- Speaker #0
Welcome to Remarkable, a podcast proposed by Thomas Gauthier, professor at EM Lyon Business School and head of the Carbon4 strategy in Anthropocene. Anthropocene is this new geological era in which humanity is confronted for the first time in its history to the planetary limits. To better understand the challenges of this new era, Thomas goes to meet those who are in the process of exploring the future and who are remembering history to build a habitable world from today. Jørgen Anders is a Norwegian university professor and emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School. To describe the project, To follow the world's path, he is closely interested in the concepts and methods of the perspective and dynamics of systems. Alongside Dennis and Donella Meadows, he is one of the co-authors of the report commissioned by the Club of Rome in 1972, The Limits to Grow, the limits to growth in a finite world. In the following interview, Jörgen wonders, more than 50 years later, about what humanity has learned since then and speculates on the importance of the future of the world. au sujet du rôle des États dans le maintien à flot du vaisseau Terre.
- Speaker #1
Welcome, Jorgen.
- Speaker #2
Thank you.
- Speaker #1
So here you are. You are looking at the Oracle and to the questions that you ask her about the future, she will answer right every time. Could you please tell us what would be the first question you would like to ask her?
- Speaker #2
I'm more than happy to do so. But since I have been... living from talking about the future for the last 50 years. I have learned long ago that I should always start my presentation with giving a quick summary of my worldview so that the audience, you, understand where I'm coming from. And it is going to be short, brief, and it is very helpful for your understanding because What I normally think about things is typically controversial and unconventional. So it's useful for you to get the big picture first. So the big picture is the following. I believe that humanity is huge and powerful and living on a tiny little green golf ball that is hanging in big black space. So the... My perspective is one of strong humanity on a small and fragile planet. The situation today, or this generation, is basically that now humanity has gotten so big relative to nature and the planet that we're starting to have physical difficulties. You know, we are interfering with the boundaries of the planet. And this is leading to two problems. These are global problems that everyone knows about. And they are five. It's the poverty problem, you know, generally in the global south, but also rising in the rich world. The second problem is inequality. It's the inequality between the north and the south and also within nations. The second problem is the disempowerment of women, the fact that one half of the world's population are secondary citizens on the planet. The fourth problem is biodiversity loss, the fact that we're losing nature. And the fifth one is climate change, the fact that we are now interfering with our environment in such a manner that it is changing very fast. We don't really know in what direction. But clearly, change is a problem because the world is full. If the world had been very empty, then few people and etc., then it wouldn't matter much that the climate change, but it's true and consequently it matters. So in my perspective, these are the five problems that we're facing. And this is not new to anyone. Everyone knows that basically these are the five problems that humanity is. facing. We also know exactly what are the solutions to those five problems. You know, poverty in the poor world basically means that you need the type of economic development that the Chinese have managed to put in place, you know, in 40 years. Hopefully, there could exist other ways of doing it. But all you need in order to remove poverty is, of course, economic development, old-fashioned economic growth, labor productivity increase. On the inequality thing, the solution is very simple. You take from the rich and give to the poor. On the empowerment side of women, health, education, contraception and opportunity to everyone, you know, gives empowerment to the women and has the very positive side effect that the women then choose to have much fewer children so that the total population, you know, ultimately will start declining, which I see as a huge advantage. It's actually the saving grace if we could just get. the population down from the current 8 billion down to 4, something like that would really solve a lot of problems. And then finally, on climate change, we know, of course, exactly what is the solution. It is to stop using coal, oil and gas. You know, 70 to 80% of all the greenhouse gases comes from our burning coal, oil or gas. And that's if we just phase out the use of those three energy carriers, you know, that solves the whole problem. We already know how to replace fossil-based electricity with wind and sun and other ways. And we know how to replace fossil-based heat, you know, with hydrogen, which is essentially liquid electricity. So the five problems are very serious. They are well known. They have been around for 50 years. We know the solution. And then one might ask the question, why in the world does so little happen? In spite of the fact that I have spent a whole lifetime traveling the world talking about this, I have had very little luck in my 50 years. Why? And luckily, the answer to that question is very simple. So the reason why so little happens is that what needs to be done to save the world is not profitable from the point of view of the profit-making investor. So the reason why we are not building sun and wind at the enormous scale that is necessary is that the return on investment using the normal calculation methods that we teach people in business schools, you know, just makes sense to put your private money into that. and so on, on climate change, on poverty reduction, on all the others. So that's the, in my mind, the main reason why so little happens is that it is not profitable. Can anything be done about this? And the answer is, of course, yes. You can subsidize those things that need to be done. That's the crudest way of solving the problem. So the state simply puts up the money. necessary to make what needs to be done profitable from the investor point of view. Where should the government get the money from? Well, there are, as most economists know, a few ways in which a government can get money. You can tax, you can borrow, you can print money. Let's take the least contentious way, which is to increase taxes. So the problem is that... In order to solve the problem, we need to make the solutions profitable. In order to make them profitable from the investor point of view, we need subsidies. In order to have subsidies, we need higher taxes. And when we go to the people and ask for higher taxes, they say no. And so what do we do at that point in time? At that point in time, we go to the people and we say we're going to tax the rich instead of taxing all of you. And, you know. 10% of the world's population control 50% of the income. So why don't we, 90%, the majority, decide democratically to tax the rich? They can easily pay the 2-4% of national income, which is necessary to solve all the problems. And that is where I am. So I've spent 50 years with different solutions to the different problems. Now I am at the point that I'm... understanding that the real problem is the profit-driven nature of the capitalist system that we are. a part of. There is no way we're going to get rid of the capitalist system nor democracy, you know, over in the short term. So we need to find a way around this. And in my mind, the only way around this is that democracy decides to tax the rich and use the money to subsidize those non-profitable activities that are necessary to save the world. And to give a final example, so this is not total hogwash. In my country, Norway, which is stinking rich in all manners, what we ought to be doing is to use our labor force and our shipyards to build floating windmills that we could then ship to nations that need windmills. We have the expertise to do those things. We have the manpower to do those things. It doesn't happen because, as you know, floating wind is roughly three times as expensive as wind standing on the bottom of the sea. And consequently, this does not happen unless the government does what I think it should do, which is basically to subsidize these things, just pay for the construction of what we need to be done. Luckily, this is not as outrageous as it sounds in the ears of most neoclassical macro people, because we have done this. Germany decided to subsidize the introduction of wind and sun in 1999. Norway decided to subsidize the introduction of electric cars with 20,000 euros per car, you know, in 2015. And we are now... the country in the world that has the most electric cars. And even the United States of America has suddenly now, through the Inflation Reduction Act, decided to breach with the dogma of the neoclassical macro or liberal market and starting to pay governmental money to get those things done. the obvious things done that are needed in order to increase the well-being of the American population. So that was my long story. And then we can turn to the Oracle and ask, you know, and I get the opportunity to ask her. It's interesting for me to do so. I very rarely get the opportunity to ask other people about what they think about the future, since I'm one of the few. living people who knows a lot about the future, I'm being asked all the time. So I did spend two minutes before this conversation trying to think about it. And here are my questions. And let me ask the three first, and then you can react and let's take a discussion. So then you know where we're going. So my first question, and here I am really curious. Will the world react fast enough to the climate change to keep warming below plus 2 degrees centigrade in the year 2100? In other words, I'm very curious about whether my forecast, which is that humanity will not react to the challenge, and will live at the end of this century in a very much climate-damaged world. I would very much like to know whether I'm right or wrong. So that's my first question. Will sanity win? That's basically my first question. My second question is the following. Will the world have disintegrated into warring nation states by 2100? So in other words, I... believe that we are not going to rise to the occasion. And as a consequence, we will get social collapse, not environmental collapse, but we will get nations that start disintegrating into what you see in identity politics and quibbling. And I think that that is going to continue so that... By the end of this century, we are no longer living in this wonderful thing that existed in the year 2000, namely a global society where at least one did, to some extent, manage to... to use each other's expertise to build a much higher average labor productivity than otherwise. So that's my second question, you know, will the end of this century be back to, you know, some kind of middle ages at a high technological level, but where we do not cooperate between nations? And the third question I've added because we're both European, and I presume that much of the audience are European, will there still be a distinct European culture in the 2100? Or will that culture have been eliminated by the influx of other cultures into Europe? So much... or different from the Mongolians when they took over China in the 1200s. You know, they simply replaced the current leadership with Mongolians and then they let the Han Chinese continue running the society. In Europe, my worry is that we will react so slowly to the migration pressures that we will in a way lose the European culture. And what do I mean by European culture? I mean a way of life that generates higher well-being for large groups of people than in regions that do not pursue this pattern. So these are my three questions, and I would be absolutely delighted if I could get an answer to them.
- Speaker #1
Well, thank you very much, Jorgen. And as you can imagine, you are. unfortunately not going to get answers from neither me nor the oracle but your questions are great starting points for further discussion i'd like to perhaps echo a word that you you used you said sanity and you asked to the oracle the question will sanity win in relation with this phrase let me ask you this question based on your you know, international conferences and talking to leaders here and there, how much are you finding your counterparts to be able to appreciate the world from a biophysical standpoint? What I'm trying to say here is that it appears to me that the world is in danger because we have a hard time reconciling human systems with the earth systems. And perhaps making peace between the two might start with a fine appreciation of biophysics. So my question to you is, powerful people or perhaps not so powerful people that you are meeting along the way, how familiar are they with a biophysical... I'm not sure. take on earth? How much do they know of biophysics?
- Speaker #2
To take the last thing first, that depends on the distance from nature. So if you speak to poor people or rural people, they have a great appreciation for what is going on. And the more urban and the higher educated you are, the more distant you are from the realities of nature. the less is the willingness to make a sacrifice in order to protect nature. I think that's my answer. This is a huge range. But of course, in general, people are getting harder away from nature than they were. My empirical basis for this answer is that I worked for five years from 1994 to 1999. as the Deputy Director General of the Worldwide Fund for Nature. Five million people, 300 billion euros budget. And I learned from that effort that there is only a tiny minority of the Western rich population that is willing to pay $25 a year in order to support. the cause of conservation. So I'm skeptical about, you know, I do not think there exists a fundamental understanding in the rich world population, that we do depend very much on nature. I am willing to excuse that thing, however, much to my enemies or my friends in the environmental movements'irritation, because I do not really think that the loss of nature is the most imminent problem. But if we lose... nature. There will be another nature around in a million years. We have changed the ecosystem many times. So what will happen during the next hundred years is not that we're going to kill nature. If we destroy the current nature, we will get another nature very quickly. The transition will be awful. It will be forest fires and lack of... wonderful animals that we had before and we will have you know all kinds of problems but nature will recover it's more a question what will happen to the the human being so what i do think is the serious problem where i do spend time trying to convince people is that they must stop using coal oil and gas that's a much simpler message. One should have thought that educated people in the Western world, you know, in general would have understood this and be willing to take the small sacrifice it is to change from a cheap fossil car to a more expensive electric car. But even there, you know, I think we are up against something which is not easily solved. In summary, I am Sadly, pessimistic at this point in time about the ability of sanity to prevail. But I'm still working at it and I encourage everyone else to keep fighting because by sitting down, it certainly is going to get less good than if we keep fighting.
- Speaker #1
Echoing the second question you asked. to the oracle you brought up the phrase social collapse and and that brings a follow-on question i'd like to ask you so what i understand is that when human beings discovered fossil fuels they all of a sudden were able to access massive amounts of energy and and that very quickly allowed societies to grow very fast in terms of how sophisticated they were. And we've been in this carbon pulse for like 200 years or maybe a bit more. And we've come to a point where we are enjoying, at least for us in Europe and other people around the world, very sophisticated societies that offer us very sophisticated societal services in terms of health, in terms of... transportation, in terms of security, in terms of education, in terms of agriculture, etc. Now, if we as humanity manage to escape this carbon pulse and transition to other ways of fueling our economies, it might be at least, it appears to me that this is a reasonable assumption that it might necessitate or it might... entail that this level of societal sophistication might have to go down a bit. And the question I have now connecting with social collapse is leaders are re-elected because they are, to make it simple and according to me, able to make promises to people that go in the direction of more sophistication, more complexity. more advanced societal services to the people. So the very foundation of leadership is ever-increasing sophistication. So what becomes of leadership in a future that would be going down the path of complexity? So complexity going down instead of complexity going up. Do we have ways to think leadership in such a transition?
- Speaker #2
That is... That was your worldview in a song. Very interesting. I think I agree with the fact that it is the easy access to slaves, the easy access to energy that has made it possible to lift 8 billion people to the current material standard of living. You call it complexity. I think it's easier to call it complexity. quality of life or high standard of living. It is the energy use. And without the energy use, which is this, you know, so I'm using, what is this, 30,000 kilowatt hours per year. That's the same as if I had of the order of 30 slaves, you know, working for me between 30 and 100 people. And it. If I didn't have the 30 to 100 slaves, clearly my life would be much more basic. You are asking the question, what will happen if there are too many people compared to the energy available, was essentially what you said. Here, my worldview is luckily different. You are absolutely right that the use of energy makes it. possible for many more people to have a much higher standard of living than they would have had if the energy was not there. But there is one very interesting side effect of this higher quality of life, and that is the fact that people choose not to have children when they get rich. You know, which is, you know, when we first discovered this 30 to 40 to 50 years ago, that we saw that fertility. is actually declining when the education level, when materials die, et cetera, et cetera. You know, we didn't really think it was going to last. And if you read, fine read our first book, The Limits to Growth, 50 years ago, you can see that we were exploring the number of children of the women in the rich suburbs of the United States. And we were discovering that they were... actually having more children again. Luckily, that turned out to be wrong. You know, we are now 50 years into a very clear development that as you educate, as you make life more interesting, as you educate the women, as you educate the whole group, as you focus on culture and care and science, luckily, families choose to have fewer and fewer children. And this... is the saving grace in my eyes. Most people don't see it that way, but this is, I think, that the world population is going to peak before 2050, and then it will be going down for the next several hundred years. And already by the end of this century, we will be back to a population that is much more handleable, you know, than the current one. And with the new energy sources, the sun and wind, There will be enough sun and wind for these people to live at a very high standard of living. And hopefully they will choose to have even fewer children so that gradually the world will go down to a handleable population, a couple of billion or four billion that can live on this earth in harmony with nature. Again, I should stress that most people disagree with me. First of all, Since people are so desperately interested in children and in labor force and in someone to take care of them when they're old, they hate to see and appreciate the fact that we are on this declining fertility line. And secondly, they have never done the calculations themselves, so they cannot understand that we are so close to the peak in the world population as we really are. Then you spoke about leadership in this period. And I think you're absolutely right that it is totally different to lead a nation where well-being is going up from year to year than leading a nation where well-being is going down. These are two very, very different things. And I think leading in a situation where well-being is... declining year after year after year after year is not possible. I think that that actually is going to lead to social collapse.
- Speaker #0
As the well-being is sinking, the trust in society, the belief in the government is going to sink, which means that the government will find it very difficult, like Monsieur Macron in France, to put in place policies that are absolutely necessary for the sustainability of the... And so we will get the national breakdowns where you then... disintegrate into something which is at a much lower level of standard of living and also well-being. And then new leaders can arise, you know, trying to get people out of the hole. But I think, you know, avoiding the hole is very difficult. The only ones who managed to do this with style and with telling people what they're doing is, of course, the Chinese Communist Party. That is doing the following. They are ensuring an economic growth rate, which is so high that they can give 3% per year higher purchasing power to 1.4 billion Chinese every year. And then they keep 2 or 3% to build a strong China in the future. The day when the growth rate, when they can no longer maintain that very high aggregate, growth rate. You know, the difficulty in running China is going to become so big, says these people, that it is, you know, important to reach the national goals before they become so rich that the growth rate declines to the level of France and the United States and Western Europe.
- Speaker #1
So with this development of yours, um, and connecting what you're saying with what I do as a teacher, I'm wondering what would be your thoughts on today's curriculum that are offered to business school students. I know that you've been president of the BI Norwegian Business School for a few years. I know that you are still affiliated with the business school. Can you please share with us whether, according to you, there are disconnects between this... let's say, upcoming collection of leadership challenges and other kinds of challenges and the sort of training that we are currently offering to our future business leaders? What are your thoughts on this?
- Speaker #0
My thought on this has been the same for the last 50 years. It is that there is a total disconnect and that the effort... to solve that disconnect is starting slowly, slowly to be underway at this point in time, but it's insufficient and probably will remain insufficient until after, you know, there is some disaster. My personal history is the following. I became the president of the Norwegian Business School in 1981. That's 41 years ago. That was 10 years after I wrote The Limits to Growth and 10 years ago that I established my new worldview, namely that society needs to do something. You cannot leave this to the market. I tried to introduce this type of curriculum in the early 1980s in the business school of Oslo, only to learn that this was a total impossibility. This was a school where the students paid tuition to go and they didn't want to hear about alternative use. They wanted to know how to get rich, you know, how to run modern corporations, etc. So I was the president for eight years, two periods. And I chose in the first year to stop pushing my agenda as part of the curriculum and consequently managed to keep peace with the faculty and with the thousands and thousands and thousands of students. 30 years later, in 2000, I returned to the school. Then as an elderly, experienced person, I had been the chairman of three banks and I had done a number of things in business. which increased my knowledge about that type of thing. I once more tried to introduce the idea of sustainability. in the business school 22 years ago. That was during the last ESG wave, you know, with the John Elkington and the triple bottom line and the, you know, the economic sustainability, the environmental sustainability and the social sustainability. I sat on the sustainability councils of three multinationals, you know, the Dow company. Dow Chemical Company in the United States, British Telecom in England and AstraZeneca in Sweden for 15 years, trying to work inside the system to make these corporations that really wanted to be sustainable to become sustainable. And this worked some, so when we got to 2010, they had essentially done those things that could be done without losing the bottom line. And then came the great financial crisis and that, in many ways, terminated this very positive wave towards sustainable business that existed 20 years ago. Now, to my great horror, the ESG wave is underway. It is totally identical with what happened in the late 1990s. And the horrible thing is that No one has the historical memory. They don't, you know, all the guys doing the consultancies and talking about this seem to have forgotten completely that we did exactly the same thing at the end of the 1990s. So I'm frustrated. And so I give my talks. And what I've ended up doing is that I'm trying to change people's worldview instead of... going down at a detailed level to make them see the world the same way I see the world, and then hopefully be honest enough to start modifying their ways. But it is not easy.
- Speaker #1
To continue on with your quest for, let's say, having an impact on people's worldview, I tend to think that... There is another complementary path for impacting people's worldview, and that is fiction. So we've been discussing for now a lot about the business world, a lot about politics. We've been quote-unquote, you know, analytical and engaging with knowledge the way that scholars would. But fiction is... I believe, a complementary way of not only generating and sharing knowledge, but this is also one of the surest ways to touch people's emotion to a point where there could be individual conversions and there could be people adopting new worldviews. What are your general thoughts on how much it is of interest to do? use fiction and to perhaps help even individuals explore alternative futures? You know, we could even go as far as staging futures in which these people might have to operate, might have to deal with new circumstances. Can we, in a way, help individuals through fiction acquire memories of the futures so that they really steer their look towards desirable futures that are probably functioning according to very different guiding principles as the way the world functions today? Can fiction help in a way broaden our appreciation of possibilities?
- Speaker #0
I think you are absolutely right that there exists the two ways of addressing the issue through the mind or through the heart. And I've spoken this far about all my mind. oriented things since I'm typically an academic or a brainy person. But 20 years ago, I started joining forces with a psychologist, my dear friend Per Espen Stocknes, who is a real psychologist. And he is 20 years younger than I. And he made the point that if I wanted to change the world, I had to stop being a doomsayer. I had to provide solution and a happy outlook. You know, the idea is that you don't make people change by scaring them. You make people change by pointing into a golden door or, you know, that there is something to be attained of positive value in the short term. He's a master in doing this himself. We started a scenario program in our business school in order to try to convey the mixed rational view of Jorgen and the attractive future world of Per Espen. And this has been one of the most successful programs ever run in this school, in spite of all the economists and everyone else saying that this is... really not academic activity. This should not be, you know, done in a business school. It should be done somewhere else, you know. But it has worked. So we have, of course, a small core of ardent followers, you know, those that have taken the one month or so it takes, you know, to get used to our worldview and see all the opportunity that exists inside that worldview, you know, et cetera. So, yes, I think fiction in your world, scenarios in my world, or what I currently do, I do what I call infotainment. So I, instead of being, you know, a band that goes around and plays music to audiences or read verses, I give very expensive academic talks that are made in such a way that people laugh. every five minutes. And you talk about very serious issues in an entertaining manner. This is a tiny market. It's very complicated. It's like stand-up comics. You really have to play the game with the audience and with the current events, etc. But that's how I have moved on this store. The final thing I wanted to say is that luckily in our current project, the 50-year anniversary project for the book The Limits to Growth that arrived in 1972 is called Earth for All, the world for everyone. And it appeared six months ago. And this is luckily a well-financed activity. So what we are currently doing, Not I, but my colleagues, we're now developing a world game based on the mathematical model that is underpinning also the Earth for All book. And this is headed by Per Espen Stocknes, my psychologist friend. And the idea is to make an interactive game that we would be playing in the town halls of the zillions of communities in the world. where you get the opportunity to engage in these world issues. And Per Espen is like you. He says there is no way we're going to sell a solution or anything, but we might shake the minds of the people if they once get to experience the hopelessness of this, that, or the great promise of happiness. happiness that you suddenly see when the population is going down. Finally, when you have played the game for a while and you have learned that if you could just get the population down, then the wealth of the remaining people and the inequality and all that, you know. And so there is now, and this will be launched in half a year's time, this fabulous game. And so my recommendation. to you as a business school professor is that instead of trying to do what we have tried to do for 30 years without any luck, you should start playing the game. Just have evenings with wine and playing the game and talking about it afterwards. You know, the impact it has on people. The game is very interesting because it's very... unstructured in a way so people have to form alliances and negotiate and quarrel and disagree and that of course deepens the emotional experience dramatically so this is apparently or we hope you know one way in which we could at least move two percent of the population in the direction of of believing in our worldview through the conversation up until now um
- Speaker #1
You've also brought into your answers and your questions some... elements of the past. You've spoken about evidently the publication of the limits to growth and other historical landmarks. We're moving into the second part of the interview. Could you please look in the rear view mirror once again and perhaps bring back one or two or three additional historical landmarks or events that you think can be of use today? to orient ourselves in this uncertain present time and also hopefully contribute to building a sustainable future for us.
- Speaker #0
A great pleasure. And I have three things that came to mind when I was asked to think about what are monumental events during my lifetime, the last of my grown-up life. the last 50 years. The first one is the fact that climate evolved as the tightest constraint. You know, the big problem of the world did not end up being overpopulation. It did not end up being lack of resources. It did not end up in a huge hunger catastrophe. These alternatives existed 50 years ago when we started the the limits to growth work. It proved that the problem is greenhouse gas emissions. The climate change is the real constraint. All the other constraints exist, but they're further out. So this is the real problem. And I think that is the most important thing that has happened during the last 50 years. Then there are two things that are also very deep. And the second point is the fact that China showed that it is actually possible to eight double the income, the GDP per person in a 40 year period, you know, having a significant population of 1.4 billion people. Norway had shown that you. could do this in a tiny, very, what's that called, coherent population of three million white people living in a hopeless territory. You know, it is doable through strong state, strong collective action and people who manage to lead. But the fact that China did this, you know, from then came to power until now is. I think, going to go into the history books as the second most important thing that happened during these 50 years. And the third thing that happened during these 50 years has come much later. And that is the fact that the United States and other democracies shows that democracy is not a sustainable solution. You know that what is happening is that when you get rich enough, then the societal groups are starting to fight instead of collaborating. And that it seems like this is a totally unavoidable side effect of a liberal system of governance. These are the types of things that I'm asked by my wife never to say. You know, she says that if you don't want to be listened to. you should say that you're a fan of China, and you should say that you are not a fan of, or do you not believe in the sustainability of democracy. But I'm now so old, and since you're asking genuine questions, I would be stupid not answering what I think. So again, that's needless to say in this context. What I am saying is a minority view. You know, most people disagree with me. Most academics would say that Jorgen is an idiot. You know, he has been around for a long time and it would be useful if you could just leave the academic debate because he makes noise and he makes people believe in things that are not real. But luckily you asked me and this is what I think.
- Speaker #1
Well, let's maybe dive into the topic of democracy. I am not a political science expert, so the way I look at democracies and perhaps more specifically democracies in some Western Europe countries is that democracy was in a way chance or people saw it as a chance for them to organize themselves without having to be constrained by religions. Democracies were an option for people to break free of the tight relationship with the long term which was up until that point governed by strong religious powers. But at the same time, my understanding is that democracies are organically short-sighted. They are not designed to care for the long term. And that care for the long term, which was ensured by all kinds of religious beliefs, is just not existent enough in democratic setups. If we keep believing that democracies have a lot of positive sides for, you know, ensuring freedom of people and offering perhaps some of the ways of people raising in society and whatnot, I'm troubled not being able to find ways in which democracy could re-engage seriously and systematically with the long term. Now, you've said just earlier that you probably share this appreciation that democracies have a weak spot when it comes to caring for the future. Do you see, nonetheless, any signs of hope that democracies could engage with the long term while keeping alive their positive sides that at least some people are considering to be positive signs? Can democracy be compatible with the long term?
- Speaker #0
First of all, I would like to compliment you on your absolutely precise description of what democracy is intended to be and pointing to why it fails. You know, so it's, of course, intended to reflect the opinion of most people disturbed by kings and priests. And the problem arises for that reason only because human beings tend to be extremely short-term. And there are, of course, development reasons why human beings do not typically have a 200-year horizon when they make a decision. So you're absolutely right that the problem with democracy... At this point in time, what needs to be done requires a very long time horizon in order to be rational. What needs to be done in Norway at this point in time is a couple of things, getting rid of the coal, oil and gas that will cost 5% of the income of people and we get the benefit. 30 to 40 to 50 years down the line. I once started a political party. We went to parliamentary elections in order to see whether we would get votes for this explicit platform. And we got 3% of the vote for the platform of solving the problem, the climate problem now, and then get a better world for our children and grandchildren 30 to 60 years in the future. Most people looked at us and said that we are not, I am not willing to make a sacrifice today to get an uncertain benefit for my children or grandchildren 30 to 60 years into the future. So all I've done now is just to support your wonderful, precise, succinct description of what is the problem with democracy. Then you ask the question, the rational question, can anything be done? to a democratic society in order to make it long-term? The simplest answer is, of course, the one that I have pursued for 50 years as a pedagogue. It is to make people long-term. And when I was young, I thought that when people get twice as rich as they were in 1970 in the United States, they would probably become a little more long-term because They had food and the TV and the car and the whole thing. Experience has showed that societies do not become more long-term. Democratic societies do not become more long-term, even now that we are four times as rich as we were in 1980. So, the pedagogic thing does not seem to work. So, the only solution I have come up with, which is meeting enormous resistance, is the following. So, I'm suggesting that the parliament in France or in Norway or the United States, when they assemble after the election, they should select a superior court, 10 members. that are there for a long time, and they are given veto rights on any decision made by the parliament that increases greenhouse gas emissions in the territory during the next 100 years. And so this is in many ways equivalent to the United States that established their Supreme Court in order to defend the Constitution. that they managed to cook up, you know, 250 years ago. The sole role of the Supreme Court in the United States is to defend the Constitution. That's why they're making all these weird decisions in my mind. That's because, of course, if you think that the Constitution is sacred, this is, you know, what is the rational consequence. So I would like the same thing to happen in Norway, that we got the Supreme Court on climate or in Europe. or probably it will have to be national in order to be democratic, perceived as democratic. And what you then need, of course, is to pay them so well that they cannot be corrupted. You need this to be, ideally it should be for lifetime, but then we run into the difficulty of the aged people sitting on these things. So what you need to do is to pay them. pay them a salary for the rest of their lives, but then say that they're only there for 10 years or 15 years or something like this. So I've been pushing this for the last three or four or five years. I don't get much traction. It's unbelievable how most people who believe in democracy think that this is just another way of oppressing them. So even though it is then oppressing them. by the people they have themselves chosen. They don't seem to like this solution. I have never ever heard any idea that I believe is feasible. So if you have one, I would be delighted. Or if one of your listeners have a solution, I would very much like to hear it. Sorry, that is... solution that maintains democracy. I am full of solutions of elite management, you know, how you can run a nation, an elite can run the nation. And I am also relatively full of ideas on how an elite can maintain credibility and support, you know, because most of the arguments that are used against elite. government is of course against governments that are in place in order to enrich themselves you know people take it for granted that authoritarian regimes are there in order to enrich their clan or these people you know clearly the alternative does exist that you put in place well-meaning people you know who actually are interested in building the future of the nation you know But this is not easy to sell. Like everything else I try to sell.
- Speaker #1
Well, going back to that last thought of yours regarding looking for, you know, solution spaces outside of democracies, I can just imagine how much resistance you're getting if, let's say, you're pushing forward systems that would resemble the, you know, the philosopher king system of... Plato, where an elite would in the end rule a country. I can just imagine how much this might be considered to be counterintuitive for people these days, although one may also question
- Speaker #0
how properly functioning democracies are today. I think that this is one thing to call yourself a democracy and that is something else to be effectively managed and run as a democracy.
- Speaker #1
Let me give you one other example, which I think is feasible. It has the problem that it is not that easy in countries with more than 10 million people. But this is the kingdom of Bhutan. So that's of the order of one million people. And they are internationally renowned because their parliament has replaced the gross domestic product with gross domestic happiness as the goal function for the running of the country. And then comes the question, so how do they do it? And it's very interesting. So here is how they run their democracy. Before the election, a questionnaire is sent to all the inhabitants of the country, where they are answering a huge number of questions about how well is this, how well is that, what would you like of this, that. So they get a database. which is the one million people, complaints about what is wrong and their wishes for the future. Then there is an election where the politicians run around and say what they plan to do within that thing. Someone is elected and then comes the interesting point. At that point in time, the king. who owns most of the country, gives the state budget to the prime minister, the selected one. He then gets five years where he can spend the money, the cost of the budget, you know, the way he wants to. At the end of the period, they have a new questionnaire sent out to people, and then they can compare, you know, what... What is the situation after five years with the situation before? And then there is a new election where they then choose whatever. This is an interesting way of running elite government. And it would, of course, be very simple if you had a wise central bank that could simply print the money that is necessary to put in place the program. of the prime minister. So you didn't have to do the taxation. You just tax people through the inflation that arises from the printing of the money. We know enough if we are outside the NNL classically, straight to jacket, how one could do this. But there they do it simply by the king being so rich that he can easily give the guys the budget for the next five years. So that's an interesting solution. We are only on the third cycle of this system. And, you know, there are problems in Bhutan, but they are different from the problems that exist elsewhere.
- Speaker #0
We are getting towards the end of the conversation. You know, the very final part of the conversation is meant to be focused on the present and more specifically on Bhutan. on your presence since we've been asking questions to the Oracle regarding the futures, and then you've brought back from the last 50 years of history the landmarks that you wanted to share with the listeners. With this final question, my interest is in perhaps you expanding upon the many ways in which you intervene in the world. Now, you've covered this question already through your academic... work. You've also shared with us your political experience. We now know that through the 50-year update to the Limits to Growth report, there is going to be a world game initiative and setup that will be available to people. Is there anything else that you want to add regarding those many different ways in which you intervene in the world? Do you still have time to do more?
- Speaker #1
Well, so I am 77. And it's already 10 years ago that I gave the first talks that were retrospective, where I said... you know, when I first gave the talk, it was called my seven paled attempts at saving the world. So I grouped my life, you know, and told what I at that time tried to do in order to save the world only to learn that it didn't work. And then I moved on to the next and the next and the next. And I am now on the 10th attempt at saving the world and the 10th attempt. is to try to convince people to tax the rich so that we can use the money to fund those unprofitable things that needs to be done in order to save the world. So that's my 10th attempt. My ninth was China. I worked in China for 10 years. I tried to introduce benevolent dictatorship. It's not a dictatorship. China is run. by 92 million members of the Chinese Communist Party. The democracy inside the Chinese Communist Party is the fiercest democracies that exist. The only thing is that those guys stop quarreling every five years, make a plan, give it to the government, and then they continue quarreling about the next five-year plan instead of... But I had hoped that it would be possible to sell this type of solution in the West. And it is not. So that was my ninth attempt. I gave up on this one. And now I am trying to make people tax the rich leg. I think I have been, you know, so I've spent one third of my life in academic activity where I write books and give talks and write papers and... analyze numbers and try to change perspectives. This is very heavy going. You know, the current war is, of course, with the neoclassical macro people who have imbued the world with the liberal market thinking, which is totally useless when the problem is that what needs to be done is not profitable from the point of view of the investor. you know what you do then if you're a real liberal market people and they oppose the obvious one namely that the government should then tax the people and use the money to solve the problem they don't like strong government they don't like high taxes and so so that is that's the end of the academic one then i spent many years in my life in in business and the only thing I learned from that is that business is not able to do what is needed because it is not profitable. And so you don't survive as a business if you really try to solve the real problems. Then I spent a lot of time trying to teach business that what they ought to do is to work as a political agent and change the frame conditions under which they work. so that those things that need to be done become profitable. This is very much uphill. I mean, if I went to your school and spoke to your students about this, they would immediately quote Mr. Friedman and say that the business of business is business, that business should keep out of political affairs, etc. And it's... It's very heavy going in that area. The only thing which is useful about business in my mind is that if you want to be a rebel and try to change the world, you need to be rich. So you need to at least spend enough time in business in your life in order to make sure you have an income when you start criticizing the system so that you can stop. relying on your employer in order to decide what you are supposed to say or not to say. So my advice to all young people is to get sufficiently rich during the first 10 or 15 years of your life that you can then spend the remaining 50 years of your life criticizing the system and trying to build a better world. And the third part of my life was in politics or in NGOs, etc. And there, the only lesson is the one that you beautifully summarized. People are unbelievably short-term in their thinking. So irrespective of what you try to do, the only things that are doable are the ones that have a very short-term and quick result. And if there is one thing that characterizes the five challenges that humanity is facing, it is that there are no short-term results. And it is costly. And it will require change of jobs. You know, the dirty jobs are going to disappear before the green jobs come up. And so there is a transition here which the government has to carry. You know, you cannot ask people to let go their profitable job wherever it is in order to later on start working in an electric car company. So this is one of the things for which we need to tax the rich. in order to pay the transfer salary for the people. So those are the three broad experiences. And in order to do what I've been taught by both my wife and Per Espen, my psychologist friend, I need to end on a positive note. So is there hope? And yes, the answer is that there is hope. It is faint, but it is... monumental when the United States of America decides to spend $800 billion on unprofitable greening of the United States of America. Of course, it is so unacceptable and so unconventional that they don't dare to call it this. They call it something else and they finance it by reducing public services in the long term. This is tax deduction financed. So it's financed in the worst way possible because the bad social services in the United States that creates sinking well-being in that population is going to get even worse, you know, 10 years into the future when the tax revenue is even lower because of the IRA. But the fact that this was passed democratically in Washington. is very, very, very impressive, and it gives hope. It certainly is going to kick the EU to do exactly the same thing, which many critics view as very sad. I view as very, very positive, and the EU should do it twice as hard and tax its citizens to get hold of the money, or go to the European Central Bank and print the money. But they should certainly follow suit. thereby accelerating the solution of the unprofitable problems that is the future. So I have hope.
- Speaker #0
Well, Jorgen, I think we are going to end this conversation on this dual lesson that you are sharing with us. First of all, yes, there is room for perhaps what I would call, after you, realistic hope. And lesson number two is we probably are well advised to... follow our partner's wisdom. Thank you very much, Jorgen.
- Speaker #1
Well, thank you too.
- Speaker #2
Thank you for listening to this new episode of Remarkable, played by Logarithme. All episodes are available on the website atelier, in singular, desfutur, in plural,.org. Pour ne rien rater des prochains, abonnez-vous, n'hésitez pas à laisser une note et à parler du podcast autour de vous. A bientôt!
