Samuel Alexander warns of 'prosperous descent ahead'

This is a transcript of my keynote address presented at the ‘Local Lives, Global Matters’ conference in Castlemaine, Victoria, 16-18 October 2015.Other keynote speakers included Rob Hopkins, David Holmgren, and Helena Norberg-Hodge: Samuel Alexander.

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hank you for that introduction, Jacinta, good morning everyone. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land and to recognise that these have always been spaces of teaching, learning, sharing, and conversation. It is a real honour to be part of this conversation today.

When I was a boy, if ever I were amongst a group of people congregating at 9am on a Sunday morning it was because I was at Church. For better or for worse, I am now a lapsed, or rather, I should say, a collapsed Catholic, although I remain a seeker. But as I look around the world today, especially from my Western perspective, it seems clear enough that God, if he is not yet dead, as Friedrich Nietzsche declared, is, at least, increasingly absent. There seems to be a tension between our spiritual sensibilities and the cultures and systems within which we live. As the poet-musician, Tom Waits, would shout in the voice of a husky wolf: ‘God’s away on business.’

But the absence of God should not imply an absence of religious thinking in our culture or cultures. In fact, I would argue quite the opposite; that our Western religiosity has become ever more intense in recent decades, and what has happened is that we simply switched idols, no longer worshipping the God of Christianity, and instead worshipping at the alter of growth, singing praises to the God of GDP, our saviour, for only in growth will we find redemption. Our high priests now take the peculiar form of neoclassical economists, bankers, and national treasurers. Daniel Bell once wrote in his landmark text, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism: ‘Economic growth is the secular religion of advancing industrial nations.’

Read what Samuel Alexander said -  “What is Degrowth? Envisioning a Prosperous Descent.”

Mistaking the poison for the cure - Samuel Alexander

(Unrestrained growth, along with a burgeoning population, is the root cause of climate change and here research fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne, Samuel Alexander, wonders if the poison has not been confused with cure)

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n the surface, the Sustainable Development Goals, soon to be confirmed by the United Nations, seem noble and progressive. They seek to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and hunger while creating sustainable and resilient societies.

But look beneath the surface of this pleasant rhetoric and one comes face to face with a far more ominous vision of development: a vision that is fundamentally compromised by corporate interests and ultimately doomed to failure, if not catastrophe.

Read Samuel Alexander's piece here - “Sustained economic growth: United Nations mistake the poison for the cure”.

'Only the brave should read' - Samuel Alexander

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amuel Alexander has written on The Conversation on a topic which he believes “only the brave should read.”

The research fellow from the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at University of Melbourne discusses our ecological footprint, and the news is not good.

Basing his comments on recent research, he says humanity as a whole is currently in ecological overshoot, demanding one and a half planet’s worth of Earth’s biocapacity.

“As the global population continues its trend toward 11 billion people, and while the growth fetish continues to shape the global economy, the extent of overshoot is only going to increase,” he writes.

Read his views - “If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble”.

Sam says we need 'disruptive social innovation'

Dr Sam
Alexander.

Samuel Alexander discusses the importance of “disruptive social innovation” necessary if we are to achieve a low-carbon world.

Dr Alexander, a lecture with the Office for Environmental Programs at the University of Melbourne, says it is becoming increasingly clear that small, incremental change to the way humans use and produce energy are unlikely to catalyse a transformation to a low-carbon civilisation.

“At least,” he points out, “not within the ever-tightening time frame urged by the world’s climate scientists”.

Dr Alexander is also a research fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) and a co-director of the Simplicity Institute.