Abstract
This chapter asks whether the UK can play its part in reducing climate change risk to a reasonable level, while maintaining a full employment economy and consumers who are satisfied with their lives (and who will therefore vote for the necessary policies). Climate change requires two kinds of measures: reducing the economy’s carbon intensity and, potentially reducing the size of the economy as compared to business as usual. The first involves cost and the second involves fewer working hours. Neither of them damage employment but both reduce consumption. The chapter quantifies four scenarios and concludes that in three of them, changes are probably politically feasible provided they are accompanied by the kind of redistribution we saw in the UK between the 1950s and the 1970s, and provided the steps described in the chapter to make the choice of fewer working hours feasible and attractive are implemented.
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Notes
- 1.
The well-being loss associated with a fall in income is much greater than the well-being gain associated with a comparable rise in income. (See Stoll et al. 2012).
- 2.
Speech in London at the launch of the Carbon Ratings Agency, reported in the Guardian, 26 June 2008.
- 3.
The following was issued while I was writing this: http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/emissionsgap2012/portals/50143/Emissions2012_Press_Release_EN.pdf.
- 4.
European Foundation for Improvement of Living and working conditions (2003) cited in Marks et.al (2004, p. 10).
- 5.
Dominique Meda, quoted in ‘About Time: Developing the case for a shorter working week’ Conference note. nef March 2012.
- 6.
Juliet Schor, quoted in ‘About Time: Developing the case for a shorter working week’ Conference note. nef March 2012.
- 7.
That is 1,379 hours as opposed to 1,625 hours in the UK in 2011. See OECD: http://stats.oecd.org
- 8.
“A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life…. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt” (Smith 1776).
- 9.
nef is currently working on these issues. For more information please contact the author at charles.seaford@neweconomics.org.
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Seaford, C. (2014). Happy Planet, Happy Economy, Happy Consumers?. In: Tatzel, M. (eds) Consumption and Well-Being in the Material World. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7368-4_7
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