Although that had most certainly been the initial goal, so-called developing countries did however, not just accept Western norms of societal change. During the 1960s, a wide range of alternative models of social development emerged in the Global South itself. In 1967, for instance, the government party of Tanzania, with its leader, Julius Nyerere issued the Arusha Declaration. Stating that development should rely on the underdeveloped nations themselves based on their traditional and it was presumed nearer to nature ways of life. Seven years later, in 1974 the UN issued the declaration on the establishment of a new international economic order that considered donors and beneficiaries equal and mutually interdependent. This interdependence manifested itself already at the Stockholm Conference when continued economic development of the Global South was the price that the Global North had to pay in order to address the environmental challenges that it had itself inflicted upon the world. So on a global scale, environmentalism became inevitably tied up with developmentalism. And this is why the Brundtland Commission when it formed the idea of sustainable development in 1987, insisted on continued economic development defined as infinite economic growth. [MUSIC] In an industrialized world, growing economic activity is almost always based on increased material throughput, consisting of intensified use of natural resources and increasing conversion of energy. And since the dominant industrial source of energy has for decades been fossil fuels, rising energy conversion results in accelerating climate change. So there may, as phrased by the 1972 report to The Club of Rome, be "Limits to Growth". Exactly the question of continued economic growth even in the prosperous Global North, forms a crucial ideational and political dividing line in how to address the SDGs. Few economists and politicians are today able or willing to imagine a future without continued material expansion. And they tend to put their faith in technological optimization. The level of decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation to be performed by such an optimization however, will have to be of a scope beyond any historical presidents. Naturally, de-materialization of consumption in affluent societies will contribute to a relative decoupling by spending money on experiences rather than on things. But it is extremely hard to imagine that genuine sustainable development is feasible on a global scale without radical geographical and social redistribution of economic activity and spending power. This however, will also affect the financing and functioning of those welfare states that appear to contribute to promoting exactly sustainable development. [MUSIC] If the welfare state really wants to give something to its citizens, then the first problem is what is a citizen? And is a citizen, those who has been living here for three generations or are we open or willing to enroll citizens who have something to give the world in our project? And that's a very big issue. So Denmark and Danish welfare State is probably not as global and as open as we possibly could wish. But the other thing is that, talking about sustainability, then it both has a social dimension. It depends on is it possible for the welfare state to continue to give new generations all they want? And should secure them as much as they need? Because need is a very soft concept and you will always need more. That means that the welfare state can never give what people need. That's the problem because then the welfare state has constantly to increase its productivity. And that means increase the output of the natural resources, but also the output of human resources. And human resources means that they have to measure everything. And to measure if you're good enough, if you perform well and you're productive enough. And even the Danish Welfare State has had rather good unions to support the individual worker. Then workers feel depressed now and they tend to leave the working market a little earlier than they did before, at 60. They might be tired and of course they have pension. And therefore they might leave the working market because they cannot fulfill the expectations for increased productivity. And then welfare state also, This quest for growth, constant growth, means that natural resources are not simply enorme or huge [enough]. So therefore... Growth is kind of exponential growth. And that means that the welfare state constantly need more resources. Of course petrol and gasoline and gas and iron and rare metals and so on. And the welfare state has not solved the problem to include the used resources in how they calculate economic growth. It's sort of a negative contribution to the final economy. [MUSIC] Well, that's one problem. We need, a strong state in order to manage resources. And a strong state need tax and taxpayers. But we also need a state which can manage resources so that the state doesn't have this mantra of productivity in its definition so that the state always have to increase the output of human resources and natural resources. So, we need a stronger state which probably can incluce both human resources and natural resources in its final strategy. So in reality our expectations to this ideal welfare state is that we need more and more. And the problem for the welfare state is that it has constantly to increase productivity and the consequence of that is that, the welfare state cannot be neither social nor environmental sustainable. [MUSIC] The hegemonic confidence in continued economic growth reflects another kind of material linearity, namely that of extraction of resources followed by conversion of kinetic energy to heat, manufacturing, marketing, consumption, and finally disposal of waste. But production doesn't need to be linear in this way. Traditional agriculture for one is not and today, many attempts are being made to make even industrial economies circular. The first step in that process has actually to do with thinking differently, considering waste not as a useless end product, but as a new resource. [MUSIC] In 1986, German sociologist Ulrich Beck published the book Risk Society. Here he described how an acute absorption of preventing those many risks that were increasingly produced by us humans characterized the late 20th-century global modernity. From the perspective of such a risk adverting society, in which it is an ideal to avoid abrupt change no matter its course incrementality is much more manageable than sudden accidents. We can foresee and prevent gradual change, but from our personal lives as well as from history, we all know that sudden changes do to take place. In regime shifts as well as in environmental catastrophes deeply affecting the biosphere. But even, when brief transitory incidents, revolutions, occur, development is largely considered to be gradual taking place at a basically equal speed. Since World War II, however, many developments in society and the environment have not behaved in the supposedly linear manner. Growth in atmospheric concentration of CO2, global population, conversion of energy, indebtedness, transportation, production of goods, etc, has developed exponentially, rather than linearly. So we are now basically living in an accelerating world and climate change represents the most pervasive exponentiality of all. The question is, however, how we culturally deal with this quite unaccustomed time regime. [MUSIC] Well, I don't think there's an easy answer or a simple answer to that, but I think that one of the things that we have to take into consideration is, the way we understand change and especially historical change, and to understand that we have also to examine our perception or notions of time and temporality. Our recent understanding of time is formed by different historical temporalities. You might say that the recent understanding of a linear time of a progression towards a better future is a recent idea. It was becoming or emerging in the late 18th century, but before that, we had the reverse idea actually that we were sort of leaving a golden age sort of paradise in the beginning and we were becoming more and more far from that. So, the recent idea about we are moving towards a better future is something that has been installed or is emerging together with industrialism and modernity at large. And this notion has sort of become more and more permeating our notion of time and also our everyday life, in the 20th and also the 21st century, in the industrialism as I said. And the way that the wage labor were sort of hired for putting the work into different slots, or blocks of time going to work and then having an off work time, leisurelife at home sort of increased that idea about time coming in blocks and time was used for specific purposes. But also, the technological development with at least here in the late 20th century and the 21st century, we have the computers, we have the mobile phones, we have the internet, the social media is all over the place. And this is sort of increasing our notion of the time is accelerating. So most of us have this feeling that we have never time enough. So there's a scarcity of time. We are always behind schedules, were always biking through the town to make our deadlines and we buy fast food and we never have time enough with our Children and so on. So this scarcity of time is sort of also adding to this notion of having too little time. But at the same time and paradoxically enough, we also have this movement which take the opposite position, namely arguing that we have to practice slow living, slow food and so on. So taking the time out of the everyday life, so to speak, in a way also having a notion rather nostalgic notion of the past as where a life where we had enough time. Everybody was more or less self sufficient, growing their own food and having time enough to take care and also to enjoying the social relationships. So there are these sort of opposite notions or movements towards time at the same time. And then comes of course climate change and the Anthropocene and all that stuff. And it's sort of adding in a way to both these notions of time. Because the Anthropocene sort of make it clear that we, as humans are responsible for the development. And therefore also sort of make us the responsible persons, those who are able to change things and to change climate things. So that will point in the direction of the slow living, the home grown garden, the homegrown vegetables and so on. But on the other hand, the Anthropocene and climate change and plastic pollution and whatnot has sort of added to the sort of apocalyptic time. The sense that we are just before the total collapse and doomsday. So we have this feeling that the clock is always five minutes to 12, right? And we have to do something now and not tomorrow and not next week, but now. So this is also adding to this acceleration of time and this understanding that it is something we simply have to do. [MUSIC] Well, of course the extreme weather that we are actually experiencing right now and also the plastic pollution in the oceans, the whales with plastic in their stomach and so on. It's a kind of sort of sensible or very concrete or materialized way in which we can actually perceive these new forms of exponentiality, but also our sort of global interdependency. But actually I would argue that on top of this, if we're speaking right now here in 2021, that the COVID-19 pandemic has also sort of done something with our notion of time. Because we have had this experience that our everyday life was sort of radically intervened by the politicians. We found out that the everyday life we had expected to live was not possible. We had to stay at home, we had to keep social distance, we had to sanitize our hands all the time and wearing masks and and so on. And most people sort of long back to the near past or to the everyday life that we knew before these restrictions. But at the same time, I think that actually reversing time so that now we long back to the past again. It also opened up the everyday life as a means for changing or shaping a better future. Because it has shown us that actually if the politicians really want to, they can actually intervene in everyday life, they can decide what we're going to do. And it makes the everyday life the sort of the site where we can actually practice not just the here and now and our needs here and now. But also the place or the site where we can actually practice a better future. And I think that people when they sort their waste for example I think that it's not just the here and now and because the municipality says that we have to do so, but also in a way to take care or caring for the future in our everyday mundane practices. So sorting the waste or knitting our own dishcloths or whatever it is that you do is in simultaneously a way to do the here and now, the everyday life and taking care of your family and household and friends. But also it is a way of taking care of the future. And I think a lot of people actually have found that the pandemic has shown us how much we are interdependent on a global level, right? So what happened in China or in Italy or in the US had directly sort of effect in our everyday life and also affected us in a new way. So I think the everyday life sort of became the obvious target also in future politics in the way that we can hopefully at least shape a better future. [MUSIC] Linear thinking in an exponentially changing world will lead to pre-centrism exaggerated emphasis in the present, that tends to delay necessary remedial action regarding the future. So if we are to engage in global sustainable development, we will have to adapt ourselves to living in an accelerating world by shifting our focus from what German historian Reinhart Koselleck called our 'space of experience' to our 'horizon of expectation'. No historical record of the past will provide us with the tools to handle the multiple crisis of the present. But confronting our own imaginaries and subconscious understandings of the human condition, nature and time, may prepare us to face a still more fickle and unpredictable present. [MUSIC] These are the three key takeaways from this module. Basic conceptions of stability and change are instrumental for our capacity to engage in sustainable development. The question whether continued economic growth is possible in affluent societies, while less developed countries catch up with them, divides the approaches to sustainable development in two incompatible positions. From ordinary human life, we know both linear and circular processes, but in order to preclude socio-environmental disasters, we will have to learn to live in an exponential time regime.
