Here’s my top tip for launching a controversial new book. Don’t underestimate your own need for preparation time. It’s not that you don’t already know the book inside out. It’s not that you haven’t already given numerous presentations and faced up to your sternest critics. It’s not that you aren’t aware of the fragile limb onto which you have somehow managed to manoeuvre yourself. It’s more that standing there at the moment of truth in a room inevitably crowded more with friends than foes you will be overcome with a ferocious desire not to let them down.
The trouble is, of course, that no amount of preparation time can really deliver you from that fear. And in any case, the time wasn’t really there to be had. The months leading up to the launch last Monday (2nd Nov) of Prosperity without Growth have been an extraordinary headlong rush from one engagement to another. The appetite for the messages in the book seems to be growing. In the ten days running up to the launch I gave presentations (some of them by video link I hasten to add) to packed audiences in Melbourne, Cardiff, Bristol, Edinburgh, Cambridge and New York.
The last of these was my main concession to carbon. And of course I thought long and hard before I accepted it. But this was a unique opportunity to contribute to a high-profile discussion on ‘green growth’ at the 64th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Hard to turn down. I couldn’t still swear that the carbon (even after offset) was definitely worth the game. You never can perhaps. But as I looked around at their assembled excellencies in the crowded Committee Room I noticed only a handful of missing spaces and a significant overflow into the observers’ gallery. And I couldn’t help feeling that something strange (and perhaps significant) was happening.
There wasn’t by any means an unequivocal acceptance of the need to question economic growth. The very name ‘green growth’ speaks of a strong attachment to familiar language. The comfort of progress runs deep. This need is acknowledged explicitly in Prosperity without Growth. Social progress matters. A robust vision for social progress is important to us, for all sorts of reasons. Hope itself is threatened in its absence. The quality of our lives is impoverished without it. But it was also clear that fewer people than ever are comfortable with the notion that social progress can be measured simply by counting up the GDP.
In fact, I think the fragile limb analogy is probably the wrong one. There was certainly a sense, during the days following the release of the report on which the book is based, that by daring to question the shibboleth of economic growth, I had placed myself (and indeed the Sustainable Development Commission who released it) in the firing line for some quite vociferous displeasure. And from some worryingly high places.
The UK Government’s initial reaction to the report, for example, could hardly be counted as favourable. In fact, when their grudging official response (under some duress from the Environmental Audit Committee) claimed to ‘welcome the Sustainable Development Commission’s thinking’ in this area, it prompted me to go back to my dictionary and look up alternative meanings of the word ‘welcome’. Bits of Government were (and still are) furious with us. With me, I guess.
And yet, in the intervening months, I’ve had the sense not so much of crawling out onto an exposed branch, as of stepping unwittingly into the middle of a raging torrent. I’ve already alluded (in this blog ) to the long pedigree of these ideas. And to the warmth and gratitude I’ve received from those who’ve been engaged with them for a long time. But during the months I’ve spent revising the report and preparing (or not) for the launch of the book, I’ve also been struck by the sense that this momentum is accelerating. More so in some places than in others. The ideas seem to have a particular place in the hearts of the Danes and the Swedes. The French delegate at the UN basked contentedly in frequent references to the Sarkozy Commission report.
And in spite of all the initial antagonism, even cautious UK policy makers are now beginning to put their toes in the water. Defra now has an exciting Green Economy project kick-started (their word!) by Prosperity without Growth. During launch week itself I had two separate engagements at Her Majesty’s Treasury. In one of those, a lunchtime seminar to the Treasury Environmental Network, there were (as my title suggests) more people in the room than chairs. Before anyone gets too excited about that, let me admit freely that it was more about the Treasury’s shortcomings in planning capital assets than it was about sheer numbers. (Presumably, they assume the market for chairs will do the planning for them.) Even so, it was a fiercely intelligent audience who plainly wanted to engage (and not always critically) with the subject matter.
That too was the message from the launch event. In the crowded room, the person with the hardest job wasn’t me at all. It was Ed Crooks, FT’s energy editor, making a valiant case for the more conventional viewpoint. And in the process of countering his constructive criticisms, I discovered something important. Flourishing isn’t just about the approval of your peers. It’s also about the respect we are prepared to hold for the differences between us. Next time I launch a controversial book, I’ll bear that in mind. Maybe it will make me less nervous.
