights to provide the means and institutional structure to encourage better management of resources is a better story than Kate's robbers of big government. I will also respond to many other critics who ridiculed our author's books for wanting us all to live like hermits or aesthetics. They just haven't read these books. All our authors assert that humans can flourish and limit growth at the same time, and even that limiting material growth might help grow non-material growth. As some of you know, my hobby is writing tonkots. Here are some to summarize this statement. Our earth has limits. Will we accept them and learn to live within them? Or will Mother Earth show us the truth the hard way? In the past, humans have abused their surroundings, but never until this age have we stressed all earth, small suffering men, what now? Before I conclude this first section, and after the first section we'll have some questions and commentaries. I want to briefly refer to how our authors look at material goods and services. They want to limit material growth for earth's sake, but they highly value material goods and services as necessary for all living things. They know material goods and services are absolutely essential in providing adequate food, children, clothing, health care, and other basics of life. Many, if not most, world experts believe that ending poverty is very possible if that would be a top priority for economic and political institutions, and reject the poor will always be with us truism. Further, our authors backed up by social scientists know material goods can be used for more than survival, and our authors spent a lot of words thinking about how goods used properly can make us more than just survive but also flourish. Our authors make one other important point about material goods that I must mention. If the world did distribute goods humanistically, as mentioned, the world could end poverty. It has been historically demonstrated that poverty leads to higher birth rates, so ending poverty should decrease population growth, one of the three drivers of emission growth. Others, like George, come out there to continue building the case for slowing population growth. Another talker. I do not damn goods. We could not live without them. We can all treasure them, but there are means, not ends, and we should not worship them. As mentioned, I believe you all accept that global warming and climate change are real and threaten our future. I believe that most of you, at least in theory, can understand the implied truth underlying each of our sources, that successfully limiting material growth on a systemic basis throughout the world would be a logical way to restore Earth's health, since all goods and even all services use up resources and produce waste. I hope our expert authors have at minimum identified the dilemmas of growth and limits, and set up some doubts that there can be unlimited growth on a finite Earth. I've already heard some argue that living growth is too difficult a task for humans, and all we can do is adapt. I understand that argument, but I'll answer that belief with a doubt. I'll answer that doubt with a belief. There are possibilities for limited growth. Ronald Reagan's oft-quoted phrase maintains there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder, ironically. That phrase was used by Reagan to explain why there was no limits on economic growth. But intelligence, imagination, and wonder as non-material qualities have few limits, and thus can be used for solutions to limit material growth and help keep humanity flourishing. Also, to think about it, adapting itself will result in a tremendous increase in carbon emissions. As a teacher, I like to experiment a little bit, so I'm going to interrupt my talk a few times for either questions or commentaries. And actually, I think I even like commentaries better. Please keep your questions or commentaries as short as three tankas or ninety-three syllables. Just joking. So, any questions on comments and main team? I am going to talk about the howl question later. How to do it? So, don't ask questions about howl. Otherwise, I'll take questions or commentaries for maybe five to ten minutes. Okay, Mary Alice. I just wanted to call your attention to George Pub's article in the Times-Argus today. And the quote here is, anyone who believes in unlimited growth is either a bad man or an economist. We both have the same source. I just thought you'd read it, if you haven't. Yeah. Have you seen the documentary movie called Growth Busters? I haven't. I haven't, but I just had four months to do so. It was shared at the Craspery Energy Committee meeting a year or so ago. And it's about, it's a mayoral candidate out in Colorado Springs. And he starts out with that exponential growth hourglass thing about, like, how, you know, we're at the top half. And so, whatever's going to happen is the fact to happen now. And it's got to be the reversal of what's been going on all along. And so it's very interesting. It's almost amusing. He walks around to campaign with a little vacuum cleaner on his back. And he's really, I mean, Colorado Springs is fully into growth and this kind of thing. So it's a good movie if you can find it somewhere. Good. I'd like to see it. I do think, from my limited experience with the environmental movement, is that they don't stress this particular strategy as much as smaller. And not very great too, when you both. But I do think this approach of tacking growth is so established that many people are afraid to do so. Other comments? Yeah. I think it's really established by people who want to, you know, to keep making their big money. And a lot of people, it's not true that most people, a lot of people would rather stay at a smaller level. No. I think that's really driven by greed and the people that want the big money. I think that concept is driven by that. I agree with you. I think ordinary people has more willing to accept that thesis than people, commentators. I very seldom hear any discussion on it on the media or any politician. I'll talk about that later, actually. Anybody else? And growth and capitalism relies on growth. And I don't know where I'm going with it except to say that it would be hard for a lot of people in this country too. No, it's going to be tough. Yeah. And we'll be talking about that a little in the second half. Yeah. I'm not sure I heard this, but recently I heard a reference to the reason we're so aware of gas prices. Gas prices is because there is huge science all over the place that we see that those numbers. And so we pay attention to that. And we don't think of other factors in inflation, but stretching that out a little bit. Almost in every newscast they're talking about growth. The growth today. So we hear that multiple times every single day. We don't hear anything like what you're talking about at all. I agree. There should at least be a discussion of this. Just an assumption. I could give you any examples because as you go home listen even more. You hear those two terms. Yeah, I agree. Okay, I think it'll be the last one here. Yeah. We'll ask the later questions later on. There are luckily people teaching environmental issues and environmental science today. We're looking at economics this way. And particularly the failure of economists to calculate the cost of pollution when we look at GDP. Yeah. Okay, great. We're going to go on a little bit. In the second half of today's program I'll present thinking about the house related to reducing carbon emissions in our atmosphere. I'll rely again primarily upon the same resource books and summarize a few of their many observations as well as insert some commentary. When almost all people discuss how can we decrease carbon emissions, they tend to mention only one fundamental solution of new technology to decrease carbon intensity or the weight of carbon emissions per dollar of GDP. One of the three major theoretical ways to reduce emissions. A pair of phrasing David Brooks, one of my favorite commentators, when asked the key how question, he said in essence, I'm worried and think that the only hope for dealing with climate change will have to be major technological breakthroughs. Those seeing technology as a solution are right in the sense that technical improvements can reduce carbon emissions intensity. Our five authors and I hope for technological breakthroughs but we argue that the world should be realistic and see the difficulties of only relying on technology and rejecting the other two fundamental ways as impractical. I found following mathematical formula useful, relevant and fairly simple to understand. When you add these three determinants of total carbon emissions, world production, world population and world carbon intensity in terms of increased or decreased percentages, you should be able to predict the total weight of carbon compounds in our atmosphere. At least this was the case between 1990 and 2017. In that period world population and world production both coincidentally increased 1.3% per year and world carbon intensity did decrease but only by 0.6% as a result of technical progress for an overall 2% increase in carbon emissions or, due to the math, 68% increase in carbon emissions over those 27 years. Technology is important that the world will have to decrease carbon intensity by 8% every year to keep carbon compounds from increasing. To reinforce that analysis, Mr. Grove uses an almost identical formula and I think George mentioned this one too, impact or carbon impact equals population times affluence times technology. If there are just these three determinants of carbon emissions, why not attempt to try to reduce all three determinants, not just one? Let's ask what the respected scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change think. They stated, we simply can't grow or invent technology to solve global warming, end quote. I can present another quote to arguments why we can't rely on technology but I don't have time to do so so I'll let a talk summarize some of it. Decades of green growth will raise carbon emissions before reductions set in, during which unintended happenings may increase them, for example wars etc. Conclusion, in building the case to limit material growth, we continue to be dangerous to put our marbles in the technology basket. Okay, time to move on. No one disputes learning how to stop, slow or even manage carefully a slow climate growth will be tough and take time. But human ingenuity is not limited to creating new inventions. My first argument is that humanity did survive tens and tens of thousands of years living essentially in a minus no or slow growth pattern. So it is certainly possible during this affluent age to live that way again. Second, yes, attitudes have to be changed. Social systems have to be redesigned. There are examples, though, and they worked. And they did change and be redesigned. In the late 20th century, the ozone hole caused by CFC emissions became a serious global challenge. The world governments and world businesses fairly quickly changed attitudes and policies to deal with that global challenge. They didn't totally solve the problem, but they did greatly reduce CFC emissions and my charcoal here, which I'll explain a little bit later to you afterwards, says at this stage they had not crossed the limits. Another example from another setting of attitudes and institutions changing quite quickly happened recently involving the LBGT community. You can make a good case that attitudes and systems can change faster than implementing major technology. At minimum again, we should not disregard limiting GDP growth as a partial solution. So let's look at some sample hows. We will start by taking a brief look at how our economists and economic systems must adapt to deal with climate change. The main purpose of economic systems is to consume the goods that produce the emissions. One big problem of changing that system is that there are few democratic checks on our economic decisions. The powerful owners, board members, and large shareholders of businesses have a strong vested interest to continue exponential growth. The mainstream media is more and more a business with a vested interest in advertising. Remember up to Sinclair's quote. It's true that there's a small group of rebel, ecological, and humanistic economists questioning the growth assumption. Also on the positive side, some competent business people do look farther to the future than the next quarterly dividend. Interestingly, in the past, some mainstream economic thinkers did not believe in exponential growth. Listen to these names. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mills, John Maynard Keynes, accepted the truth that there are limits to growth, and the latter two looked forward to a stationary economy. Kate's book for radically new 21st century thinking about our economy and the part of economists, business people, politicians, all of us, starts out in a book with stories of 21st century students, economics, and rare rebellion against their professors. Here are just a few of the many ideas the rebel Kate and her rebel colleagues are proposing. Number one, economists as a profession should adopt an ethics. Kate noted that medical professions, Hippocratic oath, do no harm, might not be a bad start. But I think that Tim's idea that economists should serve the community as well as serve the self-interest of individuals would be a good ethics standard. The economists argue that assumptions, their assumptions are value free. Stop me from laughing at the idea of rational man deciding on the basis of self-interest is value free. Number two, you want to con us in our models to stress looking at the big or macro picture of how economic behavior affects the earth, society, the commons, households, not just micro interactions between businesses and consumers. Three, they propose a better balance between large centralized efficient productive and machine based businesses and small decentralized, resilient, and high labor based businesses. The advocates are studying more carefully the nature's pattern of growth rather than our current industrial patterns. Four, they propose ways that economic systems can decrease inequality, reduce pollution, and eliminate poverty rather than assuming growth will solve these problems. I'm more than proud. I get angry about the do nothing, let the market work attitudes as inequality seemingly grows and pollution and poverty continue to high levels. Almost all the growth goes to increase inequality anyway. But none of our authors deny that the market system does something as well. I think Tim's final observation will be a good summary of the 21st century thinking. A free market approach can be an important means to meet our earth and thus humanity's needs. But humanity should not be a means to meet the self-interest of the fortunate few. I consider our moderate radicals who agree that the critics of limited growth are partially right that radical immediate revolutionary discarding our current economic system could be also a disaster leading to the same crash that exponential growth will produce. Yes, we need expert economist surgeons to heal our planet's ill, dills. But we patients know that second pinions are essential when the first opinion, in this case, stressing exponential growth, has created and will create major problems. So Tonka, can growth go on forever? That seems a stupid question. Adam Smith said no. Are cons today stupid or lazy? You're siding or fore siding? Okay, I'm going to break again for question period. We had really two topics, the role of technology and dealing with economic systems. Again, glad you're commentaries, as well as questions. I'll ask you. Oh, I'm sorry. I was just thinking about the role of technology and, in fact, what I think people can solve are problems. We're saying that technology will solve what is a social problem. These are social ills. Our ideas, ethical ills, moral ills, they're not really scientific technology. I agree very much. What do you think about all these people that seem to be wanting us to move to another planet? They try to go out into space. We can add that picture of who can madden them and so forth. If you think about that, think about the growth that's going to take us out into space. A couple billion years might be able to try to hire, but I just didn't set out to another planet. There is no plan for you. There are new measures, those product index. There's a series of measures people are working. Some people are talking about actually Fariz Akhari actually had a section on how to measure better. That's one of the solutions. There's a lot of economic solutions. The book Donate Economics, there's a lot of them. Tim's book has a lot. Our money systems, how we deal with investment, the balance between services and goods. Services don't produce quite as many carbon emissions as goods do. My Christmas daughter and I said to her, buy a concert or something rather than do a cell phone or something. We'll go on and talk about politics a little bit. Let's move on to look at how our political system needs to change. A system in which the idea of material growth is deeply embedded. I still have hopes that our politicians might adapt to a world of ecological limits more quickly than our economists. In the New York Times poll, when asked the question between environmental protection and economic growth, what do you think is most important? Any guesses out there? Well, I know you don't have to guess. I'm just going to take this inside your head. See if your guess is like this. 85% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans say environmental protection is more important than economic growth. 85% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans say environmental protection. However, I know of no politician to date, and that includes Bernie Sanders types, who had the option to question the orthodox worship of material growth. It's more a third rail than social security. Politicians are very short-term focused. On the other hand, the positive side. Politicians still do this occasionally and adapt to public opinion faster than to economists. And we ordinary folk are more familiar and effective influencing governments and we are influencing corporations. So what's our job? We just have to wake up the 68% for throwing environmental protection to get on the ball. Let's look at some intense general thoughts about political systems. Many philosophers, even Socrates, saw that the purpose of government has been to balance individual freedom against the common good. Anthropologists say societies capable of protecting social behavior have a better chance of survival. There's a second balancing act that government and society performs. To prevent ourselves from trading away our long-term well-being for short-term pleasures, there are a whole set of societies and governments committing devices that moderate our present short-term desires and foster protecting our futures. Such as savings accounts, marriage, government laws such as social security. I think most of you would agree with Tim's assessment that today's governing is not in a healthy condition, but in a conflicted one. Too deeply influenced by narrow vested interests of the wealthy and other powerful groups rather than the interests of the common man and society as a whole. Tim argues that a healthy state is attentive to changing social environmental conditions, but also supportive of traditional institutions, fundamental values including providing safety nets for basic human needs and supporting basic non-material needs, beauty, knowledge, individual rights, and last and probably first, assuring a sustainable birth. Tim asks, is the vision of a powerless, conflicted, inefficient government the only one to be able to us? Or is it possible to conceive a renewed, ruleable for the state? Historically governments often have functioned best when they faced a major challenge that requires long-term solution, such as destroying fascism, containing communism, and taking on a sputnik challenge, etc. Could you imagine meeting these past challenges just by individual efforts? What better goal for a government to replace atmospheric pollution and slow down its most harmful results? Tim describes broad policies governments should develop to reduce carbon emissions. One, carbon should establish ecological limits based on the latest scientific knowledge and enact legislation to encourage and enforce them. There have been some beginning efforts to do this globally and only, but still limited. Governments should prioritize fix the economics, not the other way around, as today when business lobbyists call the tune like they did weakening regulations to prevent another bust. Three, governments should counter overhoming consumerism by restricting and countering private advertising to buy goods over the public airways. Tim said, advertisements persuade us to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to make impressions that won't last on people we don't care about. Personally, advertising, popping up everywhere, on my computer, on my TV set, everywhere, on a daily basis makes me almost as angry as inequality. Now, none of our authors is pushing for centralized authoritarian national government becoming the economic system. These governments have been disastrous to the environment and human flourishing. Our authors call for a robust debate as well as experimentation over the best ways governments can help and not hurt. But our authors do see a healthy goal, healthy role, excuse me, for government and all social institutions including private enterprise at all levels, local, national, and global to protect the earth. We'll talk again. Throughout World War II, thanks to government, I saw folks consuming less to save our world from peril. Could that happen now? Okay, I'm going to combine looking at a few social systems and institutions whose core reason for existence has nothing much to do with material growth. Education and non-religious spiritual groups, arts and cultural groups, educational institutions, and others which have little vested interest in promoting material growth. In fact, I would argue they have the vested interest in opposing material growth. Time and energy are sterile sum categories. And if people spend so much time and energy producing and consuming goods, there's less time and energy for the non-material life. For example, I hypothesize that our economic systems all encompassing stress and growth and self-interest is one reason organized religion has been declining. Ancient Hebrew prophets did see man as a false god and they angrily called out these false gods. Our authors did spend some time on how these non-material social systems are an important part of a flourishing society. Perhaps they neglected the positive rule that their leadership and lay supporters can play in the battle against man and the idea of unlimited growth. A little talk, huh? The newest thing to take, who would value it more than self-esteem, friendship, concerts, or sunsets if there weren't advertising? Okay, any comments on politics or other social systems? How would they all have to change? I think we're never going to get people in the United States to go down to a one... You say it takes four earths, or five from five earths for them to live like an American. Either way, it's too much. If you're down to one earth, you have to live like in Africa or a very primitive society. Maybe the trick is to reduce it down to a West European approach, like two earths, and it's not going to be great. They live in the UK and not live deprived, and they don't use as much energy as we do. The difference to the developing world and the developed world and what role each has to play is certainly different. And I think I've heard people say we can't expect the developing world to forego all the benefits of consumer goods. There needs to be some thinking about transfers of wealth, but also some thinking that they won't have to have a different strategy than we do. The developed world is the one that I think is most able to reduce material growth. And it's a tough issue. There's no question about it. And I haven't spent much time on that particular. I have a relationship with the global affairs. There's my passion before this one, but this talk does not really deal with that complicated issue. But some of the more books, these three books up here, since I'm looking at them, are the three books I do my dues on, and I have a lot more detail in them. And I'll say right now, I have them up here in a free library which you can take out and give to friends or return to me whatever you want. And after the program's over, I suggest you come up and look. I'll go over a minute here and take a little bit more right toward the end. Can you say that? I just want to say, first of all, thank you for talking to me. It's really hard when it comes down to what you were just applying, Michael. The individual having to change something about this or her own behavior. The talk always seems to generate, well, the government must do this and the business must do that. Try to get a friend of yours if you're not one of them yourself, who loves to travel. And try telling that person every time they get in a plane, they are ruining the plan. And they will say, oh, but I have to go because I love to travel or I have to, I always wanted to see this event. We make decisions every day that's just, your author would have said hypocrisy. I don't know if that's true. Actually, this I have a slightly different perspective than some people. Now I try to reduce my, personally, my input. But to me, it's the systems that have to change. I refuse to not see my family. In fact, I mentioned this later in the note. I will reduce it and I'll ask the question, is it sufficient in excess? I think you need to have a role to play in persuading somebody else. That's why I'm trying to persuade you by getting these books. And so it is very useful. And I think locally, it's just as important as globally. I think we can't neglect anything. But to make us all look like, go back to the aesthetic or Herman stage, I don't think everyone's going to do that. Everyone has decided themselves and I encourage them to do it. But my stress is really changing the economic system, changing the political system. If I do something, then advertisements or all these cruise ships or something like that, I don't go on a cruise and then there's million cruise ship advertisements. I go on a cruise once a while, but I'm going to limit them. And I don't think the whole results, the total results will change unless there's more stress and systemic. But I'm not denying the important role in the individual plays. That's a good issue to debate, but that's where you come down. Yeah. I just wanted to add for people who maybe don't know you well that you are an example of that by not driving. Right. You walk everywhere and therefore you're a great businessman, too. Well, that's because I'm happy you're doing that. Like you have good friends. Yeah. I wanted to get married. I wanted to get something else that you told me about a few years ago. The magazine, Yes. And I have the latest edition out here on the rack with the magazine and it's all about dirt and what you can do with dirt. And it's all about Native Americans and some of these other things that we just don't talk about. Yeah. Native Americans had this good story in one of these books about the Native Americans and the Western fur traders raised the prices of the furs, expecting them to get more furs. And the Indians brought fewer furs. Native Americans brought fewer furs. Is this sufficient? We have just as much money with fewer furs as we had before. And so ask yourself a sufficiency question, I think, is a fun thing to do. Coming into play on the voting around people's opinions about their garage in Montpelier. I think there's elements to that. I know a lot. Our local churches think you're expanding. I think we want some things to expand. Some of the non-patriot things. I think the issues you have to decide one by one, issues. It doesn't mean all of us go equally or all of us go down equally. We have to select. Obviously, we want to grow electric cars more than carbon gas cars. There's green roads. I don't object to green roads. I object to it being the only solution. And it has its limits, that's all. There's a lot of thinking to do with that question. Last question, everybody, go on. I've had a second. Oh, just a comment that people throw that thing out about, oh, we got to go back to living like hermits. I mean, that really scares so many people. And it's really silly because people can choose. You don't have to go back to living with never traveling, never doing this, never doing that. People can choose. They could say, how about 70%, I'm going to moderate things. So I'll take two trips in a lifetime versus 20. I think that's used to scare people away from cutting down on things because the people in the money system want to keep making that money and selling you those silly products and all that. So I think people should be careful. You know, shoot down people that are saying, oh, you're saying go back to living like a hermit. I don't think it's saying that at all. I'm not sure I can interrupt you. I think that's where advertising, we're all brainwashed by that sort of thing. It's what? Brainwashing by all the advertisers. Yeah, it's good. Come on. You can ask some questions at the very end after you hit refreshments, I'll be here, but I have one final segment, even though I'm crested a little late. I want this presentation to be more than a three books report. I will add a segment focused on a few of my personal experiences, thoughts, and attitudes. I experienced all of World War II and no doubt many of you also recall those times. There were times when government restricted consumerism. I never enjoyed so much receiving a consumer's good as my victory bike, and although I can't say I enjoyed leading the victory garden, I value the lessons of leading. I do remember a sense of satisfaction in contributing to efforts to meet the challenges in those times. Collecting waste paper and scrap metal and this fun and rationing didn't seem a problem to me. I remember many acts of kindness of parents feeding tramps and taking home soldiers for meals. I hope today's world soon realizes the challenge of global warming without having a pro-harper type event, but I hope our government will play a big role and that our individual selves, especially in the developed world, will consume less as ways to meet the challenge of these times. Perhaps we older folks can communicate our learnings from earlier experiences to our growth-obsessed adult, economist, politicians, and consumers. Next issue. During my retirement, I read some Vermont history. Did you know that between 1860 and 1960, Vermont's population did not grow? And probably there are most did not grow much either. I have concluded that 100-year period of low or no growth is one reason Vermont is so attractive today. The doubling of growth since 1960 has its benefits to foster many of today's environmental problems and some ugliness as well. I'm afraid Vermonters, many Vermonters do not see the connections between that growth and the integrity of our Vermont landscape. Fortunately, there are some Vermonters who argue for a better, not a bigger Vermont. I've lived outside the United States for about eight years and learned a lot. I already stripped myself to just one relevant experience. In my four stints in Japan, I first observed the boom and bust period of the Japanese economy. In the stock market after a tremendous boom, boom was followed by a big bust. The stock market falling 50% and never has to be covered last I've heard. But I also saw in her about research real hardship then. However, in the latter three stints, I observed a period stagnation or no growth, which world economists moaned about. I thought Japan was so bad at no growth. Well, personally, I cannot recall being aware of anything but a well-functioning and even prosperous society after the initial shock. This may be explained as why I don't fear stagnation. If I were a young social science scholar, I'd love to study the social effects of stagnation versus the effects of boom and bust. For these past few months, I've fantasized on new ways to limit growth. Mostly for fun, perhaps for comic relief from my prepping for today, and indirectly driving my point home. How about the media, using the public airways, to point out in our weather reports the tonnage of carbon emissions dumped in our atmosphere that day? Why not have a congressional climate office estimate the global warming effects of all the bills brought to the floor of Congress? Why not have climate change labels on products listing the percent of non-recyclable resources used to manufacture and the percent of non-recyclable waste products that would need dumping? My favorite fantasy is that whenever any of you years or weeks about low growth, slowing growth, for example, on the stock market, please smile and imagine me jumping for joy, and vice versa. This comes back to look at Bob's question. Recently in my retirement years, I consumed a little less, but I'm very happy knowing non-material things are more important than material goods. I know I could consumption a lot more, but I have limits also. I will not give up using some goods and services to help me personally grow and maintain relationships with family and friends engaged in my community and experienced nature. I plan to use the concept of sufficacy as I said before to help deal with my personal choices. I plan to spend more time working on to affect systemic change than personal change. I'm not encouraging you to adopt my particular strategy of living in a sustainable society. I'm simply asking you to think further on this question. How will you respond to the dangers of exponential growth? I was going to conclude my talk summarizing the main points of strategy, the Levenster growth thesis contained in the last chapter of Levenster growth. I agree with this strategy anyone who wants to promote any movement to benefit society. Excellent. That I thought, you deserve the chance to read the original works, not my summaries. However, the 12 pages of text way too long to read here as I'm already past the schedule. So my plan C has been to print out copies for you to take home and use about. It was written by these scientists who admitted their discomfort on a scientific basis. Scientists who had struggled for 30 years to kill the idea of material growth but who acknowledged they had largely failed. They must have felt that a new strategy was needed and chose to conclude their book with it. It was for me the most inspiring 12 pages of the entire book and I encourage you to pick up copies of those 12 pages of the materials table. In fact, I'll leave this point that I've leaned on for most of this presentation and briefly describe the other materials, most of which are meant to be taken home. The prosperity of the growth book and I'll leave, I've talked about it so much. There's one excerpt about economics we might be interested in. This is the list of growth book and I have both the 12 page copies and also this is sort of interesting. It talks about how we know we are in overshoot. For example, after growing chaos and natural systems, natural disasters, one of it. I mean, that's evident, but they predicted this. Then I have if anybody is interested to participate in a to grow a network to start networking about this issue, sign your name here. This is an art of your time you might have seen. Time to pack is one of the better articles I've seen. I haven't seen it, you might want to put that up. This is a, I just put down a few ideas I've written four letters so far I'd like to write more. Candidates running for president or to our delegation. These are the three pictures I didn't have any power pointer photographs so I figured I had to have something. These are two concepts of them. Need percent of dollars packages. Over here we have art and sewing natural, ecological, commercial people. We want this to go up we want this to go down. And this is a wonderful model which I'll explain to you that when you come up after the program. The model of the donor outside minute is nature first limits. Inside minute, social foundations that we all need, like food and hunting and then measure where we're at oversheat or where we are under sheat and so forth. And I'll give my last two revolutions. Let's leave the industrial let's join the sustainable replace love of lots of stuff with love of planet. All things have lots of limits even above the earth. And those who accept that truth will find contentment. Those who do not, those who don't are ill-fated. And now we're the last page. Are there limits in heaven and in growth? I'm not a fan of heaven but I would prefer that it have limits. And last and most important thank you all for coming today and thank the program committee for letting me share my passions during refreshments wonderful refreshments that Neil brings I'll be over at the tour table to answer further questions and hear further comments so enjoy your refreshments.