How To Invest In A Sustainable Future

There are other ways of doing things.

we have cashed out prosperity almost literally in terms of money

and economic growth and we've grown our
economy so much

that we now stand in a real danger

of undermining hope running down resources, cutting down rain forests

spilling oil into the Gulf Mexico

changing the climate

and the only thing that has actually
remotely slowed down the relentless rise

of carbon emissions over the last two to
three decades is recession

and recession of course isn't exactly

a recipe for hope either so we're caught in
a kind of trap

it's a dilemma of growth we can't live
with it we can't live without it

but I want to concentrate

on the role of investment in seeking

out novelty because it turns out that
human beings

have something of an appetite for novelty

we love new stuff, new material stuff for sure but also new ideas

new adventures new experiences

but the materiality matters too

because in every society that
anthropologists have looked at

materials stuff operates as a kind of a
language, a language

of goods, a symbolic language that we
used to tell each other stories

stories for example, about how important
we are

status driven conspicuous consumption

thrives from the language of novelty

Adam Smith, two hundred years ago
spoke about

out desire for a life without shame

in his day what that meant was a linen shirt

today well you still need the shirt but
you need the hybrid car, the HDTV

two holidays a year in the Sun, the netbook
an iPad

the list goes on. Even if we don't want
them

we need to buy them because if we don't
buy them the system crashes

Who are we?

Are we these novelty-seeking hedonistic
selfish individuals?

Or might we actually occasionally be

something like the self depicted in
Rembrandt's

lovely sketch here

there is a tension, a tension between

self regarding behaviors and other
regarding behaviors, and these tensions

have deep evolutionary roots, so selfish
behavior is

adaptive in certain circumstances, fight
or flight

but other-regarding behaviors are
essential to

our evolution as social beings

and perhaps even more interesting from
our point of view another tension

between novelty

seeking behaviors and tradition

or conservation; novelty is adaptive when
things are changing and you need to

adapt yourself

tradition is essential to lay down the
stability to raise families and form

cohesive

social groups so here all a sudden

we're looking at a map of the human
heart and it reveals

to us suddenly the crux of the matter;
what we've done is we've created economies

we've created systems which systematically
privilege

encourage one narrow quadrant

of the human soul and left the others

unregarded

and in the same token the solution
becomes clear because this

isn't therefore about changing human
nature; it isn't

in fact about curtailing possibilities; it is about

opening up

it is about allowing ourselves the freedom
to become

fully human

recognizing the depth and the breadth of
the human psyche

and building institutions to protect
Rembrandt's

fragile 'altruist within'

what is all this mean for economics?

We need the economy to reconceive
investment

only now investment isn't going to be

about the relentless and mindless
pursuit

of consumption growth

Investment has to be in the new economy protecting
and nurturing the ecological assets on

which our future depends.

It has to be about transition

investing in low-carbon
technologies

and infrastructure

we have to invest it in the idea of a
meaningful prosperity providing

capabilities for people to flourish

and of course this task

has material dimensions. It would be nonsense
to talk about people

flourishing if they didn't have food,
clothing, and shelter but it's also clear

that prosperity goes beyond this, it has
social and psychological aims.

family, friendship, commitment society

participating in the life of that society

and this

too

requires investment

Investment for example in places

places where we can connect; places where
we can participate; shared spaces

gardens, concert halls

public parks, libraries, museums

places of joy and celebration; places of

tranquility and contemplation

prosperity is a shared endeavor

its roots are long and deep. it's
foundations exist already

inside each of us

what we doing here is taking a few

simple steps towards an economics fit
for purpose

and at the heart of the that economics
we're placing

a more credible more robust and more
realistic vision

what it means to be human